So CIA, what first attracted you to the theory that triggers the G spot of the MAGA crowd who now control you every single fcking time?
Wrong
It was the Biden admin that asked the CIA to re-examine all the evidence on Covid, and take a stance on the Origin
It's made quite clear in the NYT article and no one claims otherwise. The only difference now is that Trump has put his man at the top, John Ratcliffe. and he has made this internal judgment public
Well at least you're not denying you have an inflamed G spot.
How does Trump pass an amendment to it with these requirements and the political reality on the ground?
The political reality on the ground is that Trump will ignore the requirements.
He couldn't legally fire a bunch of people on Friday night. He did it anyway
HE CAN'T IGNORE THE REQUIREMENTS BECAUSE IT'S IN THE CONSTITUTION
He doesn't care
Whether he cares or not is entirely immaterial. He can't do it.
He can do what we wants. SCOTUS said so
No, he can't.
That's what a constitution means.
The test for me is if SCOTUS rule in favour of Trump when it comes to his executive order regarding the 14th amendment.
I'm not so sure. There is a plausible reading of the 14th amendment that it could mean what Trump claims it means - you just have to read in an "and" [in the debate, not the amendment itself], and Americans are very fond of omitting "and"s, in things like newspaper headlines and numbers.
There is no such plausible reading that allows Trump a third term through the ballot box.
He could, potentially, be elected as a Representative, then elected as Speaker of the House, and then have both President and VP resign - that would technically see him acting as president rather than being president (unless the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 were amended).
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Actual LOL here in Rangoon, Burma
Aw, couple of conspiracy nuts having a cuddle. Sweet!
It was a genuinely well-honed insult, I am paying respect to a fellow craftsman
Biting, funny, acid, all in 16 words, and accurate enough to be personally cutting - hence the explosive reaction
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Actual LOL here in Rangoon, Burma
Aw, couple of conspiracy nuts having a cuddle. Sweet!
I know causation ≠correlation, but is it a coincidence that the PB conspiracy nuts have changed their usernames at least once?
Another potentially good move by Reeves who seems to get it with regard to growth and is not just talking about it but doing stuff. Reeves has had a good couple of weeks I think in looking at putting in place foundations to fire up growth.
The journey to autocracy is usually a journey, not a one time power grab. Putsches sometimes succeed but as Trump found in 2020, it’s hard. Better to get there slowly through a series of ratchets.
So he’s not going to jump straight to removing term limits or rigging elections. The ground needs to be laid first through an increasing grip on media and social media, ongoing replacement of independent officials with loyalists, and slow but steady subversion of electoral processes.
It took Erdogan 2 decades to get to where he is now, and he still has some distance to go before he’s a bona fide autocrat. He’s a rather more wily and subtle character than Trump but he shows the way.
Note the continuing efforts to get MAGA loyalists in as election officials - and kick out the non-MAGA. From the lowest levels upwards.
Yes also the attacks on media like cnn as enemies of the state. Trump really wants full control of the media.
How does Trump pass an amendment to it with these requirements and the political reality on the ground?
The political reality on the ground is that Trump will ignore the requirements.
He couldn't legally fire a bunch of people on Friday night. He did it anyway
HE CAN'T IGNORE THE REQUIREMENTS BECAUSE IT'S IN THE CONSTITUTION
He doesn't care
Whether he cares or not is entirely immaterial. He can't do it.
He can do what we wants. SCOTUS said so
No, he can't.
That's what a constitution means.
"That's not how it works" (sic)
Trump can do what he likes until someone stops him, and so far nobody has shown any inclination to do so
Also there is no incentive for him to follow the rules as even if he breaks laws persistently and deliberately the SC has ruled he cannot be prosecuted for that.
The Supreme Court certainly hasn't ruled that. It came up with a broader view of immunity than prosecutors would have liked, but explicitly rejected Trump's argument for blanket immunity. Indeed, he is a convicted felon.
He can't be prosecuted for any official acts. Deciding to replace the leaders of the military and the courts would be official acts, as would declaring a state of emergency and postponing the next election or running again.
Reeves adamant she will not tweak or change the IHT for farms.
She'll be forced to u-turn eventually. Why spin this out?
Why would she be forced to? The government has a majority. The policy isn't noticeably popular but the election is a long way off. It is likely to be a flawed policy in terms of raising cash but it only negatively affects small numbers of people.
As with VAT on private schools, it may be a bad idea and it probably won't raise much net revenue but there's no reason to think it will be reversed.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Actual LOL here in Rangoon, Burma
Aw, couple of conspiracy nuts having a cuddle. Sweet!
It was a genuinely well-honed insult, I am paying respect to a fellow craftsman
Biting, funny, acid, all in 16 words, and accurate enough to be personally cutting - hence the explosive reaction
Which is not only infantile, but nowhere near as sharp and funny as @moonshine's insult, which was, for those who need their memory jogged:
"Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here"
The real crime of COVID in the UK was that the first instinct of senior ministers was to relax procurement processes so their unqualified cronies could cash in at the expense of the exchequer and public health.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Trump 1.0 was the delivery of the cancellation of Roe v Wade. Trump 2.0 is the delivery of Project2025 which is about embedding the GOP into the system even more. Trump 3.0 will happen if the GOP think he is the more capable of delivering whatever the GOP want in 2028.
Time to place your bets on Trump 3.0 or GOP 3.0 or something else. It's all about delivery.
The journey to autocracy is usually a journey, not a one time power grab. Putsches sometimes succeed but as Trump found in 2020, it’s hard. Better to get there slowly through a series of ratchets.
So he’s not going to jump straight to removing term limits or rigging elections. The ground needs to be laid first through an increasing grip on media and social media, ongoing replacement of independent officials with loyalists, and slow but steady subversion of electoral processes.
It took Erdogan 2 decades to get to where he is now, and he still has some distance to go before he’s a bona fide autocrat. He’s a rather more wily and subtle character than Trump but he shows the way.
Note the continuing efforts to get MAGA loyalists in as election officials - and kick out the non-MAGA. From the lowest levels upwards.
Yes also the attacks on media like cnn as enemies of the state. Trump really wants full control of the media.
Taking control of the process actually has more effect. The effectiveness of legacy media in changing minds is not very high - it’s already segmented tribally.
How does Trump pass an amendment to it with these requirements and the political reality on the ground?
The political reality on the ground is that Trump will ignore the requirements.
He couldn't legally fire a bunch of people on Friday night. He did it anyway
HE CAN'T IGNORE THE REQUIREMENTS BECAUSE IT'S IN THE CONSTITUTION
He doesn't care
Whether he cares or not is entirely immaterial. He can't do it.
He can do what we wants. SCOTUS said so
No, he can't.
That's what a constitution means.
What is a constitution? Its a set of laws drawn up by legislators *and interpreted by judges*.
The constitution is not black and white. The right to bear arms talks about militias. The SC has adjudged that to mean the right to carry an AR15 round Walmart for self defence.
None of the laws are clear and unambiguous enough to not be challenged legally. SO challenge the 22nd. Our boy can run can't he? SC says yes. Job done. You say "no he can't". But how would you challenge it? Take Trump to the SC? They already said yes.
Notably, the Constitution says not much about the Supreme Court, and nothing about the idea that the Supreme Court can strike down laws. The Supreme Court invented that power for themselves.
Reeves adamant she will not tweak or change the IHT for farms.
She'll be forced to u-turn eventually. Why spin this out?
Why would she be forced to? The government has a majority. The policy isn't noticeably popular but the election is a long way off. It is likely to be a flawed policy in terms of raising cash but it only negatively affects small numbers of people.
As with VAT on private schools, it may be a bad idea and it probably won't raise much net revenue but there's no reason to think it will be reversed.
She is going to have farmers protesting for the next four years and there's quite a few Lab rural seats these days.
Anyway, I suspect Mr G is right - at 82, Trump will just be too old to run again. He is already clearly far less coherent and sharp than he was last time he was President and the decline is only going to accelerate.
Voters and client media seemed far more concerned by Biden's cognitive decline than Trump's. Jesse Watters, Hannity and Laura Ingraham can normally explain Trump gobbledegook into a rational narrative.
Two reasons. First, Trump's Biden-moments were vastly outnumbered by Biden's Biden-moments. Second, Trump's opponents kept crying wolf over things that were clearly jokes or schtick, like the shark/electrocution dilemma.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Actual LOL here in Rangoon, Burma
Aw, couple of conspiracy nuts having a cuddle. Sweet!
It was a genuinely well-honed insult, I am paying respect to a fellow craftsman
Biting, funny, acid, all in 16 words, and accurate enough to be personally cutting - hence the explosive reaction
Which is not only infantile, but nowhere near as sharp and funny as @moonshine's insult, which was, for those who need their memory jogged:
"Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here"
The real crime of COVID in the UK was that the first instinct of senior ministers was to relax procurement processes so their unqualified cronies could cash in at the expense of the exchequer and public health.
Ridiculous. The pressure was on them to source the PPE any which way they could. It's a bit rich to then complain that they sourced the PPE any which way they could.
The real crime of Covid is that the government's first action was to repudiate the pandemic plan they had. And that the media were so irresponsibly one-sided.
I would just add you do not need to be dead or totally out of it to be unable to deal with the physical effort of being POTUS at 82
My partner and I decided last week to get married although we're both 74 (wish us luck!) - we haven't bothered to think whether people will think that appropriate or difficult. Age is one of the first things one learns about people, but that shouldn't make it the most important thing. I'd rather have a competent, reasonable 82-year-old POTUS than an eccentric, unpredictable figure of any age.
I'm surprised to see all the evidence that older people tend to be more right-wing. I'm chair of my CLP and as leftish as ever. What I do notice is a certain detachment from the longer term. Will Britain become a member of the EU in 30 years, for instance? I'm in favour, but accept that coming generations will do as they think fit. But certain things, such as ridiculous inequality of income and opportunity across the world, seem as burningly intolerable as ever.
It needs to be remembered that Federal judges at all levels are appointed for life and can only be removed by impeachment which requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate. It has only happened once back in the 19th century.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Reeves adamant she will not tweak or change the IHT for farms.
She'll be forced to u-turn eventually. Why spin this out?
Why would she be forced to? The government has a majority. The policy isn't noticeably popular but the election is a long way off. It is likely to be a flawed policy in terms of raising cash but it only negatively affects small numbers of people.
As with VAT on private schools, it may be a bad idea and it probably won't raise much net revenue but there's no reason to think it will be reversed.
She is going to have farmers protesting for the next four years and there's quite a few Lab rural seats these days.
It 'aint worth the candle.
She really is in danger of losing all six of the farmers who voted Labour at the last election.
I would just add you do not need to be dead or totally out of it to be unable to deal with the physical effort of being POTUS at 82
My partner and I decided last week to get married although we're both 74 (wish us luck!) - we haven't bothered to think whether people will think that appropriate or difficult. Age is one of the first things one learns about people, but that shouldn't make it the most important thing. I'd rather have a competent, reasonable 82-year-old POTUS than an eccentric, unpredictable figure of any age.
I'm surprised to see all the evidence that older people tend to be more right-wing. I'm chair of my CLP and as leftish as ever. What I do notice is a certain detachment from the longer term. Will Britain become a member of the EU in 30 years, for instance? I'm in favour, but accept that coming generations will do as they think fit. But certain things, such as ridiculous inequality of income and opportunity across the world, seem as burningly intolerable as ever.
Congratulations Nick! That's lovely news. A commitment worth celebrating at any age.
I would just add you do not need to be dead or totally out of it to be unable to deal with the physical effort of being POTUS at 82
My partner and I decided last week to get married although we're both 74 (wish us luck!) - we haven't bothered to think whether people will think that appropriate or difficult. Age is one of the first things one learns about people, but that shouldn't make it the most important thing. I'd rather have a competent, reasonable 82-year-old POTUS than an eccentric, unpredictable figure of any age.
I'm surprised to see all the evidence that older people tend to be more right-wing. I'm chair of my CLP and as leftish as ever. What I do notice is a certain detachment from the longer term. Will Britain become a member of the EU in 30 years, for instance? I'm in favour, but accept that coming generations will do as they think fit. But certain things, such as ridiculous inequality of income and opportunity across the world, seem as burningly intolerable as ever.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Yep. Anybody departing from this either way is grinding an axe.
I don't know. It could be either.
Which is the point: we need to ensure it never happens again, and therefore every possible way it could have developed needs to be addressed. This is the important thing.
Leon's certainty will lead to wet markets, massive pig farms, battery chicken megafactories and other such places being perfect zoonotic breeding grounds for the next killer virus. He doesn't care, because his certainty says otherwise. Despite all the pandemics throughout history that were 'naturally' caused.
And yes, we need to be careful about the sort of medical/viral/bacterial research that goes on, with much more emphasis on "Should we do this?" over "Can we do this?"
And much more openness about any disease outbreaks - whatever the cause.
Trump 1.0 was the delivery of the cancellation of Roe v Wade. Trump 2.0 is the delivery of Project2025 which is about embedding the GOP into the system even more. Trump 3.0 will happen if the GOP think he is the more capable of delivering whatever the GOP want in 2028.
Time to place your bets on Trump 3.0 or GOP 3.0 or something else. It's all about delivery.
Trump 1.0 was also tax cuts for squillionaires and probably the tech bros kissing his ring hope for more of the same.
The interesting question is what is Trump's own agenda. He is probably pro-abortion, left to his own devices, and stacking the judiciary is a long-running GOP tactic now paying off at the highest level. Axing FEMA and returning education to the states, and much else in his first days, are Project 2025 rather than Trumpism.
What we do have is that Trump is anti-war, sees abroad as a vast conspiracy against America, hates China, thinks might is right, and probably seeks a return to the gilded age of high tariffs and no income tax.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Yep. Anybody departing from this either way is grinding an axe.
I don't know. It could be either.
Which is the point: we need to ensure it never happens again, and therefore every possible way it could have developed needs to be addressed. This is the important thing.
Leon's certainty will lead to wet markets, massive pig farms, battery chicken megafactories and other such places being perfect zoonotic breeding grounds for the next killer virus. He doesn't care, because his certainty says otherwise. Despite all the pandemics throughout history that were 'naturally' caused.
And yes, we need to be careful about the sort of medical/viral/bacterial research that goes on, with much more emphasis on "Should we do this?" over "Can we do this?"
And much more openness about any disease outbreaks - whatever the cause.
Hmm. Focus on the cause is more significant because for a couple of years, discussion of one potential cause was verboten. It's understandable, therefore, that evidence that cause is more likely gets celebrated.
As for the next one, there are several things that need to be done:
Deal with the wet markets AND Deal with the labs' biosecurity AND Get a proper pandemic plan AND Not immediately junk it when the next pandemic hits AND, most critically of all Recognise the costs of government decisions as well as their benefits.
I would just add you do not need to be dead or totally out of it to be unable to deal with the physical effort of being POTUS at 82
My partner and I decided last week to get married although we're both 74 (wish us luck!) - we haven't bothered to think whether people will think that appropriate or difficult. Age is one of the first things one learns about people, but that shouldn't make it the most important thing. I'd rather have a competent, reasonable 82-year-old POTUS than an eccentric, unpredictable figure of any age.
I'm surprised to see all the evidence that older people tend to be more right-wing. I'm chair of my CLP and as leftish as ever. What I do notice is a certain detachment from the longer term. Will Britain become a member of the EU in 30 years, for instance? I'm in favour, but accept that coming generations will do as they think fit. But certain things, such as ridiculous inequality of income and opportunity across the world, seem as burningly intolerable as ever.
Definitely wish the two of you all the best. Given the complexity of inheritance laws, probably wise to regularise the situation. I'm in my mid-80's now and when I was 80+ I was going to the gym two or three times a week, and walking four or five mile walks .... never been a fan of really long ones. Then I developed a problem with my spine, in the cervical area and that has really fouled me up physically, although I think I'm unaffected mentally (YMMV) So I agree with NP.
Reeves adamant she will not tweak or change the IHT for farms.
She'll be forced to u-turn eventually. Why spin this out?
Why would she be forced to? The government has a majority. The policy isn't noticeably popular but the election is a long way off. It is likely to be a flawed policy in terms of raising cash but it only negatively affects small numbers of people.
As with VAT on private schools, it may be a bad idea and it probably won't raise much net revenue but there's no reason to think it will be reversed.
She is going to have farmers protesting for the next four years and there's quite a few Lab rural seats these days.
It 'aint worth the candle.
She really is in danger of losing all six of the farmers who voted Labour at the last election.
What does she think of the Labour councillors, such as those on Lancashire and Durham ? There aren't many wards on either where the total of farming and small business voters does not exceed the Labour majority.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Actual LOL here in Rangoon, Burma
Aw, couple of conspiracy nuts having a cuddle. Sweet!
It was a genuinely well-honed insult, I am paying respect to a fellow craftsman
Biting, funny, acid, all in 16 words, and accurate enough to be personally cutting - hence the explosive reaction
I would byjust add you do not need to be dead or totally out of it to be unable to deal with the physical effort of being POTUS at 82
My partner and I decided last week to get married although we're both 74 (wish us luck!) - we haven't bothered to think whether people will think that appropriate or difficult. Age is one of the first things one learns about people, but that shouldn't make it the most important thing. I'd rather have a competent, reasonable 82-year-old POTUS than an eccentric, unpredictable figure of any age.
I'm surprised to see all the evidence that older people tend to be more right-wing. I'm chair of my CLP and as leftish as ever. What I do notice is a certain detachment from the longer term. Will Britain become a member of the EU in 30 years, for instance? I'm in favour, but accept that coming generations will do as they think fit. But certain things, such as ridiculous inequality of income and opportunity across the world, seem as burningly intolerable as ever.
Congratulations @NickPalmer . How big a family are you planning? 😇
Trump 1.0 was the delivery of the cancellation of Roe v Wade. Trump 2.0 is the delivery of Project2025 which is about embedding the GOP into the system even more. Trump 3.0 will happen if the GOP think he is the more capable of delivering whatever the GOP want in 2028.
Time to place your bets on Trump 3.0 or GOP 3.0 or something else. It's all about delivery.
Trump 1.0 was the delivery of the cancellation of Roe v Wade. Trump 2.0 is the delivery of Project2025 which is about embedding the GOP into the system even more. Trump 3.0 will happen if the GOP think he is the more capable of delivering whatever the GOP want in 2028.
Time to place your bets on Trump 3.0 or GOP 3.0 or something else. It's all about delivery.
Somebody, and I can't remember if it was Charlotte on Good Morning Britain or J.J. Gould writing in the New Republic, said that the model for the Trump Two administration is the Islamic Revolution in Iran. In which the philosophies and ideologies of the movement are so ruthlessly and rapidly embedded in the deep state that the development of a counter-revolutionary effort is almost impossible.
I would just add you do not need to be dead or totally out of it to be unable to deal with the physical effort of being POTUS at 82
My partner and I decided last week to get married although we're both 74 (wish us luck!) - we haven't bothered to think whether people will think that appropriate or difficult. Age is one of the first things one learns about people, but that shouldn't make it the most important thing. I'd rather have a competent, reasonable 82-year-old POTUS than an eccentric, unpredictable figure of any age.
I'm surprised to see all the evidence that older people tend to be more right-wing. I'm chair of my CLP and as leftish as ever. What I do notice is a certain detachment from the longer term. Will Britain become a member of the EU in 30 years, for instance? I'm in favour, but accept that coming generations will do as they think fit. But certain things, such as ridiculous inequality of income and opportunity across the world, seem as burningly intolerable as ever.
Best wishes Nick, what anybody else thinks is irrelevant, just you enjoy.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Yep. Anybody departing from this either way is grinding an axe.
I don't know. It could be either.
Which is the point: we need to ensure it never happens again, and therefore every possible way it could have developed needs to be addressed. This is the important thing.
Leon's certainty will lead to wet markets, massive pig farms, battery chicken megafactories and other such places being perfect zoonotic breeding grounds for the next killer virus. He doesn't care, because his certainty says otherwise. Despite all the pandemics throughout history that were 'naturally' caused.
And yes, we need to be careful about the sort of medical/viral/bacterial research that goes on, with much more emphasis on "Should we do this?" over "Can we do this?"
And much more openness about any disease outbreaks - whatever the cause.
Hmm. Focus on the cause is more significant because for a couple of years, discussion of one potential cause was verboten. It's understandable, therefore, that evidence that cause is more likely gets celebrated.
As for the next one, there are several things that need to be done:
Deal with the wet markets AND Deal with the labs' biosecurity AND Get a proper pandemic plan AND Not immediately junk it when the next pandemic hits AND, most critically of all Recognise the costs of government decisions as well as their benefits.
I agree with your last statement - in part at least. There needs to be several pandemic plans, for different types of pandemic. Or, perhaps more accurately, a toolkit of little plans that can be assembled to address the exact characteristics of what happened. And costs can be hard to calculate when you do not know the exact characteristics of the disease that's hitting you - as happened in March and April 2020. Remember all that hand-washing?
Where I disagree is: "discussion of one potential cause was verboten".
It was never verboten. What people were doing was saying, with CERTAINTY that it was a lab leak - often with a sly hint at it being a man-made virus that was deliberately released and attacks on the people who weighed the evidence up otherwise. See Leon on here. People who weighed up the options and addressed both sides of the argument were fine. It's those claiming it was *certain* where it came from that were, and are, a big problem.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Yep. Anybody departing from this either way is grinding an axe.
I don't know. It could be either.
Which is the point: we need to ensure it never happens again, and therefore every possible way it could have developed needs to be addressed. This is the important thing.
Leon's certainty will lead to wet markets, massive pig farms, battery chicken megafactories and other such places being perfect zoonotic breeding grounds for the next killer virus. He doesn't care, because his certainty says otherwise. Despite all the pandemics throughout history that were 'naturally' caused.
And yes, we need to be careful about the sort of medical/viral/bacterial research that goes on, with much more emphasis on "Should we do this?" over "Can we do this?"
And much more openness about any disease outbreaks - whatever the cause.
Hmm. Focus on the cause is more significant because for a couple of years, discussion of one potential cause was verboten. It's understandable, therefore, that evidence that cause is more likely gets celebrated.
As for the next one, there are several things that need to be done:
Deal with the wet markets AND Deal with the labs' biosecurity AND Get a proper pandemic plan AND Not immediately junk it when the next pandemic hits AND, most critically of all Recognise the costs of government decisions as well as their benefits.
I agree with your last statement - in part at least. There needs to be several pandemic plans, for different types of pandemic. Or, perhaps more accurately, a toolkit of little plans that can be assembled to address the exact characteristics of what happened. And costs can be hard to calculate when you do not know the exact characteristics of the disease that's hitting you - as happened in March and April 2020. Remember all that hand-washing?
Where I disagree is: "discussion of one potential cause was verboten".
It was never verboten. What people were doing was saying, with CERTAINTY that it was a lab leak - often with a sly hint at it being a man-made virus that was deliberately released and attacks on the people who weighed the evidence up otherwise. See Leon on here. People who weighed up the options and addressed both sides of the argument were fine. It's those claiming it was *certain* where it came from that were, and are, a big problem.
For a year you were literally forbidden to even MENTION “lab leak” on Facebook and Twitter. And constantly mentioning it would get you banned
I would just add you do not need to be dead or totally out of it to be unable to deal with the physical effort of being POTUS at 82
My partner and I decided last week to get married although we're both 74 (wish us luck!) - we haven't bothered to think whether people will think that appropriate or difficult. Age is one of the first things one learns about people, but that shouldn't make it the most important thing. I'd rather have a competent, reasonable 82-year-old POTUS than an eccentric, unpredictable figure of any age.
I'm surprised to see all the evidence that older people tend to be more right-wing. I'm chair of my CLP and as leftish as ever. What I do notice is a certain detachment from the longer term. Will Britain become a member of the EU in 30 years, for instance? I'm in favour, but accept that coming generations will do as they think fit. But certain things, such as ridiculous inequality of income and opportunity across the world, seem as burningly intolerable as ever.
On old people's politics, it is probably that the zeitgeist has generally moved left, so an old dinosaur in his 70s would fifty years ago have been campaigning against capital punishment and apartheid, and for equal pay for women and access to contraception and abortion. Not even Nigel Farage wants to turn the clock back on those. About the only left wing cause from those days still relevant is nationalisation.
Indeed, we now have the paradox that some immigrant communities (a leftist cause) have a very right wing take on women's rights. Or look at the trans issue for splitting old alliances.
Reeves adamant she will not tweak or change the IHT for farms.
She'll be forced to u-turn eventually. Why spin this out?
Why would she be forced to? The government has a majority. The policy isn't noticeably popular but the election is a long way off. It is likely to be a flawed policy in terms of raising cash but it only negatively affects small numbers of people.
As with VAT on private schools, it may be a bad idea and it probably won't raise much net revenue but there's no reason to think it will be reversed.
She is going to have farmers protesting for the next four years and there's quite a few Lab rural seats these days.
It 'aint worth the candle.
Not sure a u turn is going to win her any votes, and would mean she has to cut spending/find some other tax to raise. And she believes (rightly in my view) that it's the right policy.
Anyway, I suspect Mr G is right - at 82, Trump will just be too old to run again. He is already clearly far less coherent and sharp than he was last time he was President and the decline is only going to accelerate.
Voters and client media seemed far more concerned by Biden's cognitive decline than Trump's. Jesse Watters, Hannity and Laura Ingraham can normally explain Trump gobbledegook into a rational narrative.
Two reasons. First, Trump's Biden-moments were vastly outnumbered by Biden's Biden-moments. Second, Trump's opponents kept crying wolf over things that were clearly jokes or schtick, like the shark/electrocution dilemma.
I don't think Trump does humour unless it is unpleasant "othering". The Shark episode was quite earnest as was his question to Fauci regarding injecting bleach.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Err, how do you ensure it doesn't happen again without knowing the cause/origin? You're trying to solve x + y = z and you don't know any of the variables.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Yep. Anybody departing from this either way is grinding an axe.
I don't know. It could be either.
Which is the point: we need to ensure it never happens again, and therefore every possible way it could have developed needs to be addressed. This is the important thing.
Leon's certainty will lead to wet markets, massive pig farms, battery chicken megafactories and other such places being perfect zoonotic breeding grounds for the next killer virus. He doesn't care, because his certainty says otherwise. Despite all the pandemics throughout history that were 'naturally' caused.
And yes, we need to be careful about the sort of medical/viral/bacterial research that goes on, with much more emphasis on "Should we do this?" over "Can we do this?"
And much more openness about any disease outbreaks - whatever the cause.
Hmm. Focus on the cause is more significant because for a couple of years, discussion of one potential cause was verboten. It's understandable, therefore, that evidence that cause is more likely gets celebrated.
As for the next one, there are several things that need to be done:
Deal with the wet markets AND Deal with the labs' biosecurity AND Get a proper pandemic plan AND Not immediately junk it when the next pandemic hits AND, most critically of all Recognise the costs of government decisions as well as their benefits.
I agree with your last statement - in part at least. There needs to be several pandemic plans, for different types of pandemic. Or, perhaps more accurately, a toolkit of little plans that can be assembled to address the exact characteristics of what happened. And costs can be hard to calculate when you do not know the exact characteristics of the disease that's hitting you - as happened in March and April 2020. Remember all that hand-washing?
Where I disagree is: "discussion of one potential cause was verboten".
It was never verboten. What people were doing was saying, with CERTAINTY that it was a lab leak - often with a sly hint at it being a man-made virus that was deliberately released and attacks on the people who weighed the evidence up otherwise. See Leon on here. People who weighed up the options and addressed both sides of the argument were fine. It's those claiming it was *certain* where it came from that were, and are, a big problem.
I would just add you do not need to be dead or totally out of it to be unable to deal with the physical effort of being POTUS at 82
My partner and I decided last week to get married although we're both 74 (wish us luck!) - we haven't bothered to think whether people will think that appropriate or difficult. Age is one of the first things one learns about people, but that shouldn't make it the most important thing. I'd rather have a competent, reasonable 82-year-old POTUS than an eccentric, unpredictable figure of any age.
I'm surprised to see all the evidence that older people tend to be more right-wing. I'm chair of my CLP and as leftish as ever. What I do notice is a certain detachment from the longer term. Will Britain become a member of the EU in 30 years, for instance? I'm in favour, but accept that coming generations will do as they think fit. But certain things, such as ridiculous inequality of income and opportunity across the world, seem as burningly intolerable as ever.
Definitely wish the two of you all the best. Given the complexity of inheritance laws, probably wise to regularise the situation. I'm in my mid-80's now and when I was 80+ I was going to the gym two or three times a week, and walking four or five mile walks .... never been a fan of really long ones. Then I developed a problem with my spine, in the cervical area and that has really fouled me up physically, although I think I'm unaffected mentally (YMMV) So I agree with NP.
All the very best. If one has to choose then mental ability is the more impotant, though it sounds as though you did all you could to support that physically.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Err, how do you ensure it doesn't happen again without knowing the cause/origin? You're trying to solve x + y = z and you don't know any of the variables.
Surely if trying to stop it happening again you have to tackle all the plausible causes rather than just one that you believe caused it?
Reeves adamant she will not tweak or change the IHT for farms.
She'll be forced to u-turn eventually. Why spin this out?
Why would she be forced to? The government has a majority. The policy isn't noticeably popular but the election is a long way off. It is likely to be a flawed policy in terms of raising cash but it only negatively affects small numbers of people.
As with VAT on private schools, it may be a bad idea and it probably won't raise much net revenue but there's no reason to think it will be reversed.
She is going to have farmers protesting for the next four years and there's quite a few Lab rural seats these days.
It 'aint worth the candle.
Not sure a u turn is going to win her any votes, and would mean she has to cut spending/find some other tax to raise. And she believes (rightly in my view) that it's the right policy.
It doesn't raise any money though and all of the supermarkets have come out and said it will put long term food security at risk. I guarantee you that people are more likely to trust farmers, Tesco and Sainsbury's on food matters than the government. It's a such an odd policy hill to die on unless it's ideologically driven in which case Labour will get spanked at the ballot box because largely the British public supports farmers more than they support politicians.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Yep. Anybody departing from this either way is grinding an axe.
I don't know. It could be either.
Which is the point: we need to ensure it never happens again, and therefore every possible way it could have developed needs to be addressed. This is the important thing.
Leon's certainty will lead to wet markets, massive pig farms, battery chicken megafactories and other such places being perfect zoonotic breeding grounds for the next killer virus. He doesn't care, because his certainty says otherwise. Despite all the pandemics throughout history that were 'naturally' caused.
And yes, we need to be careful about the sort of medical/viral/bacterial research that goes on, with much more emphasis on "Should we do this?" over "Can we do this?"
And much more openness about any disease outbreaks - whatever the cause.
Hmm. Focus on the cause is more significant because for a couple of years, discussion of one potential cause was verboten. It's understandable, therefore, that evidence that cause is more likely gets celebrated.
As for the next one, there are several things that need to be done:
Deal with the wet markets AND Deal with the labs' biosecurity AND Get a proper pandemic plan AND Not immediately junk it when the next pandemic hits AND, most critically of all Recognise the costs of government decisions as well as their benefits.
I agree with your last statement - in part at least. There needs to be several pandemic plans, for different types of pandemic. Or, perhaps more accurately, a toolkit of little plans that can be assembled to address the exact characteristics of what happened. And costs can be hard to calculate when you do not know the exact characteristics of the disease that's hitting you - as happened in March and April 2020. Remember all that hand-washing?
Hand washing? Yes, I remember that.
The point of "not knowing what you're facing" is that it makes it even more important that the government - and, yes, the media - doesn't deliberately stoke fear and a belief that only one response is acceptable. Because when that response turns out to be doing more harm than good, you're painted into a corner and are stuck with it.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Actual LOL here in Rangoon, Burma
Aw, couple of conspiracy nuts having a cuddle. Sweet!
It was a genuinely well-honed insult, I am paying respect to a fellow craftsman
Biting, funny, acid, all in 16 words, and accurate enough to be personally cutting - hence the explosive reaction
Which is not only infantile, but nowhere near as sharp and funny as @moonshine's insult, which was, for those who need their memory jogged:
"Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here"
The real crime of COVID in the UK was that the first instinct of senior ministers was to relax procurement processes so their unqualified cronies could cash in at the expense of the exchequer and public health.
Ridiculous. The pressure was on them to source the PPE any which way they could. It's a bit rich to then complain that they sourced the PPE any which way they could.
The real crime of Covid is that the government's first action was to repudiate the pandemic plan they had. And that the media were so irresponsibly one-sided.
I’m still interested in the adherence to the policy of one use disposable PPE.
In industrial settings - welding and painting, disposable is only used for light, occasional stuff. For working in carpentry shops, welding shops, paint shops, reusable PPE is standard. Lower overall costs & superior protection. Additionally, it is more comfortable to wear - which helps encourage protection discipline.
Cleaning is easy with modern chemical knowledge. Hearing and facial expression contact is easier.
I would just add you do not need to be dead or totally out of it to be unable to deal with the physical effort of being POTUS at 82
My partner and I decided last week to get married although we're both 74 (wish us luck!) - we haven't bothered to think whether people will think that appropriate or difficult. Age is one of the first things one learns about people, but that shouldn't make it the most important thing. I'd rather have a competent, reasonable 82-year-old POTUS than an eccentric, unpredictable figure of any age.
I'm surprised to see all the evidence that older people tend to be more right-wing. I'm chair of my CLP and as leftish as ever. What I do notice is a certain detachment from the longer term. Will Britain become a member of the EU in 30 years, for instance? I'm in favour, but accept that coming generations will do as they think fit. But certain things, such as ridiculous inequality of income and opportunity across the world, seem as burningly intolerable as ever.
Definitely wish the two of you all the best. Given the complexity of inheritance laws, probably wise to regularise the situation. I'm in my mid-80's now and when I was 80+ I was going to the gym two or three times a week, and walking four or five mile walks .... never been a fan of really long ones. Then I developed a problem with my spine, in the cervical area and that has really fouled me up physically, although I think I'm unaffected mentally (YMMV) So I agree with NP.
Seconded, including the inheritance thing. In one sense secondary but in another very important in preventing unnecessary disruption at a dreadful time for anyone.
Anyway, I suspect Mr G is right - at 82, Trump will just be too old to run again. He is already clearly far less coherent and sharp than he was last time he was President and the decline is only going to accelerate.
Voters and client media seemed far more concerned by Biden's cognitive decline than Trump's. Jesse Watters, Hannity and Laura Ingraham can normally explain Trump gobbledegook into a rational narrative.
Two reasons. First, Trump's Biden-moments were vastly outnumbered by Biden's Biden-moments. Second, Trump's opponents kept crying wolf over things that were clearly jokes or schtick, like the shark/electrocution dilemma.
I don't think Trump does humour unless it is unpleasant "othering". The Shark episode was quite earnest as was his question to Fauci regarding injecting bleach.
Yes, Trump's humour is 100% of the snide and bullying variety. People thinking he's a scream are revealing something about themselves.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Err, how do you ensure it doesn't happen again without knowing the cause/origin? You're trying to solve x + y = z and you don't know any of the variables.
Surely if trying to stop it happening again you have to tackle all the plausible causes rather than just one that you believe caused it?
It means finding the actual cause because trying to push through 10 different actions will mean none of them actually happen. Having targeted measures to solve a specific problem is much more likely to happen. Specifically, US finding of insecure Chinese labs is something under western control and is a thing that can be changed.
Mr. Trump’s allies reject the notion that he has authoritarian aspirations. After all, he is still subject to the 22nd Amendment, which bars him from running again in four years. Yet just last week, Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee, introduced a constitutional amendment to allow Mr. Trump to run for a third term.
It has no realistic chance of passing, but as it happens, the congressman’s campaign finances are under investigation by the F.B.I., a bureau overseen by the new president.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Err, how do you ensure it doesn't happen again without knowing the cause/origin? You're trying to solve x + y = z and you don't know any of the variables.
Surely if trying to stop it happening again you have to tackle all the plausible causes rather than just one that you believe caused it?
It means finding the actual cause because trying to push through 10 different actions will mean none of them actually happen. Having targeted measures to solve a specific problem is much more likely to happen. Specifically, US finding of insecure Chinese labs is something under western control and is a thing that can be changed.
No: because the cause may be different anyway next time. Sometimes in accidetn investigations one finds the actual cause, but in so doing one has looked at all the possibilities by the nature of things. And sometimes one then finds also that something else was just about to fall off the aeroplane because reasons - so that needs to be fixed anyway.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Actual LOL here in Rangoon, Burma
Aw, couple of conspiracy nuts having a cuddle. Sweet!
It was a genuinely well-honed insult, I am paying respect to a fellow craftsman
Biting, funny, acid, all in 16 words, and accurate enough to be personally cutting - hence the explosive reaction
Which is not only infantile, but nowhere near as sharp and funny as @moonshine's insult, which was, for those who need their memory jogged:
"Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here"
The real crime of COVID in the UK was that the first instinct of senior ministers was to relax procurement processes so their unqualified cronies could cash in at the expense of the exchequer and public health.
Ridiculous. The pressure was on them to source the PPE any which way they could. It's a bit rich to then complain that they sourced the PPE any which way they could.
The real crime of Covid is that the government's first action was to repudiate the pandemic plan they had. And that the media were so irresponsibly one-sided.
I’m still interested in the adherence to the policy of one use disposable PPE.
In industrial settings - welding and painting, disposable is only used for light, occasional stuff. For working in carpentry shops, welding shops, paint shops, reusable PPE is standard. Lower overall costs & superior protection. Additionally, it is more comfortable to wear - which helps encourage protection discipline.
Cleaning is easy with modern chemical knowledge. Hearing and facial expression contact is easier.
Good question. I don't know why the disposable blue "good for 15 minutes against Covid" mask became the standard in the medical field - but it has, and the public recognises that, and so will naturally think "if it's good enough for surgeons in operating theatres it's good enough for me in Tesco".
I would just add you do not need to be dead or totally out of it to be unable to deal with the physical effort of being POTUS at 82
My partner and I decided last week to get married although we're both 74 (wish us luck!) - we haven't bothered to think whether people will think that appropriate or difficult. Age is one of the first things one learns about people, but that shouldn't make it the most important thing. I'd rather have a competent, reasonable 82-year-old POTUS than an eccentric, unpredictable figure of any age.
I'm surprised to see all the evidence that older people tend to be more right-wing. I'm chair of my CLP and as leftish as ever. What I do notice is a certain detachment from the longer term. Will Britain become a member of the EU in 30 years, for instance? I'm in favour, but accept that coming generations will do as they think fit. But certain things, such as ridiculous inequality of income and opportunity across the world, seem as burningly intolerable as ever.
On old people's politics, it is probably that the zeitgeist has generally moved left, so an old dinosaur in his 70s would fifty years ago have been campaigning against capital punishment and apartheid, and for equal pay for women and access to contraception and abortion. Not even Nigel Farage wants to turn the clock back on those. About the only left wing cause from those days still relevant is nationalisation.
Indeed, we now have the paradox that some immigrant communities (a leftist cause) have a very right wing take on women's rights. Or look at the trans issue for splitting old alliances.
Wokeism is about celebrating certain cultures that are blatantly un-woke!
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Err, how do you ensure it doesn't happen again without knowing the cause/origin? You're trying to solve x + y = z and you don't know any of the variables.
Surely if trying to stop it happening again you have to tackle all the plausible causes rather than just one that you believe caused it?
It means finding the actual cause because trying to push through 10 different actions will mean none of them actually happen. Having targeted measures to solve a specific problem is much more likely to happen. Specifically, US finding of insecure Chinese labs is something under western control and is a thing that can be changed.
No: because the cause may be different anyway. Sometimes in accidetn investigations one finds the actual cause, but also that something else was just about to fall off the aeroplane because reasons - so that needs to be fixed anyway.
Our power to compel China to take action is extremely low, how do you propose that we (as in the western alliance) stop it from happening again?
Anyway, I suspect Mr G is right - at 82, Trump will just be too old to run again. He is already clearly far less coherent and sharp than he was last time he was President and the decline is only going to accelerate.
Voters and client media seemed far more concerned by Biden's cognitive decline than Trump's. Jesse Watters, Hannity and Laura Ingraham can normally explain Trump gobbledegook into a rational narrative.
Two reasons. First, Trump's Biden-moments were vastly outnumbered by Biden's Biden-moments. Second, Trump's opponents kept crying wolf over things that were clearly jokes or schtick, like the shark/electrocution dilemma.
I don't think Trump does humour unless it is unpleasant "othering". The Shark episode was quite earnest as was his question to Fauci regarding injecting bleach.
The shark thing was routine at all Trump's rallies. It was schtick. The bleach thing was an apparently serious question that might have been misunderstood and was not returned to.
Anyway, I suspect Mr G is right - at 82, Trump will just be too old to run again. He is already clearly far less coherent and sharp than he was last time he was President and the decline is only going to accelerate.
Voters and client media seemed far more concerned by Biden's cognitive decline than Trump's. Jesse Watters, Hannity and Laura Ingraham can normally explain Trump gobbledegook into a rational narrative.
Two reasons. First, Trump's Biden-moments were vastly outnumbered by Biden's Biden-moments. Second, Trump's opponents kept crying wolf over things that were clearly jokes or schtick, like the shark/electrocution dilemma.
I don't think Trump does humour unless it is unpleasant "othering". The Shark episode was quite earnest as was his question to Fauci regarding injecting bleach.
Yes, Trump's humour is 100% of the snide and bullying variety.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Err, how do you ensure it doesn't happen again without knowing the cause/origin? You're trying to solve x + y = z and you don't know any of the variables.
Surely if trying to stop it happening again you have to tackle all the plausible causes rather than just one that you believe caused it?
WRT to 2028 elephant, this sidelines the important 2028 question both for politics and betting.
Trump will not get a third term. As to being nominated, standing etc that is different. He won't serve term 3. DYOR but IMHO bet acordingly.
So the big question - politics and bettng - is who will be the GOP candidate 2028. He (it will be a he) will be Trump's vicar on earth, and the current plan is he will continue Trumpism, a movement loads bigger than Trump himself.
Trumpism has two internal contradictions: Ordinary people nationalist populism is to some extent in conflict with plutocratic gangster oligarchy. So the two poles of Trumpism may collide.
Secondly, along with conflicts in principle, there is also the realities of the greasy pole. Lots of the inner circle people are to be made rich and richer by Trumpism. But several will want to be Emperor of USA and Dominions as well. They won't all play nicely.
Also, a central conflict will be whether the GOP 2028 anointed is Trump family dynasty or Trumpian Gangster Plutocrat.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Yep. Anybody departing from this either way is grinding an axe.
I don't know. It could be either.
Which is the point: we need to ensure it never happens again, and therefore every possible way it could have developed needs to be addressed. This is the important thing.
Leon's certainty will lead to wet markets, massive pig farms, battery chicken megafactories and other such places being perfect zoonotic breeding grounds for the next killer virus. He doesn't care, because his certainty says otherwise. Despite all the pandemics throughout history that were 'naturally' caused.
And yes, we need to be careful about the sort of medical/viral/bacterial research that goes on, with much more emphasis on "Should we do this?" over "Can we do this?"
And much more openness about any disease outbreaks - whatever the cause.
Hmm. Focus on the cause is more significant because for a couple of years, discussion of one potential cause was verboten. It's understandable, therefore, that evidence that cause is more likely gets celebrated.
As for the next one, there are several things that need to be done:
Deal with the wet markets AND Deal with the labs' biosecurity AND Get a proper pandemic plan AND Not immediately junk it when the next pandemic hits AND, most critically of all Recognise the costs of government decisions as well as their benefits.
I agree with your last statement - in part at least. There needs to be several pandemic plans, for different types of pandemic. Or, perhaps more accurately, a toolkit of little plans that can be assembled to address the exact characteristics of what happened. And costs can be hard to calculate when you do not know the exact characteristics of the disease that's hitting you - as happened in March and April 2020. Remember all that hand-washing?
Where I disagree is: "discussion of one potential cause was verboten".
It was never verboten. What people were doing was saying, with CERTAINTY that it was a lab leak - often with a sly hint at it being a man-made virus that was deliberately released and attacks on the people who weighed the evidence up otherwise. See Leon on here. People who weighed up the options and addressed both sides of the argument were fine. It's those claiming it was *certain* where it came from that were, and are, a big problem.
Althiugh JJ's comment is also fair. The target was claims that Covid was definitely man-made and the "plandemic" was engineered. It was not, as Leon is misremembering, a blanket ban on suggesting that it might have been caused by a leak from a laboratory.
Anyway, I suspect Mr G is right - at 82, Trump will just be too old to run again. He is already clearly far less coherent and sharp than he was last time he was President and the decline is only going to accelerate.
Voters and client media seemed far more concerned by Biden's cognitive decline than Trump's. Jesse Watters, Hannity and Laura Ingraham can normally explain Trump gobbledegook into a rational narrative.
Two reasons. First, Trump's Biden-moments were vastly outnumbered by Biden's Biden-moments. Second, Trump's opponents kept crying wolf over things that were clearly jokes or schtick, like the shark/electrocution dilemma.
I don't think Trump does humour unless it is unpleasant "othering". The Shark episode was quite earnest as was his question to Fauci regarding injecting bleach.
The shark thing was routine at all Trump's rallies. It was schtick. The bleach thing was an apparently serious question that might have been misunderstood and was not returned to.
Perhaps you are applying credit where it is not due.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Err, how do you ensure it doesn't happen again without knowing the cause/origin? You're trying to solve x + y = z and you don't know any of the variables.
Surely if trying to stop it happening again you have to tackle all the plausible causes rather than just one that you believe caused it?
It means finding the actual cause because trying to push through 10 different actions will mean none of them actually happen. Having targeted measures to solve a specific problem is much more likely to happen. Specifically, US finding of insecure Chinese labs is something under western control and is a thing that can be changed.
No: because the cause may be different anyway. Sometimes in accidetn investigations one finds the actual cause, but also that something else was just about to fall off the aeroplane because reasons - so that needs to be fixed anyway.
Our power to compel China to take action is extremely low, how do you propose that we (as in the western alliance) stop it from happening again?
Not talking about that but about your logical failure. Edit: specifically "It means finding the actual cause because trying to push through 10 different actions will mean none of them actually happen." in response to "Surely if trying to stop it happening again you have to tackle all the plausible causes rather than just one that you believe caused it?" Not the other stuff in your post, to be fair - apols if there is a misunderstanding. [edit]
Anyway, I suspect Mr G is right - at 82, Trump will just be too old to run again. He is already clearly far less coherent and sharp than he was last time he was President and the decline is only going to accelerate.
Voters and client media seemed far more concerned by Biden's cognitive decline than Trump's. Jesse Watters, Hannity and Laura Ingraham can normally explain Trump gobbledegook into a rational narrative.
Two reasons. First, Trump's Biden-moments were vastly outnumbered by Biden's Biden-moments. Second, Trump's opponents kept crying wolf over things that were clearly jokes or schtick, like the shark/electrocution dilemma.
I don't think Trump does humour unless it is unpleasant "othering". The Shark episode was quite earnest as was his question to Fauci regarding injecting bleach.
Yes, Trump's humour is 100% of the snide and bullying variety. People thinking he's a scream are revealing something about themselves.
No-one thinks Trump is a scream but it should be obvious say, that Trump at the inauguration was hamming up being unable to kiss Melania because her hat got in the way. You do not have to think it funny to realise it was also not a sign of dementia.
No, the SC cannot rule the constitution says what it doesn't say
Of course it can
Idiot.
"You just hate that I'm right. Again "
You're not right. You very rarely are.
You're just like James O'Brien - in fact, you might even be the same person- that if you bang on about something often enough stubbornly enough eventually everyone will come round to your view.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Yep. Anybody departing from this either way is grinding an axe.
I don't know. It could be either.
Which is the point: we need to ensure it never happens again, and therefore every possible way it could have developed needs to be addressed. This is the important thing.
Leon's certainty will lead to wet markets, massive pig farms, battery chicken megafactories and other such places being perfect zoonotic breeding grounds for the next killer virus. He doesn't care, because his certainty says otherwise. Despite all the pandemics throughout history that were 'naturally' caused.
And yes, we need to be careful about the sort of medical/viral/bacterial research that goes on, with much more emphasis on "Should we do this?" over "Can we do this?"
And much more openness about any disease outbreaks - whatever the cause.
Hmm. Focus on the cause is more significant because for a couple of years, discussion of one potential cause was verboten. It's understandable, therefore, that evidence that cause is more likely gets celebrated.
As for the next one, there are several things that need to be done:
Deal with the wet markets AND Deal with the labs' biosecurity AND Get a proper pandemic plan AND Not immediately junk it when the next pandemic hits AND, most critically of all Recognise the costs of government decisions as well as their benefits.
I agree with your last statement - in part at least. There needs to be several pandemic plans, for different types of pandemic. Or, perhaps more accurately, a toolkit of little plans that can be assembled to address the exact characteristics of what happened. And costs can be hard to calculate when you do not know the exact characteristics of the disease that's hitting you - as happened in March and April 2020. Remember all that hand-washing?
Hand washing? Yes, I remember that.
The point of "not knowing what you're facing" is that it makes it even more important that the government - and, yes, the media - doesn't deliberately stoke fear and a belief that only one response is acceptable. Because when that response turns out to be doing more harm than good, you're painted into a corner and are stuck with it.
But you also need people to follow the best sensible advice. Doing otherwise leads to people injecting disinfectant (thanks, Trump!) or not getting their children the MMR jab (thanks, JFK Jr!).
There may be more than one 'sensible' response to a particular situation; but there's a near-infinity of poor or terrible responses.
There is some Trump paranoia /derangement going on here. He's just one man. Sure, a demented one, but the constitution of the USA was designed with its checks and balances precisely for this.
I don't see, with the Dems holding essentially half the House and 45%+ of the Senate, plus many states, how any of these criteria pass.
I think the derangement is the idea that Trump et al will simply follow the rules. Indeed, the fact he has become President again after Jan 6th suggests that the US system is unchecked and unbalanced.
You can't blame the rules for the fact you lost an election.
Anyway, I suspect Mr G is right - at 82, Trump will just be too old to run again. He is already clearly far less coherent and sharp than he was last time he was President and the decline is only going to accelerate.
Voters and client media seemed far more concerned by Biden's cognitive decline than Trump's. Jesse Watters, Hannity and Laura Ingraham can normally explain Trump gobbledegook into a rational narrative.
Two reasons. First, Trump's Biden-moments were vastly outnumbered by Biden's Biden-moments. Second, Trump's opponents kept crying wolf over things that were clearly jokes or schtick, like the shark/electrocution dilemma.
I don't think Trump does humour unless it is unpleasant "othering". The Shark episode was quite earnest as was his question to Fauci regarding injecting bleach.
Yes, Trump's humour is 100% of the snide and bullying variety.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Err, how do you ensure it doesn't happen again without knowing the cause/origin? You're trying to solve x + y = z and you don't know any of the variables.
Surely if trying to stop it happening again you have to tackle all the plausible causes rather than just one that you believe caused it?
It means finding the actual cause because trying to push through 10 different actions will mean none of them actually happen. Having targeted measures to solve a specific problem is much more likely to happen. Specifically, US finding of insecure Chinese labs is something under western control and is a thing that can be changed.
If you just impact one of 10 possible causes you are by definition not stopping it again!
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Yep. Anybody departing from this either way is grinding an axe.
I don't know. It could be either.
Which is the point: we need to ensure it never happens again, and therefore every possible way it could have developed needs to be addressed. This is the important thing.
Leon's certainty will lead to wet markets, massive pig farms, battery chicken megafactories and other such places being perfect zoonotic breeding grounds for the next killer virus. He doesn't care, because his certainty says otherwise. Despite all the pandemics throughout history that were 'naturally' caused.
And yes, we need to be careful about the sort of medical/viral/bacterial research that goes on, with much more emphasis on "Should we do this?" over "Can we do this?"
And much more openness about any disease outbreaks - whatever the cause.
Hmm. Focus on the cause is more significant because for a couple of years, discussion of one potential cause was verboten. It's understandable, therefore, that evidence that cause is more likely gets celebrated.
As for the next one, there are several things that need to be done:
Deal with the wet markets AND Deal with the labs' biosecurity AND Get a proper pandemic plan AND Not immediately junk it when the next pandemic hits AND, most critically of all Recognise the costs of government decisions as well as their benefits.
I agree with your last statement - in part at least. There needs to be several pandemic plans, for different types of pandemic. Or, perhaps more accurately, a toolkit of little plans that can be assembled to address the exact characteristics of what happened. And costs can be hard to calculate when you do not know the exact characteristics of the disease that's hitting you - as happened in March and April 2020. Remember all that hand-washing?
Where I disagree is: "discussion of one potential cause was verboten".
It was never verboten. What people were doing was saying, with CERTAINTY that it was a lab leak - often with a sly hint at it being a man-made virus that was deliberately released and attacks on the people who weighed the evidence up otherwise. See Leon on here. People who weighed up the options and addressed both sides of the argument were fine. It's those claiming it was *certain* where it came from that were, and are, a big problem.
Althiugh JJ's comment is also fair. The target was claims that Covid was definitely man-made and the "plandemic" was engineered. It was not, as Leon is misremembering, a blanket ban on suggesting that it might have been caused by a leak from a laboratory.
It was implemented as such, at least as far as Facebook moderation was competent.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Yep. Anybody departing from this either way is grinding an axe.
I don't know. It could be either.
Which is the point: we need to ensure it never happens again, and therefore every possible way it could have developed needs to be addressed. This is the important thing.
Leon's certainty will lead to wet markets, massive pig farms, battery chicken megafactories and other such places being perfect zoonotic breeding grounds for the next killer virus. He doesn't care, because his certainty says otherwise. Despite all the pandemics throughout history that were 'naturally' caused.
And yes, we need to be careful about the sort of medical/viral/bacterial research that goes on, with much more emphasis on "Should we do this?" over "Can we do this?"
And much more openness about any disease outbreaks - whatever the cause.
Hmm. Focus on the cause is more significant because for a couple of years, discussion of one potential cause was verboten. It's understandable, therefore, that evidence that cause is more likely gets celebrated.
As for the next one, there are several things that need to be done:
Deal with the wet markets AND Deal with the labs' biosecurity AND Get a proper pandemic plan AND Not immediately junk it when the next pandemic hits AND, most critically of all Recognise the costs of government decisions as well as their benefits.
I agree with your last statement - in part at least. There needs to be several pandemic plans, for different types of pandemic. Or, perhaps more accurately, a toolkit of little plans that can be assembled to address the exact characteristics of what happened. And costs can be hard to calculate when you do not know the exact characteristics of the disease that's hitting you - as happened in March and April 2020. Remember all that hand-washing?
Where I disagree is: "discussion of one potential cause was verboten".
It was never verboten. What people were doing was saying, with CERTAINTY that it was a lab leak - often with a sly hint at it being a man-made virus that was deliberately released and attacks on the people who weighed the evidence up otherwise. See Leon on here. People who weighed up the options and addressed both sides of the argument were fine. It's those claiming it was *certain* where it came from that were, and are, a big problem.
Althiugh JJ's comment is also fair. The target was claims that Covid was definitely man-made and the "plandemic" was engineered. It was not, as Leon is misremembering, a blanket ban on suggesting that it might have been caused by a leak from a laboratory.
No. You were literally forbidden to say “it came from the lab”. Those remarks were deleted and could get you banned
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Actual LOL here in Rangoon, Burma
Aw, couple of conspiracy nuts having a cuddle. Sweet!
It was a genuinely well-honed insult, I am paying respect to a fellow craftsman
Biting, funny, acid, all in 16 words, and accurate enough to be personally cutting - hence the explosive reaction
Which is not only infantile, but nowhere near as sharp and funny as @moonshine's insult, which was, for those who need their memory jogged:
"Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here"
The real crime of COVID in the UK was that the first instinct of senior ministers was to relax procurement processes so their unqualified cronies could cash in at the expense of the exchequer and public health.
Ridiculous. The pressure was on them to source the PPE any which way they could. It's a bit rich to then complain that they sourced the PPE any which way they could.
The real crime of Covid is that the government's first action was to repudiate the pandemic plan they had. And that the media were so irresponsibly one-sided.
I’m still interested in the adherence to the policy of one use disposable PPE.
In industrial settings - welding and painting, disposable is only used for light, occasional stuff. For working in carpentry shops, welding shops, paint shops, reusable PPE is standard. Lower overall costs & superior protection. Additionally, it is more comfortable to wear - which helps encourage protection discipline.
Cleaning is easy with modern chemical knowledge. Hearing and facial expression contact is easier.
Good question. I don't know why the disposable blue "good for 15 minutes against Covid" mask became the standard in the medical field - but it has, and the public recognises that, and so will naturally think "if it's good enough for surgeons in operating theatres it's good enough for me in Tesco".
I want to know where the bullshit about disposable real masks being impossible for the general public to operate came from.
Vast numbers are used in casual settings in the building trade. Where the users are not exactly intellectuals with PhDs.
You open the plastic bag is comes in. Open it a bit, put it on, pull the elastic over your ears. The mask fits to your face. The end.
The paper ones are performative dance, by comparison. Better than nothing, but in the hanky-over-your-face range of usefulness.
If you want to protect medics, use those.
Or better, the reusable ones with filter cartridges. Which can be carefully fitted to your face. Quite a few will take a 3D printed seal, which is made from a scan of your face for maximum comfort.
Anyway, I suspect Mr G is right - at 82, Trump will just be too old to run again. He is already clearly far less coherent and sharp than he was last time he was President and the decline is only going to accelerate.
Voters and client media seemed far more concerned by Biden's cognitive decline than Trump's. Jesse Watters, Hannity and Laura Ingraham can normally explain Trump gobbledegook into a rational narrative.
Two reasons. First, Trump's Biden-moments were vastly outnumbered by Biden's Biden-moments. Second, Trump's opponents kept crying wolf over things that were clearly jokes or schtick, like the shark/electrocution dilemma.
I don't think Trump does humour unless it is unpleasant "othering". The Shark episode was quite earnest as was his question to Fauci regarding injecting bleach.
Yes, Trump's humour is 100% of the snide and bullying variety.
Best type of humour.
Public school and RAF, right?
I'd have sank not swum.
'RAF' might be considered snide and bullying in this particular case.
Reeves adamant she will not tweak or change the IHT for farms.
She'll be forced to u-turn eventually. Why spin this out?
Why would she be forced to? The government has a majority. The policy isn't noticeably popular but the election is a long way off. It is likely to be a flawed policy in terms of raising cash but it only negatively affects small numbers of people.
As with VAT on private schools, it may be a bad idea and it probably won't raise much net revenue but there's no reason to think it will be reversed.
She is going to have farmers protesting for the next four years and there's quite a few Lab rural seats these days.
It 'aint worth the candle.
Not sure a u turn is going to win her any votes, and would mean she has to cut spending/find some other tax to raise. And she believes (rightly in my view) that it's the right policy.
It doesn't raise any money though and all of the supermarkets have come out and said it will put long term food security at risk. I guarantee you that people are more likely to trust farmers, Tesco and Sainsbury's on food matters than the government. It's a such an odd policy hill to die on unless it's ideologically driven in which case Labour will get spanked at the ballot box because largely the British public supports farmers more than they support politicians.
If it doesn't raise money, why are people annoyed? It's obviously going to raise some money although who knows how much. The real prize is removing an IHT dodge and pushing down price of agricultural land, which will help farmers a lot.
I could imagine a tweak to exempt old farmers maybe who have less time to adjust.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Yep. Anybody departing from this either way is grinding an axe.
I don't know. It could be either.
Which is the point: we need to ensure it never happens again, and therefore every possible way it could have developed needs to be addressed. This is the important thing.
Leon's certainty will lead to wet markets, massive pig farms, battery chicken megafactories and other such places being perfect zoonotic breeding grounds for the next killer virus. He doesn't care, because his certainty says otherwise. Despite all the pandemics throughout history that were 'naturally' caused.
And yes, we need to be careful about the sort of medical/viral/bacterial research that goes on, with much more emphasis on "Should we do this?" over "Can we do this?"
And much more openness about any disease outbreaks - whatever the cause.
Hmm. Focus on the cause is more significant because for a couple of years, discussion of one potential cause was verboten. It's understandable, therefore, that evidence that cause is more likely gets celebrated.
As for the next one, there are several things that need to be done:
Deal with the wet markets AND Deal with the labs' biosecurity AND Get a proper pandemic plan AND Not immediately junk it when the next pandemic hits AND, most critically of all Recognise the costs of government decisions as well as their benefits.
I agree with your last statement - in part at least. There needs to be several pandemic plans, for different types of pandemic. Or, perhaps more accurately, a toolkit of little plans that can be assembled to address the exact characteristics of what happened. And costs can be hard to calculate when you do not know the exact characteristics of the disease that's hitting you - as happened in March and April 2020. Remember all that hand-washing?
Where I disagree is: "discussion of one potential cause was verboten".
It was never verboten. What people were doing was saying, with CERTAINTY that it was a lab leak - often with a sly hint at it being a man-made virus that was deliberately released and attacks on the people who weighed the evidence up otherwise. See Leon on here. People who weighed up the options and addressed both sides of the argument were fine. It's those claiming it was *certain* where it came from that were, and are, a big problem.
Althiugh JJ's comment is also fair. The target was claims that Covid was definitely man-made and the "plandemic" was engineered. It was not, as Leon is misremembering, a blanket ban on suggesting that it might have been caused by a leak from a laboratory.
No. You were literally forbidden to say “it came from the lab”. Those remarks were deleted and could get you banned
From the article:
"Anyone posting claims that Covid-19 was “man-made or manufactured” could have seen their posts removed or restricted, and repeatedly sharing the allegation could have led to a ban from the site entirely."
Which is different. And ISTR you at one stage were on the "It was an engineered virus" bandwagon.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Yep. Anybody departing from this either way is grinding an axe.
I don't know. It could be either.
Which is the point: we need to ensure it never happens again, and therefore every possible way it could have developed needs to be addressed. This is the important thing.
Leon's certainty will lead to wet markets, massive pig farms, battery chicken megafactories and other such places being perfect zoonotic breeding grounds for the next killer virus. He doesn't care, because his certainty says otherwise. Despite all the pandemics throughout history that were 'naturally' caused.
And yes, we need to be careful about the sort of medical/viral/bacterial research that goes on, with much more emphasis on "Should we do this?" over "Can we do this?"
And much more openness about any disease outbreaks - whatever the cause.
Hmm. Focus on the cause is more significant because for a couple of years, discussion of one potential cause was verboten. It's understandable, therefore, that evidence that cause is more likely gets celebrated.
As for the next one, there are several things that need to be done:
Deal with the wet markets AND Deal with the labs' biosecurity AND Get a proper pandemic plan AND Not immediately junk it when the next pandemic hits AND, most critically of all Recognise the costs of government decisions as well as their benefits.
I agree with your last statement - in part at least. There needs to be several pandemic plans, for different types of pandemic. Or, perhaps more accurately, a toolkit of little plans that can be assembled to address the exact characteristics of what happened. And costs can be hard to calculate when you do not know the exact characteristics of the disease that's hitting you - as happened in March and April 2020. Remember all that hand-washing?
Where I disagree is: "discussion of one potential cause was verboten".
It was never verboten. What people were doing was saying, with CERTAINTY that it was a lab leak - often with a sly hint at it being a man-made virus that was deliberately released and attacks on the people who weighed the evidence up otherwise. See Leon on here. People who weighed up the options and addressed both sides of the argument were fine. It's those claiming it was *certain* where it came from that were, and are, a big problem.
Althiugh JJ's comment is also fair. The target was claims that Covid was definitely man-made and the "plandemic" was engineered. It was not, as Leon is misremembering, a blanket ban on suggesting that it might have been caused by a leak from a laboratory.
No. You were literally forbidden to say “it came from the lab”. Those remarks were deleted and could get you banned
On here? You managed to slip a few through the electrified fence.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Actual LOL here in Rangoon, Burma
Aw, couple of conspiracy nuts having a cuddle. Sweet!
It was a genuinely well-honed insult, I am paying respect to a fellow craftsman
Biting, funny, acid, all in 16 words, and accurate enough to be personally cutting - hence the explosive reaction
Which is not only infantile, but nowhere near as sharp and funny as @moonshine's insult, which was, for those who need their memory jogged:
"Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here"
The real crime of COVID in the UK was that the first instinct of senior ministers was to relax procurement processes so their unqualified cronies could cash in at the expense of the exchequer and public health.
Ridiculous. The pressure was on them to source the PPE any which way they could. It's a bit rich to then complain that they sourced the PPE any which way they could.
The real crime of Covid is that the government's first action was to repudiate the pandemic plan they had. And that the media were so irresponsibly one-sided.
I’m still interested in the adherence to the policy of one use disposable PPE.
In industrial settings - welding and painting, disposable is only used for light, occasional stuff. For working in carpentry shops, welding shops, paint shops, reusable PPE is standard. Lower overall costs & superior protection. Additionally, it is more comfortable to wear - which helps encourage protection discipline.
Cleaning is easy with modern chemical knowledge. Hearing and facial expression contact is easier.
Good question. I don't know why the disposable blue "good for 15 minutes against Covid" mask became the standard in the medical field - but it has, and the public recognises that, and so will naturally think "if it's good enough for surgeons in operating theatres it's good enough for me in Tesco".
I want to know where the bullshit about disposable real masks being impossible for the general public to operate came from.
Vast numbers are used in casual settings in the building trade. Where the users are not exactly intellectuals with PhDs.
You open the plastic bag is comes in. Open it a bit, put it on, pull the elastic over your ears. The mask fits to your face. The end. The paper ones are performative dance, by comparison. Better than nothing, but in the hanky-over-your-face range of usefulness.
If you want to protect medics, use those.
Or better, the reusable ones with filter cartridges. Which can be carefully fitted to your face. Quite a few will take a 3D printed seal, which is made from a scan of your face for maximum comfort.
I'm not sure they were better than nothing, as they gave the illusion of providing protection and thus encoraged a reduction in caution.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
The real controversy is our response to COVID, which Leon never goes near of course..🤨😏
This is bollocks, I have been quite forceful in saying the later lockdowns were a disaster, and they were
And masking has been terrible for many societies, eg Japan, Korea - I explicitly said that on my recent visit to Japan and Korea
But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters
FFS this site gets massively exercised by the Post Office subpostmasters scandal. And that was, indeed, a scandal. But Covid dwarves it by seventy eight orders of magnitude. MILLIONS died because of out-of-control science in badly run labs
Bad as she is Paula Vennels is not quite in that league
"But the ORIGIN of Covid ALSO matters"
Why?
I'd argue it's fairly irrelevant unless you want to make something else out of it. Which, of course, you never would.
If natural via wet market, or lab-leak, the important thing is to ensure it never happens again. Brainlessly going on about one of the possibilities means that the other one get ignored. And it is not as though pandemics have ever started naturally before, is it?
Seriously? It's "fairly irrelevant" if this global pandemic was caused by dangerous science?
I mean, lol. Stupefying
Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, JossiasJessop is here.
Actual LOL here in Rangoon, Burma
Aw, couple of conspiracy nuts having a cuddle. Sweet!
It was a genuinely well-honed insult, I am paying respect to a fellow craftsman
Biting, funny, acid, all in 16 words, and accurate enough to be personally cutting - hence the explosive reaction
Which is not only infantile, but nowhere near as sharp and funny as @moonshine's insult, which was, for those who need their memory jogged:
"Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here"
The real crime of COVID in the UK was that the first instinct of senior ministers was to relax procurement processes so their unqualified cronies could cash in at the expense of the exchequer and public health.
Ridiculous. The pressure was on them to source the PPE any which way they could. It's a bit rich to then complain that they sourced the PPE any which way they could.
The real crime of Covid is that the government's first action was to repudiate the pandemic plan they had. And that the media were so irresponsibly one-sided.
I’m still interested in the adherence to the policy of one use disposable PPE.
In industrial settings - welding and painting, disposable is only used for light, occasional stuff. For working in carpentry shops, welding shops, paint shops, reusable PPE is standard. Lower overall costs & superior protection. Additionally, it is more comfortable to wear - which helps encourage protection discipline.
Cleaning is easy with modern chemical knowledge. Hearing and facial expression contact is easier.
Good question. I don't know why the disposable blue "good for 15 minutes against Covid" mask became the standard in the medical field - but it has, and the public recognises that, and so will naturally think "if it's good enough for surgeons in operating theatres it's good enough for me in Tesco".
I want to know where the bullshit about disposable real masks being impossible for the general public to operate came from.
Vast numbers are used in casual settings in the building trade. Where the users are not exactly intellectuals with PhDs.
You open the plastic bag is comes in. Open it a bit, put it on, pull the elastic over your ears. The mask fits to your face. The end.
The paper ones are performative dance, by comparison. Better than nothing, but in the hanky-over-your-face range of usefulness.
If you want to protect medics, use those.
Or better, the reusable ones with filter cartridges. Which can be carefully fitted to your face. Quite a few will take a 3D printed seal, which is made from a scan of your face for maximum comfort.
The elastic round the ears is a real nuisance if one wears hearing aids.
Reeves adamant she will not tweak or change the IHT for farms.
She'll be forced to u-turn eventually. Why spin this out?
Why would she be forced to? The government has a majority. The policy isn't noticeably popular but the election is a long way off. It is likely to be a flawed policy in terms of raising cash but it only negatively affects small numbers of people.
As with VAT on private schools, it may be a bad idea and it probably won't raise much net revenue but there's no reason to think it will be reversed.
She is going to have farmers protesting for the next four years and there's quite a few Lab rural seats these days.
It 'aint worth the candle.
Not sure a u turn is going to win her any votes, and would mean she has to cut spending/find some other tax to raise. And she believes (rightly in my view) that it's the right policy.
It doesn't raise any money though and all of the supermarkets have come out and said it will put long term food security at risk. I guarantee you that people are more likely to trust farmers, Tesco and Sainsbury's on food matters than the government. It's a such an odd policy hill to die on unless it's ideologically driven in which case Labour will get spanked at the ballot box because largely the British public supports farmers more than they support politicians.
If it doesn't raise money, why are people annoyed? It's obviously going to raise some money although who knows how much. The real prize is removing an IHT dodge and pushing down price of agricultural land, which will help farmers a lot.
I could imagine a tweak to exempt old farmers maybe who have less time to adjust.
It won't raise any money because it will lead to adverse behaviour changes to avoid the tax which is why the supermarkets are saying food security is at risk.
WRT to 2028 elephant, this sidelines the important 2028 question both for politics and betting.
Trump will not get a third term. As to being nominated, standing etc that is different. He won't serve term 3. DYOR but IMHO bet acordingly.
So the big question - politics and bettng - is who will be the GOP candidate 2028. He (it will be a he) will be Trump's vicar on earth, and the current plan is he will continue Trumpism, a movement loads bigger than Trump himself.
Trumpism has two internal contradictions: Ordinary people nationalist populism is to some extent in conflict with plutocratic gangster oligarchy. So the two poles of Trumpism may collide.
Secondly, along with conflicts in principle, there is also the realities of the greasy pole. Lots of the inner circle people are to be made rich and richer by Trumpism. But several will want to be Emperor of USA and Dominions as well. They won't all play nicely.
Also, a central conflict will be whether the GOP 2028 anointed is Trump family dynasty or Trumpian Gangster Plutocrat.
it won't be dull. bet accordingly. DYOR.
The usual answer is to have enough noisy performative nationalist populism to distract the proles from the plutocratic gangsterism that's going on quietly on an industrial scale.
Question is whether the MAGA movement has anyone apart from DJT with the combination of talents needed to make that work.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Yep. Anybody departing from this either way is grinding an axe.
I don't know. It could be either.
Which is the point: we need to ensure it never happens again, and therefore every possible way it could have developed needs to be addressed. This is the important thing.
Leon's certainty will lead to wet markets, massive pig farms, battery chicken megafactories and other such places being perfect zoonotic breeding grounds for the next killer virus. He doesn't care, because his certainty says otherwise. Despite all the pandemics throughout history that were 'naturally' caused.
And yes, we need to be careful about the sort of medical/viral/bacterial research that goes on, with much more emphasis on "Should we do this?" over "Can we do this?"
And much more openness about any disease outbreaks - whatever the cause.
Hmm. Focus on the cause is more significant because for a couple of years, discussion of one potential cause was verboten. It's understandable, therefore, that evidence that cause is more likely gets celebrated.
As for the next one, there are several things that need to be done:
Deal with the wet markets AND Deal with the labs' biosecurity AND Get a proper pandemic plan AND Not immediately junk it when the next pandemic hits AND, most critically of all Recognise the costs of government decisions as well as their benefits.
I agree with your last statement - in part at least. There needs to be several pandemic plans, for different types of pandemic. Or, perhaps more accurately, a toolkit of little plans that can be assembled to address the exact characteristics of what happened. And costs can be hard to calculate when you do not know the exact characteristics of the disease that's hitting you - as happened in March and April 2020. Remember all that hand-washing?
Where I disagree is: "discussion of one potential cause was verboten".
It was never verboten. What people were doing was saying, with CERTAINTY that it was a lab leak - often with a sly hint at it being a man-made virus that was deliberately released and attacks on the people who weighed the evidence up otherwise. See Leon on here. People who weighed up the options and addressed both sides of the argument were fine. It's those claiming it was *certain* where it came from that were, and are, a big problem.
Althiugh JJ's comment is also fair. The target was claims that Covid was definitely man-made and the "plandemic" was engineered. It was not, as Leon is misremembering, a blanket ban on suggesting that it might have been caused by a leak from a laboratory.
No. You were literally forbidden to say “it came from the lab”. Those remarks were deleted and could get you banned
But not saying that it might have. We're agreeing.
Same now actually. There's no ban here on proclaiming certainty about how the pandemic started but there is an effective one because all such commentary is discounted as axe grinding.
WRT to 2028 elephant, this sidelines the important 2028 question both for politics and betting.
Trump will not get a third term. As to being nominated, standing etc that is different. He won't serve term 3. DYOR but IMHO bet acordingly.
So the big question - politics and bettng - is who will be the GOP candidate 2028. He (it will be a he) will be Trump's vicar on earth, and the current plan is he will continue Trumpism, a movement loads bigger than Trump himself.
Trumpism has two internal contradictions: Ordinary people nationalist populism is to some extent in conflict with plutocratic gangster oligarchy. So the two poles of Trumpism may collide.
Secondly, along with conflicts in principle, there is also the realities of the greasy pole. Lots of the inner circle people are to be made rich and richer by Trumpism. But several will want to be Emperor of USA and Dominions as well. They won't all play nicely.
Also, a central conflict will be whether the GOP 2028 anointed is Trump family dynasty or Trumpian Gangster Plutocrat.
it won't be dull. bet accordingly. DYOR.
The usual answer is to have enough noisy performative nationalist populism to distract the proles from the plutocratic gangsterism that's going on quietly on an industrial scale.
Question is whether the MAGA movement has anyone apart from DJT with the combination of talents needed to make that work.
Laydeez and genullmen, harken to the words of Germany’s “leading” virologist Christan Drosten,
For years he’s been adamant it came from the wet market. Now, surprise surprise - as the CIA says it likely came from the lab - he’s suddenly seen the light
"The more I think about it, the more skeptical I become"
"In my initial assessment of the origin of the virus, I didn't know anything about it. In 2021, with the help of the American FOIA, it was published that American scientists had already applied for research funding in 2018 for work that, in my opinion, is by no means harmless."
"I were to insert an artificial furin cleavage site into Sars viruses, I would be doing something that may not even exist in nature and which I could already assume makes the virus more transmissible."
"The public is rightly asking...I have doubted that for a long time. But recently I have sometimes had a bad feeling."
Watch as they all do this. The last virologists pretending it came from the market will quietly pretend they were “skeptical” all along
I know that this subject obsesses you. Can you understand how most of us are so deeply bored of Covid that we don't care either way? It happened. It was shit. Move on. You think we can keep digging away at this and find named culprits? Individuals who can be brought to justice for Covid?
We have enough of today's problems to deal with than to worry about all that. Even your AI obsession is more relevant than Covid.
Yep. Anybody departing from this either way is grinding an axe.
I don't know. It could be either.
Which is the point: we need to ensure it never happens again, and therefore every possible way it could have developed needs to be addressed. This is the important thing.
Leon's certainty will lead to wet markets, massive pig farms, battery chicken megafactories and other such places being perfect zoonotic breeding grounds for the next killer virus. He doesn't care, because his certainty says otherwise. Despite all the pandemics throughout history that were 'naturally' caused.
And yes, we need to be careful about the sort of medical/viral/bacterial research that goes on, with much more emphasis on "Should we do this?" over "Can we do this?"
And much more openness about any disease outbreaks - whatever the cause.
Hmm. Focus on the cause is more significant because for a couple of years, discussion of one potential cause was verboten. It's understandable, therefore, that evidence that cause is more likely gets celebrated.
As for the next one, there are several things that need to be done:
Deal with the wet markets AND Deal with the labs' biosecurity AND Get a proper pandemic plan AND Not immediately junk it when the next pandemic hits AND, most critically of all Recognise the costs of government decisions as well as their benefits.
I agree with your last statement - in part at least. There needs to be several pandemic plans, for different types of pandemic. Or, perhaps more accurately, a toolkit of little plans that can be assembled to address the exact characteristics of what happened. And costs can be hard to calculate when you do not know the exact characteristics of the disease that's hitting you - as happened in March and April 2020. Remember all that hand-washing?
Where I disagree is: "discussion of one potential cause was verboten".
It was never verboten. What people were doing was saying, with CERTAINTY that it was a lab leak - often with a sly hint at it being a man-made virus that was deliberately released and attacks on the people who weighed the evidence up otherwise. See Leon on here. People who weighed up the options and addressed both sides of the argument were fine. It's those claiming it was *certain* where it came from that were, and are, a big problem.
Althiugh JJ's comment is also fair. The target was claims that Covid was definitely man-made and the "plandemic" was engineered. It was not, as Leon is misremembering, a blanket ban on suggesting that it might have been caused by a leak from a laboratory.
No. You were literally forbidden to say “it came from the lab”. Those remarks were deleted and could get you banned
But not saying that it might have. We're agreeing.
Same now actually. There's no ban here on proclaiming certainty about how the pandemic started but there is an effective one because all such commentary is discounted as axe grinding.
“Accountant” was the ideal job for you, wasn’t it?
I’m glad you found your vocation and your proper role. Something so quintessentially YOU
On the question of a Trump third term, if I were so minded, rather than trying to get the 22nd amendment repealed, which is a super high bar, I'd be looking for irregularities in the original ratification process that I could challenge judicially before a friendly Supreme Court.
Comments
There is no such plausible reading that allows Trump a third term through the ballot box.
He could, potentially, be elected as a Representative, then elected as Speaker of the House, and then have both President and VP resign - that would technically see him acting as president rather than being president (unless the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 were amended).
Your riposte to @moonshine was:
"You are a total knob to be fair"
Which is not only infantile, but nowhere near as sharp and funny as @moonshine's insult, which was, for those who need their memory jogged:
"Often I come to the site and feel intellectually enriched. And other times, @JossiasJessop is here"
She'll be forced to u-turn eventually. Why spin this out?
As with VAT on private schools, it may be a bad idea and it probably won't raise much net revenue but there's no reason to think it will be reversed.
Horst Wessel song, incoming, 58 minutes
A spokesperson from the spy agency said:"[The] CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the Covid-19 pandemic remain plausible."
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/cia-covid-19-more-likely-lab-leak-low-confidence/
Time to place your bets on Trump 3.0 or GOP 3.0 or something else. It's all about delivery.
It 'aint worth the candle.
The real crime of Covid is that the government's first action was to repudiate the pandemic plan they had. And that the media were so irresponsibly one-sided.
I'm surprised to see all the evidence that older people tend to be more right-wing. I'm chair of my CLP and as leftish as ever. What I do notice is a certain detachment from the longer term. Will Britain become a member of the EU in 30 years, for instance? I'm in favour, but accept that coming generations will do as they think fit. But certain things, such as ridiculous inequality of income and opportunity across the world, seem as burningly intolerable as ever.
“Lab leak most likely source of Covid, says Prof Tim Spector
Downing Street adviser behind virus symptom tracker points to ‘obvious cover-up”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/21/prof-tim-spector-covid-likely-to-have-come-from-a-lab-leak/
Which is the point: we need to ensure it never happens again, and therefore every possible way it could have developed needs to be addressed. This is the important thing.
Leon's certainty will lead to wet markets, massive pig farms, battery chicken megafactories and other such places being perfect zoonotic breeding grounds for the next killer virus. He doesn't care, because his certainty says otherwise. Despite all the pandemics throughout history that were 'naturally' caused.
And yes, we need to be careful about the sort of medical/viral/bacterial research that goes on, with much more emphasis on "Should we do this?" over "Can we do this?"
And much more openness about any disease outbreaks - whatever the cause.
The interesting question is what is Trump's own agenda. He is probably pro-abortion, left to his own devices, and stacking the judiciary is a long-running GOP tactic now paying off at the highest level. Axing FEMA and returning education to the states, and much else in his first days, are Project 2025 rather than Trumpism.
What we do have is that Trump is anti-war, sees abroad as a vast conspiracy against America, hates China, thinks might is right, and probably seeks a return to the gilded age of high tariffs and no income tax.
As for the next one, there are several things that need to be done:
Deal with the wet markets
AND
Deal with the labs' biosecurity
AND
Get a proper pandemic plan
AND
Not immediately junk it when the next pandemic hits
AND, most critically of all
Recognise the costs of government decisions as well as their benefits.
I'm in my mid-80's now and when I was 80+ I was going to the gym two or three times a week, and walking four or five mile walks .... never been a fan of really long ones.
Then I developed a problem with my spine, in the cervical area and that has really fouled me up physically, although I think I'm unaffected mentally (YMMV)
So I agree with NP.
Where I disagree is: "discussion of one potential cause was verboten".
It was never verboten. What people were doing was saying, with CERTAINTY that it was a lab leak - often with a sly hint at it being a man-made virus that was deliberately released and attacks on the people who weighed the evidence up otherwise. See Leon on here. People who weighed up the options and addressed both sides of the argument were fine. It's those claiming it was *certain* where it came from that were, and are, a big problem.
(that's the telegraph btw)
Or have you forgotten that? Convenient
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/25/diamonds-lose-their-sparkle-as-prices-come-crashing-down
On old people's politics, it is probably that the zeitgeist has generally moved left, so an old dinosaur in his 70s would fifty years ago have been campaigning against capital punishment and apartheid, and for equal pay for women and access to contraception and abortion. Not even Nigel Farage wants to turn the clock back on those. About the only left wing cause from those days still relevant is nationalisation.
Indeed, we now have the paradox that some immigrant communities (a leftist cause) have a very right wing take on women's rights. Or look at the trans issue for splitting old alliances.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/has-donald-trump-saved-the-world/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/may/27/facebook-lifts-ban-on-posts-claiming-covid-19-was-man-made
I know we’re all friends on here, and that’s great, but in the end you are just a boring thick twat
There. Now I’ve cleared the air and made peace we can move on. FINALLY
The point of "not knowing what you're facing" is that it makes it even more important that the government - and, yes, the media - doesn't deliberately stoke fear and a belief that only one response is acceptable. Because when that response turns out to be doing more harm than good, you're painted into a corner and are stuck with it.
In industrial settings - welding and painting, disposable is only used for light, occasional stuff. For working in carpentry shops, welding shops, paint shops, reusable PPE is standard. Lower overall costs & superior protection. Additionally, it is more comfortable to wear - which helps encourage protection discipline.
Cleaning is easy with modern chemical knowledge. Hearing and facial expression contact is easier.
My writing is strictly non-fiction.
It has no realistic chance of passing, but as it happens, the congressman’s campaign finances are under investigation by the F.B.I., a bureau overseen by the new president.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/26/us/politics/trump-boundaries-presidency.html
Secondly: um, just the one partner then...?
Trump will not get a third term. As to being nominated, standing etc that is different. He won't serve term 3. DYOR but IMHO bet acordingly.
So the big question - politics and bettng - is who will be the GOP candidate 2028. He (it will be a he) will be Trump's vicar on earth, and the current plan is he will continue Trumpism, a movement loads bigger than Trump himself.
Trumpism has two internal contradictions: Ordinary people nationalist populism is to some extent in conflict with plutocratic gangster oligarchy. So the two poles of Trumpism may collide.
Secondly, along with conflicts in principle, there is also the realities of the greasy pole. Lots of the inner circle people are to be made rich and richer by Trumpism. But several will want to be Emperor of USA and Dominions as well. They won't all play nicely.
Also, a central conflict will be whether the GOP 2028 anointed is Trump family dynasty or Trumpian Gangster Plutocrat.
it won't be dull. bet accordingly. DYOR.
Now off again.
You're just like James O'Brien - in fact, you might even be the same person- that if you bang on about something often enough stubbornly enough eventually everyone will come round to your view.
There may be more than one 'sensible' response to a particular situation; but there's a near-infinity of poor or terrible responses.
I'd have sank not swum.
Bit like you pretending to have voted Labour.
Vast numbers are used in casual settings in the building trade. Where the users are not exactly intellectuals with PhDs.
You open the plastic bag is comes in. Open it a bit, put it on, pull the elastic over your ears. The mask fits to your face. The end.
The paper ones are performative dance, by comparison. Better than nothing, but in the hanky-over-your-face range of usefulness.
If you want to protect medics, use those.
Or better, the reusable ones with filter cartridges. Which can be carefully fitted to your face. Quite a few will take a 3D printed seal, which is made from a scan of your face for maximum comfort.
I could imagine a tweak to exempt old farmers maybe who have less time to adjust.
"Anyone posting claims that Covid-19 was “man-made or manufactured” could have seen their posts removed or restricted, and repeatedly sharing the allegation could have led to a ban from the site entirely."
Which is different. And ISTR you at one stage were on the "It was an engineered virus" bandwagon.
You managed to slip a few through the electrified fence.
Question is whether the MAGA movement has anyone apart from DJT with the combination of talents needed to make that work.
https://x.com/trevmckendrick/status/1883459030326382944
Same now actually. There's no ban here on proclaiming certainty about how the pandemic started but there is an effective one because all such commentary is discounted as axe grinding.
I’m glad you found your vocation and your proper role. Something so quintessentially YOU
Not everyone is so fortunate in life
@alastairmeeks.bsky.social
On the question of a Trump third term, if I were so minded, rather than trying to get the 22nd amendment repealed, which is a super high bar, I'd be looking for irregularities in the original ratification process that I could challenge judicially before a friendly Supreme Court.