Is it really 4 years since I felt like I spent all day every day trying to convince HYUFD that relying solely on Trafalgar polls was not necessarily the way to win an argument. Feels like yesterday.
It will be your eternity.
The definition of eternity, arguing with HYUFD. Tio compare with Sartre's.
That’s not Redwall, that’s Martin the Warrior. Different book set even before the building of Redwall.
The series is Redwall, smart guy.
Mossflower was actually the first one I read back in the day. I think 5-6 of the series are set before the first published book.
Though I picked up the first book in the Saga of Reclude the other day, having read it 30 years ago, and apparently of the 20 or so books the first one published is second last chronologically.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
I'd like to remind everyone that during COVID the lab leak theory was dismissed as fake news, yet here we are and most sensible people agree that COVID came from a lab leak, not what the Chinese told us that it was zoonotic transmission.
Regulating "fake news" is a truly sinister idea and is just a polite way of pushing through mass censorship. I expected nothing less from a Labour government, I'm just surprised they're doing it so early. I guess they're taking full advantage of the current opportunity and people willing to throw away their freedoms in the name of "community relations".
Most sensible people agree that COVID-19 came from zoonotic events. And by sensible people, I mean people working in virology and public health. The study of early genomic variation in the virus is particularly convincing.
They do indeed. That conspiracy theorists bombard us all with their ideas unreplied doesn't mean we agree. It just means that you cannot debate them because they do not listen.
It's not about racism. The Chinese government is on the hook for allowing cruel and dangerous wet markets at least as much as Lab work on viruses.
I've given up arguing about this one, as the vast majority of the discourse is free of any scientific evidence. But Max's "most sensible people agree" is a) wrong, b) unscientific, and c) really disappointing from one of our more sensible posters.
Neither side has come close to proving their case. Though certain accounts - a deliberately engineered virus, for example - are deeply implausible.
Which is the point I was making to mr Jessop he attacks Leon for his certainty (correctly in my view) but gives Bondezegu a free pass for his certainty (incorrectly in my view)
I think either could be the truth I doubt we will ever know and until either side brings compelling evidence then we should view any certainty about the origin as equally spurious
I think @bondegezou has, in the past, said that it is not certain. But if you read Leon's post, he goes much, much further.
What is more: if the evidence changes, I have zero doubt that @bondegezou would change his views. I have zero doubt that @Leon would not, because his conspiracy theory is the most dramatic theory (and is a short step away from a deliberate release...)
My own view, for what it matters, is that we do not know; but I think natural is more likely than lab-leak. I would not be surprised by either. But Leon's cast-iron certainty is hilarious.
I am on the other side of the "don't know": I think an accidental lab leak is the most likely scenario. Albeit, my definition of lab leak is also a broad one.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Hmm. Trump can be expected to blame his underlings for this trend, and himself for taking bad advice and not going with his gut. Could be interesting....
* Warns that leaving ECHR would be divisive and impractical. ‘It is a divisive policy at a time when we need to unite’
* Says ‘perception’ of two-tier policing risks undermining confidence
* Nigel Farage will never be allowed to join Tory party under her leadership
* Says record migration figures were justified in ‘context’ of pandemic and helping people from Afghanistan, Ukraine and Hong Kong
* Rejects suggestion she is right wing. ‘I just don’t think labels like that are relevant or helpful right now. We cannot keep on tacking left or right. I think that’s part of the reason why we’ve been in the mess we’ve been in’
* Says she has ‘100%’ confidence that she will win the contest
She’s just blown it. Even if she gets to the final two (unlikely) the members won’t vote for that
I think the strategy seems to be to curry favour with what she must perceive to be a very wet audience of MPs, to get her to the members, then she can do and say as she likes.
It's vaguely depressing firstly that she's come up with this tripe, and secondly that she feels she has to. What kind of shitty PCP have CCHQ landed us with?
I'd like to remind everyone that during COVID the lab leak theory was dismissed as fake news, yet here we are and most sensible people agree that COVID came from a lab leak, not what the Chinese told us that it was zoonotic transmission.
Regulating "fake news" is a truly sinister idea and is just a polite way of pushing through mass censorship. I expected nothing less from a Labour government, I'm just surprised they're doing it so early. I guess they're taking full advantage of the current opportunity and people willing to throw away their freedoms in the name of "community relations".
Most sensible people agree that COVID-19 came from zoonotic events. And by sensible people, I mean people working in virology and public health. The study of early genomic variation in the virus is particularly convincing.
They do indeed. That conspiracy theorists bombard us all with their ideas unreplied doesn't mean we agree. It just means that you cannot debate them because they do not listen.
It's not about racism. The Chinese government is on the hook for allowing cruel and dangerous wet markets at least as much as Lab work on viruses.
I've given up arguing about this one, as the vast majority of the discourse is free of any scientific evidence. But Max's "most sensible people agree" is a) wrong, b) unscientific, and c) really disappointing from one of our more sensible posters.
Neither side has come close to proving their case. Though certain accounts - a deliberately engineered virus, for example - are deeply implausible.
Which is the point I was making to mr Jessop he attacks Leon for his certainty (correctly in my view) but gives Bondezegu a free pass for his certainty (incorrectly in my view)
I think either could be the truth I doubt we will ever know and until either side brings compelling evidence then we should view any certainty about the origin as equally spurious
I think @bondegezou has, in the past, said that it is not certain. But if you read Leon's post, he goes much, much further.
What is more: if the evidence changes, I have zero doubt that @bondegezou would change his views. I have zero doubt that @Leon would not, because his conspiracy theory is the most dramatic theory (and is a short step away from a deliberate release...)
My own view, for what it matters, is that we do not know; but I think natural is more likely than lab-leak. I would not be surprised by either. But Leon's cast-iron certainty is hilarious.
I am on the other side of the "don't know": I think an accidental lab leak is the most likely scenario. Albeit, my definition of lab leak is also a broad one.
I don't know enough to make a call, but it did feel as though some people at least hastily ruled out some options early on.
* Warns that leaving ECHR would be divisive and impractical. ‘It is a divisive policy at a time when we need to unite’
* Says ‘perception’ of two-tier policing risks undermining confidence
* Nigel Farage will never be allowed to join Tory party under her leadership
* Says record migration figures were justified in ‘context’ of pandemic and helping people from Afghanistan, Ukraine and Hong Kong
* Rejects suggestion she is right wing. ‘I just don’t think labels like that are relevant or helpful right now. We cannot keep on tacking left or right. I think that’s part of the reason why we’ve been in the mess we’ve been in’
* Says she has ‘100%’ confidence that she will win the contest
She’s just blown it. Even if she gets to the final two (unlikely) the members won’t vote for that
I think the strategy seems to be to curry favour with what she must perceive to be a very wet audience of MPs, to get her to the members, then she can do and say as she likes.
It's vaguely depressing firstly that she's come up with this tripe, and secondly that she feels she has to. What kind of shitty PCP have CCHQ given us?
You mean has Sunak given us, given it's the ones left after the loss?
Indeed. She seems to think post war St Ives was artistically more important than New York, which saw the explosion of abstract expressionism - it’s a load of Jackson Pollocks
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Wick? Hmm. Well, it's a step up from Thurso. I'm with you on Cromarty tho.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Wick? Hmm. Well, it's a step up from Thurso. I'm with you on Cromarty tho.
Pulteneytown, the harbour steps ... Good enough for Lowry, good enough for me.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Wick? Hmm. Well, it's a step up from Thurso. I'm with you on Cromarty tho.
And if you're prepared to go further north, there's always Kirkwall. Glorious little romanesque cathedral for starters.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Wick? Hmm. Well, it's a step up from Thurso. I'm with you on Cromarty tho.
And if you're prepared to go further north, there's always Kirkwall. Glorious little romanesque cathedral for starters.
Isn’t that a city, due to the cathedral?
If is a magnificent cathedral btw. One of my favourites in all the world. So unique and very noomy
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Wick? Hmm. Well, it's a step up from Thurso. I'm with you on Cromarty tho.
And if you're prepared to go further north, there's always Kirkwall. Glorious little romanesque cathedral for starters.
Isn’t that a city, due to the cathedral?
If is a magnificent cathedral btw. One of my favourites in all the world. So unique and very noomy
Then go for Stromness. No cathedral. And a great place.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Wick? Hmm. Well, it's a step up from Thurso. I'm with you on Cromarty tho.
And if you're prepared to go further north, there's always Kirkwall. Glorious little romanesque cathedral for starters.
Isn’t that a city, due to the cathedral?
If is a magnificent cathedral btw. One of my favourites in all the world. So unique and very noomy
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Wick? Hmm. Well, it's a step up from Thurso. I'm with you on Cromarty tho.
And if you're prepared to go further north, there's always Kirkwall. Glorious little romanesque cathedral for starters.
Isn’t that a city, due to the cathedral?
If is a magnificent cathedral btw. One of my favourites in all the world. So unique and very noomy
Then go for Stromness. No cathedral. And a great place.
Is that also Orkney? I love Orkney. Magnificently wild
Having over praised France and dissed Britain, for several weeks, France has nothing like Orkney
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Wick? Hmm. Well, it's a step up from Thurso. I'm with you on Cromarty tho.
And if you're prepared to go further north, there's always Kirkwall. Glorious little romanesque cathedral for starters.
Isn’t that a city, due to the cathedral?
If is a magnificent cathedral btw. One of my favourites in all the world. So unique and very noomy
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Clovelly, Shaftesbury, Bradford-upon-Avon
Er... Shaftesbury's nice enough but not even in the top 100. It's got Gold Hill and... that's it.
I'm going to need to think a bit about the top 5 though.
I'd like to remind everyone that during COVID the lab leak theory was dismissed as fake news, yet here we are and most sensible people agree that COVID came from a lab leak, not what the Chinese told us that it was zoonotic transmission.
Regulating "fake news" is a truly sinister idea and is just a polite way of pushing through mass censorship. I expected nothing less from a Labour government, I'm just surprised they're doing it so early. I guess they're taking full advantage of the current opportunity and people willing to throw away their freedoms in the name of "community relations".
Most sensible people agree that COVID-19 came from zoonotic events. And by sensible people, I mean people working in virology and public health. The study of early genomic variation in the virus is particularly convincing.
They do indeed. That conspiracy theorists bombard us all with their ideas unreplied doesn't mean we agree. It just means that you cannot debate them because they do not listen.
It's not about racism. The Chinese government is on the hook for allowing cruel and dangerous wet markets at least as much as Lab work on viruses.
I've given up arguing about this one, as the vast majority of the discourse is free of any scientific evidence. But Max's "most sensible people agree" is a) wrong, b) unscientific, and c) really disappointing from one of our more sensible posters.
Neither side has come close to proving their case. Though certain accounts - a deliberately engineered virus, for example - are deeply implausible.
I suggest you - and any truly interested PB-er - watch this debate. It is two highly intelligent, well-informed people arguing freely and openly, and marshalling all the facts on both sides. Matt Ridley versus a renowned Virologist. It is the best actual debate out there, that I can find. It's a long watch, 90 minutes, but educational, and recent
In my opinion, any sane intelligent person - such as yourself - watching all of this, will conclude it is probable if not very probable it came from the lab. But you may conclude differently, and fair enough
I offer it for your elucidation. I agree the argument cannot advance much further now. Most people think it came from the lab (as polls show), some hardcore virologists and academics disagree and will never be reconciled to the lab leak idea probably - IMHO - because it is too distressing or menacing for them. As China has refused any further investigation - especially of the lab - we will never get 100% proof
Britain Elects @BritainElects So far there has been disorder in about four in ten seats where Reform came second in July – that’s 38 of them. In these same areas, the Reform vote averaged 19 percent, compared to the 14 per cent they received nationally.
Interesting and unsurprising, in a “so far there have been more catholics in places the pope visits th
I'd like to remind everyone that during COVID the lab leak theory was dismissed as fake news, yet here we are and most sensible people agree that COVID came from a lab leak, not what the Chinese told us that it was zoonotic transmission.
Regulating "fake news" is a truly sinister idea and is just a polite way of pushing through mass censorship. I expected nothing less from a Labour government, I'm just surprised they're doing it so early. I guess they're taking full advantage of the current opportunity and people willing to throw away their freedoms in the name of "community relations".
Most sensible people agree that COVID-19 came from zoonotic events. And by sensible people, I mean people working in virology and public health. The study of early genomic variation in the virus is particularly convincing.
No they don't. People who rely on public funding and want to appear not racist still state it might be what the Chinese told us. Everyone else with more than one brain cell can see what happened. You are the establishment, you are the censor and it is little wonder that you would back state censorship of speech. It's everything you've dreamed of, no dissent from what you and your masters deem acceptable or "truth". Anyone who says otherwise sees the inside of a jail cell.
Here's an anonymous survey of expert virologist, epidemiologists etc. showing that they think the most likely explanation is zoonosis.
"People doing dangerous science that killed 28 million people deny that science killed 28 million people and instead it was a pangolin in a hat"
Let us say that the probability of a lab leak is X.
Whereas the probability of a 'natural' cause is:
Y, the probability of zoonosis, multiplied by Z, the probability that the zoonosis would happen so near the lab.
Now people can debate what X and Y might be.
But Z has to be something like 0.0000001 or less.
So for Y*Z to be more likely than X then Y, zoonosis, needs to be about 1,000,000 more likely than X, lab leak.
This is a useful way of quantifying the circumstantial evidence / coincidence of the virus starting in Wuhan.
I’d probably go with a more prudent estimate of Z. Wuhan has a population of about 12 million. Contrary to some stories the actual lab was about 40 minutes away from the market, not just round the corner. So I think we can take 12m as the numerator over global population of 8bn as the denominator. That gives Z of 0.0015. So zoonosis would have to be roughly 666 times as likely. Still a big number.
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Wick? Hmm. Well, it's a step up from Thurso. I'm with you on Cromarty tho.
And if you're prepared to go further north, there's always Kirkwall. Glorious little romanesque cathedral for starters.
Isn’t that a city, due to the cathedral?
If is a magnificent cathedral btw. One of my favourites in all the world. So unique and very noomy
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Clovelly, Shaftesbury, Bradford-upon-Avon
Er... Shaftesbury's nice enough but not even in the top 100. It's got Gold Hill and... that's it.
I'm going to need to think a bit about the top 5 though.
It is tricky. And of course it depends on your definition of “town” and “pretty”. Also quite a fun game
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Clovelly, Shaftesbury, Bradford-upon-Avon
Er... Shaftesbury's nice enough but not even in the top 100. It's got Gold Hill and... that's it.
I'm going to need to think a bit about the top 5 though.
It is tricky. And of course it depends on your definition of “town” and “pretty”. Also quite a fun game
Tbf, I'm quite pleased to see Shaftesbury mentioned. Is it the highest town in England? I dunno.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Clovelly, Shaftesbury, Bradford-upon-Avon
Er... Shaftesbury's nice enough but not even in the top 100. It's got Gold Hill and... that's it.
I'm going to need to think a bit about the top 5 though.
It is tricky. And of course it depends on your definition of “town” and “pretty”. Also quite a fun game
* Warns that leaving ECHR would be divisive and impractical. ‘It is a divisive policy at a time when we need to unite’
* Says ‘perception’ of two-tier policing risks undermining confidence
* Nigel Farage will never be allowed to join Tory party under her leadership
* Says record migration figures were justified in ‘context’ of pandemic and helping people from Afghanistan, Ukraine and Hong Kong
* Rejects suggestion she is right wing. ‘I just don’t think labels like that are relevant or helpful right now. We cannot keep on tacking left or right. I think that’s part of the reason why we’ve been in the mess we’ve been in’
* Says she has ‘100%’ confidence that she will win the contest
She’s just blown it. Even if she gets to the final two (unlikely) the members won’t vote for that
I think the strategy seems to be to curry favour with what she must perceive to be a very wet audience of MPs, to get her to the members, then she can do and say as she likes.
It's vaguely depressing firstly that she's come up with this tripe, and secondly that she feels she has to. What kind of shitty PCP have CCHQ landed us with?
I’m not sure. I have an inkling she’s on a journey?
Why? Exhibit A: she is a keen student of all things stateside. She has also always had a no nonsense side to her. There is something of the Nicki Haley about her. Might she have watched with admiration Haley’s long, though ultimately fruitless, resistance to Trump?
Exhibit B: Suella and Kemi may well have irritated her enough to make her set her stall against those imposters. I’m not sure, notwithstanding Farage dancing vids, that Priti was ever a convinced culture warrior.
Exhibit C: My former colleague knew her parents. They were, by all accounts, not entirely on all fours with their daughter’s political trajectory.
Might she be on a slow but steady journey back towards, not centrism, but a sort of Theresa May version of authoritarian Toryism?
In 2016 though it was only Trafalgar of the main pollsters who had Trump ahead in the rustbelt states and they were correct, the rest of the pollsters weren't so they can't be dismissed.
In 2016 even RCP had Hillary ahead 272 EC votes to 266 for Trump, yet Trump won 304 to 227.
Trump's lead in the no toss up race on RCP is entirely based upon him being given Pennsylvania. If that were to go blue he would lose 268 to 270. Its why, for all his undoubted folksy charm I still worry that Harris chose Walz rather than Shapiro.
As I said earlier it is seriously misleading to take the "final" polls for Rasmussen in isolation because they are highly biased until very shortly before then come into line. Of course we have seen similar herding in the UK at times as well.
The bias is on this site.
This board hates Trump and anything bad for him, and good for Harris, gets about 15 times as much coverage as it should and anything vaguely neutral, let alone positive, gets dismissed.
Kamala Harris lost in 2020 because, largely, she was seen as on the Left and Biden as the moderate. Don't think for a moment Americans have forgotten that. And she certainly has limitations as a candidate. She's far from home and dry and the VI is mainly due to Democrats firming up.
I expect the race to narrow as polling day approaches. And Trump could easily still win this.
Kamala Harris did not lose the 2020 primary election because she was too left wing.
She lost because she didn't even make it to Iowa. She pulled out long before the first votes were cast, because she was unable to raise money.
Why?
Because she was neither a champion of the left, like Warren or Sanders. Nor a fresh face like Buttigieg. Nor an ex Vice President like Biden.
She was a dull, centrist former Prosecutor and Attorney General, who has earned the enmity of the Left by being pretty tough on crime. And who was unable to enthuse the center of the party to compensate.
She was dreadful.
And I thought @HYUFD's historic take was spot on: she was a poor candidate. And the Dems would likely lose with her as candidate.
But you know what: she said utterly ruthless in sewing up the nomination. She made a very smart VP pick. And she's proved herself to be both well organized, and a blank slate. And there's nothing better for getting elected than being a blank slate.
She is not a blank slate though. She has been the VP in an unpopular Administration who, until recently, had very dire poll ratings and with justification - she did little and what she did, she did badly.
She is also bad on the stump. One of the core reasons why she bombed in the Democratic nomination is that she couldn’t deal well with anything remotely critical. She got smashed by Tulsi Gabbard FFS. She hasn’t done a single press interview or taken a question. Trump has asked for three debates with her and there is a reason for that.
Most Americans at the moment are engrossed with Simone Biles and watching their track athletes smash the rest of the world. Give it a month’s time, and there will be a lot more scrutiny.
None of that is inaccurate; it just rather ignores the elephant in the room.
And that is that Ms Harris won't be debating with Tulsi Gabbard, she is going to be head-to-hed with a former President who is suffering from cognitive decline.
That decline was irrelevant when Trump was up against Biden (who was suffering from far worse decline), but it's going to be much more of an issue when he's facing Harris.
So, if you're going to talk about her getting more scrutiny, then you need to accept that cuts both ways. Sure, Harris gets gets more scrutiny, but so does Trump's mental fitness for the job. Because he's certainly not the force he was in 2020, let alone 2016.
One good thing about the Farage Riots is that conservative commentators have suddenly noticed that there's an underclass of around 10%-15% who feel cut off from the rest of society. I'm not sure how they didn't notice that before but that's besides the point.
Given a bipartisan inclination to heal this divide in our society, what could this Parliament do to help this 10%-15% have a stake in our country again? Particularly asking PB_Tories here, what could Labour do that you would support them with?
Labour could start by not looking down their nose at them.
Sigh
You're doing it yourself now.
I don't think he was tbf. The question was what Labour policies aimed at improving the lives of our poorest people PB Tories would support.
"Stop looking down on them" isn't an answer to that. It's just a piece of rhetoric. And it gets a "sigh" because it's not exactly mint fresh.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Wick? Hmm. Well, it's a step up from Thurso. I'm with you on Cromarty tho.
And if you're prepared to go further north, there's always Kirkwall. Glorious little romanesque cathedral for starters.
Isn’t that a city, due to the cathedral?
If is a magnificent cathedral btw. One of my favourites in all the world. So unique and very noomy
Then go for Stromness. No cathedral. And a great place.
Is that also Orkney? I love Orkney. Magnificently wild
Having over praised France and dissed Britain, for several weeks, France has nothing like Orkney
Ironically - and completelu coincidentally - it has a sort of St Ives thingy. https://www.pierartscentre.com/ Not sure the founding art collection is particularly Orcadian, though these things work both ways of course (and much has been added since too, anyway). But I tend to head for the museum myself, given my interests.
Britain Elects @BritainElects So far there has been disorder in about four in ten seats where Reform came second in July – that’s 38 of them. In these same areas, the Reform vote averaged 19 percent, compared to the 14 per cent they received nationally.
Interesting and unsurprising, in a “so far there have been more catholics in places the pope visits th
I'd like to remind everyone that during COVID the lab leak theory was dismissed as fake news, yet here we are and most sensible people agree that COVID came from a lab leak, not what the Chinese told us that it was zoonotic transmission.
Regulating "fake news" is a truly sinister idea and is just a polite way of pushing through mass censorship. I expected nothing less from a Labour government, I'm just surprised they're doing it so early. I guess they're taking full advantage of the current opportunity and people willing to throw away their freedoms in the name of "community relations".
Most sensible people agree that COVID-19 came from zoonotic events. And by sensible people, I mean people working in virology and public health. The study of early genomic variation in the virus is particularly convincing.
No they don't. People who rely on public funding and want to appear not racist still state it might be what the Chinese told us. Everyone else with more than one brain cell can see what happened. You are the establishment, you are the censor and it is little wonder that you would back state censorship of speech. It's everything you've dreamed of, no dissent from what you and your masters deem acceptable or "truth". Anyone who says otherwise sees the inside of a jail cell.
Here's an anonymous survey of expert virologist, epidemiologists etc. showing that they think the most likely explanation is zoonosis.
"People doing dangerous science that killed 28 million people deny that science killed 28 million people and instead it was a pangolin in a hat"
Let us say that the probability of a lab leak is X.
Whereas the probability of a 'natural' cause is:
Y, the probability of zoonosis, multiplied by Z, the probability that the zoonosis would happen so near the lab.
Now people can debate what X and Y might be.
But Z has to be something like 0.0000001 or less.
So for Y*Z to be more likely than X then Y, zoonosis, needs to be about 1,000,000 more likely than X, lab leak.
This is a useful way of quantifying the circumstantial evidence / coincidence of the virus starting in Wuhan.
I’d probably go with a more prudent estimate of Z. Wuhan has a population of about 12 million. Contrary to some stories the actual lab was about 40 minutes away from the market, not just round the corner. So I think we can take 12m as the numerator over global population of 8bn as the denominator. That gives Z of 0.0015. So zoonosis would have to be roughly 666 times as likely. Still a big number.
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Siri, show me someone who doesn't understand epidemiology or their fellow man.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Wick? Hmm. Well, it's a step up from Thurso. I'm with you on Cromarty tho.
And if you're prepared to go further north, there's always Kirkwall. Glorious little romanesque cathedral for starters.
Isn’t that a city, due to the cathedral?
If is a magnificent cathedral btw. One of my favourites in all the world. So unique and very noomy
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Wick? Hmm. Well, it's a step up from Thurso. I'm with you on Cromarty tho.
And if you're prepared to go further north, there's always Kirkwall. Glorious little romanesque cathedral for starters.
Isn’t that a city, due to the cathedral?
If is a magnificent cathedral btw. One of my favourites in all the world. So unique and very noomy
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
I have a treasured photo of me kissing my wife on a hill overlooking St Ives. Face caught at the perfect angle, big beautiful eyes, lustrous hair tossed by the wind. And she looks nice too.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Wick? Hmm. Well, it's a step up from Thurso. I'm with you on Cromarty tho.
And if you're prepared to go further north, there's always Kirkwall. Glorious little romanesque cathedral for starters.
Isn’t that a city, due to the cathedral?
If is a magnificent cathedral btw. One of my favourites in all the world. So unique and very noomy
Very interesting article. Fairly weird, unsupported headline.
The Telegraph thesis is that zonal pricing (ie divide country into 12 zones) will "drive up Home Counties" prices. Yet the zone with the Home Counties runs up to a line from the Bristol Channel to the North side of The Wash, and then includes 1/3 of Wales, which will all have the same prices. Then the entire South of London from Kent to Cornwall is a single zone. Modelling is that the grid will improve and prices will fall.
Their claim requires that there be choke points in electricity reaching these zones great enough to cause big price differences in the Home Counties, which requires a combination of network not being built, supplies not being developed, a crunch in supply/demand, and interconnectors not smoothing prices enough.
I'd say - far-fetched. Landing on one low probability outcome and shouting about it. Here's the map (my daily quota):
I know quite a bit about the electricity transmission grid, and that division makes very little sense.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Wick? Hmm. Well, it's a step up from Thurso. I'm with you on Cromarty tho.
And if you're prepared to go further north, there's always Kirkwall. Glorious little romanesque cathedral for starters.
Isn’t that a city, due to the cathedral?
If is a magnificent cathedral btw. One of my favourites in all the world. So unique and very noomy
Wikipedia says Bradford-upon-Avon is a small town. So I’m calling it now. At this very early stage
Bradford-upon-Avon is the prettiest town in Britain
Rye. That's it.
We’re building a good shortlist
Lavenham Bradford-upon-Avon Rye Stromness
Does Lacock count as a town?
No.
Places can turn themselves into towns simply by declaring themselves to be such eg they can go from a parish council to a town council, community council, neighbourhood council, or village council (I don't actually know of any that have done the latter 3, community council is the default in Wales) (I think some of these might require a review by the Principal Authority, but going from parish to town does not). This is about the 'style' or status of the civil parish as opposed to the name.
So there are towns like Mere with around 3k people and 'villages' like Laverstock with 7-8k. Durrington with about 7k is called a village on wikipedia but changed to a town council years ago.
Wikipedia says Bradford-upon-Avon is a small town. So I’m calling it now. At this very early stage
Bradford-upon-Avon is the prettiest town in Britain
Rye. That's it.
We’re building a good shortlist
Lavenham Bradford-upon-Avon Rye Stromness
Does Lacock count as a town?
No.
Places can turn themselves into towns simply by declaring themselves to be such eg they can go from a parish council to a town council, community council, neighbourhood council, or village council (I don't actually know of any that have done the latter 3, community council is the default in Wales) (I think some of these might require a review by the Principal Authority, but going from parish to town does not). This is about the 'style' or status of the civil parish as opposed to the name.
So there are towns like Mere with around 3k people and 'villages' like Laverstock with 7-8k.
We shouldn’t use those absurd definitions then
To my mind a town is anywhere with a population over 1000 with several shops, pubs, schools, official buildings etc
It becomes a city if it has a cathedral or if its population goes over 50,000
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
Deep down we all know it is highly likely it came from the lab. But for some it is an article of faith that it didn’t. And faith is the best metaphor here
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
I'm not sure it's that big a coincidence. There must be quite a few virology research labs dotted around the world, and they will generally be in or near big cities, which is where outbreaks of disease are likely to occur.
I'd like to remind everyone that during COVID the lab leak theory was dismissed as fake news, yet here we are and most sensible people agree that COVID came from a lab leak, not what the Chinese told us that it was zoonotic transmission.
Regulating "fake news" is a truly sinister idea and is just a polite way of pushing through mass censorship. I expected nothing less from a Labour government, I'm just surprised they're doing it so early. I guess they're taking full advantage of the current opportunity and people willing to throw away their freedoms in the name of "community relations".
Most sensible people agree that COVID-19 came from zoonotic events. And by sensible people, I mean people working in virology and public health. The study of early genomic variation in the virus is particularly convincing.
No they don't. People who rely on public funding and want to appear not racist still state it might be what the Chinese told us. Everyone else with more than one brain cell can see what happened. You are the establishment, you are the censor and it is little wonder that you would back state censorship of speech. It's everything you've dreamed of, no dissent from what you and your masters deem acceptable or "truth". Anyone who says otherwise sees the inside of a jail cell.
Here's an anonymous survey of expert virologist, epidemiologists etc. showing that they think the most likely explanation is zoonosis.
"People doing dangerous science that killed 28 million people deny that science killed 28 million people and instead it was a pangolin in a hat"
Let us say that the probability of a lab leak is X.
Whereas the probability of a 'natural' cause is:
Y, the probability of zoonosis, multiplied by Z, the probability that the zoonosis would happen so near the lab.
Now people can debate what X and Y might be.
But Z has to be something like 0.0000001 or less.
So for Y*Z to be more likely than X then Y, zoonosis, needs to be about 1,000,000 more likely than X, lab leak.
The problem here is that the epidemiological evidence such as it is ties the source of the epidemic to the inside of the market. There is no similar evidence linking the start of the epidemic to an any specific lab, even a nearby one.
We can challenge the evidence in its entirely but to the extent it shows anything at all it's market not lab. There's no factor to apply to the probability.
Lab worker gets a sniffle, goes shopping.
Possible and then passes the virus onto several workers in the market who handle the kind of animals that have been the source of similar epidemics in the past. Possible but my point remains. There is evidence linking the start of the epidemic to the market. There is no similar evidence linking it to a lab. Only the kind of speculation we have just noted.
Wikipedia says Bradford-upon-Avon is a small town. So I’m calling it now. At this very early stage
Bradford-upon-Avon is the prettiest town in Britain
Rye. That's it.
We’re building a good shortlist
Lavenham Bradford-upon-Avon Rye Stromness
Does Lacock count as a town?
No.
Places can turn themselves into towns simply by declaring themselves to be such eg they can go from a parish council to a town council, community council, neighbourhood council, or village council (I don't actually know of any that have done the latter 3, community council is the default in Wales) (I think some of these might require a review by the Principal Authority, but going from parish to town does not). This is about the 'style' or status of the civil parish as opposed to the name.
So there are towns like Mere with around 3k people and 'villages' like Laverstock with 7-8k.
We shouldn’t use those absurd definitions then
To my mind a town is anywhere with a population over 1000 with several shops, pubs, schools, official buildings etc
It becomes a city if it has a cathedral or if its population goes over 50,000
Some countries have tried to have more logical definitions we use, which is basically its up to what you want to call yourself (a town/village pronoun, as it were) or what the King calls you.
Part of the issue is ones like the Laverstock example, the reason it is so big is there's the old village and other minor settlements, some of which are now effectively suburbs of the city of Salisbury. So the core may still be an actual village, even as the bulk of it is part of the urban area.
There are processes to change that, but any change to boundaries does get people riled up. And in planning terms being a village versus a town can make a difference, so even large villages like to stay that way.
Wikipedia says Bradford-upon-Avon is a small town. So I’m calling it now. At this very early stage
Bradford-upon-Avon is the prettiest town in Britain
Rye. That's it.
We’re building a good shortlist
Lavenham Bradford-upon-Avon Rye Stromness
Does Lacock count as a town?
No.
Places can turn themselves into towns simply by declaring themselves to be such eg they can go from a parish council to a town council, community council, neighbourhood council, or village council (I don't actually know of any that have done the latter 3, community council is the default in Wales) (I think some of these might require a review by the Principal Authority, but going from parish to town does not). This is about the 'style' or status of the civil parish as opposed to the name.
So there are towns like Mere with around 3k people and 'villages' like Laverstock with 7-8k.
We shouldn’t use those absurd definitions then
To my mind a town is anywhere with a population over 1000 with several shops, pubs, schools, official buildings etc
It becomes a city if it has a cathedral or if its population goes over 50,000
50,000 people does not make you a city. It makes you a reasonable sized - not even a large - town. 50,000 people doesn't even get you a constituency of your own - that require about 70,000 voters (so probably 90,000 people).
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
Deep down we all know it is highly likely it came from the lab. But for some it is an article of faith that it didn’t. And faith is the best metaphor here
* Warns that leaving ECHR would be divisive and impractical. ‘It is a divisive policy at a time when we need to unite’
* Says ‘perception’ of two-tier policing risks undermining confidence
* Nigel Farage will never be allowed to join Tory party under her leadership
* Says record migration figures were justified in ‘context’ of pandemic and helping people from Afghanistan, Ukraine and Hong Kong
* Rejects suggestion she is right wing. ‘I just don’t think labels like that are relevant or helpful right now. We cannot keep on tacking left or right. I think that’s part of the reason why we’ve been in the mess we’ve been in’
* Says she has ‘100%’ confidence that she will win the contest
She’s just blown it. Even if she gets to the final two (unlikely) the members won’t vote for that
I think the strategy seems to be to curry favour with what she must perceive to be a very wet audience of MPs, to get her to the members, then she can do and say as she likes.
It's vaguely depressing firstly that she's come up with this tripe, and secondly that she feels she has to. What kind of shitty PCP have CCHQ landed us with?
I’m not sure. I have an inkling she’s on a journey?
Why? Exhibit A: she is a keen student of all things stateside. She has also always had a no nonsense side to her. There is something of the Nicki Haley about her. Might she have watched with admiration Haley’s long, though ultimately fruitless, resistance to Trump?
Exhibit B: Suella and Kemi may well have irritated her enough to make her set her stall against those imposters. I’m not sure, notwithstanding Farage dancing vids, that Priti was ever a convinced culture warrior.
Exhibit C: My former colleague knew her parents. They were, by all accounts, not entirely on all fours with their daughter’s political trajectory.
Might she be on a slow but steady journey back towards, not centrism, but a sort of Theresa May version of authoritarian Toryism?
We cannot know the inner-workings of Patel's mind. As for May's authoritarian Toryism, authoritarian it was, Tory it wasn't. To call it a philosophy is to dignify it with more respect than it deserves. It was May doing the blob's bidding, and putting a vaguely Tory spin on it.
In the same way, the Starmer Government isn't a Labour Government. There isn't a single Labour policy that Starmer would not drop in a heartbeat if it fell from favour at Davos/in Whitehall. Even Osborne, not noted for his rebel status, criticised Reeve's measures for being a direct transposition of the Treasury's wish list. That augers badly for a new Government. They are a moral and intellectual vacuum.
That tangent aside, the only reason I can think of for Patel to go on this Mayite journey is because she thinks it's what she needs to do for the PCP.
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
I'm not sure it's that big a coincidence. There must be quite a few virology research labs dotted around the world, and they will generally be in or near big cities, which is where outbreaks of disease are likely to occur.
Oh ffs. This wasn’t any old virology lab
This was the biggest lab in the world investigating coronaviruses. It was the ONLY lab in the world investigating coronaviruses in bats and trying to make them more pathogenic to mankind - gain of function - by passing them through humanised mice
On top of that this precise lab made a proposal to do genetic engineering on the novel bat coronaviruses around 2018 that precisely match the weird evolutions that we see in SARSCOV-2
And they did this in low level BSL2 labs (280m from the market) that Jeremy Farrar called “Wild West”
As one of the main virologists in the world said in 2020 “it’s a nightmare of circumstantial evidence”
I'd like to remind everyone that during COVID the lab leak theory was dismissed as fake news, yet here we are and most sensible people agree that COVID came from a lab leak, not what the Chinese told us that it was zoonotic transmission.
Regulating "fake news" is a truly sinister idea and is just a polite way of pushing through mass censorship. I expected nothing less from a Labour government, I'm just surprised they're doing it so early. I guess they're taking full advantage of the current opportunity and people willing to throw away their freedoms in the name of "community relations".
Most sensible people agree that COVID-19 came from zoonotic events. And by sensible people, I mean people working in virology and public health. The study of early genomic variation in the virus is particularly convincing.
No they don't. People who rely on public funding and want to appear not racist still state it might be what the Chinese told us. Everyone else with more than one brain cell can see what happened. You are the establishment, you are the censor and it is little wonder that you would back state censorship of speech. It's everything you've dreamed of, no dissent from what you and your masters deem acceptable or "truth". Anyone who says otherwise sees the inside of a jail cell.
Here's an anonymous survey of expert virologist, epidemiologists etc. showing that they think the most likely explanation is zoonosis.
"People doing dangerous science that killed 28 million people deny that science killed 28 million people and instead it was a pangolin in a hat"
Let us say that the probability of a lab leak is X.
Whereas the probability of a 'natural' cause is:
Y, the probability of zoonosis, multiplied by Z, the probability that the zoonosis would happen so near the lab.
Now people can debate what X and Y might be.
But Z has to be something like 0.0000001 or less.
So for Y*Z to be more likely than X then Y, zoonosis, needs to be about 1,000,000 more likely than X, lab leak.
The problem here is that the epidemiological evidence such as it is ties the source of the epidemic to the inside of the market. There is no similar evidence linking the start of the epidemic to an any specific lab, even a nearby one.
We can challenge the evidence in its entirely but to the extent it shows anything at all it's market not lab. There's no factor to apply to the probability.
Lab worker gets a sniffle, goes shopping.
Possible and then passes the virus onto several workers in the market who handle the kind of animals that have been the source of similar epidemics in the past. Possible but my point remains. There is evidence linking the start of the epidemic to the market. There is no similar evidence linking it to a lab. Only the kind of speculation we have just noted.
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
Deep down we all know it is highly likely it came from the lab. But for some it is an article of faith that it didn’t. And faith is the best metaphor here
He didn't say "likely", he said "know".
Yes. And I note that whilst you offer the opinion in measured terms, you also believe it. You would have to be a first rate idiot not to believe it. And nobody here is a first rate idiot.
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
Deep down we all know it is highly likely it came from the lab. But for some it is an article of faith that it didn’t. And faith is the best metaphor here
How would you or Luckyguy know what anyone thinks? In my case, you are certainly wrong. My own feeling, from reading up on the scientific evidence, albeit without much expertise in the subject, is that zoonosis is the most likely explanation. I'm about 70% zoonosis, 30% lab leak at the moment.
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
I'm not sure it's that big a coincidence. There must be quite a few virology research labs dotted around the world, and they will generally be in or near big cities, which is where outbreaks of disease are likely to occur.
Oh ffs. This wasn’t any old virology lab
This was the biggest lab in the world investigating coronaviruses. It was the ONLY lab in the world investigating coronaviruses in bats and trying to make them more pathogenic to mankind - gain of function - by passing them through humanised mice
On top of that this precise lab made a proposal to do genetic engineering on the novel bat coronaviruses around 2018 that precisely match the weird evolutions that we see in SARSCOV-2
And they did this in low level BSL2 labs (280m from the market) that Jeremy Farrar called “Wild West”
As one of the main virologists in the world said in 2020 “it’s a nightmare of circumstantial evidence”
Why is there the discrepancy between 280 metres from the market and 49 minutes from the market? They are very different.
Wikipedia says Bradford-upon-Avon is a small town. So I’m calling it now. At this very early stage
Bradford-upon-Avon is the prettiest town in Britain
Rye. That's it.
We’re building a good shortlist
Lavenham Bradford-upon-Avon Rye Stromness
Does Lacock count as a town?
No.
Places can turn themselves into towns simply by declaring themselves to be such eg they can go from a parish council to a town council, community council, neighbourhood council, or village council (I don't actually know of any that have done the latter 3, community council is the default in Wales) (I think some of these might require a review by the Principal Authority, but going from parish to town does not). This is about the 'style' or status of the civil parish as opposed to the name.
So there are towns like Mere with around 3k people and 'villages' like Laverstock with 7-8k.
We shouldn’t use those absurd definitions then
To my mind a town is anywhere with a population over 1000 with several shops, pubs, schools, official buildings etc
It becomes a city if it has a cathedral or if its population goes over 50,000
Some countries have tried to have more logical definitions we use, which is basically its up to what you want to call yourself (a town/village pronoun, as it were) or what the King calls you.
Part of the issue is ones like the Laverstock example, the reason it is so big is there's the old village and other minor settlements, some of which are now effectively suburbs of the city of Salisbury. So the core may still be an actual village, even as the bulk of it is part of the urban area.
There are processes to change that, but any change to boundaries does get people riled up. And in planning terms being a village versus a town can make a difference, so even large villages like to stay that way.
One thing that intrigues me about the Ukraine War is the way the word 'city' is used to describe small cities. Probably a combination of translation difficulties and geopolitical differences?
I also can't recall 'town' being used in the Ukraine context either?
Edit:
"There are 461 populated places in Ukraine that have been officially granted city status (Ukrainian: місто, romanized: misto) by the Verkhovna Rada, the country's parliament, as of 1 January 2022.[1] Settlements with more than 10,000 people are eligible for city status although the status is typically also granted to settlements of historical or regional importance"
Wikipedia says Bradford-upon-Avon is a small town. So I’m calling it now. At this very early stage
Bradford-upon-Avon is the prettiest town in Britain
Rye. That's it.
We’re building a good shortlist
Lavenham Bradford-upon-Avon Rye Stromness
Does Lacock count as a town?
No.
Places can turn themselves into towns simply by declaring themselves to be such eg they can go from a parish council to a town council, community council, neighbourhood council, or village council (I don't actually know of any that have done the latter 3, community council is the default in Wales) (I think some of these might require a review by the Principal Authority, but going from parish to town does not). This is about the 'style' or status of the civil parish as opposed to the name.
So there are towns like Mere with around 3k people and 'villages' like Laverstock with 7-8k.
We shouldn’t use those absurd definitions then
To my mind a town is anywhere with a population over 1000 with several shops, pubs, schools, official buildings etc
It becomes a city if it has a cathedral or if its population goes over 50,000
50,000 people does not make you a city. It makes you a reasonable sized - not even a large - town. 50,000 people doesn't even get you a constituency of your own - that require about 70,000 voters (so probably 90,000 people).
It also depends upon context too. Many towns have more population than cities, because of their context.
As an example in the North-West, Warrington's population is a bit over 200k, 2 Parliamentary constituencies, but sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester it is quite clearly a town. Nobody would dream of calling it a city.
Travel up the M6 and there's Preston, with a population of about 125k and just one Parliamentary constituency, yet standing by itself it is a city.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Isn't it time that somewhere near Cromarty (promably not there, as it was cut out in 2007) had a Statue of Charles Kennedy?
Though that does raise the prospect of one of Dennis Skinner in Bolsover, and Ken Clarke in West Bridgford.
I do quite like the idea of a statue of long-serving MPs in their Constituencies, as long as they are street level statues to represent that MPs are 'one of us'. A good way to represent democracy in our midst, which is important.
Wikipedia says Bradford-upon-Avon is a small town. So I’m calling it now. At this very early stage
Bradford-upon-Avon is the prettiest town in Britain
Rye. That's it.
We’re building a good shortlist
Lavenham Bradford-upon-Avon Rye Stromness
Does Lacock count as a town?
No.
Places can turn themselves into towns simply by declaring themselves to be such eg they can go from a parish council to a town council, community council, neighbourhood council, or village council (I don't actually know of any that have done the latter 3, community council is the default in Wales) (I think some of these might require a review by the Principal Authority, but going from parish to town does not). This is about the 'style' or status of the civil parish as opposed to the name.
So there are towns like Mere with around 3k people and 'villages' like Laverstock with 7-8k.
We shouldn’t use those absurd definitions then
To my mind a town is anywhere with a population over 1000 with several shops, pubs, schools, official buildings etc
It becomes a city if it has a cathedral or if its population goes over 50,000
50,000 people does not make you a city. It makes you a reasonable sized - not even a large - town. 50,000 people doesn't even get you a constituency of your own - that require about 70,000 voters (so probably 90,000 people).
Useless fact: my nearest town has 35,000 people and no police station. Is that a record?
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Isn't it time that somewhere near Cromarty (promably not there, as it was cut out in 2007) had a Statue of Charles Kennedy?
Though that does raise the prospect of one of Dennis Skinner in Bolsover, and Ken Clarke in West Bridgford.
I do quite like the idea of a statue of long-serving MPs in their Constituencies, as long as they are street level statues to represent that MPs are 'one of us'. A good way to represent democracy in our midst, which is important.
Fort William surely? It's where he went to school, where he lived, the main town in Lochaber which he represented in Parliament and where he died.
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
I'm not sure it's that big a coincidence. There must be quite a few virology research labs dotted around the world, and they will generally be in or near big cities, which is where outbreaks of disease are likely to occur.
Oh ffs. This wasn’t any old virology lab
This was the biggest lab in the world investigating coronaviruses. It was the ONLY lab in the world investigating coronaviruses in bats and trying to make them more pathogenic to mankind - gain of function - by passing them through humanised mice
On top of that this precise lab made a proposal to do genetic engineering on the novel bat coronaviruses around 2018 that precisely match the weird evolutions that we see in SARSCOV-2
And they did this in low level BSL2 labs (280m from the market) that Jeremy Farrar called “Wild West”
As one of the main virologists in the world said in 2020 “it’s a nightmare of circumstantial evidence”
Why is there the discrepancy between 280 metres from the market and 49 minutes from the market? They are very different.
Because of people trying to obscure the truth. The fact that the Wuhan CDC is 2 minutes walk from the market is so inconvenient people of bad faith strive to ignore it
The Wuhan CDC had strong links to the WIV. Both did intense research on novel bat coronaviruses, but the Wuhan CDC was much shoddier (BSL2). Initially it was denied that they had bats there, then too much evidence emerged that they did. eg
"Was there any other possible pathway? We screened the area around the seafood market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus. Within ~280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention (WHCDC) (Figure 1, from Baidu and Google maps). WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research purpose, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification 4-6. In one of their studies, 155 bats including Rhinolophus affinis were captured in Hubei province, and other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province 4. The expert in collection was noted in the Author Contributions (JHT). Moreover, he was broadcasted for collecting viruses on nation-wide newspapers and websites in 2017 and 2019 7,8. He described that he was once by attacked by bats and the blood of a bat shot on his skin. He knew the extreme danger of the infection so he quarantined himself for 14 days 7. In another accident, he quarantined himself again because bats peed on him. He was once thrilled for capturing a bat carrying a live tick 8. "
This is from a research paper publushed in Feb 2020, by two Chinese scientists. They concluded the leak came from the Wuhan CDC and spread, as you would expect, in the very nearby wet market. The answer was right there all along, the Chinese admitted it!
But then the Chinese deleted this paper and I've no idea what happened to the authors. Probably they fell out of a bamboo window
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
Deep down we all know it is highly likely it came from the lab. But for some it is an article of faith that it didn’t. And faith is the best metaphor here
How would you or Luckyguy know what anyone thinks? In my case, you are certainly wrong. My own feeling, from reading up on the scientific evidence, albeit without much expertise in the subject, is that zoonosis is the most likely explanation. I'm about 70% zoonosis, 30% lab leak at the moment.
No, I can accept you sincerely believe you believe this; but you are in a kind of wilful or unknowing denial
Wikipedia says Bradford-upon-Avon is a small town. So I’m calling it now. At this very early stage
Bradford-upon-Avon is the prettiest town in Britain
Rye. That's it.
We’re building a good shortlist
Lavenham Bradford-upon-Avon Rye Stromness
Does Lacock count as a town?
No.
Places can turn themselves into towns simply by declaring themselves to be such eg they can go from a parish council to a town council, community council, neighbourhood council, or village council (I don't actually know of any that have done the latter 3, community council is the default in Wales) (I think some of these might require a review by the Principal Authority, but going from parish to town does not). This is about the 'style' or status of the civil parish as opposed to the name.
So there are towns like Mere with around 3k people and 'villages' like Laverstock with 7-8k.
We shouldn’t use those absurd definitions then
To my mind a town is anywhere with a population over 1000 with several shops, pubs, schools, official buildings etc
It becomes a city if it has a cathedral or if its population goes over 50,000
Some countries have tried to have more logical definitions we use, which is basically its up to what you want to call yourself (a town/village pronoun, as it were) or what the King calls you.
Part of the issue is ones like the Laverstock example, the reason it is so big is there's the old village and other minor settlements, some of which are now effectively suburbs of the city of Salisbury. So the core may still be an actual village, even as the bulk of it is part of the urban area.
There are processes to change that, but any change to boundaries does get people riled up. And in planning terms being a village versus a town can make a difference, so even large villages like to stay that way.
One thing that intrigues me about the Ukraine War is the way the word 'city' is used to describe small cities. Probably a combination of translation difficulties and geopolitical differences?
I also can't recall 'town' being used in the Ukraine context either?
Edit:
"There are 461 populated places in Ukraine that have been officially granted city status (Ukrainian: місто, romanized: misto) by the Verkhovna Rada, the country's parliament, as of 1 January 2022.[1] Settlements with more than 10,000 people are eligible for city status although the status is typically also granted to settlements of historical or regional importance"
Wikipedia says Bradford-upon-Avon is a small town. So I’m calling it now. At this very early stage
Bradford-upon-Avon is the prettiest town in Britain
Rye. That's it.
We’re building a good shortlist
Lavenham Bradford-upon-Avon Rye Stromness
Does Lacock count as a town?
No.
Places can turn themselves into towns simply by declaring themselves to be such eg they can go from a parish council to a town council, community council, neighbourhood council, or village council (I don't actually know of any that have done the latter 3, community council is the default in Wales) (I think some of these might require a review by the Principal Authority, but going from parish to town does not). This is about the 'style' or status of the civil parish as opposed to the name.
So there are towns like Mere with around 3k people and 'villages' like Laverstock with 7-8k.
We shouldn’t use those absurd definitions then
To my mind a town is anywhere with a population over 1000 with several shops, pubs, schools, official buildings etc
It becomes a city if it has a cathedral or if its population goes over 50,000
50,000 people does not make you a city. It makes you a reasonable sized - not even a large - town. 50,000 people doesn't even get you a constituency of your own - that require about 70,000 voters (so probably 90,000 people).
Useless fact: my nearest town has 35,000 people and no police station. Is that a record?
No. My town Sutton-in-Ashfield has 48,527 (2019) people and no police station. We share a police annex in the Council Building which is next door in Kirkby-in-Ashfield, which has a population of 21,285 (2021).
As it's a lazy Saturday afternoon in the football season I was wondering how Scottish teams were sorted into the 'Highland' and 'Lowland' leagues. The obvious way is by the elevation of their home grounds above sea level. Does the SFA have a less logical method?
Wikipedia says Bradford-upon-Avon is a small town. So I’m calling it now. At this very early stage
Bradford-upon-Avon is the prettiest town in Britain
Rye. That's it.
We’re building a good shortlist
Lavenham Bradford-upon-Avon Rye Stromness
Does Lacock count as a town?
No.
Places can turn themselves into towns simply by declaring themselves to be such eg they can go from a parish council to a town council, community council, neighbourhood council, or village council (I don't actually know of any that have done the latter 3, community council is the default in Wales) (I think some of these might require a review by the Principal Authority, but going from parish to town does not). This is about the 'style' or status of the civil parish as opposed to the name.
So there are towns like Mere with around 3k people and 'villages' like Laverstock with 7-8k.
We shouldn’t use those absurd definitions then
To my mind a town is anywhere with a population over 1000 with several shops, pubs, schools, official buildings etc
It becomes a city if it has a cathedral or if its population goes over 50,000
50,000 people does not make you a city. It makes you a reasonable sized - not even a large - town. 50,000 people doesn't even get you a constituency of your own - that require about 70,000 voters (so probably 90,000 people).
Useless fact: my nearest town has 35,000 people and no police station. Is that a record?
Well within living memory many villages with a population of under 1000 in Cumberland had police houses with a resident copper.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Isn't it time that somewhere near Cromarty (promably not there, as it was cut out in 2007) had a Statue of Charles Kennedy?
Though that does raise the prospect of one of Dennis Skinner in Bolsover, and Ken Clarke in West Bridgford.
I do quite like the idea of a statue of long-serving MPs in their Constituencies, as long as they are street level statues to represent that MPs are 'one of us'. A good way to represent democracy in our midst, which is important.
I thought CK was INverness born? Quite different from Cromarty - Inverness isn't even on the Black Isle but on the other side of the Kessock Strait, and that would hav been a ferry trip or diversion via Beauly when CK was born.
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
I'm not sure it's that big a coincidence. There must be quite a few virology research labs dotted around the world, and they will generally be in or near big cities, which is where outbreaks of disease are likely to occur.
Oh ffs. This wasn’t any old virology lab
This was the biggest lab in the world investigating coronaviruses. It was the ONLY lab in the world investigating coronaviruses in bats and trying to make them more pathogenic to mankind - gain of function - by passing them through humanised mice
On top of that this precise lab made a proposal to do genetic engineering on the novel bat coronaviruses around 2018 that precisely match the weird evolutions that we see in SARSCOV-2
And they did this in low level BSL2 labs (280m from the market) that Jeremy Farrar called “Wild West”
As one of the main virologists in the world said in 2020 “it’s a nightmare of circumstantial evidence”
Why is there the discrepancy between 280 metres from the market and 49 minutes from the market? They are very different.
Because of people trying to obscure the truth. The fact that the Wuhan CDC is 2 minutes walk from the market is so inconvenient people of bad faith strive to ignore it
The Wuhan CDC had strong links to the WIV. Both did intense research on novel bat coronaviruses, but the Wuhan CDC was much shoddier (BSL2). Initially it was denied that they had bats there, then too much evidence emerged that they did. eg
"Was there any other possible pathway? We screened the area around the seafood market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus. Within ~280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention (WHCDC) (Figure 1, from Baidu and Google maps). WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research purpose, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification 4-6. In one of their studies, 155 bats including Rhinolophus affinis were captured in Hubei province, and other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province 4. The expert in collection was noted in the Author Contributions (JHT). Moreover, he was broadcasted for collecting viruses on nation-wide newspapers and websites in 2017 and 2019 7,8. He described that he was once by attacked by bats and the blood of a bat shot on his skin. He knew the extreme danger of the infection so he quarantined himself for 14 days 7. In another accident, he quarantined himself again because bats peed on him. He was once thrilled for capturing a bat carrying a live tick 8. "
This is from a research paper publushed in Feb 2020, by two Chinese scientists. They concluded the leak came from the Wuhan CDC and spread, as you would expect, in the very nearby wet market. The answer was right there all along, the Chinese admitted it!
But then the Chinese deleted this paper and I've no idea what happened to the authors. Probably they fell out of a bamboo window
The fact that people can know this and still claim to bel
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
Deep down we all know it is highly likely it came from the lab. But for some it is an article of faith that it didn’t. And faith is the best metaphor here
How would you or Luckyguy know what anyone thinks? In my case, you are certainly wrong. My own feeling, from reading up on the scientific evidence, albeit without much expertise in the subject, is that zoonosis is the most likely explanation. I'm about 70% zoonosis, 30% lab leak at the moment.
No, I can accept you sincerely believe you believe this; but you are in a kind of wilful or unknowing denial
Self-delusion of that type isn't common - it would be mental. A more logical explanation is our zoonosis people are just arguing. Their argument is more important to them and their world view than what is true. It annoys me because I come to PB for adult discussion, which is based on good faith. However, it is what it is.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Isn't it time that somewhere near Cromarty (promably not there, as it was cut out in 2007) had a Statue of Charles Kennedy?
Though that does raise the prospect of one of Dennis Skinner in Bolsover, and Ken Clarke in West Bridgford.
I do quite like the idea of a statue of long-serving MPs in their Constituencies, as long as they are street level statues to represent that MPs are 'one of us'. A good way to represent democracy in our midst, which is important.
I thought CK was INverness born? Quite different from Cromarty - Inverness isn't even on the Black Isle but on the other side of the Kessock Strait, and that would hav been a ferry trip or diversion via Beauly when CK was born.
He was born in INverness, which is the maternity hospital for the whole Highland area, but his family farm was I think near Corpach. Somewhere adjacent to the lands of Cameron of Lochiel, anyway.
As it's a lazy Saturday afternoon in the football season I was wondering how Scottish teams were sorted into the 'Highland' and 'Lowland' leagues. The obvious way is by the elevation of their home grounds above sea level. Does the SFA have a less logical method?
Geographical I think. Gala Fairy Dean in the LL is in Galashiels - which - or whose weather station - is, on checking, 161m asl, which is a lot more than some of the coastal HL clubs, though beaten by Strathspey Thistle (at least) at 220m (Grantown). Disappointing lack of effort from Wanlockhead not putting up a club in the LL, they'd easily score at 467m though visiting clubs might need oxygen.
Luke Tryl @LukeTryl 🧵 We spoke to some pensioners in Leigh last week about the decision to restrict the winter fuel allowance. I expected it to be a negative reaction, but was taken aback by how negative and particularly to the means testing element. Worth sharing quotes some to show the scale...
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
I'm not sure it's that big a coincidence. There must be quite a few virology research labs dotted around the world, and they will generally be in or near big cities, which is where outbreaks of disease are likely to occur.
Oh ffs. This wasn’t any old virology lab
This was the biggest lab in the world investigating coronaviruses. It was the ONLY lab in the world investigating coronaviruses in bats and trying to make them more pathogenic to mankind - gain of function - by passing them through humanised mice
On top of that this precise lab made a proposal to do genetic engineering on the novel bat coronaviruses around 2018 that precisely match the weird evolutions that we see in SARSCOV-2
And they did this in low level BSL2 labs (280m from the market) that Jeremy Farrar called “Wild West”
As one of the main virologists in the world said in 2020 “it’s a nightmare of circumstantial evidence”
Why is there the discrepancy between 280 metres from the market and 49 minutes from the market? They are very different.
Because of people trying to obscure the truth. The fact that the Wuhan CDC is 2 minutes walk from the market is so inconvenient people of bad faith strive to ignore it
The Wuhan CDC had strong links to the WIV. Both did intense research on novel bat coronaviruses, but the Wuhan CDC was much shoddier (BSL2). Initially it was denied that they had bats there, then too much evidence emerged that they did. eg
"Was there any other possible pathway? We screened the area around the seafood market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus. Within ~280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention (WHCDC) (Figure 1, from Baidu and Google maps). WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research purpose, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification 4-6. In one of their studies, 155 bats including Rhinolophus affinis were captured in Hubei province, and other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province 4. The expert in collection was noted in the Author Contributions (JHT). Moreover, he was broadcasted for collecting viruses on nation-wide newspapers and websites in 2017 and 2019 7,8. He described that he was once by attacked by bats and the blood of a bat shot on his skin. He knew the extreme danger of the infection so he quarantined himself for 14 days 7. In another accident, he quarantined himself again because bats peed on him. He was once thrilled for capturing a bat carrying a live tick 8. "
This is from a research paper publushed in Feb 2020, by two Chinese scientists. They concluded the leak came from the Wuhan CDC and spread, as you would expect, in the very nearby wet market. The answer was right there all along, the Chinese admitted it!
But then the Chinese deleted this paper and I've no idea what happened to the authors. Probably they fell out of a bamboo window
The fact that people can know this and still claim to bel
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
Deep down we all know it is highly likely it came from the lab. But for some it is an article of faith that it didn’t. And faith is the best metaphor here
How would you or Luckyguy know what anyone thinks? In my case, you are certainly wrong. My own feeling, from reading up on the scientific evidence, albeit without much expertise in the subject, is that zoonosis is the most likely explanation. I'm about 70% zoonosis, 30% lab leak at the moment.
No, I can accept you sincerely believe you believe this; but you are in a kind of wilful or unknowing denial
Self-delusion of that type isn't common - it would be mental. A more logical explanation is our zoonosis people are just arguing. Their argument is more important to them and their world view than what is true. It annoys me because I come to PB for adult discussion, which is based on good faith. However, it is what it is.
I’ll use my photo quote to conclude the argument. Here is the location of the Wuhan CDC in relation to the huanan seafood wet market. 280m not “40 minutes and 10km”
The Wuhan CDC kept thousands of bats, did extensive research alongside the WIV, had a history of accidents, spent months before the outbreak chaotically moving to this location, and worked at a dangerous BSL2 level - or “Wild West” as Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome institute put it
I probably ask this every August…is the 3pm TV football blackout disapplied for the 4th tier at the very start of the season or is there a rule change this year?
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Isn't it time that somewhere near Cromarty (promably not there, as it was cut out in 2007) had a Statue of Charles Kennedy?
Though that does raise the prospect of one of Dennis Skinner in Bolsover, and Ken Clarke in West Bridgford.
I do quite like the idea of a statue of long-serving MPs in their Constituencies, as long as they are street level statues to represent that MPs are 'one of us'. A good way to represent democracy in our midst, which is important.
I thought CK was INverness born? Quite different from Cromarty - Inverness isn't even on the Black Isle but on the other side of the Kessock Strait, and that would hav been a ferry trip or diversion via Beauly when CK was born.
He was born in INverness, which is the maternity hospital for the whole Highland area, but his family farm was I think near Corpach. Somewhere adjacent to the lands of Cameron of Lochiel, anyway.
Corpach? That's the locks for the south end of the Caledonian Canal at An Gearasdan, aka Fort W., anmd his croft was apparently near there. The croft is "remote in the Highlands" acc to London hacks and the BBC, though they 'd know a smuch about Scottish geography as a pithed marmoset. In reality it seems to have been in the Lochyside area - jwhich matches your location and clan lands.
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
I'm not sure it's that big a coincidence. There must be quite a few virology research labs dotted around the world, and they will generally be in or near big cities, which is where outbreaks of disease are likely to occur.
Oh ffs. This wasn’t any old virology lab
This was the biggest lab in the world investigating coronaviruses. It was the ONLY lab in the world investigating coronaviruses in bats and trying to make them more pathogenic to mankind - gain of function - by passing them through humanised mice
On top of that this precise lab made a proposal to do genetic engineering on the novel bat coronaviruses around 2018 that precisely match the weird evolutions that we see in SARSCOV-2
And they did this in low level BSL2 labs (280m from the market) that Jeremy Farrar called “Wild West”
As one of the main virologists in the world said in 2020 “it’s a nightmare of circumstantial evidence”
Why is there the discrepancy between 280 metres from the market and 49 minutes from the market? They are very different.
Because of people trying to obscure the truth. The fact that the Wuhan CDC is 2 minutes walk from the market is so inconvenient people of bad faith strive to ignore it
The Wuhan CDC had strong links to the WIV. Both did intense research on novel bat coronaviruses, but the Wuhan CDC was much shoddier (BSL2). Initially it was denied that they had bats there, then too much evidence emerged that they did. eg
"Was there any other possible pathway? We screened the area around the seafood market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus. Within ~280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention (WHCDC) (Figure 1, from Baidu and Google maps). WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research purpose, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification 4-6. In one of their studies, 155 bats including Rhinolophus affinis were captured in Hubei province, and other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province 4. The expert in collection was noted in the Author Contributions (JHT). Moreover, he was broadcasted for collecting viruses on nation-wide newspapers and websites in 2017 and 2019 7,8. He described that he was once by attacked by bats and the blood of a bat shot on his skin. He knew the extreme danger of the infection so he quarantined himself for 14 days 7. In another accident, he quarantined himself again because bats peed on him. He was once thrilled for capturing a bat carrying a live tick 8. "
This is from a research paper publushed in Feb 2020, by two Chinese scientists. They concluded the leak came from the Wuhan CDC and spread, as you would expect, in the very nearby wet market. The answer was right there all along, the Chinese admitted it!
But then the Chinese deleted this paper and I've no idea what happened to the authors. Probably they fell out of a bamboo window
The fact that people can know this and still claim to bel
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
Deep down we all know it is highly likely it came from the lab. But for some it is an article of faith that it didn’t. And faith is the best metaphor here
How would you or Luckyguy know what anyone thinks? In my case, you are certainly wrong. My own feeling, from reading up on the scientific evidence, albeit without much expertise in the subject, is that zoonosis is the most likely explanation. I'm about 70% zoonosis, 30% lab leak at the moment.
No, I can accept you sincerely believe you believe this; but you are in a kind of wilful or unknowing denial
Self-delusion of that type isn't common - it would be mental. A more logical explanation is our zoonosis people are just arguing. Their argument is more important to them and their world view than what is true. It annoys me because I come to PB for adult discussion, which is based on good faith. However, it is what it is.
I’ll use my photo quote to conclude the argument. Here is the location of the Wuhan CDC in relation to the huanan seafood wet market. 280m not “40 minutes and 10km”
The Wuhan CDC kept thousands of bats, did extensive research alongside the WIV, had a history of accidents, spent months before the outbreak chaotically moving to this location, and worked at a dangerous BSL2 level - or “Wild West” as Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome institute put it
As it's a lazy Saturday afternoon in the football season I was wondering how Scottish teams were sorted into the 'Highland' and 'Lowland' leagues. The obvious way is by the elevation of their home grounds above sea level. Does the SFA have a less logical method?
Wikipedia says Bradford-upon-Avon is a small town. So I’m calling it now. At this very early stage
Bradford-upon-Avon is the prettiest town in Britain
Rye. That's it.
We’re building a good shortlist
Lavenham Bradford-upon-Avon Rye Stromness
Does Lacock count as a town?
No.
Places can turn themselves into towns simply by declaring themselves to be such eg they can go from a parish council to a town council, community council, neighbourhood council, or village council (I don't actually know of any that have done the latter 3, community council is the default in Wales) (I think some of these might require a review by the Principal Authority, but going from parish to town does not). This is about the 'style' or status of the civil parish as opposed to the name.
So there are towns like Mere with around 3k people and 'villages' like Laverstock with 7-8k.
We shouldn’t use those absurd definitions then
To my mind a town is anywhere with a population over 1000 with several shops, pubs, schools, official buildings etc
It becomes a city if it has a cathedral or if its population goes over 50,000
Some countries have tried to have more logical definitions we use, which is basically its up to what you want to call yourself (a town/village pronoun, as it were) or what the King calls you.
Part of the issue is ones like the Laverstock example, the reason it is so big is there's the old village and other minor settlements, some of which are now effectively suburbs of the city of Salisbury. So the core may still be an actual village, even as the bulk of it is part of the urban area.
There are processes to change that, but any change to boundaries does get people riled up. And in planning terms being a village versus a town can make a difference, so even large villages like to stay that way.
Where I live was once a village. Now it is really just part of the town, with continuous housing from the town centre, through our patch and up to the next former village. We still have a "village society", however.
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
I'm not sure it's that big a coincidence. There must be quite a few virology research labs dotted around the world, and they will generally be in or near big cities, which is where outbreaks of disease are likely to occur.
Oh ffs. This wasn’t any old virology lab
This was the biggest lab in the world investigating coronaviruses. It was the ONLY lab in the world investigating coronaviruses in bats and trying to make them more pathogenic to mankind - gain of function - by passing them through humanised mice
On top of that this precise lab made a proposal to do genetic engineering on the novel bat coronaviruses around 2018 that precisely match the weird evolutions that we see in SARSCOV-2
And they did this in low level BSL2 labs (280m from the market) that Jeremy Farrar called “Wild West”
As one of the main virologists in the world said in 2020 “it’s a nightmare of circumstantial evidence”
Why is there the discrepancy between 280 metres from the market and 49 minutes from the market? They are very different.
Because of people trying to obscure the truth. The fact that the Wuhan CDC is 2 minutes walk from the market is so inconvenient people of bad faith strive to ignore it
The Wuhan CDC had strong links to the WIV. Both did intense research on novel bat coronaviruses, but the Wuhan CDC was much shoddier (BSL2). Initially it was denied that they had bats there, then too much evidence emerged that they did. eg
"Was there any other possible pathway? We screened the area around the seafood market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus. Within ~280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention (WHCDC) (Figure 1, from Baidu and Google maps). WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research purpose, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification 4-6. In one of their studies, 155 bats including Rhinolophus affinis were captured in Hubei province, and other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province 4. The expert in collection was noted in the Author Contributions (JHT). Moreover, he was broadcasted for collecting viruses on nation-wide newspapers and websites in 2017 and 2019 7,8. He described that he was once by attacked by bats and the blood of a bat shot on his skin. He knew the extreme danger of the infection so he quarantined himself for 14 days 7. In another accident, he quarantined himself again because bats peed on him. He was once thrilled for capturing a bat carrying a live tick 8. "
This is from a research paper publushed in Feb 2020, by two Chinese scientists. They concluded the leak came from the Wuhan CDC and spread, as you would expect, in the very nearby wet market. The answer was right there all along, the Chinese admitted it!
But then the Chinese deleted this paper and I've no idea what happened to the authors. Probably they fell out of a bamboo window
The fact that people can know this and still claim to bel
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
Deep down we all know it is highly likely it came from the lab. But for some it is an article of faith that it didn’t. And faith is the best metaphor here
How would you or Luckyguy know what anyone thinks? In my case, you are certainly wrong. My own feeling, from reading up on the scientific evidence, albeit without much expertise in the subject, is that zoonosis is the most likely explanation. I'm about 70% zoonosis, 30% lab leak at the moment.
No, I can accept you sincerely believe you believe this; but you are in a kind of wilful or unknowing denial
Self-delusion of that type isn't common - it would be mental. A more logical explanation is our zoonosis people are just arguing. Their argument is more important to them and their world view than what is true. It annoys me because I come to PB for adult discussion, which is based on good faith. However, it is what it is.
I’ll use my photo quote to conclude the argument. Here is the location of the Wuhan CDC in relation to the huanan seafood wet market. 280m not “40 minutes and 10km”
The Wuhan CDC kept thousands of bats, did extensive research alongside the WIV, had a history of accidents, spent months before the outbreak chaotically moving to this location, and worked at a dangerous BSL2 level - or “Wild West” as Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome institute put it
I think the phrase is “case closed, m’Lud”
They will still argue.
Because, in a weird way, they do sincerely believe it. Like creationists confronted with Darwin's Theory of Evolution in the 19th century
At first their position is logical, or so they think. Then overwhelming evidence emerges which shows they are wrong. So their logical position then evolves into a pious faith, absent rationality. So their belief is sincere, albeit ludicrous, and they manage to silence the doubt in their own minds. That is, I reckon, the process at work
People like @foxy and @bondegezou have sincerely convinced themselves that it came from the market. You could probably show them a video of the first person with Covid being mauled on the scrotum by a mad frothy bat at the Wuhan lab, surrounded by signs saying Welcome to the Wuhan Bat Lab, and they'd still believe it came from the market. It is a religious tenet
And that really is it on this topic, for today. Places to see and people to go. Later
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Wait: you believe all the posters who suggest zoonotic origins actually know it came from the lab and are just arguing against it because they believe it is their duty to keep this untruth alive?
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
Deep down we all know it is highly likely it came from the lab. But for some it is an article of faith that it didn’t. And faith is the best metaphor here
He didn't say "likely", he said "know".
Yes. And I note that whilst you offer the opinion in measured terms, you also believe it. You would have to be a first rate idiot not to believe it. And nobody here is a first rate idiot.
There's a very important difference between "thinking likely" (even very likely) and "knowing".
I know the earth is roughly cylindrical and that it orbits the Sun. It seems staggeringly unlikely that that belief could turn out to be wrong.
I think it is highly likely that Covid was released as a result of a lab leak of some kind (and I draw the definition of lab leak fairly widely). But if we were to discover a colony of bats 70 miles from Wuhan that were all carrying Covid-19 and who appear to have lived with it for a long time, we would clearly need to adjust the probability for a lab leak rather than a zoonotic event way down. Would it surprise me if such a colony was found? I think it unlikely, but not vanishingly so.
"Knowing" is more than even "reasonable doubt". It means, essentially, certainty. And I'm not certain, I merely think a lab leak fits the current facts better than an entirely zoonotic explanation.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Isn't it time that somewhere near Cromarty (promably not there, as it was cut out in 2007) had a Statue of Charles Kennedy?
Though that does raise the prospect of one of Dennis Skinner in Bolsover, and Ken Clarke in West Bridgford.
I do quite like the idea of a statue of long-serving MPs in their Constituencies, as long as they are street level statues to represent that MPs are 'one of us'. A good way to represent democracy in our midst, which is important.
I thought CK was INverness born? Quite different from Cromarty - Inverness isn't even on the Black Isle but on the other side of the Kessock Strait, and that would hav been a ferry trip or diversion via Beauly when CK was born.
He was born in INverness, which is the maternity hospital for the whole Highland area, but his family farm was I think near Corpach. Somewhere adjacent to the lands of Cameron of Lochiel, anyway.
Corpach? That's the locks for the south end of the Caledonian Canal at An Gearasdan, aka Fort W., anmd his croft was apparently near there. The croft is "remote in the Highlands" acc to London hacks and the BBC, though they 'd know a smuch about Scottish geography as a pithed marmoset. In reality it seems to have been in the Lochyside area - jwhich matches your location and clan lands.
Corpach, Lochyside and Banavie just seem suburbs of Fort Bill to me.
I feel like I've already read about 2 or 3 articles by Tanya Gold about St Ives and how tourists are ruining the town.
She lives down there. She’s a good writer but some of those claims are daft
Prettiest town in Britain is quite a stretch. St ives has a really scenic seaside location but quite a few ugly buildings. I can think of towns in the Cotswolds or the marches that are easily as nice
Ludlow, Wick, Cromarty ...
Isn't it time that somewhere near Cromarty (promably not there, as it was cut out in 2007) had a Statue of Charles Kennedy?
Though that does raise the prospect of one of Dennis Skinner in Bolsover, and Ken Clarke in West Bridgford.
I do quite like the idea of a statue of long-serving MPs in their Constituencies, as long as they are street level statues to represent that MPs are 'one of us'. A good way to represent democracy in our midst, which is important.
Perhaps Sir Philip can use the proceeds of his winning bet towards erecting a life size statue of himself in the centre of Shipley.
Comments
We all know that accolade goes to Newent.
Mossflower was actually the first one I read back in the day. I think 5-6 of the series are set before the first published book.
Though I picked up the first book in the Saga of Reclude the other day, having read it 30 years ago, and apparently of the 20 or so books the first one published is second last chronologically.
It's vaguely depressing firstly that she's come up with this tripe, and secondly that she feels she has to. What kind of shitty PCP have CCHQ landed us with?
If is a magnificent cathedral btw. One of my favourites in all the world. So unique and very noomy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Towns_with_cathedrals_in_the_United_Kingdom
Having over praised France and dissed Britain, for several weeks, France has nothing like Orkney
On the same logic Dornoch would be a cathedral city ...
I'm going to need to think a bit about the top 5 though.
Don't be daft.
I’d probably go with a more prudent estimate of Z. Wuhan has a population of about 12 million. Contrary to some stories the actual lab was about 40 minutes away from the market, not just round the corner. So I think we can take 12m as the numerator over global population of 8bn as the denominator. That gives Z of 0.0015. So zoonosis would have to be roughly 666 times as likely. Still a big number.
There is nobody on this forum who does not believe it was leaked from the lab. Nobody. There are people who believe it, and people who believe it's their duty to argue against it.
Bradford-upon-Avon is the prettiest town in Britain
Why? Exhibit A: she is a keen student of all things stateside. She has also always had a no nonsense side to her. There is something of the Nicki Haley about her. Might she have watched with admiration Haley’s long, though ultimately fruitless, resistance to Trump?
Exhibit B: Suella and Kemi may well have irritated her enough to make her set her stall against those imposters. I’m not sure, notwithstanding Farage dancing vids, that Priti was ever a convinced culture warrior.
Exhibit C: My former colleague knew her parents. They were, by all accounts, not entirely on all fours with their daughter’s political trajectory.
Might she be on a slow but steady journey back towards, not centrism, but a sort of Theresa May version of authoritarian Toryism?
And that is that Ms Harris won't be debating with Tulsi Gabbard, she is going to be head-to-hed with a former President who is suffering from cognitive decline.
That decline was irrelevant when Trump was up against Biden (who was suffering from far worse decline), but it's going to be much more of an issue when he's facing Harris.
So, if you're going to talk about her getting more scrutiny, then you need to accept that cuts both ways. Sure, Harris gets gets more scrutiny, but so does Trump's mental fitness for the job. Because he's certainly not the force he was in 2020, let alone 2016.
"Stop looking down on them" isn't an answer to that. It's just a piece of rhetoric. And it gets a "sigh" because it's not exactly mint fresh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromness#/media/File:Stromness_-_Orkney_Islands.jpg
See photos here
https://www.orkney.com/explore/stromness
Ironically - and completelu coincidentally - it has a sort of St Ives thingy. https://www.pierartscentre.com/ Not sure the founding art collection is particularly Orcadian, though these things work both ways of course (and much has been added since too, anyway). But I tend to head for the museum myself, given my interests.
Siri, show me someone who doesn't understand epidemiology or their fellow man.
Rochester, due to a remarkable administrative bungle.
Brecon, although that’s a grey area.
Then I’m struggling.
Lavenham
Bradford-upon-Avon
Rye
Stromness
Not as many as I thought, but still enough.
I was deliberately not counting Scotland as technically they abolished bishops and by implication cathedrals in 1689. So that would cause confusion.
Places can turn themselves into towns simply by declaring themselves to be such eg they can go from a parish council to a town council, community council, neighbourhood council, or village council (I don't actually know of any that have done the latter 3, community council is the default in Wales) (I think some of these might require a review by the Principal Authority, but going from parish to town does not). This is about the 'style' or status of the civil parish as opposed to the name.
So there are towns like Mere with around 3k people and 'villages' like Laverstock with 7-8k. Durrington with about 7k is called a village on wikipedia but changed to a town council years ago.
To my mind a town is anywhere with a population over 1000 with several shops, pubs, schools, official buildings etc
It becomes a city if it has a cathedral or if its population goes over 50,000
That is truly bonkers.
I think a lab leak is the most likely hypothesis, because it is an awfully big coincidence that Covid appeared in the same city as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But SARS and MERS and AIDS and a bunch of other diseases made the animal-to-man jump without going via a lab. It's possible, if unlikely, that a decade from now, we discover a cave of bats 60 miles from Wuhan where CV19 is commonly carried; in which case, we'll need to revisit this.
Because absent a direct admission from someone at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that's where we are: there's strong circumstantial evidence for it being a lab leak, but there's no smoking gun.
So your contention is bizarre. Do you really assume that your fellow men just go around lying to each other all the time because...? Do you go around lying to people all the time just because...? If not, why do you assume that other people do?
Deep down we all know it is highly likely it came from the lab. But for some it is an article of faith that
it didn’t. And faith is the best metaphor here
Part of the issue is ones like the Laverstock example, the reason it is so big is there's the old village and other minor settlements, some of which are now effectively suburbs of the city of Salisbury. So the core may still be an actual village, even as the bulk of it is part of the urban area.
There are processes to change that, but any change to boundaries does get people riled up. And in planning terms being a village versus a town can make a difference, so even large villages like to stay that way.
In the same way, the Starmer Government isn't a Labour Government. There isn't a single Labour policy that Starmer would not drop in a heartbeat if it fell from favour at Davos/in Whitehall. Even Osborne, not noted for his rebel status, criticised Reeve's measures for being a direct transposition of the Treasury's wish list. That augers badly for a new Government. They are a moral and intellectual vacuum.
That tangent aside, the only reason I can think of for Patel to go on this Mayite journey is because she thinks it's what she needs to do for the PCP.
This was the biggest lab in the world investigating coronaviruses. It was the ONLY lab in the world investigating coronaviruses in bats and trying to make them more pathogenic to mankind - gain of function - by passing them through humanised mice
On top of that this precise lab made a proposal to do genetic engineering on the novel bat coronaviruses around 2018 that precisely match the weird evolutions that we see in SARSCOV-2
And they did this in low level BSL2 labs (280m from the market) that Jeremy Farrar called “Wild West”
As one of the main virologists in the world said in 2020 “it’s a nightmare of circumstantial evidence”
I also can't recall 'town' being used in the Ukraine context either?
Edit:
"There are 461 populated places in Ukraine that have been officially granted city status (Ukrainian: місто, romanized: misto) by the Verkhovna Rada, the country's parliament, as of 1 January 2022.[1] Settlements with more than 10,000 people are eligible for city status although the status is typically also granted to settlements of historical or regional importance"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Ukraine
10,000 seems very small in terms of population. Although we also have some small cities, e.g. St David's or the City of London
As an example in the North-West, Warrington's population is a bit over 200k, 2 Parliamentary constituencies, but sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester it is quite clearly a town. Nobody would dream of calling it a city.
Travel up the M6 and there's Preston, with a population of about 125k and just one Parliamentary constituency, yet standing by itself it is a city.
Though that does raise the prospect of one of Dennis Skinner in Bolsover, and Ken Clarke in West Bridgford.
I do quite like the idea of a statue of long-serving MPs in their Constituencies, as long as they are street level statues to represent that MPs are 'one of us'. A good way to represent democracy in our midst, which is important.
The Wuhan CDC had strong links to the WIV. Both did intense research on novel bat coronaviruses, but the Wuhan CDC was much shoddier (BSL2). Initially it was denied that they had bats there, then too much evidence emerged that they did. eg
"Was there any other possible pathway? We screened the area around the seafood market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus. Within ~280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention (WHCDC) (Figure 1, from Baidu and Google maps). WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research purpose, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification 4-6. In one of their studies, 155 bats including Rhinolophus affinis were captured in Hubei province, and other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province 4. The expert in collection was noted in the Author Contributions (JHT). Moreover, he was broadcasted for collecting viruses on nation-wide newspapers and websites in 2017 and 2019 7,8. He described that he was once by attacked by bats and the blood of a bat shot on his skin. He knew the extreme danger of the infection so he quarantined himself for 14 days 7. In another accident, he quarantined himself again because bats peed on him. He was once thrilled for capturing a bat carrying a live tick 8. "
https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https:/www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128_The_possible_origins_of_2019-nCoV_coronavirus
This is from a research paper publushed in Feb 2020, by two Chinese scientists. They concluded the leak came from the Wuhan CDC and spread, as you would expect, in the very nearby wet market. The answer was right there all along, the Chinese admitted it!
But then the Chinese deleted this paper and I've no idea what happened to the authors. Probably they fell out of a bamboo window
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/aug/10/israel-gaza-war-school-strike-hamas-middle-east
An interesting story, very well written. A contemporary account of life in America and beyond in the inter-war years.
Recommended.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/tim-walz-misspoke-discussed-using-weapons-war-campaign-says-rcna166038
When I lived at the S End of Bolsover District, our local police station was between the SIXTH and EIGHTH closest in distance terms.
Is this a record?
@LukeTryl
🧵 We spoke to some pensioners in Leigh last week about the decision to restrict the winter fuel allowance. I expected it to be a negative reaction, but was taken aback by how negative and particularly to the means testing element. Worth sharing quotes some to show the scale...
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1821180783828386127
The Wuhan CDC kept thousands of bats, did extensive research alongside the WIV, had a history of accidents, spent months before the outbreak chaotically moving to this location, and worked at a dangerous BSL2 level - or “Wild West” as Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome institute put it
I think the phrase is “case closed, m’Lud”
Not much of a competition, however.
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12:33 PM · Aug 10, 2024
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At first their position is logical, or so they think. Then overwhelming evidence emerges which shows they are wrong. So their logical position then evolves into a pious faith, absent rationality. So their belief is sincere, albeit ludicrous, and they manage to silence the doubt in their own minds. That is, I reckon, the process at work
People like @foxy and @bondegezou have sincerely convinced themselves that it came from the market. You could probably show them a video of the first person with Covid being mauled on the scrotum by a mad frothy bat at the Wuhan lab, surrounded by signs saying Welcome to the Wuhan Bat Lab, and they'd still believe it came from the market. It is a religious tenet
And that really is it on this topic, for today. Places to see and people to go. Later
I know the earth is roughly cylindrical and that it orbits the Sun. It seems staggeringly unlikely that that belief could turn out to be wrong.
I think it is highly likely that Covid was released as a result of a lab leak of some kind (and I draw the definition of lab leak fairly widely). But if we were to discover a colony of bats 70 miles from Wuhan that were all carrying Covid-19 and who appear to have lived with it for a long time, we would clearly need to adjust the probability for a lab leak rather than a zoonotic event way down. Would it surprise me if such a colony was found? I think it unlikely, but not vanishingly so.
"Knowing" is more than even "reasonable doubt". It means, essentially, certainty. And I'm not certain, I merely think a lab leak fits the current facts better than an entirely zoonotic explanation.
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Just in time for City of Culture.