The difference between the Met Office and the BBC forecasts on temp becoming starker by the day.
BBC talking about 35 or 36 in my neck of the woods. Met says 32 at most.
Does anyone actually check back on the Beeb stuff to see what actually happens?
BBC forecast is significantly less accurate in my experience.*
"On 6 February 2018 BBC Weather changed supplier from the government Met Office to MeteoGroup, after being required to put its weather services out to tender."
Another triumph of market competition, eh?
(*In fairness, as it happens, the BBC and Met Office forecasts for my area for the next week are pretty much identical.)
I'm a big defender of the Met Office. Meteorology is an area where Britain is genuinely world-leading and a big reason for that is the success of the Met Office and the support it has received from numerous governments.
But, you could make the argument that the BBC doesn't need the best forecasts, only forecasts that are good enough for its purposes, and so saving money on weather forecasts to spend it on something else might have been the best choice for them.
Fortunately, because there is open competition, you can get forecasts directly from the Met Office on their website, YouTube, etc, and these are paid for by the Public Weather Service contract the Met Office has with the government, that comes with a bunch of performance metrics (including temperature forecasts) the results of which are still laid before Parliament every year, I believe.
True but the BBC is the national broadcaster, effectively funded by taxes. Met Office is the national forecast service, effectively funded by taxes.
Why not just let them share data for free rather than have the ridiculous situation where the BBC end up paying a Dutch company for UK forecasts?
The government arguably needs to order the water companies to (a) build more reservoirs, and (b) construct pipes from the north and west to the south and east. They should have done so 30 years ago.
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
It's not really in any way like the Nazis.
Yes, really
As Churchill said, the Nazis will sadly prosper by using "the lights of perverted science"
What is Covid if not "perverted science"?
1. Churchill did not say that. He said: "But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."
2. Covid is a pandemic.
The Nazis deliberately planned and perpetrated the massacre of six million Jews. Are you suggesting the Fauci and co. did something similar?
Shameful diminution of the evils of Nazisim. I'd have thought better of you tbh.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
You're just working very hard this evening to try to demonstrate that you run the conversational shop on PB aren't you?
I’m really not. I’m deadly serious here
I can’t believe people are prepared to shrug and accept “oh we don’t know where it came from, probably it came from the lab but does it matter now?”
I’ve heard people say exactly that. IT DOESN’T MATTER
It absolutely matters. For start we don’t want it to happen AGAIN
Yes but you have the wrong target. It matters not whether it came from a bat in the lab or a bat in the market. The scandal is America was paying for dangerous gain of function research in a country, China, that is bound to exploit that research for biowarfare. That's the real issue.
Actually, I've always felt that the really bad behaviour - the one that cost tens of millions of lives and lost livelihoods - was the Chinese allowing flights out the country when they knew there might very well be infected people on them.
If a virus escaped from Porton Down and killed thousands of people in the South East of England, I would be angry that protocols weren't followed, but it would ultimately be an accident. On the other hand if a virus escaped, and the government made the decision to do nothing to prevent people from the area travelling all over the country carrying the virus, then I would be very fucking angry.
Yes, the virus almost certainly came from the lab: the fact that a bat virus outbreak happened in the city with bat virus research has always made that likely (although, of course, there are many ways to make the jump.)
BUT, the absolutely massive thing that is positively criminal was the failure of the Chinese government to come clean early and for flights to be stopped. That would have allowed much shorter lock-downs, and for millions of lives to have been saved.
I think that's right, and it does reflect the closed, dictatorial nature of Chinese leadership. I doubt if anyone said, "Oh, let's infect the world." Rather, they said, "Oh, this could be serious. But I could get in trouble if I decided to do anything. I'll report it confidentially to X, and maybe he'll do something." If something can go disastrously wrong like this, you need a culture encouraging whistleblowers and sensationalist media, tiresome though both of them are for authority.
Echoes of the causes of Chernobyl in that.
In an interesting parallel, the experiment at Chernobyl that caused the disaster was actually a test of safety systems and procedures…..
On the day before Deepwater Horizon went belly-up there was a senior management safety visit. Where they focused on avoiding finger injuries.
One can argue that the Met Office is rendered better by needing to compete.
Indeed that’s based on some pretty basic economic thinking.
The Met Office doesn't necessarily compete in that sense though. It "competes" with real world results. It's models are adjusted to better track real temperatures and climate. It's pretty binary.
The difference between the Met Office and the BBC forecasts on temp becoming starker by the day.
BBC talking about 35 or 36 in my neck of the woods. Met says 32 at most.
Does anyone actually check back on the Beeb stuff to see what actually happens?
BBC forecast is significantly less accurate in my experience.*
"On 6 February 2018 BBC Weather changed supplier from the government Met Office to MeteoGroup, after being required to put its weather services out to tender."
Another triumph of market competition, eh?
(*In fairness, as it happens, the BBC and Met Office forecasts for my area for the next week are pretty much identical.)
I'm a big defender of the Met Office. Meteorology is an area where Britain is genuinely world-leading and a big reason for that is the success of the Met Office and the support it has received from numerous governments.
But, you could make the argument that the BBC doesn't need the best forecasts, only forecasts that are good enough for its purposes, and so saving money on weather forecasts to spend it on something else might have been the best choice for them.
Fortunately, because there is open competition, you can get forecasts directly from the Met Office on their website, YouTube, etc, and these are paid for by the Public Weather Service contract the Met Office has with the government, that comes with a bunch of performance metrics (including temperature forecasts) the results of which are still laid before Parliament every year, I believe.
True but the BBC is the national broadcaster, effectively funded by taxes. Met Office is the national forecast service, effectively funded by taxes.
Why not just let them share data for free rather than have the ridiculous situation where the BBC end up paying a Dutch company for UK forecasts?
Symptomatic of neoliberalism gone mad.
One of the reasons the Met Office has been able to defend its funding from the government is that it doesn't simply receive a wodge of departmental spending that can easily be salami-sliced away. It signs contracts with government departments and agencies to supply services in return for payment.
This means when a government department wants to cut its funding for the Met Office they are able to move the discussion onto which services the department wants to stop receiving.
So you can't force the BBC to get its forecasts from the Met Office, because the question then would be how much they pay for it, and who decides, or which other contact is it paid under?
You can be sure the Met Office will want to win the contract back next time it's up, so they'll be gathering evidence on forecast accuracy, and other ways of justifying their worth, while working out how much less money they can afford to ask for.
Liz has proved she has no ability to win an election.
Energy bills up okay let’s talk about solar panels
And here are some farmers explaining how it's done and it doesn't harm food production. An article from years ago, when Truss was environment secretary.
Liz has proved she has no ability to win an election.
Energy bills up okay let’s talk about solar panels
SKS
Let's talk about nothing cos I am on my holidays innit
The more you despair about the Tories the more you have to despair about sir interesting missing a goal wider than Watford Gap because holidays. Does he just not want the job?
One can argue that the Met Office is rendered better by needing to compete.
Indeed that’s based on some pretty basic economic thinking.
The Met Office doesn't necessarily compete in that sense though. It "competes" with real world results. It's models are adjusted to better track real temperatures and climate. It's pretty binary.
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
It's not really in any way like the Nazis.
Yes, really
As Churchill said, the Nazis will sadly prosper by using "the lights of perverted science"
What is Covid if not "perverted science"?
1. Churchill did not say that. He said: "But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."
2. Covid is a pandemic.
The Nazis deliberately planned and perpetrated the massacre of six million Jews. Are you suggesting the Fauci and co. did something similar?
Shameful diminution of the evils of Nazisim. I'd have thought better of you tbh.
Oh do calm down. I'm not saying scientists are Nazis. They are just vain, flawed, selfish, ambitious human beings - like the rest of us. Sadly their vanity and greed Has resulted in a true catastrophe, because we gave them too much untrammelled power
I am saying that the scale of the Covid disaster is comparable with Nazism. And it is. WW2 killed 80m? Covid has so far killed 20m, and counting, and the human/economic aftershocks are similarly epochal
We need justice, like WW2 needed the Nuremburg Trials
The difference between the Met Office and the BBC forecasts on temp becoming starker by the day.
BBC talking about 35 or 36 in my neck of the woods. Met says 32 at most.
Does anyone actually check back on the Beeb stuff to see what actually happens?
BBC forecast is significantly less accurate in my experience.*
"On 6 February 2018 BBC Weather changed supplier from the government Met Office to MeteoGroup, after being required to put its weather services out to tender."
Another triumph of market competition, eh?
(*In fairness, as it happens, the BBC and Met Office forecasts for my area for the next week are pretty much identical.)
As a regular golfer, playing throughout the year, I pay a great deal of attention to the daily forecasts for days when I'm considering playing, down to the precise hour of forecast rain and the percentage likelihood during the hour. When you're going to be playing out in the open for about 4 hours continually with almost no shelter, it really does matter.
In my experience in terms of rainfall the Met Office forecast has been streets ahead of what the BBC publishes.
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
Is this now accepted by most scientists?
God no. They hate the idea. Because it taints all science
But the circumstantial evidence is now overwhelming (to my mind)
It is noticeable that science is spending tens of millions investigating the wet market hypothesis, and yet not a dollar on the lab leak idea. But it doesn't help
They keep producing papers and saying Look, it was the market, almost as if they want us to believe that. And yet every one of these papers folds and dies, because they cannot compete with Occam's Razor, which says: Look three hundred yards south, where there is a lab specifically investigating novel bat coronaviruses, and trying to make them more infective for humans, via the Furin Cleavage Site, and this is going on in the exact same place where a terribly dangerous novel bat coronavirus emerged, with remarkable and dangerous evolutions at the Furin Cleavage Site
No scientific study can compete with that basic truth. It came from the lab
Careful, you could be awarded two pinnochios for that sort of loose talk.
One can argue that the Met Office is rendered better by needing to compete.
Indeed that’s based on some pretty basic economic thinking.
And in what way is the Met Office now better as a result of competition rather than as a result of comparing its forecasts to outcomes (science) or bigger computers (technology)? The public arguably has a worse service (via the BBC).
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
You're just working very hard this evening to try to demonstrate that you run the conversational shop on PB aren't you?
I’m really not. I’m deadly serious here
I can’t believe people are prepared to shrug and accept “oh we don’t know where it came from, probably it came from the lab but does it matter now?”
I’ve heard people say exactly that. IT DOESN’T MATTER
It absolutely matters. For start we don’t want it to happen AGAIN
Yes but you have the wrong target. It matters not whether it came from a bat in the lab or a bat in the market. The scandal is America was paying for dangerous gain of function research in a country, China, that is bound to exploit that research for biowarfare. That's the real issue.
Actually, I've always felt that the really bad behaviour - the one that cost tens of millions of lives and lost livelihoods - was the Chinese allowing flights out the country when they knew there might very well be infected people on them.
If a virus escaped from Porton Down and killed thousands of people in the South East of England, I would be angry that protocols weren't followed, but it would ultimately be an accident. On the other hand if a virus escaped, and the government made the decision to do nothing to prevent people from the area travelling all over the country carrying the virus, then I would be very fucking angry.
Yes, the virus almost certainly came from the lab: the fact that a bat virus outbreak happened in the city with bat virus research has always made that likely (although, of course, there are many ways to make the jump.)
BUT, the absolutely massive thing that is positively criminal was the failure of the Chinese government to come clean early and for flights to be stopped. That would have allowed much shorter lock-downs, and for millions of lives to have been saved.
I think that's right, and it does reflect the closed, dictatorial nature of Chinese leadership. I doubt if anyone said, "Oh, let's infect the world." Rather, they said, "Oh, this could be serious. But I could get in trouble if I decided to do anything. I'll report it confidentially to X, and maybe he'll do something." If something can go disastrously wrong like this, you need a culture encouraging whistleblowers and sensationalist media, tiresome though both of them are for authority.
Echoes of the causes of Chernobyl in that.
In an interesting parallel, the experiment at Chernobyl that caused the disaster was actually a test of safety systems and procedures…..
On the day before Deepwater Horizon went belly-up there was a senior management safety visit. Where they focused on avoiding finger injuries.
Bedtime...
The case worker for Baby P was so annoying* to her boss that they investigated her (the case worker) for child abuse.
She had shouted back at a teenager who had been aggressive towards her. Once.
As opposed to investigating the people slowly beating a baby to death.
*She kept of banging on about Baby P being abused. Which wasn’t what management wanted to hear.
2 years ago it was 35p/therm. Now 402p/therm. Futures for delivery in Dec ‘22, 545p/therm.
Someone quoted in the telegraph is extrapolating this to mean a £5k average cap, come next April.
Ouchy ouch ouch.
This will blow every other political consideration out of the water unless HMG take some radical measures (funded by higher taxes and more borrowing).
I am still puzzled why the rising gas price seems to have such a direct impact on electricity prices when less than half our electricity is produced by gas generation plants.
The market price of electricity is set by the cost of the marginal unit of electricity - this will almost always be the gas generating plant.
So the owners of wind turbines, nuclear plants, hydroelectric, PV panel arrays* etc. are making a huge windfall profit?
Which should be taxed.
(*Checks, my home 4.0kW PV array is paying me the huge rate of, er, 5.99p per exported kWh.)
turbotubbs said: "The issue with blame for actions taken during the pandemic will be tricky, and I suspect will be rather divisive. People really ought to be judged for decisions taken only on the information they had at the time. And it’s pretty clear that all governments messed up to a greater or lesser extent. I’m not convinced there was one right answer."
Agreed.
But I think we knew, even at the time, that Trump's unwillingness to test widely was an obvious blunder. (To be fair, the CDC was part of the testing problem, since they rejected using the faster, but more error-prone, tests.) And there are other examples, such as Trump's hosting "super spreader" events.
By the way, one of the things I like about Birx's book is her frankness about how she, and those she worked with, learned what worked against COVID, as they fought it.
There was the same reluctance over lateral flow tests in the U.K. it went against decades of testing ethos, but in the face of a pathogen that spread assymptomatically or at best pre-symptomatically lateral flows, with mass use, were actually going to be the better tool. Interestingly, omicron now seems less likely to spread pre symptomatically, with lots of anecdote about symposiums significantly before testing positive. This is a GOOD thing, as conventional measures to fight disease spread (isolate if you feel unwell) will work much better.
The worst thing for me in the U.K. has been the unwillingness to update guidance. People still seem obsessed with hand sanitisation, when reall6bwe should be rolling out air purifiers in all crowded environments. The symptoms list never really changed, even if it should have.
The three best things that were done in the UK were:
1. Early and generous funding of vaccine development and production expansion. 2. Hospital acute treatment studies. 3. Possibly the ventilator challenge, even though ventilators didn't end up being used so much.
The five biggest mistakes were: 1. Ventilation / hand-washing guidance emphasis (as you say). 2. The general approach to law, guidance, etc, in relation to public health measures to reduce spread was a huge mess in many and various ways. 3. The failure to learn from the successes and failures in other countries. 4. The failure to start a large medical training programme in 2020 to help expand medical capacity. 5. The half-hearted approach to the contract tracing and isolation stages of the standard public health approach to controlling infectious diseases, which meant the vast sums spent on testing were wasted.
I think it's important that we try to spend time on learning from our successes, as well as from our mistakes. It's probably easier to build on our successes than to fix our mistakes.
I would add to the mistakes the constant conflation of "face mask" and "face covering" in the early weeks, which prevented a message of "cover your face" getting circulated.
"Leave the face masks for health care professionals" is fine, but follow up with "so use a scarf".
And that was mainly a failure of common sense on the part of politicians. They knew the disease was spread by aerosol - if you spray an aerosol through a layer of fabric, it stops it, alot. Politicians listened to 'experts' rather than use their own common sense. As Brexiteers know, never a good idea.
One can argue that the Met Office is rendered better by needing to compete.
Indeed that’s based on some pretty basic economic thinking.
The Met Office doesn't necessarily compete in that sense though. It "competes" with real world results. It's models are adjusted to better track real temperatures and climate. It's pretty binary.
It’s a trading business, with a CEO.
It's publicly owned and it's primary income source is a very big annual government research grant to study climate, weather and provide the state with metrics for shipping, agriculture and other weather based data for economic growth forecasting. It's actually a world leader and has been for decades. One of our few state owned success stories. The BBC being forced to drop them because a second rate Dutch company came in with a lower bid was and is a national embarrassment.
The government arguably needs to order the water companies to (a) build more reservoirs, and (b) construct pipes from the north and west to the south and east. They should have done so 30 years ago.
The regulator, among others, put pressure on the water companies to not build reservoirs.
Pumping water about is insanely expensive. However, I believe some of the old canal network is actually used (or was it just proposed?) for this…
Liz has proved she has no ability to win an election.
Energy bills up okay let’s talk about solar panels
And here are some farmers explaining how it's done and it doesn't harm food production. An article from years ago, when Truss was environment secretary.
They would say that though wouldn't they? The fact remains that absent some really fancy shit about using completely different wavelengths, which doesn't apply, your sunlight can be snapped up by grass or by panels, not both. Farmers like something for nothing as much as the next man, and solar is a fuck of a lot less work.
One can argue that the Met Office is rendered better by needing to compete.
Indeed that’s based on some pretty basic economic thinking.
And in what way is the Met Office now better as a result of competition rather than as a result of comparing its forecasts to outcomes (science) or bigger computers (technology)? The public arguably has a worse service (via the BBC).
I think if you talk to the users of a variety of Met Office commercial forecasts, such as for wind farms, or council road departments, they would be able to tell you about a lot of ways that the Met Office forecasts are better because they have to compete with private forecasters.
I want Trump to win so he can put all these scientists in jail. Forever
Which ones? The ones who signed off the money? The poor scheme who was working on a project then felt a bit rough but went to pick up food for his/her evening meal from the wuhan market? The ones who insisted it couldn’t be a lab leak?
Anyone who was involved in the cover-up should go to jail
Anyone involved in the Furin Cleavage Shit should face the gallows. There needs to be severe deterrence so that mad selfish scientists think twice before doing it again
You're just working very hard this evening to try to demonstrate that you run the conversational shop on PB aren't you?
I’m really not. I’m deadly serious here
I can’t believe people are prepared to shrug and accept “oh we don’t know where it came from, probably it came from the lab but does it matter now?”
I’ve heard people say exactly that. IT DOESN’T MATTER
It absolutely matters. For start we don’t want it to happen AGAIN
It will happen again. No doubt in my mind. As long as these places exist where this kind of research is being undertaken then human error and cock-up will happen.
It was a zoonotic infection, caught from a wild animal trapped to be eaten. And we know it could happen again, because people are regularly being exposed to similar viruses: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02153-5 That’s the real risk, and stupid conspiracy theories will just get in the way of trying to mitigate the real risks out there.
We literally have another zoonotic infection running rampant right now in monkeypox. This is where pandemics come from, by jumping from another species.
By the way, do you know how you can tell whether something is a stupid conspiracy theory? Trump believes it. If you’re not certain whether something could be right or it’s just a conspiracy theory, have a quick Google and see what Trump is saying. If you’re on the same side as Trump, stop and re-evaluate your life.
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
Surely that would be up to the Chinese government, given China was likely the leak source
Where have you been? It was an American lab, doing research for the US. It happened to be in China, apparently because they were banned from doing such dangerous research in the US.
One can argue that the Met Office is rendered better by needing to compete.
Indeed that’s based on some pretty basic economic thinking.
And in what way is the Met Office now better as a result of competition rather than as a result of comparing its forecasts to outcomes (science) or bigger computers (technology)? The public arguably has a worse service (via the BBC).
If the public is getting a poorer service, then the BBC has made a poor procurement decision, but that’s a separate point.
With regard to how the Met Office is now better, I don’t know. Maybe they are more accessible, or innovative, or better at finding commercial applications for their research.
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
It's not really in any way like the Nazis.
Yes, really
As Churchill said, the Nazis will sadly prosper by using "the lights of perverted science"
What is Covid if not "perverted science"?
1. Churchill did not say that. He said: "But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."
2. Covid is a pandemic.
The Nazis deliberately planned and perpetrated the massacre of six million Jews. Are you suggesting the Fauci and co. did something similar?
Shameful diminution of the evils of Nazisim. I'd have thought better of you tbh.
Oh do calm down. I'm not saying scientists are Nazis. They are just vain, flawed, selfish, ambitious human beings - like the rest of us. Sadly their vanity and greed Has resulted in a true catastrophe, because we gave them too much untrammelled power
I am saying that the scale of the Covid disaster is comparable with Nazism. And it is. WW2 killed 80m? Covid has so far killed 20m, and counting, and the human/economic aftershocks are similarly epochal
We need justice, like WW2 needed the Nuremburg Trials
You are still concentrating on the wrong thing. What killed millions of people was, as @rcs1000 reminds us, the cover-up by China and the spread throughout the world. And for that it makes no difference whether it started with a lab leak or at the wet market.
The difference between the Met Office and the BBC forecasts on temp becoming starker by the day.
BBC talking about 35 or 36 in my neck of the woods. Met says 32 at most.
Does anyone actually check back on the Beeb stuff to see what actually happens?
BBC forecast is significantly less accurate in my experience.*
"On 6 February 2018 BBC Weather changed supplier from the government Met Office to MeteoGroup, after being required to put its weather services out to tender."
Another triumph of market competition, eh?
(*In fairness, as it happens, the BBC and Met Office forecasts for my area for the next week are pretty much identical.)
As a regular golfer, playing throughout the year, I pay a great deal of attention to the daily forecasts for days when I'm considering playing, down to the precise hour of forecast rain and the percentage likelihood during the hour. When you're going to be playing out in the open for about 4 hours continually with almost no shelter, it really does matter.
In my experience in terms of rainfall the Met Office forecast has been streets ahead of what the BBC publishes.
You make it sound like the Murmansk convoys. Thanks and blessings to all you brave golfers going out there for half hours on end so the rest of us can sleep easy in our beds.
Liz has proved she has no ability to win an election.
Energy bills up okay let’s talk about solar panels
And here are some farmers explaining how it's done and it doesn't harm food production. An article from years ago, when Truss was environment secretary.
They would say that though wouldn't they? The fact remains that absent some really fancy shit about using completely different wavelengths, which doesn't apply, your sunlight can be snapped up by grass or by panels, not both. Farmers like something for nothing as much as the next man, and solar is a fuck of a lot less work.
The panels don't intercept all of the sunlight, and grass growth is limited by soil moisture and temperature, so likely some of the sunlight used by the solar panels couldn't be used by the grass to grow anyway.
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
Cool. How do we do that then? Send the Met into China? Good luck talking President Xi into that one.
Well, the US Congress could subpeona British-American scientist Peter Daszak, for a start
He is out there, walking around, a free man, like he has no association with the plague that has killed twenty million people. Even tho he was co-head of the Wuhan lab, and the man leading the charge for more Gain of Function research
Here he is boasting about the "killer coronaviruses" they were making in that lab
"2016 video shows Peter Daszak describing “Chinese colleagues” developing “killer” coronaviruses. Daszak describes the process of “inserting spike proteins” into viruses to see if they can “bind to human cells.”
We can't get Xi Jinping into the dock, but this guy is a British raised US citizen. Surely he is worth at least questioning? After 20 million people died, and it was possibly, to an extent, his fault?
The fact this hasn't happened suggests to me, strongly, that the US scientific establishment knows perfectly well that it is probably his fault, but they don't want him in the dock, because he might name others
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
What subsidy regime?
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
Yes, but that's when most of these schemes were built.
I am not going to catastrophise about food - I am an optimist. However, I think the Ukraine war has thrown both food and energy security into the limelight. And I agree with Truss that in Britain, a field of food is a better used field than a field of solar panels. In the Sahara dessert, I'd disagree.
If the fields were built a decade ago under a subsidy scheme that hasn't existed for a decade then what exactly would you propose?
Abolish the subsidy scheme that has already been abolished? Renege on the contracts that are in place? Compulsory purchase and bulldoze already built solar fields?
The subsidies already don't exist. If someone chooses to build a new field, on their own land, without subsidies then what exactly is your problem with that?
A field is best used providing whatever the field's owner thinks its best for him or her to use that field for. That's the free market, its not a Commissars job to decide that food, energy or anything else is a "better use". Even if that we means we import less energy from your beloved homeland, I can understand why you don't want Britain self-sufficient on energy, Vlad.
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
What subsidy regime?
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
Yes, but that's when most of these schemes were built.
I am not going to catastrophise about food - I am an optimist. However, I think the Ukraine war has thrown both food and energy security into the limelight. And I agree with Truss that in Britain, a field of food is a better used field than a field of solar panels. In the Sahara dessert, I'd disagree.
If the fields were built a decade ago under a subsidy scheme that hasn't existed for a decade then what exactly would you propose?
Abolish the subsidy scheme that has already been abolished? Renege on the contracts that are in place? Compulsory purchase and bulldoze already built solar fields?
The subsidies already don't exist. If someone chooses to build a new field, on their own land, without subsidies then what exactly is your problem with that?
A field is best used providing whatever the field's owner thinks its best for him or her to use that field for. That's the free market, its not a Commissars job to decide that food, energy or anything else is a "better use". Even if that we means we import less energy from your beloved homeland, I can understand why you don't want Britain self-sufficient on energy, Vlad.
Liz has proved she has no ability to win an election.
Energy bills up okay let’s talk about solar panels
And here are some farmers explaining how it's done and it doesn't harm food production. An article from years ago, when Truss was environment secretary.
They would say that though wouldn't they? The fact remains that absent some really fancy shit about using completely different wavelengths, which doesn't apply, your sunlight can be snapped up by grass or by panels, not both. Farmers like something for nothing as much as the next man, and solar is a fuck of a lot less work.
The panels don't intercept all of the sunlight, and grass growth is limited by soil moisture and temperature, so likely done of the sunlight used by the dollar panels couldn't be used by the grass to grow anyway.
1. Yes they do
2. I manage 11 acres of pasture and am involved in managing an extra 1000 odd. Temperature is irrelevant over the past decade, grass grows all year round. As to moisture I agree. Presumably even if you claim the panels let some sunlight through you don't deny they are waterproof? What effect do you think that has?
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
It's not really in any way like the Nazis.
Yes, really
As Churchill said, the Nazis will sadly prosper by using "the lights of perverted science"
What is Covid if not "perverted science"?
1. Churchill did not say that. He said: "But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."
2. Covid is a pandemic.
The Nazis deliberately planned and perpetrated the massacre of six million Jews. Are you suggesting the Fauci and co. did something similar?
Shameful diminution of the evils of Nazisim. I'd have thought better of you tbh.
Oh do calm down. I'm not saying scientists are Nazis. They are just vain, flawed, selfish, ambitious human beings - like the rest of us. Sadly their vanity and greed Has resulted in a true catastrophe, because we gave them too much untrammelled power
I am saying that the scale of the Covid disaster is comparable with Nazism. And it is. WW2 killed 80m? Covid has so far killed 20m, and counting, and the human/economic aftershocks are similarly epochal
We need justice, like WW2 needed the Nuremburg Trials
You are still concentrating on the wrong thing. What killed millions of people was, as @rcs1000 reminds us, the cover-up by China and the spread throughout the world. And for that it makes no difference whether it started with a lab leak or at the wet market.
Jesus F Christ it matters whether it came from a market or a lab. Because labs are still doing this terribly dangerous virology
And indeed it matters if it came from a market. STOP EATING BATS
We don't want this to happen again
I do not understand people who have no desire to investigate Covid origins. And I am automatically suspicious of their motives. Usually they are people invested in science, or just stupid, or lefties that hate Trump so much they don't care
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
If the lab leak is true, then that will be the end of us being told to 'trust the science'.
Harry Cole @MrHarryCole · 6h 🚨 NEW: A third of Tory members voted for new PM in the first week of the contest - with one in seven voting in the first 48 hours.
Tory sources expect half of those that will vote to have done so by next week.
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
What subsidy regime?
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
Yes, but that's when most of these schemes were built.
I am not going to catastrophise about food - I am an optimist. However, I think the Ukraine war has thrown both food and energy security into the limelight. And I agree with Truss that in Britain, a field of food is a better used field than a field of solar panels. In the Sahara dessert, I'd disagree.
If the fields were built a decade ago under a subsidy scheme that hasn't existed for a decade then what exactly would you propose?
Abolish the subsidy scheme that has already been abolished? Renege on the contracts that are in place? Compulsory purchase and bulldoze already built solar fields?
The subsidies already don't exist. If someone chooses to build a new field, on their own land, without subsidies then what exactly is your problem with that?
A field is best used providing whatever the field's owner thinks its best for him or her to use that field for. That's the free market, its not a Commissars job to decide that food, energy or anything else is a "better use". Even if that we means we import less energy from your beloved homeland, I can understand why you don't want Britain self-sufficient on energy, Vlad.
So it's ok if I put half a dozen houses on my field?
One can argue that the Met Office is rendered better by needing to compete.
Indeed that’s based on some pretty basic economic thinking.
And in what way is the Met Office now better as a result of competition rather than as a result of comparing its forecasts to outcomes (science) or bigger computers (technology)? The public arguably has a worse service (via the BBC).
If the public is getting a poorer service, then the BBC has made a poor procurement decision, but that’s a separate point.
With regard to how the Met Office is now better, I don’t know. Maybe they are more accessible, or innovative, or better at finding commercial applications for their research.
It may be poorer, but it's also cheaper. Which is the choice tends to happen when you cut an organisation's budget.
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
Is this now accepted by most scientists?
God no. They hate the idea. Because it taints all science
But the circumstantial evidence is now overwhelming (to my mind)
It is noticeable that science is spending tens of millions investigating the wet market hypothesis, and yet not a dollar on the lab leak idea. But it doesn't help
They keep producing papers and saying Look, it was the market, almost as if they want us to believe that. And yet every one of these papers folds and dies, because they cannot compete with Occam's Razor, which says: Look three hundred yards south, where there is a lab specifically investigating novel bat coronaviruses, and trying to make them more infective for humans, via the Furin Cleavage Site, and this is going on in the exact same place where a terribly dangerous novel bat coronavirus emerged, with remarkable and dangerous evolutions at the Furin Cleavage Site
No scientific study can compete with that basic truth. It came from the lab
I think the loudest online voices are still pushing the zoonotic origin theory but the majority of scientists are on the lab leak train. One of my friends works in a secure lab of sorts and as if by magic he has had multiple lab safety training sessions over the past year compared to just two in two years before COVID. If that isn't telling about the actual truth then I don't know what is.
No, they’re not. Most scientists think COVID-19 was a zoonotic event, like multiple other pandemics/near pandemics. (Compare monkeypox, HIV, MERS, SARS, plague.)
Multiple Lab safety trainings is sensible and COVID-19 has made people more cautious about the risks of infectious diseases. That your friend has had more safety training is not good evidence that COVID-19 came from a lab. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337 is the sort of actual science you need to answer these questions… and the answer is, no, it didn’t come from a lab.
One can argue that the Met Office is rendered better by needing to compete.
Indeed that’s based on some pretty basic economic thinking.
The Met Office doesn't necessarily compete in that sense though. It "competes" with real world results. It's models are adjusted to better track real temperatures and climate. It's pretty binary.
It’s a trading business, with a CEO.
It's publicly owned and it's primary income source is a very big annual government research grant to study climate, weather and provide the state with metrics for shipping, agriculture and other weather based data for economic growth forecasting. It's actually a world leader and has been for decades. One of our few state owned success stories. The BBC being forced to drop them because a second rate Dutch company came in with a lower bid was and is a national embarrassment.
Generally speaking, competition is good. Tories used to get that, certainly those of a Thatcherite ilk.
You seem to be advocating something kind of British Leyland Metrology Service.
Liz has proved she has no ability to win an election.
Energy bills up okay let’s talk about solar panels
And here are some farmers explaining how it's done and it doesn't harm food production. An article from years ago, when Truss was environment secretary.
They would say that though wouldn't they? The fact remains that absent some really fancy shit about using completely different wavelengths, which doesn't apply, your sunlight can be snapped up by grass or by panels, not both. Farmers like something for nothing as much as the next man, and solar is a fuck of a lot less work.
The panels don't intercept all of the sunlight, and grass growth is limited by soil moisture and temperature, so likely some of the sunlight used by the solar panels couldn't be used by the grass to grow anyway.
I don't think you're going to be getting many cuts of silage off a field full of solar panels tbh.
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
Surely that would be up to the Chinese government, given China was likely the leak source
Where have you been? It was an American lab, doing research for the US. It happened to be in China, apparently because they were banned from doing such dangerous research in the US.
Liz has proved she has no ability to win an election.
Energy bills up okay let’s talk about solar panels
And here are some farmers explaining how it's done and it doesn't harm food production. An article from years ago, when Truss was environment secretary.
They would say that though wouldn't they? The fact remains that absent some really fancy shit about using completely different wavelengths, which doesn't apply, your sunlight can be snapped up by grass or by panels, not both. Farmers like something for nothing as much as the next man, and solar is a fuck of a lot less work.
The panels don't intercept all of the sunlight, and grass growth is limited by soil moisture and temperature, so likely done of the sunlight used by the dollar panels couldn't be used by the grass to grow anyway.
1. Yes they do
2. I manage 11 acres of pasture and am involved in managing an extra 1000 odd. Temperature is irrelevant over the past decade, grass grows all year round. As to moisture I agree. Presumably even if you claim the panels let some sunlight through you don't deny they are waterproof? What effect do you think that has?
If you are correct that no sunlight falls onto the fields on which solar panels are located then the amount of grass growth in those fields would be zero. Why then do these fields have sheep grazing in them to stop the grass growing taller than the solar panels?
I watch the farming forecast on RTÉ, and they always give the soil temperature because it has an effect on grass growth. Duh.
I believe that the rain drips off the edge of the solar panels and falls onto the field underneath. Though, admittedly, this is a hypothesis untested by direct observation.
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
On the assumption that a bunch of people on a political betting site with no training in epidemiology, genetics or virology don’t know what the f—- they’re talking about, my feeling is that we’re definitely ready to move on from Trumpian conspiracy theories.
"‘Gutsy’ Truss a potential nightmare for Labour, say party strategists Starmer’s inner circle impressed by the simplicity of the Tory frontrunner’s message" [via G search]
Liz has proved she has no ability to win an election.
Energy bills up okay let’s talk about solar panels
SKS
Let's talk about nothing cos I am on my holidays innit
The more you despair about the Tories the more you have to despair about sir interesting missing a goal wider than Watford Gap because holidays. Does he just not want the job?
Is SKS on holiday?
How are we supposed to tell the difference from when he's not?
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
Surely that would be up to the Chinese government, given China was likely the leak source
Where have you been? It was an American lab, doing research for the US. It happened to be in China, apparently because they were banned from doing such dangerous research in the US.
Evidence?
Evidence of the sponsorship of the lab and who was doing the research there? That bit is public record. Do some reading.
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
What subsidy regime?
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
Yes, but that's when most of these schemes were built.
I am not going to catastrophise about food - I am an optimist. However, I think the Ukraine war has thrown both food and energy security into the limelight. And I agree with Truss that in Britain, a field of food is a better used field than a field of solar panels. In the Sahara dessert, I'd disagree.
If the fields were built a decade ago under a subsidy scheme that hasn't existed for a decade then what exactly would you propose?
Abolish the subsidy scheme that has already been abolished? Renege on the contracts that are in place? Compulsory purchase and bulldoze already built solar fields?
The subsidies already don't exist. If someone chooses to build a new field, on their own land, without subsidies then what exactly is your problem with that?
A field is best used providing whatever the field's owner thinks its best for him or her to use that field for. That's the free market, its not a Commissars job to decide that food, energy or anything else is a "better use". Even if that we means we import less energy from your beloved homeland, I can understand why you don't want Britain self-sufficient on energy, Vlad.
So it's ok if I put half a dozen houses on my field?
As far as I'm concerned? Absolutely, yes, its your field, go for it.
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
Surely that would be up to the Chinese government, given China was likely the leak source
Where have you been? It was an American lab, doing research for the US. It happened to be in China, apparently because they were banned from doing such dangerous research in the US.
You are too keen to exonerate China. See the evidence linking the Chinese military to Wuhan. There is plentiful evidence the PLA were interested in potential bioweaponry coming out of Wuhan
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
On the assumption that a bunch of people on a political betting site with no training in epidemiology, genetics or virology don’t know what the f—- they’re talking about, my feeling is that we’re definitely ready to move on from Trumpian conspiracy theories.
I certainly have no training or expertise in the above. My early assumption was that it was a lab leak, I still think that seems most probable, and I don’t care what Trump thinks.
I’m very happy to be persuaded otherwise but there seems to be reasonable debate over it. I suppose I should read those articles you posted, but I’ve got “pork, sesame and sriracha” sausages on the go.
One can argue that the Met Office is rendered better by needing to compete.
Indeed that’s based on some pretty basic economic thinking.
And in what way is the Met Office now better as a result of competition rather than as a result of comparing its forecasts to outcomes (science) or bigger computers (technology)? The public arguably has a worse service (via the BBC).
If the public is getting a poorer service, then the BBC has made a poor procurement decision, but that’s a separate point.
With regard to how the Met Office is now better, I don’t know. Maybe they are more accessible, or innovative, or better at finding commercial applications for their research.
It may be poorer, but it's also cheaper. Which is the choice tends to happen when you cut an organisation's budget.
Given that the taxpayer foots the bill for both anyway, it's not cheaper.
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
It's not really in any way like the Nazis.
Yes, really
As Churchill said, the Nazis will sadly prosper by using "the lights of perverted science"
What is Covid if not "perverted science"?
1. Churchill did not say that. He said: "But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."
2. Covid is a pandemic.
The Nazis deliberately planned and perpetrated the massacre of six million Jews. Are you suggesting the Fauci and co. did something similar?
Shameful diminution of the evils of Nazisim. I'd have thought better of you tbh.
Oh do calm down. I'm not saying scientists are Nazis. They are just vain, flawed, selfish, ambitious human beings - like the rest of us. Sadly their vanity and greed Has resulted in a true catastrophe, because we gave them too much untrammelled power
I am saying that the scale of the Covid disaster is comparable with Nazism. And it is. WW2 killed 80m? Covid has so far killed 20m, and counting, and the human/economic aftershocks are similarly epochal
We need justice, like WW2 needed the Nuremburg Trials
You are still concentrating on the wrong thing. What killed millions of people was, as @rcs1000 reminds us, the cover-up by China and the spread throughout the world. And for that it makes no difference whether it started with a lab leak or at the wet market.
Jesus F Christ it matters whether it came from a market or a lab. Because labs are still doing this terribly dangerous virology
And indeed it matters if it came from a market. STOP EATING BATS
We don't want this to happen again
I do not understand people who have no desire to investigate Covid origins. And I am automatically suspicious of their motives. Usually they are people invested in science, or just stupid, or lefties that hate Trump so much they don't care
Scientists are investigating Covid origins. Your complaint seems to be they have not "proved" it was a lab leak; that they should ignore evidence pointing to the market.
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
What subsidy regime?
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
Yes, but that's when most of these schemes were built.
I am not going to catastrophise about food - I am an optimist. However, I think the Ukraine war has thrown both food and energy security into the limelight. And I agree with Truss that in Britain, a field of food is a better used field than a field of solar panels. In the Sahara dessert, I'd disagree.
If the fields were built a decade ago under a subsidy scheme that hasn't existed for a decade then what exactly would you propose?
Abolish the subsidy scheme that has already been abolished? Renege on the contracts that are in place? Compulsory purchase and bulldoze already built solar fields?
The subsidies already don't exist. If someone chooses to build a new field, on their own land, without subsidies then what exactly is your problem with that?
A field is best used providing whatever the field's owner thinks its best for him or her to use that field for. That's the free market, its not a Commissars job to decide that food, energy or anything else is a "better use". Even if that we means we import less energy from your beloved homeland, I can understand why you don't want Britain self-sufficient on energy, Vlad.
So it's ok if I put half a dozen houses on my field?
As far as I'm concerned? Absolutely, yes, its your field, go for it.
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
Is this now accepted by most scientists?
God no. They hate the idea. Because it taints all science
But the circumstantial evidence is now overwhelming (to my mind)
It is noticeable that science is spending tens of millions investigating the wet market hypothesis, and yet not a dollar on the lab leak idea. But it doesn't help
They keep producing papers and saying Look, it was the market, almost as if they want us to believe that. And yet every one of these papers folds and dies, because they cannot compete with Occam's Razor, which says: Look three hundred yards south, where there is a lab specifically investigating novel bat coronaviruses, and trying to make them more infective for humans, via the Furin Cleavage Site, and this is going on in the exact same place where a terribly dangerous novel bat coronavirus emerged, with remarkable and dangerous evolutions at the Furin Cleavage Site
No scientific study can compete with that basic truth. It came from the lab
I think the loudest online voices are still pushing the zoonotic origin theory but the majority of scientists are on the lab leak train. One of my friends works in a secure lab of sorts and as if by magic he has had multiple lab safety training sessions over the past year compared to just two in two years before COVID. If that isn't telling about the actual truth then I don't know what is.
No, they’re not. Most scientists think COVID-19 was a zoonotic event, like multiple other pandemics/near pandemics. (Compare monkeypox, HIV, MERS, SARS, plague.)
Multiple Lab safety trainings is sensible and COVID-19 has made people more cautious about the risks of infectious diseases. That your friend has had more safety training is not good evidence that COVID-19 came from a lab. https:/www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337 is the sort of actual science you need to answer these questions… and the answer is, no, it didn’t come from a lab.
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
Is this now accepted by most scientists?
God no. They hate the idea. Because it taints all science
But the circumstantial evidence is now overwhelming (to my mind)
It is noticeable that science is spending tens of millions investigating the wet market hypothesis, and yet not a dollar on the lab leak idea. But it doesn't help
They keep producing papers and saying Look, it was the market, almost as if they want us to believe that. And yet every one of these papers folds and dies, because they cannot compete with Occam's Razor, which says: Look three hundred yards south, where there is a lab specifically investigating novel bat coronaviruses, and trying to make them more infective for humans, via the Furin Cleavage Site, and this is going on in the exact same place where a terribly dangerous novel bat coronavirus emerged, with remarkable and dangerous evolutions at the Furin Cleavage Site
No scientific study can compete with that basic truth. It came from the lab
I think the loudest online voices are still pushing the zoonotic origin theory but the majority of scientists are on the lab leak train. One of my friends works in a secure lab of sorts and as if by magic he has had multiple lab safety training sessions over the past year compared to just two in two years before COVID. If that isn't telling about the actual truth then I don't know what is.
No, they’re not. Most scientists think COVID-19 was a zoonotic event, like multiple other pandemics/near pandemics. (Compare monkeypox, HIV, MERS, SARS, plague.)
Multiple Lab safety trainings is sensible and COVID-19 has made people more cautious about the risks of infectious diseases. That your friend has had more safety training is not good evidence that COVID-19 came from a lab. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337 is the sort of actual science you need to answer these questions… and the answer is, no, it didn’t come from a lab.
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
Is this now accepted by most scientists?
God no. They hate the idea. Because it taints all science
But the circumstantial evidence is now overwhelming (to my mind)
It is noticeable that science is spending tens of millions investigating the wet market hypothesis, and yet not a dollar on the lab leak idea. But it doesn't help
They keep producing papers and saying Look, it was the market, almost as if they want us to believe that. And yet every one of these papers folds and dies, because they cannot compete with Occam's Razor, which says: Look three hundred yards south, where there is a lab specifically investigating novel bat coronaviruses, and trying to make them more infective for humans, via the Furin Cleavage Site, and this is going on in the exact same place where a terribly dangerous novel bat coronavirus emerged, with remarkable and dangerous evolutions at the Furin Cleavage Site
No scientific study can compete with that basic truth. It came from the lab
I think the loudest online voices are still pushing the zoonotic origin theory but the majority of scientists are on the lab leak train. One of my friends works in a secure lab of sorts and as if by magic he has had multiple lab safety training sessions over the past year compared to just two in two years before COVID. If that isn't telling about the actual truth then I don't know what is.
No, they’re not. Most scientists think COVID-19 was a zoonotic event, like multiple other pandemics/near pandemics. (Compare monkeypox, HIV, MERS, SARS, plague.)
Multiple Lab safety trainings is sensible and COVID-19 has made people more cautious about the risks of infectious diseases. That your friend has had more safety training is not good evidence that COVID-19 came from a lab. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337 is the sort of actual science you need to answer these questions… and the answer is, no, it didn’t come from a lab.
Stop embarrassing yourself. Pekar is an utter cock who thinks science is conducted primarily on twitter and is in China's pocket. He or one of his co authors was giving it very large indeed last year on cases of covid predating by months what he now says was the original event. Ignore.
I have to agree there. Pathetic pandering to NIMBY/agriculture vote.
Personally I think wind farms are far superior to solar panels, and probably more important for UK security than food or solar too.
But what people want to do with their land should be up to them. Crops, meat, biodiversity, solar, turbines or new housing - the land owner should be responsible for deciding what they do with their own land, not Commissars, Bureaucrats or Curtain Twitchers.
Given that farmers have put the solar panels there due to the subsidy regime, I don't see how Liz's comments in favour of crops are in any way a sop to the agricultural vote (such as it is) - they seem in actuality to be quite challenging to that community.
She is of course 100% right. A food crisis is being loudly touted, and whilst I'm sure the UK is placed well, it's clear that solar panel covered agricultural land in the UK is a pretty shit use of it.
What subsidy regime?
Unless there's one I'm unaware of, subsidies for solar panels were very rightly abolished years ago.
We have an energy crisis more than a food crisis, and energy is a lot harder to import than food is. Food can be easily boxed up and sold across the world to the highest bidder, electricity can't so readily.
Yes, but that's when most of these schemes were built.
I am not going to catastrophise about food - I am an optimist. However, I think the Ukraine war has thrown both food and energy security into the limelight. And I agree with Truss that in Britain, a field of food is a better used field than a field of solar panels. In the Sahara dessert, I'd disagree.
If the fields were built a decade ago under a subsidy scheme that hasn't existed for a decade then what exactly would you propose?
Abolish the subsidy scheme that has already been abolished? Renege on the contracts that are in place? Compulsory purchase and bulldoze already built solar fields?
The subsidies already don't exist. If someone chooses to build a new field, on their own land, without subsidies then what exactly is your problem with that?
A field is best used providing whatever the field's owner thinks its best for him or her to use that field for. That's the free market, its not a Commissars job to decide that food, energy or anything else is a "better use". Even if that we means we import less energy from your beloved homeland, I can understand why you don't want Britain self-sufficient on energy, Vlad.
So it's ok if I put half a dozen houses on my field?
As far as I'm concerned? Absolutely, yes, its your field, go for it.
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
On the assumption that a bunch of people on a political betting site with no training in epidemiology, genetics or virology don’t know what the f—- they’re talking about, my feeling is that we’re definitely ready to move on from Trumpian conspiracy theories.
I certainly have no training or expertise in the above. My early assumption was that it was a lab leak, I still think that seems most probable, and I don’t care what Trump thinks.
I’m very happy to be persuaded otherwise but there seems to be reasonable debate over it. I suppose I should read those articles you posted, but I’ve got “pork, sesame and sriracha” sausages on the go.
I can’t really disagree with your decision to focus on the sausages.
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
On the assumption that a bunch of people on a political betting site with no training in epidemiology, genetics or virology don’t know what the f—- they’re talking about, my feeling is that we’re definitely ready to move on from Trumpian conspiracy theories.
I certainly have no training or expertise in the above. My early assumption was that it was a lab leak, I still think that seems most probable, and I don’t care what Trump thinks.
I’m very happy to be persuaded otherwise but there seems to be reasonable debate over it. I suppose I should read those articles you posted, but I’ve got “pork, sesame and sriracha” sausages on the go.
I can’t really disagree with your decision to focus on the sausages.
Absolutely. Hot fat and kids underfoot is a dangerous combo.
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
On the assumption that a bunch of people on a political betting site with no training in epidemiology, genetics or virology don’t know what the f—- they’re talking about, my feeling is that we’re definitely ready to move on from Trumpian conspiracy theories.
I certainly have no training or expertise in the above. My early assumption was that it was a lab leak, I still think that seems most probable, and I don’t care what Trump thinks.
I’m very happy to be persuaded otherwise but there seems to be reasonable debate over it. I suppose I should read those articles you posted, but I’ve got “pork, sesame and sriracha” sausages on the go.
The use of the phrase "Trumpian conspiracy theories" tells you all you need to know
Liz has proved she has no ability to win an election.
Energy bills up okay let’s talk about solar panels
SKS
Let's talk about nothing cos I am on my holidays innit
The more you despair about the Tories the more you have to despair about sir interesting missing a goal wider than Watford Gap because holidays. Does he just not want the job?
Is SKS on holiday?
How are we supposed to tell the difference from when he's not?
It's all much less forensic when he's not around. Apparently.
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
It's not really in any way like the Nazis.
Yes, really
As Churchill said, the Nazis will sadly prosper by using "the lights of perverted science"
What is Covid if not "perverted science"?
1. Churchill did not say that. He said: "But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."
2. Covid is a pandemic.
The Nazis deliberately planned and perpetrated the massacre of six million Jews. Are you suggesting the Fauci and co. did something similar?
Shameful diminution of the evils of Nazisim. I'd have thought better of you tbh.
Oh do calm down. I'm not saying scientists are Nazis. They are just vain, flawed, selfish, ambitious human beings - like the rest of us. Sadly their vanity and greed Has resulted in a true catastrophe, because we gave them too much untrammelled power
I am saying that the scale of the Covid disaster is comparable with Nazism. And it is. WW2 killed 80m? Covid has so far killed 20m, and counting, and the human/economic aftershocks are similarly epochal
We need justice, like WW2 needed the Nuremburg Trials
You are still concentrating on the wrong thing. What killed millions of people was, as @rcs1000 reminds us, the cover-up by China and the spread throughout the world. And for that it makes no difference whether it started with a lab leak or at the wet market.
Jesus F Christ it matters whether it came from a market or a lab. Because labs are still doing this terribly dangerous virology
And indeed it matters if it came from a market. STOP EATING BATS
We don't want this to happen again
I do not understand people who have no desire to investigate Covid origins. And I am automatically suspicious of their motives. Usually they are people invested in science, or just stupid, or lefties that hate Trump so much they don't care
Scientists are investigating Covid origins. Your complaint seems to be they have not "proved" it was a lab leak; that they should ignore evidence pointing to the market.
I think @Leon's point is more that there a number of scientists who are so determined to say this wasn't a lab leak that they will take any old shit and run with it.
I actually find the near-vindication of the Lab Leak hypothesis quite distressing
I would far rather believe that this terrible terrible plague was visited upon us by zoonotic chance. A twat eating a pangolin that ate a bat. That's "not great", but hey, it happens. We should take more care of animals; we should absolutely not eat pangolins
But the idea we did this to ourselves in a damn laboratory? We made awful viruses even nastier, as a kind of scientific game? WTF? WTAF? it is unspeakably grim. 20 million people are dead. So many lives are blighted or ruined. Hundreds of millions of people have suffered deeply, because of quite casual human arrogance and stupidity
I do believe we need justice, and I do sincerely believe this might involve capital punishment. This cannot stand. This is like the Nazis
It's not really in any way like the Nazis.
Yes, really
As Churchill said, the Nazis will sadly prosper by using "the lights of perverted science"
What is Covid if not "perverted science"?
1. Churchill did not say that. He said: "But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."
2. Covid is a pandemic.
The Nazis deliberately planned and perpetrated the massacre of six million Jews. Are you suggesting the Fauci and co. did something similar?
Shameful diminution of the evils of Nazisim. I'd have thought better of you tbh.
Oh do calm down. I'm not saying scientists are Nazis. They are just vain, flawed, selfish, ambitious human beings - like the rest of us. Sadly their vanity and greed Has resulted in a true catastrophe, because we gave them too much untrammelled power
I am saying that the scale of the Covid disaster is comparable with Nazism. And it is. WW2 killed 80m? Covid has so far killed 20m, and counting, and the human/economic aftershocks are similarly epochal
We need justice, like WW2 needed the Nuremburg Trials
You are still concentrating on the wrong thing. What killed millions of people was, as @rcs1000 reminds us, the cover-up by China and the spread throughout the world. And for that it makes no difference whether it started with a lab leak or at the wet market.
Jesus F Christ it matters whether it came from a market or a lab. Because labs are still doing this terribly dangerous virology
And indeed it matters if it came from a market. STOP EATING BATS
We don't want this to happen again
I do not understand people who have no desire to investigate Covid origins. And I am automatically suspicious of their motives. Usually they are people invested in science, or just stupid, or lefties that hate Trump so much they don't care
Scientists are investigating Covid origins. Your complaint seems to be they have not "proved" it was a lab leak; that they should ignore evidence pointing to the market.
No, I'd just like them to dedicate the same resources to investigating the lab leak hypothesis as they do towards investigating the wet market hypothesis. Oddly, they do not. Indeed they seem pathologically allergic to the entire lab leak hypothesis, to the extent they can barely mention it, let alone spend a dollar looking into it. Can't think why
On topic, I will take Beto at a tenner because he is £180/1 and he could be the new Rishi Sunak. Realistically though, no chance - some privileged white guy tying to pretend he is down with the people. A total joke.
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
Surely that would be up to the Chinese government, given China was likely the leak source
Where have you been? It was an American lab, doing research for the US. It happened to be in China, apparently because they were banned from doing such dangerous research in the US.
You are too keen to exonerate China. See the evidence linking the Chinese military to Wuhan. There is plentiful evidence the PLA were interested in potential bioweaponry coming out of Wuhan
Of course they were. Evil communist regimes gonna evil communist regime. That itself is mind-boggling, for the US to be so determined to do this research that they were comfortable with its deadly findings being known by the Chinese. I'm not absolving China; I think they're grotesque. I just think it's too easy to shift all the blame on to the acceptable enemy, and give Uncle Sam a free pass.
"‘Gutsy’ Truss a potential nightmare for Labour, say party strategists Starmer’s inner circle impressed by the simplicity of the Tory frontrunner’s message" [via G search]
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
On the assumption that a bunch of people on a political betting site with no training in epidemiology, genetics or virology don’t know what the f—- they’re talking about, my feeling is that we’re definitely ready to move on from Trumpian conspiracy theories.
I certainly have no training or expertise in the above. My early assumption was that it was a lab leak, I still think that seems most probable, and I don’t care what Trump thinks.
I’m very happy to be persuaded otherwise but there seems to be reasonable debate over it. I suppose I should read those articles you posted, but I’ve got “pork, sesame and sriracha” sausages on the go.
The use of the phrase "Trumpian conspiracy theories" tells you all you need to know
As far as I can tell I am an ideological ally of @bondegezou but the Trumpian conspiracy veto card doesn’t work in this instance I think.
2 years ago it was 35p/therm. Now 402p/therm. Futures for delivery in Dec ‘22, 545p/therm.
Someone quoted in the telegraph is extrapolating this to mean a £5k average cap, come next April.
Ouchy ouch ouch.
This will blow every other political consideration out of the water unless HMG take some radical measures (funded by higher taxes and more borrowing).
I am still puzzled why the rising gas price seems to have such a direct impact on electricity prices when less than half our electricity is produced by gas generation plants.
Someone is getting seriously rich off the back of this.
Yep. One of the Big Six energy suppliers is wholly owned by a single man. He's called Stephen Fitzpatrick. I wonder how his finances are doing? He's the c*** who said that customers who had trouble paying their bills should cuddle their pets and eat lentils.[1] If he was Russian [2], he'd be called an "oligarch".
An angry autumn and winter coming? I wouldn't be so sure. May I recommend Robert Dirks's 1980 paper "Social responses during severe food shortages and famine".
Notes
1) The lentils idea was recently pushed here too. 2) Or, until recently, if he was Ukrainian.
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
Surely that would be up to the Chinese government, given China was likely the leak source
Where have you been? It was an American lab, doing research for the US. It happened to be in China, apparently because they were banned from doing such dangerous research in the US.
You are too keen to exonerate China. See the evidence linking the Chinese military to Wuhan. There is plentiful evidence the PLA were interested in potential bioweaponry coming out of Wuhan
Of course they were. Evil communist regimes gonna evil communist regime. That itself is mind-boggling, for the US to be so determined to do this research that they were comfortable with its deadly findings being known by the Chinese. I'm not absolving China; I think they're grotesque. I just think it's too easy to shift all the blame on to the acceptable enemy, and give Uncle Sam a free pass.
Ah god no, I'm not exonerating the USA. Or indeed the UK. This is all science. Hence the success of the cover-up. They all have a vested interest in keeping this Q
Check this (and it seems legit, tho the ultimate Australian source is frustratingly paywall)
"China Discussed Weaponising Coronaviruses Before Pandemic, Predicted WW3 With Bio-weapons
Describing SARS coronaviruses as heralding a “new era of genetic weapons”, China's scientists claimed the viruses could be “artificially manipulated"."
A Trump supporting nutjob shot dead after attacking an FBI office . The waste of space is another useful idiot who will be pushing up daisies after being goaded into attacking the FBI by the fat orange blob and the GOP.
Good riddance , one less Trump supporting moron that can’t now procreate !
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
On the assumption that a bunch of people on a political betting site with no training in epidemiology, genetics or virology don’t know what the f—- they’re talking about, my feeling is that we’re definitely ready to move on from Trumpian conspiracy theories.
I certainly have no training or expertise in the above. My early assumption was that it was a lab leak, I still think that seems most probable, and I don’t care what Trump thinks.
I’m very happy to be persuaded otherwise but there seems to be reasonable debate over it. I suppose I should read those articles you posted, but I’ve got “pork, sesame and sriracha” sausages on the go.
The use of the phrase "Trumpian conspiracy theories" tells you all you need to know
As far as I can tell I am an ideological ally of @bondegezou but the Trumpian conspiracy veto card doesn’t work in this instance I think.
Yes, the card worked - all too well on social media - a couple of years back. Not now
First by election is an Independant gain from Labour in Bridgend. Spelthornes Laleham ward due shortly, coukd see a LD gain from Con. Theyve already iost one by election in this multi member ward in May to the greens but the greens arent fighting this time, the LDs are in a straight swap so perhaps a similar result? (52 to 44) The third , Dodderhill, counts Friday AM
Well, where did SARS-CoV-1 come from? A zoonotic event.
What about MERS, another new coronavirus? A zoonotic event.
What about some other new diseases affecting people? Monkeypox? Zoonotic event. HIV? Zoonotic event. Ebola? Zoonotic event. Marburg? Zoonotic event. Sleeping sickness? Zoonotic event. Chagas disease? Zoonotic event. Zika? Zoonotic event. Smallpox? Zoonotic event.
Swine flu? Ah… that one seems to be a recombination of a zoonotic infection and an existing human flu strain, so not a straight zoonotic event.
So, even before we look at the actual research on the early infections and the virus’s genome, what’s the most likely explanation for where COVID-19 came from?
On topic, I will take Beto at a tenner because he is £180/1 and he could be the new Rishi Sunak. Realistically though, no chance - some privileged white guy tying to pretend he is down with the people. A total joke.
Whoever wins the White House will be privileged, will be a millionaire. You can't rule Beto or anyone else out on that basis. Even Trump, the great outsider, was an Establishment billionaire. No, the problem with Beto is it is hard to get his calendar to work. If he wins Texas, does he have time for a White House run? If he loses Texas (again) does he have the momentum for a White House run?
ETA and that is without needing the incumbent President and (probably) Vice-President not to stand.
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
On the assumption that a bunch of people on a political betting site with no training in epidemiology, genetics or virology don’t know what the f—- they’re talking about, my feeling is that we’re definitely ready to move on from Trumpian conspiracy theories.
I certainly have no training or expertise in the above. My early assumption was that it was a lab leak, I still think that seems most probable, and I don’t care what Trump thinks.
I’m very happy to be persuaded otherwise but there seems to be reasonable debate over it. I suppose I should read those articles you posted, but I’ve got “pork, sesame and sriracha” sausages on the go.
The use of the phrase "Trumpian conspiracy theories" tells you all you need to know
As far as I can tell I am an ideological ally of @bondegezou but the Trumpian conspiracy veto card doesn’t work in this instance I think.
I think we’re certainly sausage allies. Are they ready yet?
On the assumption there has been a lab leak, we certainly need to figure out why and bring the culprits to justice.
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
Surely that would be up to the Chinese government, given China was likely the leak source
Where have you been? It was an American lab, doing research for the US. It happened to be in China, apparently because they were banned from doing such dangerous research in the US.
You are too keen to exonerate China. See the evidence linking the Chinese military to Wuhan. There is plentiful evidence the PLA were interested in potential bioweaponry coming out of Wuhan
Of course they were. Evil communist regimes gonna evil communist regime. That itself is mind-boggling, for the US to be so determined to do this research that they were comfortable with its deadly findings being known by the Chinese. I'm not absolving China; I think they're grotesque. I just think it's too easy to shift all the blame on to the acceptable enemy, and give Uncle Sam a free pass.
Ah god no, I'm not exonerating the USA. Or indeed the UK. This is all science. Hence the success of the cover-up. They all have a vested interest in keeping this Q
Check this (and it seems legit, tho the ultimate Australian source is frustratingly paywall)
"China Discussed Weaponising Coronaviruses Before Pandemic, Predicted WW3 With Bio-weapons
Describing SARS coronaviruses as heralding a “new era of genetic weapons”, China's scientists claimed the viruses could be “artificially manipulated"."
No LD gain, Con hold in Laleham (Spelthorne) 55 to 40. They will probably be somewhat relieved given their travails in Surrey and that they lost in this ward in Mays by election
Well, where did SARS-CoV-1 come from? A zoonotic event.
What about MERS, another new coronavirus? A zoonotic event.
What about some other new diseases affecting people? Monkeypox? Zoonotic event. HIV? Zoonotic event. Ebola? Zoonotic event. Marburg? Zoonotic event. Sleeping sickness? Zoonotic event. Chagas disease? Zoonotic event. Zika? Zoonotic event. Smallpox? Zoonotic event.
Swine flu? Ah… that one seems to be a recombination of a zoonotic infection and an existing human flu strain, so not a straight zoonotic event.
So, even before we look at the actual research on the early infections and the virus’s genome, what’s the most likely explanation for where COVID-19 came from?
God. I dunno. Maybe the lab 200 yards from the wet market where they were researching novel bat coronaviruses and trying to make them more pathogenic for humans by altering the furin cleavage site and then amazingly 200 yards away a novel bat coronavirus emerged in the wet market with bizarre evolutions in the furin cleavage site which make it more pathogenic for humans?
Could there *possibly* be a link? Lord knows! Surely not! Blame the pangolins!
But the director of the Wuhan lab immediately thought she was the culprit. Not "zoonosis" which you apparently claim is the OBVIOUS origin
"Shi, a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years, walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?”"
On topic, I will take Beto at a tenner because he is £180/1 and he could be the new Rishi Sunak. Realistically though, no chance - some privileged white guy tying to pretend he is down with the people. A total joke.
Whoever wins the White House will be privileged, will be a millionaire. You can't rule Beto or anyone else out on that basis. Even Trump, the great outsider, was an Establishment billionaire. No, the problem with Beto is it is hard to get his calendar to work. If he wins Texas, does he have time for a White House run? If he loses Texas (again) does he have the momentum for a White House run?
ETA and that is without needing the incumbent President and (probably) Vice-President not to stand.
Privileged is another one of those famed irregular verbs, but its especially amusing being wielded by one of Trump's biggest cheerleaders on this site.
Although to be fair, he also said "white" guys and Beto is white unlike Trump who was America's first Oompa Loompa President.
Remarkable, though unsurprising findings, in @IRIglobal's latest poll from #Ukraine:
✅98% of Ukrainians believe they'll win war ✅91% approve of @ZelenskyyUa's job performance ✅Support for @NATO membership continue to grow ✅Ukrainians do not want to not concede any territory
Particularly interesting that there are no real differences across Ukraine regions. That is very united as a country. Russia has created its own downfall.
Three years ago 73% in Ukraine voted for a comedy actor playing a schoolteacher who unexpectedly became president. He stood on a "Servant of the People" ticket, the name of the series. The nearest British parallel would be Paul Eddington of "Yes Minister" winning perhaps a 500 seat majority for a "Yes Minister Party", funded by an oligarch like Stephen Fitzpatrick. This seems to be a step beyond people who think Coronation Street is true.
On topic, I will take Beto at a tenner because he is £180/1 and he could be the new Rishi Sunak. Realistically though, no chance - some privileged white guy tying to pretend he is down with the people. A total joke.
Whoever wins the White House will be privileged, will be a millionaire. You can't rule Beto or anyone else out on that basis. Even Trump, the great outsider, was an Establishment billionaire. No, the problem with Beto is it is hard to get his calendar to work. If he wins Texas, does he have time for a White House run? If he loses Texas (again) does he have the momentum for a White House run?
ETA and that is without needing the incumbent President and (probably) Vice-President not to stand.
As you say, the path for Beto is incredibly narrow:
I think he has to win Texas, because without that, he's just a guy who lost both a Texas Senate race and a Texas Gubernatorial race. I mean, if he lost incredibly narrowly... well, maybe... but I just don't see it.
But if he's won, he'd look like a total flake to immediately run for President.
My gut, fwiw, is that Joe will not run for a second term. But that he will not announce this until Autumn 2023.
And then the candidates with be Kamala (who's pretty dreadful, but is sitting VP), Pete Buttigieg, and presumably half a dozen others.
I would also note that Beto was pretty poor last time he ran for President.
Well, where did SARS-CoV-1 come from? A zoonotic event.
What about MERS, another new coronavirus? A zoonotic event.
What about some other new diseases affecting people? Monkeypox? Zoonotic event. HIV? Zoonotic event. Ebola? Zoonotic event. Marburg? Zoonotic event. Sleeping sickness? Zoonotic event. Chagas disease? Zoonotic event. Zika? Zoonotic event. Smallpox? Zoonotic event.
Swine flu? Ah… that one seems to be a recombination of a zoonotic infection and an existing human flu strain, so not a straight zoonotic event.
So, even before we look at the actual research on the early infections and the virus’s genome, what’s the most likely explanation for where COVID-19 came from?
God. I dunno. Maybe the lab 200 yards from the wet market where they were researching novel bat coronaviruses and trying to make them more pathogenic for humans by altering the furin cleavage site and then amazingly 200 yards away a novel bat coronavirus emerged in the wet market with bizarre evolutions in the furin cleavage site which make it more pathogenic for humans?
Could there *possibly* be a link? Lord knows! Surely not! Blame the pangolins!
But the director of the Wuhan lab immediately thought she was the culprit. Not "zoonosis" which you apparently claim is the OBVIOUS origin
"Shi, a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years, walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?”"
Remember, that was her FIRST thought. "Could they have come from my lab"?
SPOILER: it came from her lab
Dude:
You *know* that the Chinese CDC lab was not where bat viruses were researched. It's in the same fucking city out of hundreds of Chinese cities as the Wuhan Institute of Virology - that's evidence enough without claiming that the CDC offices were the nexus.
Well, where did SARS-CoV-1 come from? A zoonotic event.
What about MERS, another new coronavirus? A zoonotic event.
What about some other new diseases affecting people? Monkeypox? Zoonotic event. HIV? Zoonotic event. Ebola? Zoonotic event. Marburg? Zoonotic event. Sleeping sickness? Zoonotic event. Chagas disease? Zoonotic event. Zika? Zoonotic event. Smallpox? Zoonotic event.
Swine flu? Ah… that one seems to be a recombination of a zoonotic infection and an existing human flu strain, so not a straight zoonotic event.
So, even before we look at the actual research on the early infections and the virus’s genome, what’s the most likely explanation for where COVID-19 came from?
Occam's razor as usually deployed, including by you, is the world's laziest non argument. The rule says entia non sunt multiplicanda *praeter necessitatem* but the last two words seem to pass you by. What's the likeliest reason why the sun seems to go round the earth? What's the likeliest reason, members of the jury, for the defendant being in the dock?
A Trump supporting nutjob shot dead after attacking an FBI office . The waste of space is another useful idiot who will be pushing up daisies after being goaded into attacking the FBI by the fat orange blob and the GOP.
Good riddance , one less Trump supporting moron that can’t now procreate !
Remarkable, though unsurprising findings, in @IRIglobal's latest poll from #Ukraine:
✅98% of Ukrainians believe they'll win war ✅91% approve of @ZelenskyyUa's job performance ✅Support for @NATO membership continue to grow ✅Ukrainians do not want to not concede any territory
Particularly interesting that there are no real differences across Ukraine regions. That is very united as a country. Russia has created its own downfall.
Three years ago 73% in Ukraine voted for a comedy actor playing a schoolteacher who unexpectedly became president. He stood on a "Servant of the People" ticket, the name of the series. The nearest British parallel would be Paul Eddington of "Yes Minister" winning perhaps a 500 seat majority for a "Yes Minister Party", funded by an oligarch like Stephen Fitzpatrick. This seems to be a step beyond people who think Coronation Street is true.
Well, no, because it's actually what happened, and he seems to have grown into the role. What point do you think you are making?
Labours first intervention into the crisis is fucking lame, does nothing to address the overall costs and involves reimbursing energy companies for the inconvenience of legislating. I mean, what prick thought throwing out this in isolation was an idea?!
Well, where did SARS-CoV-1 come from? A zoonotic event.
What about MERS, another new coronavirus? A zoonotic event.
What about some other new diseases affecting people? Monkeypox? Zoonotic event. HIV? Zoonotic event. Ebola? Zoonotic event. Marburg? Zoonotic event. Sleeping sickness? Zoonotic event. Chagas disease? Zoonotic event. Zika? Zoonotic event. Smallpox? Zoonotic event.
Swine flu? Ah… that one seems to be a recombination of a zoonotic infection and an existing human flu strain, so not a straight zoonotic event.
So, even before we look at the actual research on the early infections and the virus’s genome, what’s the most likely explanation for where COVID-19 came from?
God. I dunno. Maybe the lab 200 yards from the wet market where they were researching novel bat coronaviruses and trying to make them more pathogenic for humans by altering the furin cleavage site and then amazingly 200 yards away a novel bat coronavirus emerged in the wet market with bizarre evolutions in the furin cleavage site which make it more pathogenic for humans?
Could there *possibly* be a link? Lord knows! Surely not! Blame the pangolins!
But the director of the Wuhan lab immediately thought she was the culprit. Not "zoonosis" which you apparently claim is the OBVIOUS origin
"Shi, a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years, walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?”"
Remember, that was her FIRST thought. "Could they have come from my lab"?
SPOILER: it came from her lab
Dude:
You *know* that the Chinese CDC lab was not where bat viruses were researched. It's in the same fucking city out of hundreds of Chinese cities as the Wuhan Institute of Virology - that's evidence enough without claiming that the CDC offices were the nexus.
Er, you loudly claimed the CDC was on the other side of town. Then I proved you wrong
Anyway who cares? No one can know for sure. We do know that the Wuhan CDC kept bats as part of the overall Wuhan research. And the Wuhan CDC is a leaky BSL2 job (unlike WIV central: BSL4). That is a fact
The Chinese have since moved it hastily elsewhere. Also a fact. And the Chinese have steadfastly refused any proper scrutiny of the CDC, all they say is "no true virology was done here". Fact?
Best guess: it came out of that CDC WIV BSL2 lab so spookily close to the wet market (which was a perfect superspreader environment). Maybe a worker got bit or peed on or whatever. Then walked to the market 3 minutes away. Bought a chicken. Et voila
Well, where did SARS-CoV-1 come from? A zoonotic event.
What about MERS, another new coronavirus? A zoonotic event.
What about some other new diseases affecting people? Monkeypox? Zoonotic event. HIV? Zoonotic event. Ebola? Zoonotic event. Marburg? Zoonotic event. Sleeping sickness? Zoonotic event. Chagas disease? Zoonotic event. Zika? Zoonotic event. Smallpox? Zoonotic event.
Swine flu? Ah… that one seems to be a recombination of a zoonotic infection and an existing human flu strain, so not a straight zoonotic event.
So, even before we look at the actual research on the early infections and the virus’s genome, what’s the most likely explanation for where COVID-19 came from?
Why not list the probably 10s of 1000s of natural deaths on record in Hyde to prove that Harold Shipman was innocent? How would such an argument differ from the above?
Labours first intervention into the crisis is fucking lame, does nothing to address the overall costs and involves reimbursing energy companies for the inconvenience of legislating. I mean, what prick thought throwing out this in isolation was an idea?!
The pre-payment problem is an important point but as you say, looks like a trivial footnote.
Well, where did SARS-CoV-1 come from? A zoonotic event.
What about MERS, another new coronavirus? A zoonotic event.
What about some other new diseases affecting people? Monkeypox? Zoonotic event. HIV? Zoonotic event. Ebola? Zoonotic event. Marburg? Zoonotic event. Sleeping sickness? Zoonotic event. Chagas disease? Zoonotic event. Zika? Zoonotic event. Smallpox? Zoonotic event.
Swine flu? Ah… that one seems to be a recombination of a zoonotic infection and an existing human flu strain, so not a straight zoonotic event.
So, even before we look at the actual research on the early infections and the virus’s genome, what’s the most likely explanation for where COVID-19 came from?
God. I dunno. Maybe the lab 200 yards from the wet market where they were researching novel bat coronaviruses and trying to make them more pathogenic for humans by altering the furin cleavage site and then amazingly 200 yards away a novel bat coronavirus emerged in the wet market with bizarre evolutions in the furin cleavage site which make it more pathogenic for humans?
Could there *possibly* be a link? Lord knows! Surely not! Blame the pangolins!
But the director of the Wuhan lab immediately thought she was the culprit. Not "zoonosis" which you apparently claim is the OBVIOUS origin
"Shi, a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years, walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?”"
Remember, that was her FIRST thought. "Could they have come from my lab"?
SPOILER: it came from her lab
Dude:
You *know* that the Chinese CDC lab was not where bat viruses were researched. It's in the same fucking city out of hundreds of Chinese cities as the Wuhan Institute of Virology - that's evidence enough without claiming that the CDC offices were the nexus.
Why do you believe ANYTHING China says?
"A video from December 2019 shows Wuhan CDC experts collecting virus samples in local bat caves.
Yet the Wuhan CDC said it did not store or study coronaviruses or bat viruses prior to the pandemic.
US intelligence is investigating the possibility that the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab."
An actual quote:
"Among all the known creatures, the bats are rich in various viruses inside. You can find most viruses responsible for human diseases like rabies, SARS, and Ebola," Tian Junhua, a Wuhan CDC researcher, says in the video. "It is while discovering new viruses that we are most at risk of infection."
"Last year, Chinese scientist Botao Xiao wrote in a paper that the Wuhan CDC "hosted animals in laboratories for research purposes," including bats. He suggested that an unsuspecting scientist might have accidentally tracked out a virus from one of those animals. But Botao later withdrew the paper because he said it lacked sufficient proof."
Comments
Indeed that’s based on some pretty basic economic thinking.
2. Covid is a pandemic.
The Nazis deliberately planned and perpetrated the massacre of six million Jews. Are you suggesting the Fauci and co. did something similar?
Shameful diminution of the evils of Nazisim. I'd have thought better of you tbh.
Bedtime...
Manslaughter is a thing.
My feeling is that we’re not ready yet as a society to consider Covid sufficiently in the past to start the investigation.
This means when a government department wants to cut its funding for the Met Office they are able to move the discussion onto which services the department wants to stop receiving.
So you can't force the BBC to get its forecasts from the Met Office, because the question then would be how much they pay for it, and who decides, or which other contact is it paid under?
You can be sure the Met Office will want to win the contract back next time it's up, so they'll be gathering evidence on forecast accuracy, and other ways of justifying their worth, while working out how much less money they can afford to ask for.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/21/are-solar-farms-really-hitting-british-food-production
Helps to realise that a lot of those images that make it look like the panels form continuous cover are a trick of perspective;
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/shepherds-can-cash-in-on-their-sheep-grazing-around-solar-panels/
Let's talk about nothing cos I am on my holidays innit
The more you despair about the Tories the more you have to despair about sir interesting missing a goal wider than Watford Gap because holidays. Does he just not want the job?
I am saying that the scale of the Covid disaster is comparable with Nazism. And it is. WW2 killed 80m? Covid has so far killed 20m, and counting, and the human/economic aftershocks are similarly epochal
We need justice, like WW2 needed the Nuremburg Trials
In my experience in terms of rainfall the Met Office forecast has been streets ahead of what the BBC publishes.
She had shouted back at a teenager who had been aggressive towards her. Once.
As opposed to investigating the people slowly beating a baby to death.
*She kept of banging on about Baby P being abused. Which wasn’t what management wanted to hear.
Which should be taxed.
(*Checks, my home 4.0kW PV array is paying me the huge rate of, er, 5.99p per exported kWh.)
Matt Chorley
@MattChorley
·
6h
Can I just say now that if Rishi Sunak wins after all it would be very, very funny
===
... and lucrative.
Pumping water about is insanely expensive. However, I believe some of the old canal network is actually used (or was it just proposed?) for this…
We can sanction individuals, for example.
https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
It was a zoonotic infection, caught from a wild animal trapped to be eaten. And we know it could happen again, because people are regularly being exposed to similar viruses: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02153-5 That’s the real risk, and stupid conspiracy theories will just get in the way of trying to mitigate the real risks out there.
We literally have another zoonotic infection running rampant right now in monkeypox. This is where pandemics come from, by jumping from another species.
By the way, do you know how you can tell whether something is a stupid conspiracy theory? Trump believes it. If you’re not certain whether something could be right or it’s just a conspiracy theory, have a quick Google and see what Trump is saying. If you’re on the same side as Trump, stop and re-evaluate your life.
With regard to how the Met Office is now better, I don’t know. Maybe they are more accessible, or innovative, or better at finding commercial applications for their research.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/en/politics-betting-2378961
4 hours continually.
He is out there, walking around, a free man, like he has no association with the plague that has killed twenty million people. Even tho he was co-head of the Wuhan lab, and the man leading the charge for more Gain of Function research
Here he is boasting about the "killer coronaviruses" they were making in that lab
"2016 video shows Peter Daszak describing “Chinese colleagues” developing “killer” coronaviruses. Daszak describes the process of “inserting spike proteins” into viruses to see if they can “bind to human cells.”
You can watch entire video here: https://c-span.org/video/?404875-1/pandemics
https://twitter.com/1stLtPatriot/status/1404217883794853889?s=20&t=zfQ1sBhQwYeaipWFyx_BAw
We can't get Xi Jinping into the dock, but this guy is a British raised US citizen. Surely he is worth at least questioning? After 20 million people died, and it was possibly, to an extent, his fault?
The fact this hasn't happened suggests to me, strongly, that the US scientific establishment knows perfectly well that it is probably his fault, but they don't want him in the dock, because he might name others
Abolish the subsidy scheme that has already been abolished?
Renege on the contracts that are in place?
Compulsory purchase and bulldoze already built solar fields?
The subsidies already don't exist. If someone chooses to build a new field, on their own land, without subsidies then what exactly is your problem with that?
A field is best used providing whatever the field's owner thinks its best for him or her to use that field for. That's the free market, its not a Commissars job to decide that food, energy or anything else is a "better use". Even if that we means we import less energy from your beloved homeland, I can understand why you don't want Britain self-sufficient on energy, Vlad.
Betfair next prime minister
1.12 Liz Truss 89%
9.4 Rishi Sunak 11%
Next Conservative leader
1.12 Liz Truss 89%
8.6 Rishi Sunak 12%
Deary me.
2. I manage 11 acres of pasture and am involved in managing an extra 1000 odd. Temperature is irrelevant over the past decade, grass grows all year round. As to moisture I agree. Presumably even if you claim the panels let some sunlight through you don't deny they are waterproof? What effect do you think that has?
And indeed it matters if it came from a market. STOP EATING BATS
We don't want this to happen again
I do not understand people who have no desire to investigate Covid origins. And I am automatically suspicious of their motives. Usually they are people invested in science, or just stupid, or lefties that hate Trump so much they don't care
Harry Cole
@MrHarryCole
·
6h
🚨 NEW: A third of Tory members voted for new PM in the first week of the contest - with one in seven voting in the first 48 hours.
Tory sources expect half of those that will vote to have done so by next week.
Multiple Lab safety trainings is sensible and COVID-19 has made people more cautious about the risks of infectious diseases. That your friend has had more safety training is not good evidence that COVID-19 came from a lab. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8337 is the sort of actual science you need to answer these questions… and the answer is, no, it didn’t come from a lab.
Tories used to get that, certainly those of a Thatcherite ilk.
You seem to be advocating something kind of British Leyland Metrology Service.
I don't think you're going to be getting many cuts of silage off a field full of solar panels tbh.
I watch the farming forecast on RTÉ, and they always give the soil temperature because it has an effect on grass growth. Duh.
I believe that the rain drips off the edge of the solar panels and falls onto the field underneath. Though, admittedly, this is a hypothesis untested by direct observation.
Goodnight!
Starmer’s inner circle impressed by the simplicity of the Tory frontrunner’s message" [via G search]
https://www.ft.com/content/1583d277-6b6a-4b97-81ba-35e9ceb0fa22
How are we supposed to tell the difference from when he's not?
We look forward to the DM headline Truss enemy of the people !
I’m very happy to be persuaded otherwise but there seems to be reasonable debate over it.
I suppose I should read those articles you posted, but I’ve got “pork, sesame and sriracha” sausages on the go.
Can you tell the guy who runs the Lancet Commission for investigating the origins of Covid 19? He seems to think it probably came from the lab
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/08/why-the-chair-of-the-lancets-covid-19-commission-thinks-the-us-government-is-preventing-a-real-investigation-into-the-pandemic
Considering we used to always be getting a chunk of our energy from France, that turnaround isn't helping.
Hopefully the French can get their nuclear plants up and running again before the winter.
An angry autumn and winter coming? I wouldn't be so sure. May I recommend Robert Dirks's 1980 paper "Social responses during severe food shortages and famine".
Notes
1) The lentils idea was recently pushed here too.
2) Or, until recently, if he was Ukrainian.
Check this (and it seems legit, tho the ultimate Australian source is frustratingly paywall)
"China Discussed Weaponising Coronaviruses Before Pandemic, Predicted WW3 With Bio-weapons
Describing SARS coronaviruses as heralding a “new era of genetic weapons”, China's scientists claimed the viruses could be “artificially manipulated"."
https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/china/china-discussed-weaponising-coronaviruses-before-pandemic-predicted-ww3-with-bio-weapons.html
Good riddance , one less Trump supporting moron that can’t now procreate !
Spelthornes Laleham ward due shortly, coukd see a LD gain from Con. Theyve already iost one by election in this multi member ward in May to the greens but the greens arent fighting this time, the LDs are in a straight swap so perhaps a similar result? (52 to 44)
The third , Dodderhill, counts Friday AM
Where did SARS-CoV-2 come from?
Well, where did SARS-CoV-1 come from? A zoonotic event.
What about MERS, another new coronavirus? A zoonotic event.
What about some other new diseases affecting people? Monkeypox? Zoonotic event. HIV? Zoonotic event. Ebola? Zoonotic event. Marburg? Zoonotic event. Sleeping sickness? Zoonotic event. Chagas disease? Zoonotic event. Zika? Zoonotic event. Smallpox? Zoonotic event.
Swine flu? Ah… that one seems to be a recombination of a zoonotic infection and an existing human flu strain, so not a straight zoonotic event.
So, even before we look at the actual research on the early infections and the virus’s genome, what’s the most likely explanation for where COVID-19 came from?
ETA and that is without needing the incumbent President and (probably) Vice-President not to stand.
Could there *possibly* be a link? Lord knows! Surely not! Blame the pangolins!
But the director of the Wuhan lab immediately thought she was the culprit. Not "zoonosis" which you apparently claim is the OBVIOUS origin
"Shi, a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years, walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?”"
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/
Remember, that was her FIRST thought. "Could they have come from my lab"?
SPOILER: it came from her lab
Although to be fair, he also said "white" guys and Beto is white unlike Trump who was America's first Oompa Loompa President.
I think he has to win Texas, because without that, he's just a guy who lost both a Texas Senate race and a Texas Gubernatorial race. I mean, if he lost incredibly narrowly... well, maybe... but I just don't see it.
But if he's won, he'd look like a total flake to immediately run for President.
My gut, fwiw, is that Joe will not run for a second term. But that he will not announce this until Autumn 2023.
And then the candidates with be Kamala (who's pretty dreadful, but is sitting VP), Pete Buttigieg, and presumably half a dozen others.
I would also note that Beto was pretty poor last time he ran for President.
You *know* that the Chinese CDC lab was not where bat viruses were researched. It's in the same fucking city out of hundreds of Chinese cities as the Wuhan Institute of Virology - that's evidence enough without claiming that the CDC offices were the nexus.
Labours first intervention into the crisis is fucking lame, does nothing to address the overall costs and involves reimbursing energy companies for the inconvenience of legislating.
I mean, what prick thought throwing out this in isolation was an idea?!
Anyway who cares? No one can know for sure. We do know that the Wuhan CDC kept bats as part of the overall Wuhan research. And the Wuhan CDC is a leaky BSL2 job (unlike WIV central: BSL4). That is a fact
The Chinese have since moved it hastily elsewhere. Also a fact. And the Chinese have steadfastly refused any proper scrutiny of the CDC, all they say is "no true virology was done here". Fact?
Best guess: it came out of that CDC WIV BSL2 lab so spookily close to the wet market (which was a perfect superspreader environment). Maybe a worker got bit or peed on or whatever. Then walked to the market 3 minutes away. Bought a chicken. Et voila
"A video from December 2019 shows Wuhan CDC experts collecting virus samples in local bat caves.
Yet the Wuhan CDC said it did not store or study coronaviruses or bat viruses prior to the pandemic.
US intelligence is investigating the possibility that the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab."
An actual quote:
"Among all the known creatures, the bats are rich in various viruses inside. You can find most viruses responsible for human diseases like rabies, SARS, and Ebola," Tian Junhua, a Wuhan CDC researcher, says in the video. "It is while discovering new viruses that we are most at risk of infection."
https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-scientists-bat-caves-video-2021-6?r=US&IR=T
"Last year, Chinese scientist Botao Xiao wrote in a paper that the Wuhan CDC "hosted animals in laboratories for research purposes," including bats. He suggested that an unsuspecting scientist might have accidentally tracked out a virus from one of those animals. But Botao later withdrew the paper because he said it lacked sufficient proof."