I said months ago the government should have just said vaccinating going great, but no summer holidays abroad this year, lets just get this covid lark cracked, keep arrival of new variants to a minimum and see where we are in the autumn.
That way Oz/NZ lies. Going on holiday is part of normal life and the government seems keen to return to normal life.
They could close the borders but then you have a fully vaccinated nation not allowed to leave the country.
It isn't bonkers, would you really want to go to a foreign country where you get trapped in with a overwhelmed health system and where you might need urgent non Covid-19 related healthcare.
That's the risk I've decided I don't want.
More likely to die in the taxi ride from the airport to your hotel if you're fully vaxxed.
You, meanwhile, are taking a huge risk in Blackpool. Odds on surviving? 50:50 at best.
It's also the financial aspect.
Having to quarantine a hotel for ten days.
For someone such as yourself? I don't believe it. And in any case most UK holidays are far more spenny than ones abroad right now.
Well ok, I'm honest, I worry I'll have to quarantine for ten days in a ghastly Premier Inn or a Britannia hotel.
The horror...
Could be worse, it could be one of those old school service station Travelodge's....
Could be worse...could be Blackpool.
The only place I have ever had to go down to a hotel reception to complain that there isn’t a bed in my room.
Only to have them come back up with me to demonstrate how it folded down out of the wardrobe.
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
Tangentially, does anyone know what will happen if we have more than 25 or more variants?
s/even worse/almost but not quite as bad/. Labour did not force peerages through after they'd been blocked by the Appointments Commission, as Boris has just done. Still, half a million quid's half a million quid.
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
If its a case of ensuring all domestic restrictions are lifted on 21 June then the entire world can go on the red list as far as I'm concerned.
Once all domestic restrictions are lifted on 21 June, then we can start to move countries to green list so long as it doesn't jeopardise our having no domestic restrictions.
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
Most of the zero-covidians are reaching far beyond their expertise, as far as I can see. The real experts have been far more circumspect - I don't think I've seen any calling for a delay, yet, just unwilling to commit without time for a bit more data, which is not unreasonable (the evidence seems* to be that the vaccines will keep hospitalisations manageable even at the more pessimistic ends of India variant estimates, but that just gets more certain with a few more passing days).
Scientists are no more immune than anyone else to speaking beyond their expertise if it gets them a bit of attention and massages their egos.
*this is beyond my expertise too - I'm not an infectious disease modeller - but the public data do not concern me yet.
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
This is a bit out of date (to 9/20) (and note log scale) but Portugal has been pulling its weight on sequencing:
Sorry to disappoint, but 10 points of lead is roughly where I would expect any party of government that was managing the current vaccine programme.
Like in Germany?
As in our vaccination programme, which I would put more down to our expertise in pharma and the expert advice it gives to government than our Classics educated ex-polemicist PM.
Besides, the reality is that government ministers are on TV and radio constantly. For the last 6 months the press briefings have been party political broadcasts. Whether one believes the vaccine programme in the UK was a result of Boris Johnson, Brexit or extra terrestrial intervention from the planet Zog, the reality is that the government has had massive publicity. I don't have the ability to compare with Germany because I don't live there.
Delighted to assist you with the comparison:
Vaccines doses per 100 administered in Britain under Boris Johnson (B.A. Literae Humaniores): 96.72
Vaccines does per 100 administered in Germany under Angela Merkel (Doctor of Quantum Chemistry): 61.57
Average Conservative polling lead: 11%
Average CDU/CSU polling lead: 2%
Oh it must be nice to be such an unthinking loyalist. Life must be so simple, a bit like being a gold fish. Boris Johnson may be popular with the gullible, but he is still UNFIT FOR OFFICE.
As I said to his one of his other fanbois, I can't judge Germany as I don't live there. Your nationalistic gloating about vaccines just makes you look silly and uneducated, and despite your blind loyalty I doubt you are either. You might want to try and grow up politically.
And yet somehow under the man allegedly 'unfit for office' Britain has been vaccinated faster than any other major country in the world. Surely dear Angela's rather less impressive achievement - and she a quantum chemist, not a mere Greats man, let's recall - would have seen her rusticated from the Nigel Foremain School of Political Leadership?
Because, thankfully, he was told to keep well out of it.
We're the first U.S. airline to sign an agreement for @boomaero 's ‘Overture’ airliners which are expected to be net-zero carbon and connect 500+ cities in nearly half the time. Taking off in 2029:
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
Tangentially, does anyone know what will happen if we have more than 25 or more variants?
We're the first U.S. airline to sign an agreement for @boomaero 's ‘Overture’ airliners which are expected to be net-zero carbon and connect 500+ cities in nearly half the time. Taking off in 2029:
I think it's supposed to evoke "sonic" but I see your poimt.
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
If it was my decision I would close the borders altogether and then unlock the UK internally
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
Tangentially, does anyone know what will happen if we have more than 25 or more variants?
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
Tangentially, does anyone know what will happen if we have more than 25 or more variants?
I mean the Greek Alphabet ends at Ω.
Couple of years and it will be the [Alpha, Beta, Alpha, Gamma] variant, which we aren't allowed to shortened to the Outer Hebrides one.
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
Tangentially, does anyone know what will happen if we have more than 25 or more variants?
I mean the Greek Alphabet ends at Ω.
The suggestion from the WHO chap on R4 was adding the year as suffix - so Alpha-21, etc, let's hope there aren't more than 25 in a year....
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
If it was my decision I would close the borders altogether and then unlock the UK internally
It's what Guernsey has done quite successfully.....
We're the first U.S. airline to sign an agreement for @boomaero 's ‘Overture’ airliners which are expected to be net-zero carbon and connect 500+ cities in nearly half the time. Taking off in 2029:
You know, the design of that aircraft looks awfully familiar.
We're the first U.S. airline to sign an agreement for @boomaero 's ‘Overture’ airliners which are expected to be net-zero carbon and connect 500+ cities in nearly half the time. Taking off in 2029:
I think it's supposed to evoke "sonic" but I see your poimt.
We're the first U.S. airline to sign an agreement for @boomaero 's ‘Overture’ airliners which are expected to be net-zero carbon and connect 500+ cities in nearly half the time. Taking off in 2029:
I think it's supposed to evoke "sonic" but I see your poimt.
We're the first U.S. airline to sign an agreement for @boomaero 's ‘Overture’ airliners which are expected to be net-zero carbon and connect 500+ cities in nearly half the time. Taking off in 2029:
You know, the design of that aircraft looks awfully familiar.
Good video on this from the ever reliable Wendover.
Supersonic Planes are Coming Back (And This Time, They Might Work)
s/even worse/almost but not quite as bad/. Labour did not force peerages through after they'd been blocked by the Appointments Commission, as Boris has just done. Still, half a million quid's half a million quid.
But then labour did take a million quid and then, by a happy coincidence, exempted a sport from tobacco advertising ban and misled parliament on the dates.
The system is not fit for purpose and no political party is fit to oversee any change to it. Labour came to govt in 1997 partly on the back of Tory sleaze and were just as bad.
The whole system needs taking away from political decisions and the assumption one party is better than the other.
Alistair Campbell is interviewing Tony Blair at Hay at the moment. Interesting stuff. Blair is surprisingly even handed about Boris ('too early to tell' if he is any good)
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
Tangentially, does anyone know what will happen if we have more than 25 or more variants?
We're the first U.S. airline to sign an agreement for @boomaero 's ‘Overture’ airliners which are expected to be net-zero carbon and connect 500+ cities in nearly half the time. Taking off in 2029:
I think it's supposed to evoke "sonic" but I see your poimt.
So if we get to net zero air travel and net zero car travel will the environmentalists then accept it ?
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
Tangentially, does anyone know what will happen if we have more than 25 or more variants?
I mean the Greek Alphabet ends at Ω.
Couple of years and it will be the [Alpha, Beta, Alpha, Gamma] variant, which we aren't allowed to shortened to the Outer Hebrides one.
On those very rare occasions I annoyed my headmaster I was required to recite the Greek alphabet.
I then developed issues circa 1991 when the Star Trek writers decided to split the universe into four quadrants, Α, B, Γ, and Δ.
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
Tangentially, does anyone know what will happen if we have more than 25 or more variants?
I mean the Greek Alphabet ends at Ω.
Move to the Russian alphabet?
I do like the suggestion of moving to Viking Runes.
We're the first U.S. airline to sign an agreement for @boomaero 's ‘Overture’ airliners which are expected to be net-zero carbon and connect 500+ cities in nearly half the time. Taking off in 2029:
You know, the design of that aircraft looks awfully familiar.
I suspect there aren't many designs that enable a plane to go supersonic while carrying a significant number of passengers.
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
Tangentially, does anyone know what will happen if we have more than 25 or more variants?
I mean the Greek Alphabet ends at Ω.
Move to the Russian alphabet?
I do like the suggestion of moving to Viking Runes.
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
Tangentially, does anyone know what will happen if we have more than 25 or more variants?
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
Tangentially, does anyone know what will happen if we have more than 25 or more variants?
I mean the Greek Alphabet ends at Ω.
Not sure, but I reckon sigma will just be a standard deviation.
We're the first U.S. airline to sign an agreement for @boomaero 's ‘Overture’ airliners which are expected to be net-zero carbon and connect 500+ cities in nearly half the time. Taking off in 2029:
I think it's supposed to evoke "sonic" but I see your poimt.
So if we get to net zero air travel and net zero car travel will the environmentalists then accept it ?
New York to London in 3:30 with Net Zero emissions?
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
If it was my decision I would close the borders altogether and then unlock the UK internally
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
Tangentially, does anyone know what will happen if we have more than 25 or more variants?
I mean the Greek Alphabet ends at Ω.
Not sure, but I reckon sigma will just be a standard deviation.
I used to know a perverted mathematician. The standard deviation just wasn't enough for her.
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
Tangentially, does anyone know what will happen if we have more than 25 or more variants?
I mean the Greek Alphabet ends at Ω.
Move to the Russian alphabet?
It doesn't really have letter names... A, Be, Ve, Ge, De... The Hebrew one does though, and I think the Arabic.
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
My plan as God Emperor is to invert the pyramid of snobbery.
As you become more knowledgeable and powerful your titles will *reduce*.
So only Einstein, Newton and Hawking would have been allowed to call themselves Mr.
That and my plan to replace the House of Lords with the 300 closest illegitimate descendants of Charle II. So we really will be ruled by a bunch of bastards.
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
Slightly complicated by the problem that many GPs are actually Bachelors of Medicine, not MDs. Then you have dentists that are actually surgeons so traditionally in UK are called "Mr", and now they want to be called Dr. Perhaps we should just call everyone Mr or Ms.?
Except the New Statesman figures include students amongst the figure for 'excluding retirees.'
As I showed last night IPSOS Mori had the Tories winning all classes amongst over 65s in 2019 and the Tories won ABs, C1s and C2s amongst 35-54s with Labour winning DEs amongst that age group.
Labour won all classes amongst 18 to 34s though so it is really only students and under 35s not yet on the property ladder Labour won, once workers neared 40 and got on the property ladder they voted Tory (with only those low paid workers or the unemployed still in social housing or renting over 40 in social class DE sticking with Labour).
Blair of course even managed to win retirees over 65 in 1997 41% to 36% for the Tories and in 2001 he only lost them by 1% to Hague and in 2005 by just 4% to Howard. Even Brown only lost them by 13% in 2010 and so it really is a particularly post Brexit phenomonon.
For example Boris beat Corbyn by a vast 47% margin amongst over 65s in 2019 compared to the 24% margin Cameron beat Ed Miliband by in 2015 amongst retirees
The comparison is quite useful in itself.
But I think it will help perpetuate this idea that over time, demographics favour Labour as older Tory voters die and younger Labour voters turn 18.
Of course if that had been the case, Labour would have had a majority from at the very latest 1992.
Generally the average voter votes Labour from when they get their first vote as they leave school and continue to vote Labour as they attend university, if they do and through their 20s when they are renting free and single and early 30s. By their mid 30s if they are married and have bought their first property they start to consider voting Tory and by the time they reach retirement age in their 60s they will likely own their own home outright and continue voting Tory at every general election until they die
Although your analysis is correct, these patterns are not inevitable.
There's an assumption on here that those who are retired vote out of narrow self-interest, and of course many do. But it's worth remembering that retired people usually have kids, maybe in their 30s/40s, and often grandchildren. It doesn't take that much for older people to be persuaded that what may be in their own narrow self-interest is actually not in the interest of their kids or grandkids, especially if they see their kids prospects being tarnished by specific policies. I make no claim to nobility, but when I come to vote, given that I am comfortable retired, I'm more interested in what the offer is to my offspring and to the public good than to me personally.
Yes and they may also help their children get on the property ladder by giving them some money for a deposit to buy their first property too, thus turning their children into Tories by their 40s
I hope this is not an automatic effect because I've just given my son some money to help him buy a house. I'd never have done this if it's going to turn him into a Tory.
Maybe not a Tory, but perhaps a Lib Dem? You know, the kind of people who find Conservatism uncool but couldn't possibly vote Labour under Corbyn because he would tax their houses of antisemitism...
That will also lead to a money reclaim. Boy can stand on his own two feet if he's going to misbehave like that.
Again, I'm having to recalibrate kinabalu's age, if he has a grown up son.
Anyway, the assumption that older people only vote Conservative out of self-interest needs challenging. I have become more Conservative - well, more anti-Labour - as I have aged because I have children, and because I have no confidence in Labour to deliver the sort of future I want for them. I have little confidence in the Conservatives, either, mind. But my primary political motivation is keeping the sorts of people who hang around with Jeremy Corbyn out of power. Doing so was important when I just had myself to worry about, but vital now I have children.
I had him very young. Shouldn't have been allowed really.
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
Tangentially, does anyone know what will happen if we have more than 25 or more variants?
I mean the Greek Alphabet ends at Ω.
Move to the Russian alphabet?
It doesn't really have letter names... A, Be, Ve, Ge, De... The Hebrew one does though, and I think the Arabic.
FFS, let's not go there. Use Hebrew and you'll be accused of being an imperialist oppressor and use Arabic and you'll be called an apologist for terrorists.
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
I did mine on the history of lesbian novels. Does that get a free pass?
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
My plan as God Emperor is to invert the pyramid of snobbery.
As you become more knowledgeable and powerful your titles will *reduce*.
So only Einstein, Newton and Hawking would have been allowed to call themselves Mr.
That and my plan to replace the House of Lords with the 300 closest illegitimate descendants of Charle II. So we really will be ruled by a bunch of bastards.
Surely if you were God Emperor you would be the only person allowed to be called Mr.?
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
I did mine on the history of lesbian novels. Does that get a free pass?
Discussions about lesbians usually gets me into trouble.
The Wuhan lab being the source of the pandemic would change the status quo hugely and is hence inconvenient. Therefore most people will put their fingers in their ears to anything that points that way.
To those citing Occam’s Razor, they should consider what is simplest.
1) A bat coronavirus makes its way 1200 miles from Yunnan in southern China to Wuhan, via an unidentified mammalian intermediary and leaves no trace of its journey. It then suddenly makes the jump to humans, with an outbreak epicentre that’s walking distance from a viral laboratory. The only lab in China as far as I’m aware, that’s licensed to mess around with coronaviruses and which has specifically taken samples of bat viruses from Yunnan caves.
Or, 2) the virus leaked from the lab.
Leaving all this aside, there’s something else to ponder. That even if there is a natural explanation for the outbreak, what seems undeniable is that the CCP acted to ensure they virus seeded internationally, once it became known to them they had a domestic outbreak.
And further, even if you are naive enough not to see this, surely you can see that China communism has done mightily from this crisis, and it’s going to be an awful temptation for Xi to repeat the trick.
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
I did mine on the history of lesbian novels. Does that get a free pass?
Discussions about lesbians usually gets me into trouble.
I did some drugs as well.
Er, that is, my thesis also covered the changes in recreational drug taking.
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
My plan as God Emperor is to invert the pyramid of snobbery.
As you become more knowledgeable and powerful your titles will *reduce*.
So only Einstein, Newton and Hawking would have been allowed to call themselves Mr.
That and my plan to replace the House of Lords with the 300 closest illegitimate descendants of Charle II. So we really will be ruled by a bunch of bastards.
Surely if you were God Emperor you would be the only person allowed to be called Mr.?
No - I would be the person of least respect. You don't *look up* to dictators, do you?
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
I did mine on the history of lesbian novels. Does that get a free pass?
I wasn't aware that Lesbos was such a renowned centre of literary output?
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
I did mine on the history of lesbian novels. Does that get a free pass?
I wasn't aware that Lesbos was such a renowned centre of literary output?
I'm not sure whether that's deliberate irony or not.
New - 30 Conservative MPs have now signed an amendment to stop aid cuts, including former Prime Minister Theresa May and ex cabinet minister Damian Green, and others including Tim Loughton, Johnny Mercer, Nus Ghani and Bob Seeley https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/1400391811449847816
I'm told they have the numbers - and the government will reverse this without it going to a vote.
Terrible. All these virtue signalling prats who want aid based on our own GDP and not based on what is best for others, what we can afford, or ensuring that the developed world together pays. Should be ashamed of themselves, but instead they're so full of their own moral superiority complex.
In fact this plays well for the Tories. It reminds people that they aren't all parochial, mean spirited little englanders. And for those who wish they were, Johnson is untainted by this (in their view) bleeding heartery because they know it's a backbench rebellion. A win/win. So much so that I'm suspicious.
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
I did mine on the history of lesbian novels. Does that get a free pass?
I met a chap who was doing a PhD on the architecture of the public houses of Fife.
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
My plan as God Emperor is to invert the pyramid of snobbery.
As you become more knowledgeable and powerful your titles will *reduce*.
So only Einstein, Newton and Hawking would have been allowed to call themselves Mr.
That and my plan to replace the House of Lords with the 300 closest illegitimate descendants of Charle II. So we really will be ruled by a bunch of bastards.
Surely if you were God Emperor you would be the only person allowed to be called Mr.?
No - I would be the person of least respect. You don't *look up* to dictators, do you?
You would call yourself "Boris" or something like that then?
Joe is not his normal busy self. It's as if the weight of carrying this batting line up is almost too much for him. He always looks more effective when taking the quick singles and rotating the strike.
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
I did mine on the history of lesbian novels. Does that get a free pass?
I met a chap who was doing a PhD on the architecture of the public houses of Fife.
My favourite one was somebody who did his PhD on the tourism industry in South America.
He therefore got fully funded travel on a huge variety of different tourism junkets - cruises, hotels, backpacking - for three years.
New: Grant Shapps tells Sky News one of the reasons Portugal has been taken off the green list is because of the so-called Nepal variant of the so-called Indian variant
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
I did mine on the history of lesbian novels. Does that get a free pass?
I wasn't aware that Lesbos was such a renowned centre of literary output?
I'm not sure whether that's deliberate irony or not.
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
I did mine on the history of lesbian novels. Does that get a free pass?
I wasn't aware that Lesbos was such a renowned centre of literary output?
I'm not sure whether that's deliberate irony or not.
New: Grant Shapps tells Sky News one of the reasons Portugal has been taken off the green list is because of the so-called Nepal variant of the so-called Indian variant
Tbf, the government are three or four steps ahead of the WHO in variant detection. I think with India it learned a hard lesson in being alert to them and acting early.
Joe is not his normal busy self. It's as if the weight of carrying this batting line up is almost too much for him. He always looks more effective when taking the quick singles and rotating the strike.
I'm not familiar with Bracey and Robinson. Are we "batting deep"?
Joe is not his normal busy self. It's as if the weight of carrying this batting line up is almost too much for him. He always looks more effective when taking the quick singles and rotating the strike.
I'm not familiar with Bracey and Robinson. Are we "batting deep"?
Bracey is an accomplished opening batsman who can keep wicket - a bit like Alec Stewart.
Robinson can bat and has a first class century, but is inconsistent.
New - 30 Conservative MPs have now signed an amendment to stop aid cuts, including former Prime Minister Theresa May and ex cabinet minister Damian Green, and others including Tim Loughton, Johnny Mercer, Nus Ghani and Bob Seeley https://twitter.com/jessicaelgot/status/1400391811449847816
I'm told they have the numbers - and the government will reverse this without it going to a vote.
Terrible. All these virtue signalling prats who want aid based on our own GDP and not based on what is best for others, what we can afford, or ensuring that the developed world together pays. Should be ashamed of themselves, but instead they're so full of their own moral superiority complex.
In fact this plays well for the Tories. It reminds people that they aren't all parochial, mean spirited little englanders. And for those who wish they were, Johnson is untainted by this (in their view) bleeding heartery because they know it's a backbench rebellion. A win/win. So much so that I'm suspicious.
I think it simply that not all Conservatives ARE parochial, mean spirited little englanders, in spite of Boris Johnson doing his best to get rid of that wing of the party. They are just now the minority. Perhaps one day they will become the majority again. It will take time.
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
I did mine on the history of lesbian novels. Does that get a free pass?
I met a chap who was doing a PhD on the architecture of the public houses of Fife.
My favourite one was somebody who did his PhD on the tourism industry in South America.
He therefore got fully funded travel on a huge variety of different tourism junkets - cruises, hotels, backpacking - for three years.
In exchange for writing one book about it.
Now that's what I call genius.
We used to have an academic in Mechanical Engineering who was into bio-mimetics e.g. making a underwater device that moved like a shark moves. He spent 3 months of the year (over the summer) running whale watching tours off the coast of Canada...
Remarkable Newsweek article, telling the story of how a bunch of online amateur Sherlocks sleuthed the lab leak hypothesis, and made it mainstream
Simultaneously dispiriting and encouraging. Dispiriting because of the terrible lies and evasions from China, and the duplicitous omerta from western scientists, encouraging because it shows that concerned citizens around the world can make a massive difference, just with a phone, a laptop and the Net
It is also highly persuasive, if you need to be persuaded that it came from the lab
You seem to have decided well in advance of any evidence!
Maybe your alien chums brought it with them from Zog, on one of their survelling outings?
I think the key point is that the lab leak hypothesis is most dramatic and exciting. Leon has a journalist’s soul, which means drama and excitement (and, preferably, outrage where possible) are key heuristics. You can’t blame journalists. Their job is grabbing attention from a busy populace, and that’s what works. Highlighting the unrepresentative and unusual, often in fields where they have little background (because they don’t really have the time for expertise).
Sometimes they’re even right. Although these are not the metrics to be used to best judge what is and is not right, sheer chance will occasionally cause a bullseye.
Not remotely convinced at the moment, but I’m open to actual evidence.
Where is the ‘actual evidence’ of a natural non-lab origin for this novel bat coronavirus? How did it get from a cave in Yunnan to the centre of Wuhan, 1000 miles away? How did it make that geographical and zoological leap from the cave?
A Yunnanese cave which was, of course, being visited by teams of scientists collecting dozens of novel bat coronaviruses, scientists who then took their samples back to their globally unique lab. 1000 miles away. In the centre of Wuhan
The problem is that pretty much everyone who I've seen pushing this theory has appeared to be a seeker-after-dramatic-story rather than an obRNA that would make the mRNA vaccines we've since developed in the West look like sixth-form projects against whatever China would have been able to roll out at far shorter timescales and more effectively (and gain the plaudits for saving the world). Not only haven't they done so, there are no hints that they have the technology to do so.
(1/2)
Because, though, that all makes for a really great story, it's all glossed over. Either ignored, or diminished, or insulted. While any anecdotal or circumstantial evidence in favour of the story is cherry-picked and highlighted and emphasised. (Stuff like the zoonotic origin being described as only supported by 'precedent' with the word precedent in scare quotes - when by that it is meant that it's only supported by the fact that literally every previous virus to make the jump, all the millions since the dawn of time, did it just that way and no virus has ever done it before in the way that the story requires).
It does make one take these earnest and breathless links with an entire chip-shop-worth of salt. Which can be a shame if there's something in it.
Personally, I could easily accept "they were studying bat coronaviruses because they were worried about another SARS or MERS and had an accident." It would need genuine evidence to back it up (a God of the Gaps argument that we can't trace it all the way back to Bartok the Bat in Cave 16 in Yunnan province and what he did doesn't cut the mustard, because it's far more common to be unable to trace a zoonotic jump all the way back than otherwise. But this doesn't mean that there was a secret virus lab in the 1800s run by a Victorian Dr Moreau that designed the most recent of the four cold coronaviruses, either). However, this always gets swept into a "they were designing it and it was a mad scientist experiment run amuck!" theme as well, which runs into multiple implausibilities that have been highlighted.
It's an Achilles heel of storylovers - to push the more dramatic ones too far. (2/2)
And yet you completely miss the most obvious evidence of all. Which is all around you, the circumstantial stuff
"literally every previous virus to make the jump, all the millions since the dawn of time, did it just that way and no virus has ever done it before in the way that the story requires)."
So basically it's almost impossible. It can never happen! This is the entirety of YOUR evidence (I wait for any more)
And yet, here is the reaction of the director of the Wuhan lab, when she first heard about this weird new respiratory coronavirus disease, at a conference in Shanghai
""Drop whatever you are doing and deal with it now,” she recalls the director saying.
"Shi, a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years, walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?”"
COULD THEY HAVE COME FROM OUR LAB
That was her first, urgent reaction. A leak from the lab. She rushed back to Wuhan to check....
And concluded NO.
...Meanwhile she frantically went through her own lab’s records from the past few years to check for any mishandling of experimental materials, especially during disposal. Shi breathed a sigh of relief when the results came back: none of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves. “That really took a load off my mind,” she says. “I had not slept a wink for days.”...
I note you omitted the other bit of the article which very clearly demonstrates the occurrence of bat-human transfer of coronaviruses in the wild.
...In October 2015 Shi’s team collected blood samples from more than 200 residents in four of those villages. It found that six people, or nearly 3 percent, carried antibodies against SARS-like coronaviruses from bats—even though none of them had handled wildlife or reported SARS-like or other pneumonia like symptoms…. …Three years earlier Shi’s team had been called in to investigate the virus profile of a mine shaft in Yunnan’s mountainous Mojiang County—famous for its fermented Pu’er tea—where six miners suffered from pneumonialike diseases and two died. After sampling the cave for a year, the researchers discovered a diverse group of coronaviruses in six bat species. In many cases, multiple viral strains had infected a single animal, turning it into a flying factory for new viruses...
Thank you for the sensible and balanced response.
It is my experience, across the Internet, that there are people (who seem to be represented on this forum too) who are only too willing to believe the worst, will only cherry pick the evidence that suits their approach and then run with it as though only they were the holders and purveyors of the 'true truth'.
My instinct is that the belief in and acceptance of the various conspiracy fantasies on this subject require too much work for them to have taken place. The path of evolution and the path of contemporary events is normally along the line of least resistance and least effort. Viruses mutate and become more widespread because they become easier to contract. Of the type that the Coronavirus is, being single strand RNA, they are also prone to error during their replication phase. Some errors cause the newly replicated virus to become useless, therefore that mutation dies out, some make it less dangerous and some make it more easy to transmit. Given how many billions of billions of viral particles there are out there, it's not in the least bit surprising or abnormal that, once they get to infect a human that they should then, by random chance, mutate into the perfect transmission machine. And, over time, mutate out of it again once we all have antibodies, of course.
This whole thing about finding someone to blame for these sorts of things is psychologically understandable - having something to point at and judge makes the afflicted (in all sorts of circumstances) feel better, but it does nothing whatsoever to change the situation that the afflicted are in.
Are we blaming the people of Kent for for the 'Alpha Variant'? Shall we carpet-bomb Kent as an act of revenge? Cut them off from the rest of society? Forever ostracise the leaders of Kent County Council for having the misfortune to be in roughly the part of the world where someone unknown caught Covid, replicated the virus and in doing so, it mutated into a better virus - i.e. the gain of function caused by random chance?
To do that would be ridiculous. And that ridiculousness goes all the way back through the chain of transmission to China where, all the relevant evidence shows that Coronaviruses transmit to humans naturally and this one almost certainly did that exactly the same way as all the others - like SARS (from Civet Cats) and MERS (from camels in the Middle East) before it.
Not everything is a conspiracy or a cover up. It might be a calamity, but its cause almost certainly isn't deliberate. And, to go back to my original point, it makes no difference to you or me now anyway.
The Chinese deliberately spread Covid around the world by allowing - even encouraging - flights in and out of the country, even as they shut down their own country domestically, to contain the pandemic
You want us to just forget that, because "it makes no difference now anyway"
Honestly, why do you need to obsess about it? Even if the bug did escape a lab by accident (and elsewhere in this forum is presented evidence that it didn't), what difference does it make to you, personally, now?
What do you gain by your hypothesis being true*? What about the public health situation is going to change?
The people who matter are the ones doing the investigation, and those who need to know will do so. You and I just need to keep socially distancing, get our vaccinations and do our best to help stop a disease from spreading. Endlessly trying to find some nefarious actor to blame for its source isn't going to help anyone.
Actually I can think of one thing that is 'gained'. It's the encouragement of the growth of distrust in science, the distrust of modes of logical thought that help humanity, and the encouragement of the fracturing of civil society. Now which state actors in the world can we recall who have an interest in sowing distrust and chaos in the societies in which people live? Your name isn't Leonid, by any chance is it?
The Wuhan lab being the source of the pandemic would change the status quo hugely and is hence inconvenient. Therefore most people will put their fingers in their ears to anything that points that way.
To those citing Occam’s Razor, they should consider what is simplest.
1) A bat coronavirus makes its way 1200 miles from Yunnan in southern China to Wuhan, via an unidentified mammalian intermediary and leaves no trace of its journey. It then suddenly makes the jump to humans, with an outbreak epicentre that’s walking distance from a viral laboratory. The only lab in China as far as I’m aware, that’s licensed to mess around with coronaviruses and which has specifically taken samples of bat viruses from Yunnan caves.
Or, 2) the virus leaked from the lab.
Leaving all this aside, there’s something else to ponder. That even if there is a natural explanation for the outbreak, what seems undeniable is that the CCP acted to ensure they virus seeded internationally, once it became known to them they had a domestic outbreak.
And further, even if you are naive enough not to see this, surely you can see that China communism has done mightily from this crisis, and it’s going to be an awful temptation for Xi to repeat the trick.
You are absolutely correct that the CCP has behaved disgracefully, even if the origin of the virus is entirely natural. There are a whole variety of areas - from covering up initial severity, through not sharing information, and through allowing international flights to continue even when they knew they had a problem - where they have behaved absolutely appallingly, and their behaviour needs to be called out.
Re lab leak: it's also important to remember that there are many gradients here
1. There was a leak at the lab, which low level employees covered up, and which resulted in something between one and a thousand viruses escaping into the wild - with one of those being CV19
2. There was a leak, which was known about by the lab director and the CCP, which was covered up.
3. Viruses were being studied, and were being cultured in petri dishes, and some human cells got into the petri dish, allowing the virus to have some human cells to go around its mutating way on.
4. The virus was one of a number of "gain of function" experiments that escaped.
5. The virus was genetically engineered by scientists looking to create a bioweapon that accidentially escaped
6. As 5, but the virus was deliberately released, in the knowledge that China would be able to lockdown, while the rest of the world suffered.
It's also entirely possible that late this year, a group of pangolins are discovered living in the wild somewhere outside Wuhan happily having a coronavirus that looks remarkably like CV19.
New: Grant Shapps tells Sky News one of the reasons Portugal has been taken off the green list is because of the so-called Nepal variant of the so-called Indian variant
New: Grant Shapps tells Sky News one of the reasons Portugal has been taken off the green list is because of the so-called Nepal variant of the so-called Indian variant
New: Grant Shapps tells Sky News one of the reasons Portugal has been taken off the green list is because of the so-called Nepal variant of the so-called Indian variant
Tbf, the government are three or four steps ahead of the WHO in variant detection. I think with India it learned a hard lesson in being alert to them and acting early.
IIRC an absurd proportion of the genomic analysis of COVID is being done in the UK - was the most in the world at one point. Surely the US labs must have woken up on this now, though?
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
I did mine on the history of lesbian novels. Does that get a free pass?
I wasn't aware that Lesbos was such a renowned centre of literary output?
I'm not sure whether that's deliberate irony or not.
Another government insider said that it was a rise in variants that prompted ministers to decide to take it off the green list. “They’re victim of their own pretty decent genomic capabilities. They’ve picked up increases in both the Indian and Nepalese variants so there was little choice.”
The decision to take Portugal off the green list was also influenced by the Johnson government’s eagerness to lift all lockdown restrictions on June 21. “There’s no way we can meet the step four easing if we’re importing more variants of concern,” an official said. https://www.ft.com/content/be70d339-37c7-46c9-98e8-4f8878c7392f
Tangentially, does anyone know what will happen if we have more than 25 or more variants?
I mean the Greek Alphabet ends at Ω.
Move to the Russian alphabet?
Since Shapps is already talking about some “Nepal” variant apparently coming our way from Portugal, it appears they aren’t on message. Once people have a country associated with a new variant, it will be too late to expect everyone to switch to Greek letters.
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
I did mine on the history of lesbian novels. Does that get a free pass?
I wasn't aware that Lesbos was such a renowned centre of literary output?
I'm not sure whether that's deliberate irony or not.
Remarkable Newsweek article, telling the story of how a bunch of online amateur Sherlocks sleuthed the lab leak hypothesis, and made it mainstream
Simultaneously dispiriting and encouraging. Dispiriting because of the terrible lies and evasions from China, and the duplicitous omerta from western scientists, encouraging because it shows that concerned citizens around the world can make a massive difference, just with a phone, a laptop and the Net
It is also highly persuasive, if you need to be persuaded that it came from the lab
You seem to have decided well in advance of any evidence!
Maybe your alien chums brought it with them from Zog, on one of their survelling outings?
I think the key point is that the lab leak hypothesis is most dramatic and exciting. Leon has a journalist’s soul, which means drama and excitement (and, preferably, outrage where possible) are key heuristics. You can’t blame journalists. Their job is grabbing attention from a busy populace, and that’s what works. Highlighting the unrepresentative and unusual, often in fields where they have little background (because they don’t really have the time for expertise).
Sometimes they’re even right. Although these are not the metrics to be used to best judge what is and is not right, sheer chance will occasionally cause a bullseye.
Not remotely convinced at the moment, but I’m open to actual evidence.
Where is the ‘actual evidence’ of a natural non-lab origin for this novel bat coronavirus? How did it get from a cave in Yunnan to the centre of Wuhan, 1000 miles away? How did it make that geographical and zoological leap from the cave?
A Yunnanese cave which was, of course, being visited by teams of scientists collecting dozens of novel bat coronaviruses, scientists who then took their samples back to their globally unique lab. 1000 miles away. In the centre of Wuhan
The problem is that pretty much everyone who I've seen pushing this theory has appeared to be a seeker-after-dramatic-story rather than an obRNA that would make the mRNA vaccines we've since developed in the West look like sixth-form projects against whatever China would have been able to roll out at far shorter timescales and more effectively (and gain the plaudits for saving the world). Not only haven't they done so, there are no hints that they have the technology to do so.
(1/2)
Because, though, that all makes for a really great story, it's all glossed over. Either ignored, or diminished, or insulted. While any anecdotal or circumstantial evidence in favour of the story is cherry-picked and highlighted and emphasised. (Stuff like the zoonotic origin being described as only supported by 'precedent' with the word precedent in scare quotes - when by that it is meant that it's only supported by the fact that literally every previous virus to make the jump, all the millions since the dawn of time, did it just that way and no virus has ever done it before in the way that the story requires).
It does make one take these earnest and breathless links with an entire chip-shop-worth of salt. Which can be a shame if there's something in it.
Personally, I could easily accept "they were studying bat coronaviruses because they were worried about another SARS or MERS and had an accident." It would need genuine evidence to back it up (a God of the Gaps argument that we can't trace it all the way back to Bartok the Bat in Cave 16 in Yunnan province and what he did doesn't cut the mustard, because it's far more common to be unable to trace a zoonotic jump all the way back than otherwise. But this doesn't mean that there was a secret virus lab in the 1800s run by a Victorian Dr Moreau that designed the most recent of the four cold coronaviruses, either). However, this always gets swept into a "they were designing it and it was a mad scientist experiment run amuck!" theme as well, which runs into multiple implausibilities that have been highlighted.
It's an Achilles heel of storylovers - to push the more dramatic ones too far. (2/2)
And yet you completely miss the most obvious evidence of all. Which is all around you, the circumstantial stuff
"literally every previous virus to make the jump, all the millions since the dawn of time, did it just that way and no virus has ever done it before in the way that the story requires)."
So basically it's almost impossible. It can never happen! This is the entirety of YOUR evidence (I wait for any more)
And yet, here is the reaction of the director of the Wuhan lab, when she first heard about this weird new respiratory coronavirus disease, at a conference in Shanghai
""Drop whatever you are doing and deal with it now,” she recalls the director saying.
"Shi, a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years, walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?”"
COULD THEY HAVE COME FROM OUR LAB
That was her first, urgent reaction. A leak from the lab. She rushed back to Wuhan to check....
And concluded NO.
...Meanwhile she frantically went through her own lab’s records from the past few years to check for any mishandling of experimental materials, especially during disposal. Shi breathed a sigh of relief when the results came back: none of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves. “That really took a load off my mind,” she says. “I had not slept a wink for days.”...
I note you omitted the other bit of the article which very clearly demonstrates the occurrence of bat-human transfer of coronaviruses in the wild.
...In October 2015 Shi’s team collected blood samples from more than 200 residents in four of those villages. It found that six people, or nearly 3 percent, carried antibodies against SARS-like coronaviruses from bats—even though none of them had handled wildlife or reported SARS-like or other pneumonia like symptoms…. …Three years earlier Shi’s team had been called in to investigate the virus profile of a mine shaft in Yunnan’s mountainous Mojiang County—famous for its fermented Pu’er tea—where six miners suffered from pneumonialike diseases and two died. After sampling the cave for a year, the researchers discovered a diverse group of coronaviruses in six bat species. In many cases, multiple viral strains had infected a single animal, turning it into a flying factory for new viruses...
Thank you for the sensible and balanced response.
It is my experience, across the Internet, that there are people (who seem to be represented on this forum too) who are only too willing to believe the worst, will only cherry pick the evidence that suits their approach and then run with it as though only they were the holders and purveyors of the 'true truth'.
My instinct is that the belief in and acceptance of the various conspiracy fantasies on this subject require too much work for them to have taken place. The path of evolution and the path of contemporary events is normally along the line of least resistance and least effort. Viruses mutate and become more widespread because they become easier to contract. Of the type that the Coronavirus is, being single strand RNA, they are also prone to error during their replication phase. Some errors cause the newly replicated virus to become useless, therefore that mutation dies out, some make it less dangerous and some make it more easy to transmit. Given how many billions of billions of viral particles there are out there, it's not in the least bit surprising or abnormal that, once they get to infect a human that they should then, by random chance, mutate into the perfect transmission machine. And, over time, mutate out of it again once we all have antibodies, of course.
This whole thing about finding someone to blame for these sorts of things is psychologically understandable - having something to point at and judge makes the afflicted (in all sorts of circumstances) feel better, but it does nothing whatsoever to change the situation that the afflicted are in.
Are we blaming the people of Kent for for the 'Alpha Variant'? Shall we carpet-bomb Kent as an act of revenge? Cut them off from the rest of society? Forever ostracise the leaders of Kent County Council for having the misfortune to be in roughly the part of the world where someone unknown caught Covid, replicated the virus and in doing so, it mutated into a better virus - i.e. the gain of function caused by random chance?
To do that would be ridiculous. And that ridiculousness goes all the way back through the chain of transmission to China where, all the relevant evidence shows that Coronaviruses transmit to humans naturally and this one almost certainly did that exactly the same way as all the others - like SARS (from Civet Cats) and MERS (from camels in the Middle East) before it.
Not everything is a conspiracy or a cover up. It might be a calamity, but its cause almost certainly isn't deliberate. And, to go back to my original point, it makes no difference to you or me now anyway.
The Chinese deliberately spread Covid around the world by allowing - even encouraging - flights in and out of the country, even as they shut down their own country domestically, to contain the pandemic
You want us to just forget that, because "it makes no difference now anyway"
Honestly, why do you need to obsess about it? Even if the bug did escape a lab by accident (and elsewhere in this forum is presented evidence that it didn't), what difference does it make to you, personally, now?
What do you gain by your hypothesis being true*? What about the public health situation is going to change?
The people who matter are the ones doing the investigation, and those who need to know will do so. You and I just need to keep socially distancing, get our vaccinations and do our best to help stop a disease from spreading. Endlessly trying to find some nefarious actor to blame for its source isn't going to help anyone.
Actually I can think of one thing that is 'gained'. It's the encouragement of the growth of distrust in science, the distrust of modes of logical thought that help humanity, and the encouragement of the fracturing of civil society. Now which state actors in the world can we recall who have an interest in sowing distrust and chaos in the societies in which people live? Your name isn't Leonid, by any chance is it?
I think you might have just named Leon's next incarnation for him
Good Morning Britain's ratings plunge to a record low with 450,000 viewers tuning in - a far cry from the peak of 1.9 million before Piers Morgan's departure
It is worth remembering that between mid-March and mid-April, daily US Covid cases went from 35,000 to 70,000. But hospitalisations and deaths didn't budge, because the most vulnerable had already been vaccinated.
This seems to be the absolute crux of the shrill voices. Because in wave 1 and 2 there was a direct path of increase cases leads to increased hospitalization leads to deaths. But now the pathway should have been broken by the vaccination of the most vulnerable. Yet all you see on the zero covid and iSAGE twitter feeds is "cases are rising and this will lead to more deaths, why are the government being so stupid? They are making the same mistake again!"
It's reassuring to read posts like this and realise not all academic scientists* are complete idiots.
*Or at least, so I deduce from your posts. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Complete idiot on many things, but hopefully not where science is concerned...
Mr Tubbs, I think you're selling yourself short.
What is worrying though, speaking as a layman, is the realisation as to just how far many scientists are willing to ride their personal hobby horses rather than look objectively at the data and draw logical conclusions. I don't think it's doing the reputation of science any favours, frankly.
One problem is that the title of Professor or Dr is taken (often by the possessor) to incur god like powers of knowledge and perfectly unprejudiced judgement.
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
If I ever became Prime Minister/Directly Elected Dictator I would ban the use of awarding doctorates for non medical/science degrees.
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
I did mine on the history of lesbian novels. Does that get a free pass?
I wasn't aware that Lesbos was such a renowned centre of literary output?
I'm not sure whether that's deliberate irony or not.
The Wuhan lab being the source of the pandemic would change the status quo hugely and is hence inconvenient. Therefore most people will put their fingers in their ears to anything that points that way.
To those citing Occam’s Razor, they should consider what is simplest.
1) A bat coronavirus makes its way 1200 miles from Yunnan in southern China to Wuhan, via an unidentified mammalian intermediary and leaves no trace of its journey. It then suddenly makes the jump to humans, with an outbreak epicentre that’s walking distance from a viral laboratory. The only lab in China as far as I’m aware, that’s licensed to mess around with coronaviruses and which has specifically taken samples of bat viruses from Yunnan caves.
Or, 2) the virus leaked from the lab.
Leaving all this aside, there’s something else to ponder. That even if there is a natural explanation for the outbreak, what seems undeniable is that the CCP acted to ensure they virus seeded internationally, once it became known to them they had a domestic outbreak.
And further, even if you are naive enough not to see this, surely you can see that China communism has done mightily from this crisis, and it’s going to be an awful temptation for Xi to repeat the trick.
You are absolutely correct that the CCP has behaved disgracefully, even if the origin of the virus is entirely natural. There are a whole variety of areas - from covering up initial severity, through not sharing information, and through allowing international flights to continue even when they knew they had a problem - where they have behaved absolutely appallingly, and their behaviour needs to be called out.
Re lab leak: it's also important to remember that there are many gradients here
1. There was a leak at the lab, which low level employees covered up, and which resulted in something between one and a thousand viruses escaping into the wild - with one of those being CV19
2. There was a leak, which was known about by the lab director and the CCP, which was covered up.
3. Viruses were being studied, and were being cultured in petri dishes, and some human cells got into the petri dish, allowing the virus to have some human cells to go around its mutating way on.
4. The virus was one of a number of "gain of function" experiments that escaped.
5. The virus was genetically engineered by scientists looking to create a bioweapon that accidentially escaped
6. As 5, but the virus was deliberately released, in the knowledge that China would be able to lockdown, while the rest of the world suffered.
It's also entirely possible that late this year, a group of pangolins are discovered living in the wild somewhere outside Wuhan happily having a coronavirus that looks remarkably like CV19.
7. None of the above
And besides what you going to do about it?
Capitalist greed has sold its soul and half its assets to the CCP
New: Grant Shapps tells Sky News one of the reasons Portugal has been taken off the green list is because of the so-called Nepal variant of the so-called Indian variant
Remarkable Newsweek article, telling the story of how a bunch of online amateur Sherlocks sleuthed the lab leak hypothesis, and made it mainstream
Simultaneously dispiriting and encouraging. Dispiriting because of the terrible lies and evasions from China, and the duplicitous omerta from western scientists, encouraging because it shows that concerned citizens around the world can make a massive difference, just with a phone, a laptop and the Net
It is also highly persuasive, if you need to be persuaded that it came from the lab
You seem to have decided well in advance of any evidence!
Maybe your alien chums brought it with them from Zog, on one of their survelling outings?
I think the key point is that the lab leak hypothesis is most dramatic and exciting. Leon has a journalist’s soul, which means drama and excitement (and, preferably, outrage where possible) are key heuristics. You can’t blame journalists. Their job is grabbing attention from a busy populace, and that’s what works. Highlighting the unrepresentative and unusual, often in fields where they have little background (because they don’t really have the time for expertise).
Sometimes they’re even right. Although these are not the metrics to be used to best judge what is and is not right, sheer chance will occasionally cause a bullseye.
Not remotely convinced at the moment, but I’m open to actual evidence.
Where is the ‘actual evidence’ of a natural non-lab origin for this novel bat coronavirus? How did it get from a cave in Yunnan to the centre of Wuhan, 1000 miles away? How did it make that geographical and zoological leap from the cave?
A Yunnanese cave which was, of course, being visited by teams of scientists collecting dozens of novel bat coronaviruses, scientists who then took their samples back to their globally unique lab. 1000 miles away. In the centre of Wuhan
The problem is that pretty much everyone who I've seen pushing this theory has appeared to be a seeker-after-dramatic-story rather than an obRNA that would make the mRNA vaccines we've since developed in the West look like sixth-form projects against whatever China would have been able to roll out at far shorter timescales and more effectively (and gain the plaudits for saving the world). Not only haven't they done so, there are no hints that they have the technology to do so.
(1/2)
Because, though, that all makes for a really great story, it's all glossed over. Either ignored, or diminished, or insulted. While any anecdotal or circumstantial evidence in favour of the story is cherry-picked and highlighted and emphasised. (Stuff like the zoonotic origin being described as only supported by 'precedent' with the word precedent in scare quotes - when by that it is meant that it's only supported by the fact that literally every previous virus to make the jump, all the millions since the dawn of time, did it just that way and no virus has ever done it before in the way that the story requires).
It does make one take these earnest and breathless links with an entire chip-shop-worth of salt. Which can be a shame if there's something in it.
Personally, I could easily accept "they were studying bat coronaviruses because they were worried about another SARS or MERS and had an accident." It would need genuine evidence to back it up (a God of the Gaps argument that we can't trace it all the way back to Bartok the Bat in Cave 16 in Yunnan province and what he did doesn't cut the mustard, because it's far more common to be unable to trace a zoonotic jump all the way back than otherwise. But this doesn't mean that there was a secret virus lab in the 1800s run by a Victorian Dr Moreau that designed the most recent of the four cold coronaviruses, either). However, this always gets swept into a "they were designing it and it was a mad scientist experiment run amuck!" theme as well, which runs into multiple implausibilities that have been highlighted.
It's an Achilles heel of storylovers - to push the more dramatic ones too far. (2/2)
And yet you completely miss the most obvious evidence of all. Which is all around you, the circumstantial stuff
"literally every previous virus to make the jump, all the millions since the dawn of time, did it just that way and no virus has ever done it before in the way that the story requires)."
So basically it's almost impossible. It can never happen! This is the entirety of YOUR evidence (I wait for any more)
And yet, here is the reaction of the director of the Wuhan lab, when she first heard about this weird new respiratory coronavirus disease, at a conference in Shanghai
""Drop whatever you are doing and deal with it now,” she recalls the director saying.
"Shi, a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years, walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?”"
COULD THEY HAVE COME FROM OUR LAB
That was her first, urgent reaction. A leak from the lab. She rushed back to Wuhan to check....
And concluded NO.
...Meanwhile she frantically went through her own lab’s records from the past few years to check for any mishandling of experimental materials, especially during disposal. Shi breathed a sigh of relief when the results came back: none of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from bat caves. “That really took a load off my mind,” she says. “I had not slept a wink for days.”...
I note you omitted the other bit of the article which very clearly demonstrates the occurrence of bat-human transfer of coronaviruses in the wild.
...In October 2015 Shi’s team collected blood samples from more than 200 residents in four of those villages. It found that six people, or nearly 3 percent, carried antibodies against SARS-like coronaviruses from bats—even though none of them had handled wildlife or reported SARS-like or other pneumonia like symptoms…. …Three years earlier Shi’s team had been called in to investigate the virus profile of a mine shaft in Yunnan’s mountainous Mojiang County—famous for its fermented Pu’er tea—where six miners suffered from pneumonialike diseases and two died. After sampling the cave for a year, the researchers discovered a diverse group of coronaviruses in six bat species. In many cases, multiple viral strains had infected a single animal, turning it into a flying factory for new viruses...
Thank you for the sensible and balanced response.
It is my experience, across the Internet, that there are people (who seem to be represented on this forum too) who are only too willing to believe the worst, will only cherry pick the evidence that suits their approach and then run with it as though only they were the holders and purveyors of the 'true truth'.
My instinct is that the belief in and acceptance of the various conspiracy fantasies on this subject require too much work for them to have taken place. The path of evolution and the path of contemporary events is normally along the line of least resistance and least effort. Viruses mutate and become more widespread because they become easier to contract. Of the type that the Coronavirus is, being single strand RNA, they are also prone to error during their replication phase. Some errors cause the newly replicated virus to become useless, therefore that mutation dies out, some make it less dangerous and some make it more easy to transmit. Given how many billions of billions of viral particles there are out there, it's not in the least bit surprising or abnormal that, once they get to infect a human that they should then, by random chance, mutate into the perfect transmission machine. And, over time, mutate out of it again once we all have antibodies, of course.
This whole thing about finding someone to blame for these sorts of things is psychologically understandable - having something to point at and judge makes the afflicted (in all sorts of circumstances) feel better, but it does nothing whatsoever to change the situation that the afflicted are in.
Are we blaming the people of Kent for for the 'Alpha Variant'? Shall we carpet-bomb Kent as an act of revenge? Cut them off from the rest of society? Forever ostracise the leaders of Kent County Council for having the misfortune to be in roughly the part of the world where someone unknown caught Covid, replicated the virus and in doing so, it mutated into a better virus - i.e. the gain of function caused by random chance?
To do that would be ridiculous. And that ridiculousness goes all the way back through the chain of transmission to China where, all the relevant evidence shows that Coronaviruses transmit to humans naturally and this one almost certainly did that exactly the same way as all the others - like SARS (from Civet Cats) and MERS (from camels in the Middle East) before it.
Not everything is a conspiracy or a cover up. It might be a calamity, but its cause almost certainly isn't deliberate. And, to go back to my original point, it makes no difference to you or me now anyway.
The Chinese deliberately spread Covid around the world by allowing - even encouraging - flights in and out of the country, even as they shut down their own country domestically, to contain the pandemic
You want us to just forget that, because "it makes no difference now anyway"
Honestly, why do you need to obsess about it? Even if the bug did escape a lab by accident (and elsewhere in this forum is presented evidence that it didn't), what difference does it make to you, personally, now?
What do you gain by your hypothesis being true*? What about the public health situation is going to change?
The people who matter are the ones doing the investigation, and those who need to know will do so. You and I just need to keep socially distancing, get our vaccinations and do our best to help stop a disease from spreading. Endlessly trying to find some nefarious actor to blame for its source isn't going to help anyone.
Actually I can think of one thing that is 'gained'. It's the encouragement of the growth of distrust in science, the distrust of modes of logical thought that help humanity, and the encouragement of the fracturing of civil society. Now which state actors in the world can we recall who have an interest in sowing distrust and chaos in the societies in which people live? Your name isn't Leonid, by any chance is it?
I think you might have just named Leon's next incarnation for him
I don't think he liked it when I compared his works to Dan Brown.
New: Grant Shapps tells Sky News one of the reasons Portugal has been taken off the green list is because of the so-called Nepal variant of the so-called Indian variant
Comments
The only place I have ever had to go down to a hotel reception to complain that there isn’t a bed in my room.
Only to have them come back up with me to demonstrate how it folded down out of the wardrobe.
I mean the Greek Alphabet ends at Ω.
Once all domestic restrictions are lifted on 21 June, then we can start to move countries to green list so long as it doesn't jeopardise our having no domestic restrictions.
Scientists are no more immune than anyone else to speaking beyond their expertise if it gets them a bit of attention and massages their egos.
*this is beyond my expertise too - I'm not an infectious disease modeller - but the public data do not concern me yet.
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)32557-1/pdf
https://twitter.com/united/status/1400407090192125952
We're the first U.S. airline to sign an agreement for
@boomaero
's ‘Overture’ airliners which are expected to be net-zero carbon and connect 500+ cities in nearly half the time. Taking off in 2029:
Either people could go to Portugal, in which case supporters could be there, or they shouldn't in which case it should never have been green.
How many travellers have gone to Portugal anyway without the footie just because they've been told they can?
This is like the furore over the horse race again when Tube travel was orders of magnitude more.
Or Iran.
Supersonic Planes are Coming Back (And This Time, They Might Work)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p0fRlCHYyg
The system is not fit for purpose and no political party is fit to oversee any change to it. Labour came to govt in 1997 partly on the back of Tory sleaze and were just as bad.
The whole system needs taking away from political decisions and the assumption one party is better than the other.
I then developed issues circa 1991 when the Star Trek writers decided to split the universe into four quadrants, Α, B, Γ, and Δ.
If that's feasible then fantastic.
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1400456741033189385?s=20
John Keegan pointed out the equivalent problem in the military - every brigadier-general paper pusher thinks he is the re-incarnation of Alexander or Napoleon. Because the name plate on his desk starts with "General..."
You really shouldn't get to call yourself a doctor just because you've done 'This history of needlework as a tool of oppression by the patriarchy' at Brighton University.
As you become more knowledgeable and powerful your titles will *reduce*.
So only Einstein, Newton and Hawking would have been allowed to call themselves Mr.
That and my plan to replace the House of Lords with the 300 closest illegitimate descendants of Charle II. So we really will be ruled by a bunch of bastards.
And another sport gone from Sky.
The obvious compromise is to use Sanskrit.
To those citing Occam’s Razor, they should consider what is simplest.
1) A bat coronavirus makes its way 1200 miles from Yunnan in southern China to Wuhan, via an unidentified mammalian intermediary and leaves no trace of its journey. It then suddenly makes the jump to humans, with an outbreak epicentre that’s walking distance from a viral laboratory. The only lab in China as far as I’m aware, that’s licensed to mess around with coronaviruses and which has specifically taken samples of bat viruses from Yunnan caves.
Or, 2) the virus leaked from the lab.
Leaving all this aside, there’s something else to ponder. That even if there is a natural explanation for the outbreak, what seems undeniable is that the CCP acted to ensure they virus seeded internationally, once it became known to them they had a domestic outbreak.
And further, even if you are naive enough not to see this, surely you can see that China communism has done mightily from this crisis, and it’s going to be an awful temptation for Xi to repeat the trick.
Er, that is, my thesis also covered the changes in recreational drug taking.
Is this helping?
Last ball of the 117th over: Ollie Robinson shies at the stumps, the ricochet keeps Tim Southee on strike
First ball of the 118th over: James Anderson nicks off Tim Southee
Just what is it about New Zealand, Lord's, and costly overthrows?
He therefore got fully funded travel on a huge variety of different tourism junkets - cruises, hotels, backpacking - for three years.
In exchange for writing one book about it.
Now that's what I call genius.
But the WHO says no Nepal variant exists...?
https://twitter.com/kitty_donaldson/status/1400476606477516801
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sappho
Robinson can bat and has a first class century, but is inconsistent.
What do you gain by your hypothesis being true*? What about the public health situation is going to change?
The people who matter are the ones doing the investigation, and those who need to know will do so. You and I just need to keep socially distancing, get our vaccinations and do our best to help stop a disease from spreading. Endlessly trying to find some nefarious actor to blame for its source isn't going to help anyone.
Actually I can think of one thing that is 'gained'. It's the encouragement of the growth of distrust in science, the distrust of modes of logical thought that help humanity, and the encouragement of the fracturing of civil society. Now which state actors in the world can we recall who have an interest in sowing distrust and chaos in the societies in which people live? Your name isn't Leonid, by any chance is it?
Re lab leak: it's also important to remember that there are many gradients here
1. There was a leak at the lab, which low level employees covered up, and which resulted in something between one and a thousand viruses escaping into the wild - with one of those being CV19
2. There was a leak, which was known about by the lab director and the CCP, which was covered up.
3. Viruses were being studied, and were being cultured in petri dishes, and some human cells got into the petri dish, allowing the virus to have some human cells to go around its mutating way on.
4. The virus was one of a number of "gain of function" experiments that escaped.
5. The virus was genetically engineered by scientists looking to create a bioweapon that accidentially escaped
6. As 5, but the virus was deliberately released, in the knowledge that China would be able to lockdown, while the rest of the world suffered.
It's also entirely possible that late this year, a group of pangolins are discovered living in the wild somewhere outside Wuhan happily having a coronavirus that looks remarkably like CV19.
Go woke...go broke....
And besides what you going to do about it?
Capitalist greed has sold its soul and half its assets to the CCP
https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1400397182176567302?s=21
And now some nonsense scaremongering about a Nepal variant. I did say there would be a Nauru one so I wasn't far out.
It's pathetic.
My goodwill towards this Government, and my vote, is rapidly evaporating.