Why ARE people so irrationally allergic to the Lab Leak Hypothesis?
The first reaction of the director of the Wuhan lab, Shi Zhengli, when she heard about Covid, a novel bat coronavirus, was to think "OMG maybe it came from my lab", and she rushed home from Shanghai to check
Her first reaction was not "oh lab leak plagues never happen, all pandemics have come from natural zoonosis".
She thought the idea was highly plausible.
And yet so many people in the West are utterly averse to the notion. To the extent they don't even want it discussed.
Why is this? Hatred of Trump, who espoused the theory? I can believe that in the USA, in very liberal circles - but not in the UK. Fear of being racist? Fear that a proven lab leak will upend the world? Destroy virology? What?
This is a serious point. We have reacted so irrationally Facebook censored any mention of this hypothesis for a year, exactly as the Chinese wanted
I just don't care — I have more important things to worry about.
I live in Havering but had my jab today in Barking & Dagenham. That’ll mess with the figures!
How are you feeling? And which vaccine did you get?
AZ unfortunately. Although I read something about Pfizer and myocardia yesterday which made me equally scared of having that! The nurse said I could swerve it and rebook if I liked, but I couldn’t be bothered. Getting on a plane levels of anxiety. I didn’t even realise she’d done the jab though.
I feel ok thanks Robert. I had it almost 5 hours ago, maybe the worst is yet to come. Terrible nights sleep last night as my son was up screaming for ages, so I felt knackered before and after the jab. Rode there and back on the mountain bike (17k) plus did an hours ride after to ease a bit of anxiety.
You'll be fine. Tomorrow, you'll have a slightly sore arm, and that'll be it.
And you'll have done your bit to help end this pandemic.
I live in Havering but had my jab today in Barking & Dagenham. That’ll mess with the figures!
How are you feeling? And which vaccine did you get?
AZ unfortunately. Although I read something about Pfizer and myocardia yesterday which made me equally scared of having that! The nurse said I could swerve it and rebook if I liked, but I couldn’t be bothered. Getting on a plane levels of anxiety. I didn’t even realise she’d done the jab though.
I feel ok thanks Robert. I had it almost 5 hours ago, maybe the worst is yet to come. Terrible nights sleep last night as my son was up screaming for ages, so I felt knackered before and after the jab. Rode there and back on the mountain bike (17k) plus did an hours ride after to ease a bit of anxiety.
About 10 hours after I had AZ I started to feel the effect. Fucking horrible night 'sleep' .
Thanks. Well at least there’s a chance I’ll feel as bad to brighten your day
Why ARE people so irrationally allergic to the Lab Leak Hypothesis?
The first reaction of the director of the Wuhan lab, Shi Zhengli, when she heard about Covid, a novel bat coronavirus, was to think "OMG maybe it came from my lab", and she rushed home from Shanghai to check
Her first reaction was not "oh lab leak plagues never happen, all pandemics have come from natural zoonosis".
She thought the idea was highly plausible.
And yet so many people in the West are utterly averse to the notion. To the extent they don't even want it discussed.
Why is this? Hatred of Trump, who espoused the theory? I can believe that in the USA, in very liberal circles - but not in the UK. Fear of being racist? Fear that a proven lab leak will upend the world? Destroy virology? What?
This is a serious point. We have reacted so irrationally Facebook censored any mention of this hypothesis for a year, exactly as the Chinese wanted
1) because humans are irrational. 2) because the truth doesn't exist anymore
I live in Havering but had my jab today in Barking & Dagenham. That’ll mess with the figures!
How are you feeling? And which vaccine did you get?
AZ unfortunately. Although I read something about Pfizer and myocardia yesterday which made me equally scared of having that! The nurse said I could swerve it and rebook if I liked, but I couldn’t be bothered. Getting on a plane levels of anxiety. I didn’t even realise she’d done the jab though.
I feel ok thanks Robert. I had it almost 5 hours ago, maybe the worst is yet to come. Terrible nights sleep last night as my son was up screaming for ages, so I felt knackered before and after the jab. Rode there and back on the mountain bike (17k) plus did an hours ride after to ease a bit of anxiety.
About 10 hours after I had AZ I started to feel the effect. Fucking horrible night 'sleep' .
Thanks. Well at least there’s a chance I’ll feel as bad to brighten your day
I wish everyone has zero side effects. Side effects are shit.
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
Old Flint Knob Leon ain’t no fun Chipped a tooth sucking on a thumb His kitchens flooded, his powers gone And now no ones buying his conspiracy shit 😗
I live in Havering but had my jab today in Barking & Dagenham. That’ll mess with the figures!
How are you feeling? And which vaccine did you get?
AZ unfortunately. Although I read something about Pfizer and myocardia yesterday which made me equally scared of having that! The nurse said I could swerve it and rebook if I liked, but I couldn’t be bothered. Getting on a plane levels of anxiety. I didn’t even realise she’d done the jab though.
I feel ok thanks Robert. I had it almost 5 hours ago, maybe the worst is yet to come. Terrible nights sleep last night as my son was up screaming for ages, so I felt knackered before and after the jab. Rode there and back on the mountain bike (17k) plus did an hours ride after to ease a bit of anxiety.
You'll be fine. Tomorrow, you'll have a slightly sore arm, and that'll be it.
And you'll have done your bit to help end this pandemic.
Here’s hoping. The nurse said most people have a headache 2 hours after and that’s it. The flu type aches etc were rarer than people make out, so she told me. The older nurse said she had no side effects off two jabs and she had a few glasses of wine that night (I asked) . Maybe they just felt sorry for me and was trying to make me less anxious. They both said I didn’t look my age too, although I was wearing a mask, how pleasant.
Seems to me older people don’t seem to get the side effect agony so bad. All my mates moaned about them, none of my parents or in laws felt bad at all
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Ollie Robinson is likely to be dropped by England for the second Test against New Zealand next week, in the wake of the row over his racist and sexist tweets.
Robinson impressed in taking two more wickets on his Test debut on Thursday, ending with figures of 4-75, but the England and Wales Cricket Board is understood to be determined to make an example of him as it tries to root out discrimination in cricket.
The ECB launched an investigation into Robinson's conduct - centering on tweets he sent in 2012 and 2013 which included racist and sexist language - on Wednesday night and is set to drop him from the squad for the second Test, which begins at Edgbaston next Thursday. The investigation could yet lead to him being ruled out of some of the series against India too.
Hold the fucking phone. Oxford and Cambridge are only 44% first doses?
Is there something weird with students goin on here?
No, like I said above, dig into the local data and it appears pretty obvious that the nominator and denominator are misaligned.
Students, registered with doctors in Ox or Cambs as is the normal way, have been back at home chez mum and dad, and are being vaccinated there, as and when their turn comes up. Too early to say, given their age.
Yeah; there's a nice comparison of the NIMS population figures the vaccine stats are using against ONS and other estimates of Cambridge population. Colleges encourage students to register with a GP in Cambridge, but nobody is nudging people to register elsewhere when they leave, so there are a lot of "not actually still here, but still on some GP'S list" ex-students too.
Why is this a good thing? Surely enclosing people in their own little world is a bad idea. The right thing to do would be to mix it up, so that people all over the country hear a mixture of different accents.
"BBC One will speak to northern viewers in their own accent 'Bespoke' service will employ regional announcers in bid to make corporation feel less London-centric"
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Ollie Robinson is likely to be dropped by England for the second Test against New Zealand next week, in the wake of the row over his racist and sexist tweets.
Robinson impressed in taking two more wickets on his Test debut on Thursday, ending with figures of 4-75, but the England and Wales Cricket Board is understood to be determined to make an example of him as it tries to root out discrimination in cricket.
The ECB launched an investigation into Robinson's conduct - centering on tweets he sent in 2012 and 2013 which included racist and sexist language - on Wednesday night and is set to drop him from the squad for the second Test, which begins at Edgbaston next Thursday. The investigation could yet lead to him being ruled out of some of the series against India too.
That's ridiculous, if he's apologised sincerely (and I think he has) then it should be called. The world seems to have lost its capacity for second chances. Everyone is a bit of a c*** when they're young, it's how you grow up and mature that matters. If this guy has seen the error in what he was saying before then he should be commended for understanding why he was wrong.
Hold the fucking phone. Oxford and Cambridge are only 44% first doses?
Is there something weird with students goin on here?
Surely a large proportion of the population are very young (i.e. students) and therefore are ineligible for their first dose.
Diggin into the number it looks to be a bit of that but uptake across older groups is also significantly lower.
East of England 1st dose for 50-54 year olds - 86% Cambridge uptake for 50-54 year olds - 76%
Even in the 70-74 year olds in is 88% in Cambridge rather than the East of England 95%
Get out of your ivory towers and get vaccinated you academic wankers.
I'm wondering where the highest take up of vaccines has been, my first guess would be Bury St Edmonds,
Various islands are the winners, otkeny, Shetland and western Isles have 88-90% first dose and Isle of Wight and western Isle lead the pack on second dose with 64% and 73%! respectively.
Edit: West Suffolk is actually below the national average for first doses.
I live in Havering but had my jab today in Barking & Dagenham. That’ll mess with the figures!
How are you feeling? And which vaccine did you get?
AZ unfortunately. Although I read something about Pfizer and myocardia yesterday which made me equally scared of having that! The nurse said I could swerve it and rebook if I liked, but I couldn’t be bothered. Getting on a plane levels of anxiety. I didn’t even realise she’d done the jab though.
I feel ok thanks Robert. I had it almost 5 hours ago, maybe the worst is yet to come. Terrible nights sleep last night as my son was up screaming for ages, so I felt knackered before and after the jab. Rode there and back on the mountain bike (17k) plus did an hours ride after to ease a bit of anxiety.
About 10 hours after I had AZ I started to feel the effect. Fucking horrible night 'sleep' .
Thanks. Well at least there’s a chance I’ll feel as bad to brighten your day
I wish everyone has zero side effects. Side effects are shit.
The good thing about side effects is that they indicate that your immune system has responded to the vaccine.
Why ARE people so irrationally allergic to the Lab Leak Hypothesis?
The first reaction of the director of the Wuhan lab, Shi Zhengli, when she heard about Covid, a novel bat coronavirus, was to think "OMG maybe it came from my lab", and she rushed home from Shanghai to check
Her first reaction was not "oh lab leak plagues never happen, all pandemics have come from natural zoonosis".
She thought the idea was highly plausible.
And yet so many people in the West are utterly averse to the notion. To the extent they don't even want it discussed.
Why is this? Hatred of Trump, who espoused the theory? I can believe that in the USA, in very liberal circles - but not in the UK. Fear of being racist? Fear that a proven lab leak will upend the world? Destroy virology? What?
This is a serious point. We have reacted so irrationally Facebook censored any mention of this hypothesis for a year, exactly as the Chinese wanted
1) because humans are irrational. 2) because the truth doesn't exist anymore
IN THE WEST
We are willingly abandoning the Scientific Method, Free Speech and the Enlightenment, on the altar of anti-racism, crap science, perverse social media (quasi-owned by China), and horribly polarised politics
It is a tragedy unfolding in real time, in plain sight.
Ollie Robinson is likely to be dropped by England for the second Test against New Zealand next week, in the wake of the row over his racist and sexist tweets.
Robinson impressed in taking two more wickets on his Test debut on Thursday, ending with figures of 4-75, but the England and Wales Cricket Board is understood to be determined to make an example of him as it tries to root out discrimination in cricket.
The ECB launched an investigation into Robinson's conduct - centering on tweets he sent in 2012 and 2013 which included racist and sexist language - on Wednesday night and is set to drop him from the squad for the second Test, which begins at Edgbaston next Thursday. The investigation could yet lead to him being ruled out of some of the series against India too.
That's ridiculous, if he's apologised sincerely (and I think he has) then it should be called. The world seems to have lost its capacity for second chances. Everyone is a bit of a c*** when they're young, it's how you grow up and mature that matters. If this guy has seen the error in what he was saying before then he should be commended for understanding why he was wrong.
If we were to cancel everyone who said something Dickinson when they were 18, we would very soon have no MPs lef...
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
I live in Havering but had my jab today in Barking & Dagenham. That’ll mess with the figures!
How are you feeling? And which vaccine did you get?
AZ unfortunately. Although I read something about Pfizer and myocardia yesterday which made me equally scared of having that! The nurse said I could swerve it and rebook if I liked, but I couldn’t be bothered. Getting on a plane levels of anxiety. I didn’t even realise she’d done the jab though.
I feel ok thanks Robert. I had it almost 5 hours ago, maybe the worst is yet to come. Terrible nights sleep last night as my son was up screaming for ages, so I felt knackered before and after the jab. Rode there and back on the mountain bike (17k) plus did an hours ride after to ease a bit of anxiety.
About 10 hours after I had AZ I started to feel the effect. Fucking horrible night 'sleep' .
Thanks. Well at least there’s a chance I’ll feel as bad to brighten your day
I wish everyone has zero side effects. Side effects are shit.
The side effects of the vaccine were a doddle compared to the side effects of the immunotherapy that meant I was eligible for my vaccine a month earlier than my age would have done.
Ollie Robinson is likely to be dropped by England for the second Test against New Zealand next week, in the wake of the row over his racist and sexist tweets.
Robinson impressed in taking two more wickets on his Test debut on Thursday, ending with figures of 4-75, but the England and Wales Cricket Board is understood to be determined to make an example of him as it tries to root out discrimination in cricket.
The ECB launched an investigation into Robinson's conduct - centering on tweets he sent in 2012 and 2013 which included racist and sexist language - on Wednesday night and is set to drop him from the squad for the second Test, which begins at Edgbaston next Thursday. The investigation could yet lead to him being ruled out of some of the series against India too.
I live in Havering but had my jab today in Barking & Dagenham. That’ll mess with the figures!
How are you feeling? And which vaccine did you get?
AZ unfortunately. Although I read something about Pfizer and myocardia yesterday which made me equally scared of having that! The nurse said I could swerve it and rebook if I liked, but I couldn’t be bothered. Getting on a plane levels of anxiety. I didn’t even realise she’d done the jab though.
I feel ok thanks Robert. I had it almost 5 hours ago, maybe the worst is yet to come. Terrible nights sleep last night as my son was up screaming for ages, so I felt knackered before and after the jab. Rode there and back on the mountain bike (17k) plus did an hours ride after to ease a bit of anxiety.
About 10 hours after I had AZ I started to feel the effect. Fucking horrible night 'sleep' .
Thanks. Well at least there’s a chance I’ll feel as bad to brighten your day
I wish everyone has zero side effects. Side effects are shit.
The good thing about side effects is that they indicate that your immune system has responded to the vaccine.
That's exactly what I told myself as I lay shivering whilst blazing hot through the night.
Ollie Robinson is likely to be dropped by England for the second Test against New Zealand next week, in the wake of the row over his racist and sexist tweets.
Robinson impressed in taking two more wickets on his Test debut on Thursday, ending with figures of 4-75, but the England and Wales Cricket Board is understood to be determined to make an example of him as it tries to root out discrimination in cricket.
The ECB launched an investigation into Robinson's conduct - centering on tweets he sent in 2012 and 2013 which included racist and sexist language - on Wednesday night and is set to drop him from the squad for the second Test, which begins at Edgbaston next Thursday. The investigation could yet lead to him being ruled out of some of the series against India too.
I just don't see how it makes an example of someone when they've already apologised for their historic actions - if they'd apologised for something they had literally just done it'd make a bit more sense, to reinforce that they shouldnot do it again.
Ollie Robinson is likely to be dropped by England for the second Test against New Zealand next week, in the wake of the row over his racist and sexist tweets.
Robinson impressed in taking two more wickets on his Test debut on Thursday, ending with figures of 4-75, but the England and Wales Cricket Board is understood to be determined to make an example of him as it tries to root out discrimination in cricket.
The ECB launched an investigation into Robinson's conduct - centering on tweets he sent in 2012 and 2013 which included racist and sexist language - on Wednesday night and is set to drop him from the squad for the second Test, which begins at Edgbaston next Thursday. The investigation could yet lead to him being ruled out of some of the series against India too.
That's ridiculous, if he's apologised sincerely (and I think he has) then it should be called. The world seems to have lost its capacity for second chances. Everyone is a bit of a c*** when they're young, it's how you grow up and mature that matters. If this guy has seen the error in what he was saying before then he should be commended for understanding why he was wrong.
I agree, although I don't think we know whether his apology was sincere - on the hostage video of him apologising, he read out words written for him by somebody in the ECB. I don't think Ollie is very bright, and he's been in hot water several times, but it would have been much better for him to give a more inarticulate but sincere apology if that was deemed necessary.
Whatever, despite me being on the woke end of things, I really don't think we should be hunting down people for youthful stupidity. If he transgressed again while playing for England, that would be a different matter.
I live in Havering but had my jab today in Barking & Dagenham. That’ll mess with the figures!
How are you feeling? And which vaccine did you get?
AZ unfortunately. Although I read something about Pfizer and myocardia yesterday which made me equally scared of having that! The nurse said I could swerve it and rebook if I liked, but I couldn’t be bothered. Getting on a plane levels of anxiety. I didn’t even realise she’d done the jab though.
I feel ok thanks Robert. I had it almost 5 hours ago, maybe the worst is yet to come. Terrible nights sleep last night as my son was up screaming for ages, so I felt knackered before and after the jab. Rode there and back on the mountain bike (17k) plus did an hours ride after to ease a bit of anxiety.
You'll be fine. Tomorrow, you'll have a slightly sore arm, and that'll be it.
And you'll have done your bit to help end this pandemic.
Here’s hoping. The nurse said most people have a headache 2 hours after and that’s it. The flu type aches etc were rarer than people make out, so she told me. The older nurse said she had no side effects off two jabs and she had a few glasses of wine that night (I asked) . Maybe they just felt sorry for me and was trying to make me less anxious. They both said I didn’t look my age too, although I was wearing a mask, how pleasant.
Seems to me older people don’t seem to get the side effect agony so bad. All my mates moaned about them, none of my parents or in laws felt bad at all
What's more likely to cause side-effects: the vaccination or riding 2 x 17km + an hour + being kept up all night by the fruit of your loins? Btw your son should not be screaming all night. Is he ill? Get his mother to check in case you catch anything from him.
Hold the fucking phone. Oxford and Cambridge are only 44% first doses?
Is there something weird with students goin on here?
Surely a large proportion of the population are very young (i.e. students) and therefore are ineligible for their first dose.
Diggin into the number it looks to be a bit of that but uptake across older groups is also significantly lower.
East of England 1st dose for 50-54 year olds - 86% Cambridge uptake for 50-54 year olds - 76%
Even in the 70-74 year olds in is 88% in Cambridge rather than the East of England 95%
Get out of your ivory towers and get vaccinated you academic wankers.
Middle class anti-vaxxers definitely exist.
The Corbyn family. Tip of the iceberg of the moron “educated but still very thick” class.
I thought Corbyn managed to get expelled from a polytechnic?
Which is quite impressive on its own, but I’m not sure I’d call him ‘educated.’
According to Wikipedia (so I'm not saying this is right, but it sounds plausible) " Corbyn began a course in Trade Union Studies at North London Polytechnic but left after a year without a degree after a series of arguments with his tutors over the curriculum."
It also says he spent two years doing Voluntary Service Overseas in Jamaica (which is good) as a geography teacher (which is horrifying).
I live in Havering but had my jab today in Barking & Dagenham. That’ll mess with the figures!
How are you feeling? And which vaccine did you get?
AZ unfortunately. Although I read something about Pfizer and myocardia yesterday which made me equally scared of having that! The nurse said I could swerve it and rebook if I liked, but I couldn’t be bothered. Getting on a plane levels of anxiety. I didn’t even realise she’d done the jab though.
I feel ok thanks Robert. I had it almost 5 hours ago, maybe the worst is yet to come. Terrible nights sleep last night as my son was up screaming for ages, so I felt knackered before and after the jab. Rode there and back on the mountain bike (17k) plus did an hours ride after to ease a bit of anxiety.
About 10 hours after I had AZ I started to feel the effect. Fucking horrible night 'sleep' .
Thanks. Well at least there’s a chance I’ll feel as bad to brighten your day
I wish everyone has zero side effects. Side effects are shit.
The good thing about side effects is that they indicate that your immune system has responded to the vaccine.
Does that mean no side effects say it hasn’t worked?
What odd's the new Israeli coalition doesn't even make it to the planned 'handover' of the PM role in 2 years? The last such arrangement didn't work out for anyone not named Netanyahu.
An altogether wilier and at the same time nastier version of Trump.
At least he hasn't locked them out of their parliament yet, as the defeated incumbent did in Samoa.
If the Israeli/Palestinian conflict ends in a bloodbath, I will assign blame four ways:*
20% to Nasser, for being an arrogant tosser and launching a war he couldn’t hope to win; 20% to Sharon, for sparking the second intifada, using it to seize power and then nicking most of the West Bank. 20% to Hamas and Iran basically for being dicks 40% to Netanyahu for using every dirty trick in the book to set people against each other so he could strut around feeling important and inflaming tensions while making reasonable solutions impossible as a result.
More to blame than a bunch of nutters like Ahmadinijed. What a thought.
*Yes, I know, gross oversimplification and there’s plenty of blame to go round one way and another.
Hold the fucking phone. Oxford and Cambridge are only 44% first doses?
Is there something weird with students goin on here?
Surely a large proportion of the population are very young (i.e. students) and therefore are ineligible for their first dose.
Diggin into the number it looks to be a bit of that but uptake across older groups is also significantly lower.
East of England 1st dose for 50-54 year olds - 86% Cambridge uptake for 50-54 year olds - 76%
Even in the 70-74 year olds in is 88% in Cambridge rather than the East of England 95%
Get out of your ivory towers and get vaccinated you academic wankers.
Middle class anti-vaxxers definitely exist.
The Corbyn family. Tip of the iceberg of the moron “educated but still very thick” class.
I thought Corbyn managed to get expelled from a polytechnic?
Which is quite impressive on its own, but I’m not sure I’d call him ‘educated.’
According to Wikipedia (so I'm not saying this is right, but it sounds plausible) " Corbyn began a course in Trade Union Studies at North London Polytechnic but left after a year without a degree after a series of arguments with his tutors over the curriculum."
It also says he spent two years doing Voluntary Service Overseas in Jamaica (which is good) as a geography teacher (which is horrifying).
Ollie Robinson is likely to be dropped by England for the second Test against New Zealand next week, in the wake of the row over his racist and sexist tweets.
Robinson impressed in taking two more wickets on his Test debut on Thursday, ending with figures of 4-75, but the England and Wales Cricket Board is understood to be determined to make an example of him as it tries to root out discrimination in cricket.
The ECB launched an investigation into Robinson's conduct - centering on tweets he sent in 2012 and 2013 which included racist and sexist language - on Wednesday night and is set to drop him from the squad for the second Test, which begins at Edgbaston next Thursday. The investigation could yet lead to him being ruled out of some of the series against India too.
Hold the fucking phone. Oxford and Cambridge are only 44% first doses?
Is there something weird with students goin on here?
Surely a large proportion of the population are very young (i.e. students) and therefore are ineligible for their first dose.
Diggin into the number it looks to be a bit of that but uptake across older groups is also significantly lower.
East of England 1st dose for 50-54 year olds - 86% Cambridge uptake for 50-54 year olds - 76%
Even in the 70-74 year olds in is 88% in Cambridge rather than the East of England 95%
Get out of your ivory towers and get vaccinated you academic wankers.
Middle class anti-vaxxers definitely exist.
The Corbyn family. Tip of the iceberg of the moron “educated but still very thick” class.
I thought Corbyn managed to get expelled from a polytechnic?
Which is quite impressive on its own, but I’m not sure I’d call him ‘educated.’
According to Wikipedia (so I'm not saying this is right, but it sounds plausible) " Corbyn began a course in Trade Union Studies at North London Polytechnic but left after a year without a degree after a series of arguments with his tutors over the curriculum."
It also says he spent two years doing Voluntary Service Overseas in Jamaica (which is good) as a geography teacher (which is horrifying).
That’s his story. A second version is he was expelled for refusing to submit any work.
Hold the fucking phone. Oxford and Cambridge are only 44% first doses?
Is there something weird with students goin on here?
Surely a large proportion of the population are very young (i.e. students) and therefore are ineligible for their first dose.
Diggin into the number it looks to be a bit of that but uptake across older groups is also significantly lower.
East of England 1st dose for 50-54 year olds - 86% Cambridge uptake for 50-54 year olds - 76%
Even in the 70-74 year olds in is 88% in Cambridge rather than the East of England 95%
Get out of your ivory towers and get vaccinated you academic wankers.
Middle class anti-vaxxers definitely exist.
The Corbyn family. Tip of the iceberg of the moron “educated but still very thick” class.
I thought Corbyn managed to get expelled from a polytechnic?
Which is quite impressive on its own, but I’m not sure I’d call him ‘educated.’
According to Wikipedia (so I'm not saying this is right, but it sounds plausible) " Corbyn began a course in Trade Union Studies at North London Polytechnic but left after a year without a degree after a series of arguments with his tutors over the curriculum."
It also says he spent two years doing Voluntary Service Overseas in Jamaica (which is good) as a geography teacher (which is horrifying).
Perhaps he was good at sport.
I dont think he was
It seems he was present but not involved a lot of the time
Hold the fucking phone. Oxford and Cambridge are only 44% first doses?
Is there something weird with students goin on here?
Surely a large proportion of the population are very young (i.e. students) and therefore are ineligible for their first dose.
Diggin into the number it looks to be a bit of that but uptake across older groups is also significantly lower.
East of England 1st dose for 50-54 year olds - 86% Cambridge uptake for 50-54 year olds - 76%
Even in the 70-74 year olds in is 88% in Cambridge rather than the East of England 95%
Get out of your ivory towers and get vaccinated you academic wankers.
Middle class anti-vaxxers definitely exist.
The Corbyn family. Tip of the iceberg of the moron “educated but still very thick” class.
I thought Corbyn managed to get expelled from a polytechnic?
Which is quite impressive on its own, but I’m not sure I’d call him ‘educated.’
According to Wikipedia (so I'm not saying this is right, but it sounds plausible) " Corbyn began a course in Trade Union Studies at North London Polytechnic but left after a year without a degree after a series of arguments with his tutors over the curriculum."
It also says he spent two years doing Voluntary Service Overseas in Jamaica (which is good) as a geography teacher (which is horrifying).
That’s his story. A second version is he was expelled for refusing to submit any work.
No idea which is true.
Why does it have to be one or the other? I can easily see him refusing to submit any work until they had changed the curriculum.
You're a wealth of scientific knowledge, aren't you? I didn't realise that being sexist and impolite increased the size of your penis and the volume of your sperm, but each to their own.
Ollie Robinson is likely to be dropped by England for the second Test against New Zealand next week, in the wake of the row over his racist and sexist tweets.
Robinson impressed in taking two more wickets on his Test debut on Thursday, ending with figures of 4-75, but the England and Wales Cricket Board is understood to be determined to make an example of him as it tries to root out discrimination in cricket.
The ECB launched an investigation into Robinson's conduct - centering on tweets he sent in 2012 and 2013 which included racist and sexist language - on Wednesday night and is set to drop him from the squad for the second Test, which begins at Edgbaston next Thursday. The investigation could yet lead to him being ruled out of some of the series against India too.
That's ridiculous, if he's apologised sincerely (and I think he has) then it should be called. The world seems to have lost its capacity for second chances. Everyone is a bit of a c*** when they're young, it's how you grow up and mature that matters. If this guy has seen the error in what he was saying before then he should be commended for understanding why he was wrong.
Would you take a different approach if it was someone standing for Parliament and this was heat of an election campaign? Similar to this example, historic social media came up quite a lot in 2019 GE revealing just how social media has enacted a change, wether we realised we would have to accept such downsides of social media record keeping or not.
I think there is a debate not so much around social media, but the nature of record keeping in digital age.
Was it not records kept which eventually skewered the tobacco companies?
If social media records reveal crime committed, that in old money would be court conviction, is tampering with those electronic records the crime of destroying records?
It’s so much easier to drift into a 1984 style society these days? The answer is pressure must be kept on to keep freedom?
Hold the fucking phone. Oxford and Cambridge are only 44% first doses?
Is there something weird with students goin on here?
Surely a large proportion of the population are very young (i.e. students) and therefore are ineligible for their first dose.
Diggin into the number it looks to be a bit of that but uptake across older groups is also significantly lower.
East of England 1st dose for 50-54 year olds - 86% Cambridge uptake for 50-54 year olds - 76%
Even in the 70-74 year olds in is 88% in Cambridge rather than the East of England 95%
Get out of your ivory towers and get vaccinated you academic wankers.
Middle class anti-vaxxers definitely exist.
The Corbyn family. Tip of the iceberg of the moron “educated but still very thick” class.
I thought Corbyn managed to get expelled from a polytechnic?
Which is quite impressive on its own, but I’m not sure I’d call him ‘educated.’
According to Wikipedia (so I'm not saying this is right, but it sounds plausible) " Corbyn began a course in Trade Union Studies at North London Polytechnic but left after a year without a degree after a series of arguments with his tutors over the curriculum."
It also says he spent two years doing Voluntary Service Overseas in Jamaica (which is good) as a geography teacher (which is horrifying).
I think it would be hilarious if after the next election Corbyn becomes Father of the House.
It's not likely, as those above him are not at the upper end of aged MPs historically, and some are even younger than him, but it would be amusing - there's only a handful between him and the gig.
I live in Havering but had my jab today in Barking & Dagenham. That’ll mess with the figures!
How are you feeling? And which vaccine did you get?
AZ unfortunately. Although I read something about Pfizer and myocardia yesterday which made me equally scared of having that! The nurse said I could swerve it and rebook if I liked, but I couldn’t be bothered. Getting on a plane levels of anxiety. I didn’t even realise she’d done the jab though.
I feel ok thanks Robert. I had it almost 5 hours ago, maybe the worst is yet to come. Terrible nights sleep last night as my son was up screaming for ages, so I felt knackered before and after the jab. Rode there and back on the mountain bike (17k) plus did an hours ride after to ease a bit of anxiety.
You'll be fine. Tomorrow, you'll have a slightly sore arm, and that'll be it.
And you'll have done your bit to help end this pandemic.
Here’s hoping. The nurse said most people have a headache 2 hours after and that’s it. The flu type aches etc were rarer than people make out, so she told me. The older nurse said she had no side effects off two jabs and she had a few glasses of wine that night (I asked) . Maybe they just felt sorry for me and was trying to make me less anxious. They both said I didn’t look my age too, although I was wearing a mask, how pleasant.
Seems to me older people don’t seem to get the side effect agony so bad. All my mates moaned about them, none of my parents or in laws felt bad at all
What's more likely to cause side-effects: the vaccination or riding 2 x 17km + an hour + being kept up all night by the fruit of your loins? Btw your son should not be screaming all night. Is he ill? Get his mother to check in case you catch anything from him.
I think he was too hot, it was very warm last night. He normally sleeps 12 hours straight through... his mother usually deals with it when he doesn’t!
I live in Havering but had my jab today in Barking & Dagenham. That’ll mess with the figures!
How are you feeling? And which vaccine did you get?
AZ unfortunately. Although I read something about Pfizer and myocardia yesterday which made me equally scared of having that! The nurse said I could swerve it and rebook if I liked, but I couldn’t be bothered. Getting on a plane levels of anxiety. I didn’t even realise she’d done the jab though.
I feel ok thanks Robert. I had it almost 5 hours ago, maybe the worst is yet to come. Terrible nights sleep last night as my son was up screaming for ages, so I felt knackered before and after the jab. Rode there and back on the mountain bike (17k) plus did an hours ride after to ease a bit of anxiety.
About 10 hours after I had AZ I started to feel the effect. Fucking horrible night 'sleep' .
Thanks. Well at least there’s a chance I’ll feel as bad to brighten your day
I wish everyone has zero side effects. Side effects are shit.
The good thing about side effects is that they indicate that your immune system has responded to the vaccine.
Does that mean no side effects say it hasn’t worked?
No. But maybe more of a slow burn. Which would explain older people with less active immune systems being less likely to get side effects.
Hold the fucking phone. Oxford and Cambridge are only 44% first doses?
Is there something weird with students goin on here?
Surely a large proportion of the population are very young (i.e. students) and therefore are ineligible for their first dose.
Diggin into the number it looks to be a bit of that but uptake across older groups is also significantly lower.
East of England 1st dose for 50-54 year olds - 86% Cambridge uptake for 50-54 year olds - 76%
Even in the 70-74 year olds in is 88% in Cambridge rather than the East of England 95%
Get out of your ivory towers and get vaccinated you academic wankers.
Middle class anti-vaxxers definitely exist.
The Corbyn family. Tip of the iceberg of the moron “educated but still very thick” class.
I thought Corbyn managed to get expelled from a polytechnic?
Which is quite impressive on its own, but I’m not sure I’d call him ‘educated.’
According to Wikipedia (so I'm not saying this is right, but it sounds plausible) " Corbyn began a course in Trade Union Studies at North London Polytechnic but left after a year without a degree after a series of arguments with his tutors over the curriculum."
It also says he spent two years doing Voluntary Service Overseas in Jamaica (which is good) as a geography teacher (which is horrifying).
Perhaps he was good at sport.
Not all geography teachers are good at sport.
Admittedly I'm struggling to think of counter-examples from my own school, but I'm sure they exist.
Why ARE people so irrationally allergic to the Lab Leak Hypothesis?
The first reaction of the director of the Wuhan lab, Shi Zhengli, when she heard about Covid, a novel bat coronavirus, was to think "OMG maybe it came from my lab", and she rushed home from Shanghai to check
Her first reaction was not "oh lab leak plagues never happen, all pandemics have come from natural zoonosis".
She thought the idea was highly plausible.
And yet so many people in the West are utterly averse to the notion. To the extent they don't even want it discussed.
Why is this? Hatred of Trump, who espoused the theory? I can believe that in the USA, in very liberal circles - but not in the UK. Fear of being racist? Fear that a proven lab leak will upend the world? Destroy virology? What?
This is a serious point. We have reacted so irrationally Facebook censored any mention of this hypothesis for a year, exactly as the Chinese wanted
1) because humans are irrational. 2) because the truth doesn't exist anymore
IN THE WEST
We are willingly abandoning the Scientific Method, Free Speech and the Enlightenment, on the altar of anti-racism, crap science, perverse social media (quasi-owned by China), and horribly polarised politics
It is a tragedy unfolding in real time, in plain sight.
It's a tragedy unfolding in your head more like.
The lab leak theory is a plausible theory. Nothing more, nothing less. Your unwillingness to think in terms of probabilities, instead opining in terms of utter certainty about whatever has most recently crossed your frontal cortex is why no-one is engaging with you on this.
Why is this a good thing? Surely enclosing people in their own little world is a bad idea. The right thing to do would be to mix it up, so that people all over the country hear a mixture of different accents.
"BBC One will speak to northern viewers in their own accent 'Bespoke' service will employ regional announcers in bid to make corporation feel less London-centric"
I once went on a short rugby tour of Scotland. We played West of Scotland (suburban Glasgow) on Saturday and Hawick (Borders) on Sunday. Chatting to our opponents after the game on Saturday, I was asked where we were playing next. "Hawick", I said, pronouncing it expertly (I am, after all, half Scottish). "Och, you'll have terrible trouble understanding them there," he said. "It's barely English, the language they speak in the Borders." The levity was slightly undermined by me having to get him to repeat this four times in order to pick my way through the thickets of Glasweigan vowels. But he was right; the Borders were more impenetrable still. Both lovely, lovely clubs though. Though in the history of gigantic sporting opponents West of Scotland take the biscuit.
That was the plot of a Sweeney episode iirc. Maybe I should watch it next and give up on Vice (the Dick Cheney biopic). I don't suppose it will improve much in the final half hour.
Ollie Robinson is likely to be dropped by England for the second Test against New Zealand next week, in the wake of the row over his racist and sexist tweets.
Robinson impressed in taking two more wickets on his Test debut on Thursday, ending with figures of 4-75, but the England and Wales Cricket Board is understood to be determined to make an example of him as it tries to root out discrimination in cricket.
The ECB launched an investigation into Robinson's conduct - centering on tweets he sent in 2012 and 2013 which included racist and sexist language - on Wednesday night and is set to drop him from the squad for the second Test, which begins at Edgbaston next Thursday. The investigation could yet lead to him being ruled out of some of the series against India too.
I never sent any sexist Tweets aged 18. None whatsoever. I can guarantee that the vast majority of people on this board didn’t either.
This is what Robinson tweeted. Age 18
"Females who play video games actually tend to have more sex"."
Yes, that's all he tweeted.
In terms of sexism, yes. I can't find much more
The racist tweets are different. But even then I would forgive a man - or woman - age 18, if they express a sincere apology now. Everyone must have a shot at redemption
It is insane that we are crucifying 27 year old people for tweets they did as teens. Let's just cancel everyone
Why ARE people so irrationally allergic to the Lab Leak Hypothesis?
The first reaction of the director of the Wuhan lab, Shi Zhengli, when she heard about Covid, a novel bat coronavirus, was to think "OMG maybe it came from my lab", and she rushed home from Shanghai to check
Her first reaction was not "oh lab leak plagues never happen, all pandemics have come from natural zoonosis".
She thought the idea was highly plausible.
And yet so many people in the West are utterly averse to the notion. To the extent they don't even want it discussed.
Why is this? Hatred of Trump, who espoused the theory? I can believe that in the USA, in very liberal circles - but not in the UK. Fear of being racist? Fear that a proven lab leak will upend the world? Destroy virology? What?
This is a serious point. We have reacted so irrationally Facebook censored any mention of this hypothesis for a year, exactly as the Chinese wanted
1) because humans are irrational. 2) because the truth doesn't exist anymore
IN THE WEST
We are willingly abandoning the Scientific Method, Free Speech and the Enlightenment, on the altar of anti-racism, crap science, perverse social media (quasi-owned by China), and horribly polarised politics
It is a tragedy unfolding in real time, in plain sight.
It's a tragedy unfolding in your head more like.
The lab leak theory is a plausible theory. Nothing more, nothing less. Your unwillingness to think in terms of probabilities, instead opining in terms of utter certainty about whatever has most recently crossed your frontal cortex is why no-one is engaging with you on this.
To be fair to Leon, Hollywood don’t make films about facts and realities, because fictions and conspiracies are much more entertaining to us humans? And God put Leon on this earth to entertain, that is his calling?
Is a blog like this just for boring facts and realities, or entertainment too? The human race needs to decide where it wants to go with social media, because of course there are dangers to the power of this new media to distract and engage, as well as positives with distracting and engaging.
I never sent any sexist Tweets aged 18. None whatsoever. I can guarantee that the vast majority of people on this board didn’t either.
This is what Robinson tweeted. Age 18
"Females who play video games actually tend to have more sex"."
Yes, that's all he tweeted.
In terms of sexism, yes. I can't find much more
The racist tweets are different. But even then I would forgive a man - or woman - age 18, if they express a sincere apology now. Everyone must have a shot at redemption
It is insane that we are crucifying 27 year old people for tweets they did as teens. Let's just cancel everyone
Ollie Robinson is likely to be dropped by England for the second Test against New Zealand next week, in the wake of the row over his racist and sexist tweets.
Robinson impressed in taking two more wickets on his Test debut on Thursday, ending with figures of 4-75, but the England and Wales Cricket Board is understood to be determined to make an example of him as it tries to root out discrimination in cricket.
The ECB launched an investigation into Robinson's conduct - centering on tweets he sent in 2012 and 2013 which included racist and sexist language - on Wednesday night and is set to drop him from the squad for the second Test, which begins at Edgbaston next Thursday. The investigation could yet lead to him being ruled out of some of the series against India too.
Why ARE people so irrationally allergic to the Lab Leak Hypothesis?
The first reaction of the director of the Wuhan lab, Shi Zhengli, when she heard about Covid, a novel bat coronavirus, was to think "OMG maybe it came from my lab", and she rushed home from Shanghai to check
Her first reaction was not "oh lab leak plagues never happen, all pandemics have come from natural zoonosis".
She thought the idea was highly plausible.
And yet so many people in the West are utterly averse to the notion. To the extent they don't even want it discussed.
Why is this? Hatred of Trump, who espoused the theory? I can believe that in the USA, in very liberal circles - but not in the UK. Fear of being racist? Fear that a proven lab leak will upend the world? Destroy virology? What?
This is a serious point. We have reacted so irrationally Facebook censored any mention of this hypothesis for a year, exactly as the Chinese wanted
1) because humans are irrational. 2) because the truth doesn't exist anymore
IN THE WEST
We are willingly abandoning the Scientific Method, Free Speech and the Enlightenment, on the altar of anti-racism, crap science, perverse social media (quasi-owned by China), and horribly polarised politics
It is a tragedy unfolding in real time, in plain sight.
It's a tragedy unfolding in your head more like.
The lab leak theory is a plausible theory. Nothing more, nothing less. Your unwillingness to think in terms of probabilities, instead opining in terms of utter certainty about whatever has most recently crossed your frontal cortex is why no-one is engaging with you on this.
Did you see what he said?
About new religions if little green men exist?
Yes. No way he’d say all this - to the New York Times - unless he felt something big was trundling in our direction. Buckle up
Are some people on social media enjoying their exploiting of the poor media literacy skills of others, such as being able to identify misinformation, or is this stuff, pushing the line governments hiding evidence that aliens have visited earth [or insert anything] just harmless fun?
Is it really wrong and harmful to indulge in such pastime of conspiracy theories ? Are there social consequences? Could conspiracy theories undermine democracy? Undermine internal relations in a country or internationally? If it’s health base conspiracy for example, will it lead to deaths? Undermine trust in authority, where trust is needed?
Does it all work on basis it can’t be proved, but damn hard to utterly disprove too, that is actually part of an absolutist anti-governmentalism agenda to undermine a regulatory state and credentialed experts, leading us to an undemocratic and elitist future?
You, Leon, are pushing two simultaneously - UFO conspiracy - China Virus conspiracy. You do it like you hold all the facts, bare assertions, so it’s open and shut case. Though you obviously haven’t heard the Scientists playing with COVID in the lab used to meet children in subterranean room of a sushi restaurant, in their private life.
Ask yourself, which of the two books you are going to write next, what do people want to read and which gets Hollywood interested - how it was actually impossible for Elizabeth l to keep up the secret she was a man throughout her life and after - or that it’s credible a child under care could die from something and be swapped out with a boy from Bisley? we even have a skeleton.
You appreciate you have a case to answer?
I shall print and frame this comment and put it on the wall of my loo
Within a few weeks every adult in the UK will have been offered a first jab, and most with a first jab will have been offered a second jab. Then Boris Johnson will have to proceed with the next stage of the unlocking process. People who have chosen to be unvaccinated will have to take their chances with the virus. Most of the Indian variant hospital cases are in people who are not fully vaccinated. Politically, I do not see how Johnson can do anything else or people's patience with the restrictions will run out.
I didn't quote the Newham figures as an argument against the further easing of restrictions because it isn't or they aren't.
I used the term "tyranny of the vaccinated" last evening as I sense public policy being driven by the frustrations of the doubly vaccinated who want to go back to night clubs and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with 50,000 others in a muddy field somewhere.
Actions have consequences, however, and those who have not, will not or cannot be vaccinated will bear the impact of the release of society and I struggle with the throwaway notion "people will have to take their chances".
Is it really so simple that what the majority wants, the majority gets? I'm rarely in the position of being in a majority on anything - perhaps I'm more contrarian than those who call themselves such.
Friend of mine flew in from Germany a week ago, flew back yesterday. Sauntered through both sets of immigration.
I shall say no more but as I'd encouraged his trip it amused me.
I too shall travel and will tell the UK Government through my actions to go fuck themselves.
As long as you do not try to claim on your holiday insurance then
Claim what exactly? Why would I need to claim anything?
In a serious accident, taken ill, to name just 2
Ah I see.
I have global insurance so I'm not really sure what point you're making. I don't plan my travel around my insurance needs. Never have, never will. Until the past 12 months I spent much of my life travelling the globe.
All life contains risk. And we will all, without exception, die one day.
You only get one of these things and it should be enjoyed.
Why ARE people so irrationally allergic to the Lab Leak Hypothesis?
The first reaction of the director of the Wuhan lab, Shi Zhengli, when she heard about Covid, a novel bat coronavirus, was to think "OMG maybe it came from my lab", and she rushed home from Shanghai to check
Her first reaction was not "oh lab leak plagues never happen, all pandemics have come from natural zoonosis".
She thought the idea was highly plausible.
And yet so many people in the West are utterly averse to the notion. To the extent they don't even want it discussed.
Why is this? Hatred of Trump, who espoused the theory? I can believe that in the USA, in very liberal circles - but not in the UK. Fear of being racist? Fear that a proven lab leak will upend the world? Destroy virology? What?
This is a serious point. We have reacted so irrationally Facebook censored any mention of this hypothesis for a year, exactly as the Chinese wanted
1) because humans are irrational. 2) because the truth doesn't exist anymore
IN THE WEST
We are willingly abandoning the Scientific Method, Free Speech and the Enlightenment, on the altar of anti-racism, crap science, perverse social media (quasi-owned by China), and horribly polarised politics
It is a tragedy unfolding in real time, in plain sight.
It's a tragedy unfolding in your head more like.
The lab leak theory is a plausible theory. Nothing more, nothing less. Your unwillingness to think in terms of probabilities, instead opining in terms of utter certainty about whatever has most recently crossed your frontal cortex is why no-one is engaging with you on this.
"Utter certainty"?
I've actually put figures on it. 75% lab leak, 25% natural non-lab zoonosis. Yesterday I did that
Why ARE people so irrationally allergic to the Lab Leak Hypothesis?
The first reaction of the director of the Wuhan lab, Shi Zhengli, when she heard about Covid, a novel bat coronavirus, was to think "OMG maybe it came from my lab", and she rushed home from Shanghai to check
Her first reaction was not "oh lab leak plagues never happen, all pandemics have come from natural zoonosis".
She thought the idea was highly plausible.
And yet so many people in the West are utterly averse to the notion. To the extent they don't even want it discussed.
Why is this? Hatred of Trump, who espoused the theory? I can believe that in the USA, in very liberal circles - but not in the UK. Fear of being racist? Fear that a proven lab leak will upend the world? Destroy virology? What?
This is a serious point. We have reacted so irrationally Facebook censored any mention of this hypothesis for a year, exactly as the Chinese wanted
1) because humans are irrational. 2) because the truth doesn't exist anymore
IN THE WEST
We are willingly abandoning the Scientific Method, Free Speech and the Enlightenment, on the altar of anti-racism, crap science, perverse social media (quasi-owned by China), and horribly polarised politics
It is a tragedy unfolding in real time, in plain sight.
A tragedy brilliantly engineered by people who wish us harm. If you accept that we are finished, the situation becomes easier to live with.
Why is this a good thing? Surely enclosing people in their own little world is a bad idea. The right thing to do would be to mix it up, so that people all over the country hear a mixture of different accents.
"BBC One will speak to northern viewers in their own accent 'Bespoke' service will employ regional announcers in bid to make corporation feel less London-centric"
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Most people don’t have any concept of how different the culture is in China. And I don’t mean the malls in Pudong or golf courses in Guangzhou. Or the internationalised Chinese they meet overseas. I mean proper, communist China. They don’t understand how severely the Cultural Revolution warped society’s mindset.
It occurred to me at the time that the meme of the tv presenter eating bat soup was most likely a careful disinformation effort from the CCP. Because it was completely effective in immediately cementing the narrative in the west that the virus came from the wet market, even though we knew that to be false as early as April. While simultaneously allowing nationalistic rallying around the idea that these racist, stupid foreigners don’t realise the photo was from a relatively famous tv presenter on a travel programme in Palau.
Think of that meme video of the Ozzie dad asking his toddler why they couldn’t go to the park. “Because some c**t ate a bat Dad”. Xi would have looked at it being forwarded a gazillion times and thought, job done lads.
Within a few weeks every adult in the UK will have been offered a first jab, and most with a first jab will have been offered a second jab. Then Boris Johnson will have to proceed with the next stage of the unlocking process. People who have chosen to be unvaccinated will have to take their chances with the virus. Most of the Indian variant hospital cases are in people who are not fully vaccinated. Politically, I do not see how Johnson can do anything else or people's patience with the restrictions will run out.
I didn't quote the Newham figures as an argument against the further easing of restrictions because it isn't or they aren't.
I used the term "tyranny of the vaccinated" last evening as I sense public policy being driven by the frustrations of the doubly vaccinated who want to go back to night clubs and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with 50,000 others in a muddy field somewhere.
Actions have consequences, however, and those who have not, will not or cannot be vaccinated will bear the impact of the release of society and I struggle with the throwaway notion "people will have to take their chances".
Is it really so simple that what the majority wants, the majority gets? I'm rarely in the position of being in a majority on anything - perhaps I'm more contrarian than those who call themselves such.
Society can't be constructed entirely around the needs of minorities, either.
I feel extremely sorry for severely immunocompromised people who are at great risk from Covid, and would desperately wish to have the vaccines, but can't. If they receive medical advice to keep shielding for a long time and decide to do that, then they should be supported. But does it therefore follow that the whole population should have to spend their entire lives walking around in hazmat suits, in order to protect leukaemia patients from germs when they feel confident enough to sally forth from their homes?
And my sympathy certainly doesn't extend to anti-vaxxers. Please explain why we should all have to live with masks and social distancing for years, simply for the convenience of stroppy conspiracy theorists and fringe religious types who don't want to have vaccines forced upon them. The deal here is, there probably aren't enough of you to fuck everything up, so we'll leave you to your own devices - but if you catch the thing and die, tough.
This doesn't seem to me to be particularly controversial.
Why ARE people so irrationally allergic to the Lab Leak Hypothesis?
The first reaction of the director of the Wuhan lab, Shi Zhengli, when she heard about Covid, a novel bat coronavirus, was to think "OMG maybe it came from my lab", and she rushed home from Shanghai to check
Her first reaction was not "oh lab leak plagues never happen, all pandemics have come from natural zoonosis".
She thought the idea was highly plausible.
And yet so many people in the West are utterly averse to the notion. To the extent they don't even want it discussed.
Why is this? Hatred of Trump, who espoused the theory? I can believe that in the USA, in very liberal circles - but not in the UK. Fear of being racist? Fear that a proven lab leak will upend the world? Destroy virology? What?
This is a serious point. We have reacted so irrationally Facebook censored any mention of this hypothesis for a year, exactly as the Chinese wanted
1) because humans are irrational. 2) because the truth doesn't exist anymore
IN THE WEST
We are willingly abandoning the Scientific Method, Free Speech and the Enlightenment, on the altar of anti-racism, crap science, perverse social media (quasi-owned by China), and horribly polarised politics
It is a tragedy unfolding in real time, in plain sight.
A tragedy brilliantly engineered by people who wish us harm. If you accept that we are finished, the situation becomes easier to live with.
Yes. The Chinese and Russians are snookering us with our own technology, social media especially. Every culture war is stoked, every division is fanned, every internal strife is weaponised by bots: from Scots indy on Twitter to Brexit on Insta to BLM, Wokeness, CRT, and many many more, on Facebook and everywhere. Thus the West breaks down, and dissolves in the curated acid of its guilt and self hatred, as the Chinese escape censure even as they incarcerate 1m Muslims and take over Hong Kong.
Getting Facebook to prohibit a debate, in the west, about the highly feasible Chinese lab origin of coronavirus must go down as their greatest achievement yet. Really quite special. It is like Goebbels times a million. So much smarter than the Nazis
Friend of mine flew in from Germany a week ago, flew back yesterday. Sauntered through both sets of immigration.
I shall say no more but as I'd encouraged his trip it amused me.
I too shall travel and will tell the UK Government through my actions to go fuck themselves.
As long as you do not try to claim on your holiday insurance then
Claim what exactly? Why would I need to claim anything?
In a serious accident, taken ill, to name just 2
Ah I see.
I have global insurance so I'm not really sure what point you're making. I don't plan my travel around my insurance needs. Never have, never will. Until the past 12 months I spent much of my life travelling the globe.
All life contains risk. And we will all, without exception, die one day.
You only get one of these things and it should be enjoyed.
So next season the Premier League will have two clubs owned by two of the very biggest gamblers on football in the world, who have made hundreds of millions if not billions from such betting. Not to mention owners of recent Premier League teams like Stoke and Cardiff, with more billions in football betting profits.
Somehow this is all okay yet a non league keeper who a multi national bookie wanted to take the piss out of gets a two month ban for eating a pie to enforce the FA's betting rules.
"These rules apply to everyone involved in football, from the players and managers, to the match officials and club staff."
"A worldwide ban on betting on football was introduced for all those involved in the game at Premier League, English Football League, National League and The FA Women's Super League and The FA Women's Championship levels, as well as those at clubs in the Northern, Southern and Isthmian leagues and all other Participants who do not fall into the category below. Participants covered by the ban will be prohibited from betting, either directly or indirectly, on any football match or competition that takes place anywhere in the world."
In the last 24 hours the kitchen of my flat has partly flooded with water from upstairs, I now have no electricity there because it has shorted, someone smashed into my car when it was parked in the Chilterns, and then I chipped a front tooth chewing a thumbnail from anxiety
I never sent any sexist Tweets aged 18. None whatsoever. I can guarantee that the vast majority of people on this board didn’t either.
This is what Robinson tweeted. Age 18
"Females who play video games actually tend to have more sex"."
Yes, that's all he tweeted.
In terms of sexism, yes. I can't find much more
The racist tweets are different. But even then I would forgive a man - or woman - age 18, if they express a sincere apology now. Everyone must have a shot at redemption
It is insane that we are crucifying 27 year old people for tweets they did as teens. Let's just cancel everyone
Sadly that’s where we are now and both left and right are as bad as each other at doing it.
Why is this a good thing? Surely enclosing people in their own little world is a bad idea. The right thing to do would be to mix it up, so that people all over the country hear a mixture of different accents.
"BBC One will speak to northern viewers in their own accent 'Bespoke' service will employ regional announcers in bid to make corporation feel less London-centric"
I once went on a short rugby tour of Scotland. We played West of Scotland (suburban Glasgow) on Saturday and Hawick (Borders) on Sunday. Chatting to our opponents after the game on Saturday, I was asked where we were playing next. "Hawick", I said, pronouncing it expertly (I am, after all, half Scottish). "Och, you'll have terrible trouble understanding them there," he said. "It's barely English, the language they speak in the Borders." The levity was slightly undermined by me having to get him to repeat this four times in order to pick my way through the thickets of Glasweigan vowels. But he was right; the Borders were more impenetrable still. Both lovely, lovely clubs though. Though in the history of gigantic sporting opponents West of Scotland take the biscuit.
That was the plot of a Sweeney episode iirc. Maybe I should watch it next and give up on Vice (the Dick Cheney biopic). I don't suppose it will improve much in the final half hour.
The last half hour of Vice is about Iraq. Tony Blair's in it, briefly, and 7/7. A reminder that we are not always the good guys. The great thing about President Trump is that he reined in the neocons. And yes, Trump had been railing against China for decades. He was probably right, even if he was wrong about, and possibly compromised by, Russia.
Nike (NKE) and other major sponsors have come out in support of tennis star Naomi Osaka following her decision to withdraw from the French Open.
'The sports apparel giant — who signed a sponsorship deal with Osaka in 2019 — applauded the athlete in a statement on Monday for opening up about her struggle with depression. "Our thoughts are with Naomi. We support her and recognize her courage in sharing her own mental health experience," Nike said. . . .
"Naomi Osaka's decision reminds us all how important it is to prioritize personal health and well-being," Mastercard (MA) said in a statement. "We support her and admire her courage to address important issues, both on and off the court."
Swiss luxury watchmaker TAG Heuer said that it supports its brand ambassadors "in triumph but also during challenging periods."
"Naomi is going through difficult times and we truly hope to see her back soon. She is a great champion and we are convinced that she will come out of this period stronger, be it professionally or personally," the company said in a statement. . . .
Nissan, the Japanese automaker, also threw its weight behind Osaka. "We support the right of our ambassadors to express themselves and stand by her decision," the company said in a statement. All Nippon Airways, a Tokyo-based airline, said that it, too, would continue to support Osaka "as a sponsor."
Sweetgreen, a US restaurant chain of which Osaka is a brand ambassador and investor, said: "Our partnership with Naomi is rooted in wellness in all its forms. We support her in furthering the conversation around mental health and are proud to have her as part of the Sweetgreen team." . . .
Lewis Hamilton has delivered a scathing criticism of the backlash against Naomi Osaka after her withdrawal from the French Open. Hamilton, speaking before this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, praised her brave stance, condemned the organisers of the French Open for their treatment of the Japanese player after her decision not to speak to the press at the tournament and admitted he too had struggled with the demands that come with competing on a global stage.
When the director of America's CDC said he believed the Lab Leak hypothesis was plausible, this is what happened
"After the [lab leak] interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”
Remember when they told us: Just listen to the scientists
These are the wankers they told us to obey.
Yes, but they didn't say *which* scientists.
The reality is that the lab leak hypothesis remains a hypothesis.
The evidence for it is that the epicenter of CV19 is Wuhan, where there is a lab that studies bat coronaviruses.
But while that is compelling circumstantial evidence, it is far from overwhelming. The reality is that viruses make the leap from animals to humans all the time. And it's often the case that we never find the animal from whence the virus came.
Er, yeah. Fascinatingly new insight
What is interesting here is the way many scientists totally lose it when confronted with the plausibility of the Lab Leak hypothesis. They can't cope with it, they want it suppressed, not just dismissed, but actually censored - as Facebook did for a whole year.
If a bunch of concerned citizen journalists hadn't badgered away (Google "DRASTIC") 99% of people would still be parroting the bullshit about the lab leak being a debunked, racist conspiracy theory - as if blaming the Chinese for eating bats is somehow better?
Science has been badly exposed by this whole pandemic. There have been triumphs - the vaccines, of course - but also disasters, from the revelation about "gain of function" to this new calamity around censorship and groupthink
Your posts seem mostly to involve conjuring up an enemy who you can then get really angry with.
They really aren't. Really.
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Facebook acting as agent for the thought police, trying to impose right-think by denying realistic possibilities for the origins of the global Covid calamity is really disturbing.
Yes - there's been a lot of this. See also Google blocking searches of the Great Barrington Declaration, and Twitter blocking links to studies which raised doubts about the efficacy of masks. Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.
In the last 24 hours the kitchen of my flat has partly flooded with water from upstairs, I now have no electricity there because it has shorted, someone smashed into my car when it was parked in the Chilterns, and then I chipped a front tooth chewing a thumbnail from anxiety
I am now on the gin
The moral of (part of) this story is: if you're going to live in a flat, always opt for the top floor.
Why is this a good thing? Surely enclosing people in their own little world is a bad idea. The right thing to do would be to mix it up, so that people all over the country hear a mixture of different accents.
"BBC One will speak to northern viewers in their own accent 'Bespoke' service will employ regional announcers in bid to make corporation feel less London-centric"
Comments
And you'll have done your bit to help end this pandemic.
2) because the truth doesn't exist anymore
Chipped a tooth sucking on a thumb
His kitchens flooded, his powers gone
And now no ones buying his conspiracy shit 😗
Seems to me older people don’t seem to get the side effect agony so bad. All my mates moaned about them, none of my parents or in laws felt bad at all
I find the psychology of this fascinating, and disturbing. There is an enormous resistance to facing a possible but uncomfortable truth - such that the Scientific Method has been suspended in parts of the West. The Facebook censorship is particularly startling. We have allowed our discourse to be taken over by private social media companies which are happy to cancel wholly plausible ideas about the most important subjects of the moment. And the true origin of Covid is definitely one of those
And you join in this dim, weary, timid, small-minded complacency! I am genuinely shocked
Shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED
Robinson impressed in taking two more wickets on his Test debut on Thursday, ending with figures of 4-75, but the England and Wales Cricket Board is understood to be determined to make an example of him as it tries to root out discrimination in cricket.
The ECB launched an investigation into Robinson's conduct - centering on tweets he sent in 2012 and 2013 which included racist and sexist language - on Wednesday night and is set to drop him from the squad for the second Test, which begins at Edgbaston next Thursday. The investigation could yet lead to him being ruled out of some of the series against India too.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/06/03/ollie-robinson-dropped-england-second-test-wake-racist-tweets/
I'm wondering where the highest take up of vaccines has been, my first guess would be Bury St Edmonds,
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1400524506234601472/photo/1
I told you so he says
Which is quite impressive on its own, but I’m not sure I’d call him ‘educated.’
Edit: West Suffolk is actually below the national average for first doses.
We are willingly abandoning the Scientific Method, Free Speech and the Enlightenment, on the altar of anti-racism, crap science, perverse social media (quasi-owned by China), and horribly polarised politics
It is a tragedy unfolding in real time, in plain sight.
It’s a brilliant idea, drop him.
Benjamin Netanyahu calls to block Israel's newly formed coalition
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-57340973
An altogether wilier and at the same time nastier version of Trump.
https://twitter.com/joepompliano/status/1400245761854652417?s=21
I just don't see how it makes an example of someone when they've already apologised for their historic actions - if they'd apologised for something they had literally just done it'd make a bit more sense, to reinforce that they shouldnot do it again.
Continue down this road we will breed a generation of tiny penised neuter men, who are ever so polite but have no sperm
Oh, we are
"Plummeting sperm counts, shrinking penises"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/18/toxic-chemicals-health-humanity-erin-brokovich
Whatever, despite me being on the woke end of things, I really don't think we should be hunting down people for youthful stupidity. If he transgressed again while playing for England, that would be a different matter.
It also says he spent two years doing Voluntary Service Overseas in Jamaica (which is good) as a geography teacher (which is horrifying).
20% to Nasser, for being an arrogant tosser and launching a war he couldn’t hope to win;
20% to Sharon, for sparking the second intifada, using it to seize power and then nicking most of the West Bank.
20% to Hamas and Iran basically for being dicks
40% to Netanyahu for using every dirty trick in the book to set people against each other so he could strut around feeling important and inflaming tensions while making reasonable solutions impossible as a result.
More to blame than a bunch of nutters like Ahmadinijed. What a thought.
*Yes, I know, gross oversimplification and there’s plenty of blame to go round one way and another.
No idea which is true.
It seems he was present but not involved a lot of the time
I think there is a debate not so much around social media, but the nature of record keeping in digital age.
Was it not records kept which eventually skewered the tobacco companies?
If social media records reveal crime committed, that in old money would be court conviction, is tampering with those electronic records the crime of destroying records?
It’s so much easier to drift into a 1984 style society these days?
The answer is pressure must be kept on to keep freedom?
It's not likely, as those above him are not at the upper end of aged MPs historically, and some are even younger than him, but it would be amusing - there's only a handful between him and the gig.
I think he was too hot, it was very warm last night. He normally sleeps 12 hours straight through... his mother usually deals with it when he doesn’t!
17k round trip btw, prob 30 all in. Gentle pace
Admittedly I'm struggling to think of counter-examples from my own school, but I'm sure they exist.
The lab leak theory is a plausible theory. Nothing more, nothing less. Your unwillingness to think in terms of probabilities, instead opining in terms of utter certainty about whatever has most recently crossed your frontal cortex is why no-one is engaging with you on this.
"Females who play video games actually tend to have more sex"."
And this:
"Remind me not to watch the boxing with a girl again"
The racist tweets are different. But even then I would forgive a man - or woman - age 18, if they express a sincere apology now. Everyone must have a shot at redemption
It is insane that we are crucifying 27 year old people for tweets they did as teens. Let's just cancel everyone
Is a blog like this just for boring facts and realities, or entertainment too? The human race needs to decide where it wants to go with social media, because of course there are dangers to the power of this new media to distract and engage, as well as positives with distracting and engaging.
Plus I was at Headingley in 2019.
About new religions if little green men exist?
Yes. No way he’d say all this - to the New York Times - unless he felt something big was trundling in our direction. Buckle up
Are some people on social media enjoying their exploiting of the poor media literacy skills of others, such as being able to identify misinformation, or is this stuff, pushing the line governments hiding evidence that aliens have visited earth [or insert anything] just harmless fun?
Is it really wrong and harmful to indulge in such pastime of conspiracy theories ? Are there social consequences? Could conspiracy theories undermine democracy? Undermine internal relations in a country or internationally? If it’s health base conspiracy for example, will it lead to deaths? Undermine trust in authority, where trust is needed?
Does it all work on basis it can’t be proved, but damn hard to utterly disprove too, that is actually part of an absolutist anti-governmentalism agenda to undermine a regulatory state and credentialed experts, leading us to an undemocratic and elitist future?
You, Leon, are pushing two simultaneously - UFO conspiracy - China Virus conspiracy. You do it like you hold all the facts, bare assertions, so it’s open and shut case. Though you obviously haven’t heard the Scientists playing with COVID in the lab used to meet children in subterranean room of a sushi restaurant, in their private life.
Ask yourself, which of the two books you are going to write next, what do people want to read and which gets Hollywood interested - how it was actually impossible for Elizabeth l to keep up the secret she was a man throughout her life and after - or that it’s credible a child under care could die from something and be swapped out with a boy from Bisley? we even have a skeleton.
You appreciate you have a case to answer?
I shall print and frame this comment and put it on the wall of my loo
I used the term "tyranny of the vaccinated" last evening as I sense public policy being driven by the frustrations of the doubly vaccinated who want to go back to night clubs and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with 50,000 others in a muddy field somewhere.
Actions have consequences, however, and those who have not, will not or cannot be vaccinated will bear the impact of the release of society and I struggle with the throwaway notion "people will have to take their chances".
Is it really so simple that what the majority wants, the majority gets? I'm rarely in the position of being in a majority on anything - perhaps I'm more contrarian than those who call themselves such.
Indeed, some of the older ones probably had their eighteenth birthdays before writing existed.
I've actually put figures on it. 75% lab leak, 25% natural non-lab zoonosis. Yesterday I did that
I see I am quite close to Nate Silver:
"My priors:
Lab leak 60% (Upwards arrow +20%)
Natural origin 40% (Downwards arrow -20%)"
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1396550770368172033?s=20
https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/labour-candidate-apologises-for-saying-zionists-were-not-willingly-to-assimilate-1.493172
It occurred to me at the time that the meme of the tv presenter eating bat soup was most likely a careful disinformation effort from the CCP. Because it was completely effective in immediately cementing the narrative in the west that the virus came from the wet market, even though we knew that to be false as early as April. While simultaneously allowing nationalistic rallying around the idea that these racist, stupid foreigners don’t realise the photo was from a relatively famous tv presenter on a travel programme in Palau.
Think of that meme video of the Ozzie dad asking his toddler why they couldn’t go to the park. “Because some c**t ate a bat Dad”. Xi would have looked at it being forwarded a gazillion times and thought, job done lads.
Shock headline: I already presume that most of PB is over 65, there's no need for "satire" to prove the point
If he’s punished, Labour more or less have to move against her. Her tweets were racist and incited murder/suicide, so are orders of magnitude worse.
And she’s a nasty person public life would be better off without.
Surely that’s worth the loss of one above average medium pacer?
https://twitter.com/stephenflynnsnp/status/1400527183886622721?s=21
I feel extremely sorry for severely immunocompromised people who are at great risk from Covid, and would desperately wish to have the vaccines, but can't. If they receive medical advice to keep shielding for a long time and decide to do that, then they should be supported. But does it therefore follow that the whole population should have to spend their entire lives walking around in hazmat suits, in order to protect leukaemia patients from germs when they feel confident enough to sally forth from their homes?
And my sympathy certainly doesn't extend to anti-vaxxers. Please explain why we should all have to live with masks and social distancing for years, simply for the convenience of stroppy conspiracy theorists and fringe religious types who don't want to have vaccines forced upon them. The deal here is, there probably aren't enough of you to fuck everything up, so we'll leave you to your own devices - but if you catch the thing and die, tough.
This doesn't seem to me to be particularly controversial.
Getting Facebook to prohibit a debate, in the west, about the highly feasible Chinese lab origin of coronavirus must go down as their greatest achievement yet. Really quite special. It is like Goebbels times a million. So much smarter than the Nazis
We are fucked
Somehow this is all okay yet a non league keeper who a multi national bookie wanted to take the piss out of gets a two month ban for eating a pie to enforce the FA's betting rules.
https://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/policies/betting-rules
"These rules apply to everyone involved in football, from the players and managers, to the match officials and club staff."
"A worldwide ban on betting on football was introduced for all those involved in the game at Premier League, English Football League, National League and The FA Women's Super League and The FA Women's Championship levels, as well as those at clubs in the Northern, Southern and Isthmian leagues and all other Participants who do not fall into the category below.
Participants covered by the ban will be prohibited from betting, either directly or indirectly, on any football match or competition that takes place anywhere in the world."
That's ten TRILLION.
Is there scouse in the blood?
Look, we all know the score. The Left get to say whatever they want and then apologise. There’s no consistency in all of this.
CNet.com - Why Naomi Osaka dropped out of the French Open: Reaction, what to know
Venus Williams is the latest to speak out in support of Naomi Osaka
https://www.cnet.com/news/why-naomi-osaka-dropped-out-of-the-french-open-what-to-know/
CNN.com - Nike backs Naomi Osaka after she withdraws from French Open
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/01/business/naomi-osaka-nike-sponsors/index.html
Nike (NKE) and other major sponsors have come out in support of tennis star Naomi Osaka following her decision to withdraw from the French Open.
'The sports apparel giant — who signed a sponsorship deal with Osaka in 2019 — applauded the athlete in a statement on Monday for opening up about her struggle with depression.
"Our thoughts are with Naomi. We support her and recognize her courage in sharing her own mental health experience," Nike said. . . .
"Naomi Osaka's decision reminds us all how important it is to prioritize personal health and well-being," Mastercard (MA) said in a statement. "We support her and admire her courage to address important issues, both on and off the court."
Swiss luxury watchmaker TAG Heuer said that it supports its brand ambassadors "in triumph but also during challenging periods."
"Naomi is going through difficult times and we truly hope to see her back soon. She is a great champion and we are convinced that she will come out of this period stronger, be it professionally or personally," the company said in a statement. . . .
Nissan, the Japanese automaker, also threw its weight behind Osaka. "We support the right of our ambassadors to express themselves and stand by her decision," the company said in a statement.
All Nippon Airways, a Tokyo-based airline, said that it, too, would continue to support Osaka "as a sponsor."
Sweetgreen, a US restaurant chain of which Osaka is a brand ambassador and investor, said: "Our partnership with Naomi is rooted in wellness in all its forms. We support her in furthering the conversation around mental health and are proud to have her as part of the Sweetgreen team." . . .
PLUS
Guardian.com Lewis Hamilton criticises backlash against Naomi Osaka’s withdrawal
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jun/03/lewis-hamilton-criticises-backlash-against-naomi-osaka-decision
Lewis Hamilton has delivered a scathing criticism of the backlash against Naomi Osaka after her withdrawal from the French Open. Hamilton, speaking before this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, praised her brave stance, condemned the organisers of the French Open for their treatment of the Japanese player after her decision not to speak to the press at the tournament and admitted he too had struggled with the demands that come with competing on a global stage.
Now the rightness of otherwise of these views is open to question. Or should be. But big tech has enforced a frightening orthodoxy in which any questioning of the consensus is simply barred. Which is just about the opposite of how science should proceed.