A bit of a non-apology, starting "Oh dear." He's such a nasty prat.
Nick, what was your opinion of Jo Brands comments re acid and Nigel Farage? Her apology seemed pretty weak to me at the time, yet she gets a free pass. (As @FrancisUrquhart has also opined).
Equally vile. This sort of thing pretends to be OTT rhetoric, but in my opinion encourages actual violence.
I'm not sure of that, but as others have noted such direct language is not especially funny, even if one is in the market for deliberately offensive humour, and certainly isn't clever. So when people employ it I'm skeptical that that they even are attempting to be that funny, since they almost certainly can do a lot better than that.
So it seems more like a chance for them to say something hateful which isn't even well done, and claim it was a poor joke. I mean, are either so stupid as to not know how it looks? Relative of mine likes to talk, appropos of nothing, of hunting Tories or bashing their heads in, and it's obviously not serious in the sense they will do it, but its also not really a joke either, the emotion being expressed is pretty real, and that's how I tend to see rather blunt attempts at 'shock' comedy.
Comedians who actually make shocking and offending people as a core part of their schtick are actually pretty rare, since they need to be better at it than just occasionally being nasty about people they don't like.
Very well said. I think Jimmy Carr falls into that category.
It’s showing how good our vaccinations and coverage are. Their uptake is reputedly rubbish. I wonder about peoples skepticism of the government in a totalitarian society and the all pervading influence of Chinese herbal medicine.
1 million is 0.07% of China's population. 700 deaths per million, as against UK 2,895 per million over, effectively, 2 years so call it 700 vs 1,500 annualised. The situation may indeed be dire, but the scary number of 1 million turns out not to tell us that.
It looks like we are going to get a lesson in what happens without lockdown* or effective vaccinations in a unexposed population.
* actually China still has some restrictions, as lockdowns are not all or nothing.
The Republican House Committee report on Covid Origins is dynamite. Why are people ignoring it?
I hope PB will forgive me from quoting at length:
"AMMS’ 2015 Book on Weaponizing Artificially Engineered Chimeric Coronaviruses
[AMMS is the Bioweapon division of the Chinese military]
The declassified Updated Assessment [Biden's official report] also failed to address the AMMS’ publicly stated interest in the development of engineered coronaviruses for biological weapons purposes. In 2015, the official publishing house of the AMMS released a book titled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Artificial Humanized Viruses as Genetic Weapons.
The book was produced and edited using 18 experts, 16 of whom were officers at AMMS or other PLA research centers. Indeed, one of the editors not only works for the Fifth Institute but also has a long history of collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, having coauthored 12 scientific papers...
The book described the PLA researchers’ broader belief that other nations are developing chimeric coronaviruses to use as genetic weapons.
The authors described how to create weaponized chimeric SARS coronaviruses, the potentially broader scope for their use compared to traditional bioweapons, and the benefits of being able to plausibly deny that such chimeric coronaviruses were artificially created rather than naturally occurring.
The authors described the experimental techniques virologists could use to create weaponized chimeric coronaviruses:
1. Apply the latest genetic modification technology to induce a recombination between an animal virus and a human virus,,, until the point that the virus can directly attack humans.
2. Take an animal pathogen (at present this is mostly viruses) and use various methods and channels to attack animals with cellular receptors that are very similar to humans, and conduct various kinds of passaging many times until the pathogen ultimately adapts to transmit among the intended group of animals...
3. Combine the two methods described above. The authors noted that these techniques could also be used in benign research, such that the research is inherently dual-use and it would thus be difficult for others to distinguish between efforts for defensive and offensive purposes.
The authors also argued that the potential scope for the use of weaponized chimeric coronaviruses would be much broader than the traditional wartime uses of bioweapons.
They also note such weapons could strain the victim countries’ healthcare systems, potentially “causing the enemy’s medical system to collapse.”"
If the Chinese really did develop this as a weapon, and leaked it accidentally, then my sympathies for their upcoming Covid Horror are *somewhat restrained*
Comments
NEW THREAD
* actually China still has some restrictions, as lockdowns are not all or nothing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_bankruptcy
I hope PB will forgive me from quoting at length:
"AMMS’ 2015 Book on Weaponizing Artificially Engineered Chimeric Coronaviruses
[AMMS is the Bioweapon division of the Chinese military]
The declassified Updated Assessment [Biden's official report] also failed to address the AMMS’ publicly stated interest in the development of engineered coronaviruses for biological weapons purposes. In 2015, the official
publishing house of the AMMS released a book titled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of
Artificial Humanized Viruses as Genetic Weapons.
The book was produced and edited using 18 experts, 16 of whom were officers at AMMS or other PLA research centers. Indeed, one of the editors not only works for the Fifth Institute but also has a long history of collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, having coauthored 12 scientific papers...
The book described the PLA researchers’ broader belief that other nations are developing chimeric coronaviruses to use as genetic weapons.
The authors described how to create weaponized chimeric SARS coronaviruses, the potentially broader
scope for their use compared to traditional bioweapons, and the benefits of being able to plausibly
deny that such chimeric coronaviruses were artificially created rather than naturally occurring.
The authors described the experimental techniques virologists could use to create weaponized
chimeric coronaviruses:
1. Apply the latest genetic modification technology to induce a
recombination between an animal virus and a human virus,,,
until the point that the virus can directly attack humans.
2. Take an animal pathogen (at present this is mostly viruses) and use
various methods and channels to attack animals with cellular receptors
that are very similar to humans, and conduct various kinds of passaging
many times until the pathogen ultimately adapts to transmit among the
intended group of animals...
3. Combine the two methods described above.
The authors noted that these techniques could also be used in benign research, such that the research
is inherently dual-use and it would thus be difficult for others to distinguish between efforts for
defensive and offensive purposes.
The authors also argued that the potential scope for the use of weaponized chimeric
coronaviruses would be much broader than the traditional wartime uses of bioweapons.
They also note such weapons could strain the victim countries’ healthcare systems, potentially “causing the enemy’s medical system to collapse.”"
https://republicans-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/final_unclass_summary_-_covid_origins_report_.pdf
If the Chinese really did develop this as a weapon, and leaked it accidentally, then my sympathies for their upcoming Covid Horror are *somewhat restrained*