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Punters see WH2024 as a re-run of WH2020 – Biden v Trump – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited September 2021 in General
imagePunters see WH2024 as a re-run of WH2020 – Biden v Trump – politicalbetting.com

In spite of their ages, Trump’s 75 and Biden 78, the two men who were their party’s nominees last time continue to head the betting for WH2024.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    rcs1000 said:

    I forecast neither Trump nor Biden will be candidates in 2024.

    To be specific, I mean neither will be the nominee of their Party. And I mean Donald J Tump Sr.
  • Hopefully both parties realise that neither should be anywhere near the race....one can hardly remember the day of the week and the other one shouldn't ever be let never the levers of power after last time.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    gealbhan said:

    rcs1000 said:

    gealbhan said:

    gealbhan said:

    kle4 said:

    Aslan said:

    HYUFD said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    MrEd said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"


    "“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.

    "“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”

    "He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."

    https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/stab-in-the-back-europe-s-fury-with-morrison-and-biden-over-aukus-submarine-deal-20210916-p58sea.html


    AHAHAHAHAHAHAH

    Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
    Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is

    Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk

    They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.

    Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany

    All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies




    Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
    Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important

    So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it

    Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
    It won't kill the US-French relationship.

    The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
    I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
    I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.

    Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
    Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.

    Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
    The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon

    You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
    Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened.
    If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
    Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.

    We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.

    If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
    Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan?
    Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
    No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.

    China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
    Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy.
    Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
    Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
    If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
    Sure.

    I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.

    I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
    It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
    Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.

    So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?

    At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
    Is that bad? Debts the UK owes China consist of money the Chinese had that they now rely on British goodwill to get back. UK assets owned by China consist of assets the Chinese have that they now rely on British goodwill to protect.
    Government debt is basically where you have been running deficits, not balancing the books, not healthy from point of view of servicing it, hence austerity in the UK. Do you really believe government debt can be infinite without default in the end? Where for example you will have little money to spend, and you owe even that to the Chinese?
    And you think the risk of being in that situation is okay?

    Obviously I don’t know the details of UK or US debt portfolios, how long the maturity profiles I add as caveats, though suspect they are sort of mix of medium and short.

    The US, our great friend and ally, lent us money for the Second World War, and it was quite long and painful paying it back.
    Japan.
    I don’t wish to be rude or anything, but have you been at the Vapors?
    Very good.

    My point is that Japan seems to have survived perfectly well by simply printing money since about 2010. I believe that of the 250% debt-to-GDP, around 180% (of GDP) is held by the BOJ.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited September 2021
    Health Canada announced on Thursday that the three COVID-19 vaccines currently approved for use in the country will now go by new names. "The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will now be named Comirnaty, the Moderna vaccine will be named SpikeVax, and the AstraZeneca vaccine will be named Vaxzevria," according to the announcement.

    I think they should have been called SheMirnaty, SheVax and SheZevira.

    More seriously, WTF, why are they doing this? Surely this will just cause more confusion, people turn up and told they are getting some weird name they have never heard of.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771

    Health Canada announced on Thursday that the three COVID-19 vaccines currently approved for use in the country will now go by new names. "The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will now be named Comirnaty, the Moderna vaccine will be named SpikeVax, and the AstraZeneca vaccine will be named Vaxzevria," according to the announcement.

    I think they should have been called SheMirnaty, SheVax and SheZevira.

    More seriously, WTF, why are they doing this?

    Because those are the official brand names for those drugs.
  • rcs1000 said:

    Health Canada announced on Thursday that the three COVID-19 vaccines currently approved for use in the country will now go by new names. "The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will now be named Comirnaty, the Moderna vaccine will be named SpikeVax, and the AstraZeneca vaccine will be named Vaxzevria," according to the announcement.

    I think they should have been called SheMirnaty, SheVax and SheZevira.

    More seriously, WTF, why are they doing this?

    Because those are the official brand names for those drugs.
    But why do this now? Everybody has heard of the other names, these weird brand names, surely it will confuse people.
  • Lay the favourites.
    rcs1000 said:

    gealbhan said:

    rcs1000 said:

    gealbhan said:

    gealbhan said:

    kle4 said:

    Aslan said:

    HYUFD said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    MrEd said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"


    "“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.

    "“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”

    "He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."

    https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/stab-in-the-back-europe-s-fury-with-morrison-and-biden-over-aukus-submarine-deal-20210916-p58sea.html


    AHAHAHAHAHAHAH

    Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
    Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is

    Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk

    They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.

    Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany

    All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies




    Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
    Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important

    So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it

    Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
    It won't kill the US-French relationship.

    The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
    I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
    I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.

    Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
    Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.

    Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
    The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon

    You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
    Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened.
    If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
    Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.

    We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.

    If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
    Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan?
    Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
    No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.

    China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
    Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy.
    Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
    Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
    If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
    Sure.

    I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.

    I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
    It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
    Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.

    So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?

    At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
    Is that bad? Debts the UK owes China consist of money the Chinese had that they now rely on British goodwill to get back. UK assets owned by China consist of assets the Chinese have that they now rely on British goodwill to protect.
    Government debt is basically where you have been running deficits, not balancing the books, not healthy from point of view of servicing it, hence austerity in the UK. Do you really believe government debt can be infinite without default in the end? Where for example you will have little money to spend, and you owe even that to the Chinese?
    And you think the risk of being in that situation is okay?

    Obviously I don’t know the details of UK or US debt portfolios, how long the maturity profiles I add as caveats, though suspect they are sort of mix of medium and short.

    The US, our great friend and ally, lent us money for the Second World War, and it was quite long and painful paying it back.
    Japan.
    I don’t wish to be rude or anything, but have you been at the Vapors?
    Very good.

    My point is that Japan seems to have survived perfectly well by simply printing money since about 2010. I believe that of the 250% debt-to-GDP, around 180% (of GDP) is held by the BOJ.
    They've survived but they've not thrived. Japan has really stagnated in recent decades and we need to be careful we don't do the same.
  • rcs1000 said:

    I forecast neither Trump nor Biden will be candidates in 2024.

    Afraid I disagree. Trump will be the nominee. About as certain as anything gets in politics. Absolutely rock solid.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837

    rcs1000 said:

    Health Canada announced on Thursday that the three COVID-19 vaccines currently approved for use in the country will now go by new names. "The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will now be named Comirnaty, the Moderna vaccine will be named SpikeVax, and the AstraZeneca vaccine will be named Vaxzevria," according to the announcement.

    I think they should have been called SheMirnaty, SheVax and SheZevira.

    More seriously, WTF, why are they doing this?

    Because those are the official brand names for those drugs.
    But why do this now? Everybody has heard of the other names, these weird brand names, surely it will confuse people.
    I don't know. It is only a thought. Canada has vaccinated all but the hardcore. This group of holdouts has been in receipt of much propaganda against the current vaccines, often by name.
    Therefore, change the name. It may help at the margins.
  • dixiedean said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Health Canada announced on Thursday that the three COVID-19 vaccines currently approved for use in the country will now go by new names. "The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will now be named Comirnaty, the Moderna vaccine will be named SpikeVax, and the AstraZeneca vaccine will be named Vaxzevria," according to the announcement.

    I think they should have been called SheMirnaty, SheVax and SheZevira.

    More seriously, WTF, why are they doing this?

    Because those are the official brand names for those drugs.
    But why do this now? Everybody has heard of the other names, these weird brand names, surely it will confuse people.
    I don't know. It is only a thought. Canada has vaccinated all but the hardcore. This group of holdouts has been in receipt of much propaganda against the current vaccines, often by name.
    Therefore, change the name. It may help at the margins.
    Perhaps, but if I was an antivax, the government are trying to control me type nutjob

    a) all those social media propaganda channels will pump this out (and probably come up with some crazy spin of these are reformulated to do an even better job of mind control)

    and if you were just really hesitant,

    b) I would probably even more suspicious of what are these different ones I have never heard of, wondering if they are Chinese ones that I heard they had that aren't as good...or something.
  • Lay the favourites.

    rcs1000 said:

    gealbhan said:

    rcs1000 said:

    gealbhan said:

    gealbhan said:

    kle4 said:

    Aslan said:

    HYUFD said:

    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    MrEd said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"


    "“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.

    "“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”

    "He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."

    https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/stab-in-the-back-europe-s-fury-with-morrison-and-biden-over-aukus-submarine-deal-20210916-p58sea.html


    AHAHAHAHAHAHAH

    Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
    Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is

    Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk

    They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.

    Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany

    All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies




    Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
    Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important

    So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it

    Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
    It won't kill the US-French relationship.

    The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
    I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
    I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.

    Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
    Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.

    Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
    The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon

    You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
    Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened.
    If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
    Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.

    We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.

    If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
    Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan?
    Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
    No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.

    China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
    Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy.
    Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
    Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
    If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
    Sure.

    I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.

    I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
    It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
    Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.

    So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?

    At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
    Is that bad? Debts the UK owes China consist of money the Chinese had that they now rely on British goodwill to get back. UK assets owned by China consist of assets the Chinese have that they now rely on British goodwill to protect.
    Government debt is basically where you have been running deficits, not balancing the books, not healthy from point of view of servicing it, hence austerity in the UK. Do you really believe government debt can be infinite without default in the end? Where for example you will have little money to spend, and you owe even that to the Chinese?
    And you think the risk of being in that situation is okay?

    Obviously I don’t know the details of UK or US debt portfolios, how long the maturity profiles I add as caveats, though suspect they are sort of mix of medium and short.

    The US, our great friend and ally, lent us money for the Second World War, and it was quite long and painful paying it back.
    Japan.
    I don’t wish to be rude or anything, but have you been at the Vapors?
    Very good.

    My point is that Japan seems to have survived perfectly well by simply printing money since about 2010. I believe that of the 250% debt-to-GDP, around 180% (of GDP) is held by the BOJ.
    They've survived but they've not thrived. Japan has really stagnated in recent decades and we need to be careful we don't do the same.
    Its still the world's third largest economy...... hardly a basket case.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    At the moment that looks like the case but I think Biden will only run again if his approval rating is about 50%+ and he thinks he will be re elected. Trump I think will run again regardless
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837

    dixiedean said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Health Canada announced on Thursday that the three COVID-19 vaccines currently approved for use in the country will now go by new names. "The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will now be named Comirnaty, the Moderna vaccine will be named SpikeVax, and the AstraZeneca vaccine will be named Vaxzevria," according to the announcement.

    I think they should have been called SheMirnaty, SheVax and SheZevira.

    More seriously, WTF, why are they doing this?

    Because those are the official brand names for those drugs.
    But why do this now? Everybody has heard of the other names, these weird brand names, surely it will confuse people.
    I don't know. It is only a thought. Canada has vaccinated all but the hardcore. This group of holdouts has been in receipt of much propaganda against the current vaccines, often by name.
    Therefore, change the name. It may help at the margins.
    Perhaps, but if I was an antivax, the government are trying to control me type nutjob

    a) all those social media propaganda channels will pump this out (and probably come up with some crazy spin of these are reformulated to do an even better job of mind control)

    and if you were just really hesitant,

    b) I would probably even more suspicious of what are these different ones I have never heard of, wondering if they are Chinese ones that I heard they had that aren't as good...or something.
    Yes. Perhaps.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837
    3 dull by elections tonight. MIG hold in Boro.
    Comfortable Lab hold in Ealing.
    Lab hold in Sheffield. 25% swing to LD's mind.
    Malvern Hills count tomorrow.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,280
    PB scoop on the latest YouGov figures

    "Conservatives 39% (+6)
    Labour 35% (nc)
    Liberal Democrats 7% (-3)"

    https://twitter.com/TSEofPB/status/1438642258178412546/
  • rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787

    rcs1000 said:

    Health Canada announced on Thursday that the three COVID-19 vaccines currently approved for use in the country will now go by new names. "The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will now be named Comirnaty, the Moderna vaccine will be named SpikeVax, and the AstraZeneca vaccine will be named Vaxzevria," according to the announcement.

    I think they should have been called SheMirnaty, SheVax and SheZevira.

    More seriously, WTF, why are they doing this?

    Because those are the official brand names for those drugs.
    But why do this now? Everybody has heard of the other names, these weird brand names, surely it will confuse people.
    I think it’s a legal/IP thing here in the US, and I guess Canada is the same (cos of NSFTA/USMCA perhaps), All the interminable prescription drug ads use the brand name with the scientific name in brackets. I think now the Pfizer has been fully approved here it’s now being called “ Comirnaty”
  • rpjs said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Health Canada announced on Thursday that the three COVID-19 vaccines currently approved for use in the country will now go by new names. "The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will now be named Comirnaty, the Moderna vaccine will be named SpikeVax, and the AstraZeneca vaccine will be named Vaxzevria," according to the announcement.

    I think they should have been called SheMirnaty, SheVax and SheZevira.

    More seriously, WTF, why are they doing this?

    Because those are the official brand names for those drugs.
    But why do this now? Everybody has heard of the other names, these weird brand names, surely it will confuse people.
    I think it’s a legal/IP thing here in the US, and I guess Canada is the same (cos of NSFTA/USMCA perhaps), All the interminable prescription drug ads use the brand name with the scientific name in brackets. I think now the Pfizer has been fully approved here it’s now being called “ Comirnaty”
    That sounds plausible explanation. All the reports I saw didn't seem to give any reason other than Health Canada was changing the names of all 3.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    Has anyone been out in town recently?

    It is absolutely buzzing.

    More confirmation, were any needed, that London is the greatest city in the world.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited September 2021

    Has anyone been out in town recently?

    It is absolutely buzzing.

    More confirmation, were any needed, that London is the greatest city in the world.

    Out out on a school night?
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,280
    "La Chine critique l’alliance entre Washington, Londres et Canberra et menace l’Australie"

    https://www.lemonde.fr
  • iSAGE screeching incoming....

    Long Covid less common than feared - ONS study
    https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58584558
  • Covid: Italy to require all workers to show 'green pass' certificate

    The measures are a first for Europe and some of the strictest in the world.

    Anyone without a pass will reportedly face suspension from work and may have their pay stopped after five days.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58590187
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/16/aukus-deal-showing-france-and-eu-that-biden-not-all-he-seems


    Buried deep in the article you can only imagine the angst in the Guardian having to write this:

    "But France’s exclusion shows the extent to which the US does not trust it with nuclear technology. This is a big win for Boris Johnson, and those that said post-Brexit Britain would remain more important to the US than the EU, even if it is going to alarm the pro-China business lobby in the UK. "

  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 23,926
    edited September 2021
    felix said:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/16/aukus-deal-showing-france-and-eu-that-biden-not-all-he-seems


    Buried deep in the article you can only imagine the angst in the Guardian having to write this:

    "But France’s exclusion shows the extent to which the US does not trust it with nuclear technology. This is a big win for Boris Johnson, and those that said post-Brexit Britain would remain more important to the US than the EU, even if it is going to alarm the pro-China business lobby in the UK. "

    Is that because it is nonsense? At least, the first sentence is. It may well be that America does not trust France with nuclear technology but for the purposes of selling submarines to Australia, how is that relevant? France has its own systems which it does not export. That is why America was able to swoop in and steal the deal. The rest of it might be correct. Boris will probably count it as a win.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124

    felix said:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/16/aukus-deal-showing-france-and-eu-that-biden-not-all-he-seems


    Buried deep in the article you can only imagine the angst in the Guardian having to write this:

    "But France’s exclusion shows the extent to which the US does not trust it with nuclear technology. This is a big win for Boris Johnson, and those that said post-Brexit Britain would remain more important to the US than the EU, even if it is going to alarm the pro-China business lobby in the UK. "

    Is that because it is nonsense? At least, the first sentence is. It may well be that America does not trust France with nuclear technology but for the purposes of selling submarines to Australia, how is that relevant? France has its own systems which it does not export. That is why America was able to swoop in and steal the deal. The rest of it might be correct. Boris will probably count it as a win.
    Lol - QED
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124

    Covid: Italy to require all workers to show 'green pass' certificate

    The measures are a first for Europe and some of the strictest in the world.

    Anyone without a pass will reportedly face suspension from work and may have their pay stopped after five days.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58590187

    shows how different is the approach within different European countries. I'd expect Spain to be close the the Italian position. Indeed it may even become an EU thing. I confess this is one area I find the UK attitude reprehensible, as with ID cards.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124

    iSAGE screeching incoming....

    Long Covid less common than feared - ONS study
    https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58584558

    Given the lack of research and clear definitions I can see it becoming another tool for the workshy to trot out as well.
  • I feel this lacks a stable equilibrium

    * If Trump is going to be the nominee, Biden will want to run. He beat him before, he knows Kamala would be a shitty candidate against Trump, he'll be old but his opponent will also be old. He'd have a tougher time against a fresh face, and might be inclined to pass the torch.

    * If Biden is running and the Dem nom is uncontested, it's likely Trump loses the nomination even if he runs. Moderates will want their party back, and politically active centrists will vote on the GOP side.

  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555
    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    You're months behind the curve, at least as far as this country was concerned. It was downgraded from a pandemic to endemic or an epidemic in the spring.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Fishing said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    You're months behind the curve, at least as far as this country was concerned. It was downgraded from a pandemic to endemic or an epidemic in the spring.
    Incoherently. You can't downgrade a pandemic "at least as far as [one] country is concerned."
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,083

    Health Canada announced on Thursday that the three COVID-19 vaccines currently approved for use in the country will now go by new names. "The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will now be named Comirnaty, the Moderna vaccine will be named SpikeVax, and the AstraZeneca vaccine will be named Vaxzevria," according to the announcement.

    I think they should have been called SheMirnaty, SheVax and SheZevira.

    More seriously, WTF, why are they doing this? Surely this will just cause more confusion, people turn up and told they are getting some weird name they have never heard of.

    Astra has been called Vaxzevria abroad for some time, and we’ve been using that name on NHS covid travel passes and the like.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,083

    Covid: Italy to require all workers to show 'green pass' certificate

    The measures are a first for Europe and some of the strictest in the world.

    Anyone without a pass will reportedly face suspension from work and may have their pay stopped after five days.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58590187

    Italy is still scarred by its experience at the outset, and they’ll probably get away with this where other countries wouldn’t. I’ll be back in Bergamo on Sunday and it will be interesting to see how things are there.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Has anyone been out in town recently?

    It is absolutely buzzing.

    More confirmation, were any needed, that London is the greatest city in the world.

    Went to Asia Ivy on Wednesday and it was completely packed
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718
    edited September 2021
    Good morning everyone. Bit earlier this am than recently, but only 11.5degC, according to my app. Winter, I fear, draws on!

    The next POTUS election is, IIRC 2024. Serious campaigning will occur from about Feb of that year onward.
    That's two-and-a-half years away. A lot can happen, health-wise, to men in their mid to late 70's in that time, I can assure you! And very little of it good!

    Secondly of course, we should bear the words of the late Harold Macmillan in mind 'Events, dear you, events!'
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,083
    edited September 2021
    Charles said:

    Has anyone been out in town recently?

    It is absolutely buzzing.

    More confirmation, were any needed, that London is the greatest city in the world.

    Went to Asia Ivy on Wednesday and it was completely packed
    Anywhere that gets tourist visitors is heaving right now, as so many travel plans have been focused into the last couple of months of the season. It was like that on the island when I left, and here I have never known the Alps so busy.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    Health Canada announced on Thursday that the three COVID-19 vaccines currently approved for use in the country will now go by new names. "The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will now be named Comirnaty, the Moderna vaccine will be named SpikeVax, and the AstraZeneca vaccine will be named Vaxzevria," according to the announcement.

    I think they should have been called SheMirnaty, SheVax and SheZevira.

    More seriously, WTF, why are they doing this? Surely this will just cause more confusion, people turn up and told they are getting some weird name they have never heard of.

    Comirnaty is the vax name given in my NHS app (Pfizer)
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Good morning everyone. Bit earlier this am than recently, but only 11.5degC, according to my app. Winter, I fear, draws on!

    The next POTUS election is, IIRC 2024. Serious campaigning will occur from about Feb of that year onward.
    That's two-and-a-half years away. A lot can happen, health-wise, to men in their mid to late 70's in that time, I can assure you! And very little of it good!

    Secondly of course, we should bear the words of the late Harold Macmillan in mind 'Events, dear you, events!'

    "That fellow down under." Biden will not run again.

    Kamala has sunk without trace.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,280
    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    Let's hope so.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718
    IanB2 said:

    Charles said:

    Has anyone been out in town recently?

    It is absolutely buzzing.

    More confirmation, were any needed, that London is the greatest city in the world.

    Went to Asia Ivy on Wednesday and it was completely packed
    Anywhere that gets tourist visitors is heaving right now, as so many travel plans have been focused into the last couple of months of the season. It was like that on the island when I left, and here I have never known the Alps so busy.
    Universities starting again, especially Freshers Weeks, perhaps contributing. Conversely, people having their last holiday before knuckling down?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.

    Somethings are better though, a cracking game of football against Napoli last night, albeit shame to let the lead slip to a 2:2 draw.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718
    Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746
    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    Hope so. Obvuosly the fear must be that there will be a new variant.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.

    Somethings are better though, a cracking game of football against Napoli last night, albeit shame to let the lead slip to a 2:2 draw.
    Hopefully the belated announcement of the booster programme will stop things going too Pete Tong this winter. But the way this government works, I think we should consider their Plan B to be just an early flagging of their winter Plan A.
  • Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.
    And this is the room of pain the Tories have just stepped into. Whopping pay rise for most working people. Punative UC cut for the poorest. To pay to fix services which by their own admission will stay broken and get worse.

    By the time we get to the next election people will be hopping mad. Which will leave the Tories with only two options. Lie - say that everything is great and that the professionals reporting problems are Talking Down Britain. Or blame someone else - crap medics, pinko commie judges, whatever.
  • A court has ruled that if we were to see Prince Phillips will, the Queen would lose her dignity. Makes me wonder what was in the will.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58587147

    "Sir Andrew said: "I have held that, because of the constitutional position of the Sovereign, it is appropriate to have a special practice in relation to royal wills.

    "There is a need to enhance the protection afforded to truly private aspects of the lives of this limited group of individuals in order to maintain the dignity of the Sovereign and close members of her family.""
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718
    moonshine said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.

    Somethings are better though, a cracking game of football against Napoli last night, albeit shame to let the lead slip to a 2:2 draw.
    Hopefully the belated announcement of the booster programme will stop things going too Pete Tong this winter. But the way this government works, I think we should consider their Plan B to be just an early flagging of their winter Plan A.
    Rather wondering about the effect of reducing travel restrictions. Will be good to see relatives 'in the flesh' after being restricted to Zoom or FaceTime, but will that import, and indeed export, varieties of the virus?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    Fishing said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    You're months behind the curve, at least as far as this country was concerned. It was downgraded from a pandemic to endemic or an epidemic in the spring.
    I'm not talking about official ratings. I'm talking about the possibility of us slipping from current ratings. I'm saying - from here - the only way is towards further loosening of restrictions and guidance,
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.
    And this is the room of pain the Tories have just stepped into. Whopping pay rise for most working people. Punative UC cut for the poorest. To pay to fix services which by their own admission will stay broken and get worse.

    By the time we get to the next election people will be hopping mad. Which will leave the Tories with only two options. Lie - say that everything is great and that the professionals reporting problems are Talking Down Britain. Or blame someone else - crap medics, pinko commie judges, whatever.
    Whopping pay rise?
  • paulyork64paulyork64 Posts: 2,461

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.
    And this is the room of pain the Tories have just stepped into. Whopping pay rise for most working people. Punative UC cut for the poorest. To pay to fix services which by their own admission will stay broken and get worse.

    By the time we get to the next election people will be hopping mad. Which will leave the Tories with only two options. Lie - say that everything is great and that the professionals reporting problems are Talking Down Britain. Or blame someone else - crap medics, pinko commie judges, whatever.
    Whopping pay rise?
    I was wondering about that too. Take home pay cut methinks.
  • If Trump wants the nomination he wins it.
    If Trump is running, Biden is the best Democrat to take him on, as the others all have issues that lose some switchers.
    If Trump is not running Biden's age could be a serious issue.

    I think Biden will feel duty bound to run if Trump does, but is odds against to run otherwise.

    If its Biden v Trump, Biden wins based on votes cast and the electoral college, but who actually becomes President is dependent on the 2022 elections and supreme court, not the 2024 election.
  • moonshine said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.

    Somethings are better though, a cracking game of football against Napoli last night, albeit shame to let the lead slip to a 2:2 draw.
    Hopefully the belated announcement of the booster programme will stop things going too Pete Tong this winter. But the way this government works, I think we should consider their Plan B to be just an early flagging of their winter Plan A.
    Rather wondering about the effect of reducing travel restrictions. Will be good to see relatives 'in the flesh' after being restricted to Zoom or FaceTime, but will that import, and indeed export, varieties of the virus?
    For a variety of the virus to be properly scary it presumably needs to out compete delta, which is tough to do. Possible but unlikely, and as other countries have found with delta it gets there sooner or later whatever travel restrictions we have.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.

    Somethings are better though, a cracking game of football against Napoli last night, albeit shame to let the lead slip to a 2:2 draw.
    The sequelae of Covid will undoubtedly last for years. In the Courts Scottish courts are running more High Courts than ever before but the backlog, especially for multiple accused trials where social distancing is problematic, is huge. I am doing my own modest bit and will be giving a jury speech for the prosecution in another rape case in Stirling this morning but the only realistic way to address the incredible backlog of summary crime is going to be to no pro thousands of cases. No politician has been brave enough to grasp this nettle yet.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,083

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.
    And this is the room of pain the Tories have just stepped into. Whopping pay rise for most working people. Punative UC cut for the poorest. To pay to fix services which by their own admission will stay broken and get worse.

    By the time we get to the next election people will be hopping mad. Which will leave the Tories with only two options. Lie - say that everything is great and that the professionals reporting problems are Talking Down Britain. Or blame someone else - crap medics, pinko commie judges, whatever.
    Whopping pay rise?
    I was wondering about that too. Take home pay cut methinks.
    I presume he means the big increase in average earnings? But that isn’t a pay rise for specific individuals, simply a reversion of the economic mix and furlough effects that produced last year’s dramatic decline.
  • Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.

    Somethings are better though, a cracking game of football against Napoli last night, albeit shame to let the lead slip to a 2:2 draw.
    Is this not a return to normal? For years in the West we have not have to worry about infectious diseases, at least in healthy adults. They were a problem only in pediatrics, geriatrics, and people who travelled to dodgy foreign countries.

    So just as a pandemic is no more than business as usual for the human race, we are going to have to reinvent an earlier form of medicine when we had to combat deadly transmissible diseases.

    When they interview Indian doctors they have job titles such as Consultant in Infectious Diseases. Not sure your average NHS general hospital has such a thing.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226

    moonshine said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.

    Somethings are better though, a cracking game of football against Napoli last night, albeit shame to let the lead slip to a 2:2 draw.
    Hopefully the belated announcement of the booster programme will stop things going too Pete Tong this winter. But the way this government works, I think we should consider their Plan B to be just an early flagging of their winter Plan A.
    Rather wondering about the effect of reducing travel restrictions. Will be good to see relatives 'in the flesh' after being restricted to Zoom or FaceTime, but will that import, and indeed export, varieties of the virus?
    Variants will go where they go. All you’re really doing is buying a (small) bit of time with border action.

    Perhaps Charles or others can comment but I’ve heard it mentioned that in future years we can throw supercomputer modelling at the virus and seek to predict future variants. That way we don’t just get tweaked boosters for the variant of the day but also the variant of tomorrow. Certainly I expect the infectious diseases landscape to be utterly transformed by 2030.
  • Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
    No chance Trump will be in jail.

    Even if he's guilty, no Jury will be 12 Democrats (and if it were that'd be grounds for appeal surely). And no MAGA is going to convict.

    As Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
  • Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.
    And this is the room of pain the Tories have just stepped into. Whopping pay rise for most working people. Punative UC cut for the poorest. To pay to fix services which by their own admission will stay broken and get worse.

    By the time we get to the next election people will be hopping mad. Which will leave the Tories with only two options. Lie - say that everything is great and that the professionals reporting problems are Talking Down Britain. Or blame someone else - crap medics, pinko commie judges, whatever.
    Whopping pay rise?
    *giggles* whopping TAX rise.

    More coffee needed...
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.

    Somethings are better though, a cracking game of football against Napoli last night, albeit shame to let the lead slip to a 2:2 draw.
    Hopefully the belated announcement of the booster programme will stop things going too Pete Tong this winter. But the way this government works, I think we should consider their Plan B to be just an early flagging of their winter Plan A.
    Rather wondering about the effect of reducing travel restrictions. Will be good to see relatives 'in the flesh' after being restricted to Zoom or FaceTime, but will that import, and indeed export, varieties of the virus?
    Variants will go where they go. All you’re really doing is buying a (small) bit of time with border action.

    Perhaps Charles or others can comment but I’ve heard it mentioned that in future years we can throw supercomputer modelling at the virus and seek to predict future variants. That way we don’t just get tweaked boosters for the variant of the day but also the variant of tomorrow. Certainly I expect the infectious diseases landscape to be utterly transformed by 2030.
    Is this not pretty much what we do when selecting a flu vaccine every year?
  • Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.

    Somethings are better though, a cracking game of football against Napoli last night, albeit shame to let the lead slip to a 2:2 draw.
    Is this not a return to normal? For years in the West we have not have to worry about infectious diseases, at least in healthy adults. They were a problem only in pediatrics, geriatrics, and people who travelled to dodgy foreign countries.

    So just as a pandemic is no more than business as usual for the human race, we are going to have to reinvent an earlier form of medicine when we had to combat deadly transmissible diseases.

    When they interview Indian doctors they have job titles such as Consultant in Infectious Diseases. Not sure your average NHS general hospital has such a thing.
    I'm wary of this argument that as ≈ 90% have antibodies it will be ok. Hope so. But not sure it will turn out to be that simple.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,555
    rcs1000 said:

    Fishing said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    You're months behind the curve, at least as far as this country was concerned. It was downgraded from a pandemic to endemic or an epidemic in the spring.
    I'm not talking about official ratings. I'm talking about the possibility of us slipping from current ratings. I'm saying - from here - the only way is towards further loosening of restrictions and guidance,
    That's more or less what the government was saying in the spring, and is still saying, though of course keeping the powers and plans to reimpose restrictions in place.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    Yes, Delta sped everything along quite a lot, I think with Alpha we'd have significantly lower antibody prevalence, especially among younger people under 30.

    One of my friends pointed out when delta took off that we were lucky in a way because delta was so competitive vs other known variants but also had almost no diluting effects on vaccines. Her ideal scenario was that everyone under 60 gets a post-vaccine infection with Delta which will amount to nothing or at worst a mild cold because we know that prior infection is the best way to protect against severe symptoms of future infection by any variant.

    She also pointed at that this random luck could have gone the other way and delta could have shown the same competitive advantage but also had significant vaccine dilution with just another few mutations that they've modelled (but obviously not synthesised!). It would almost have set the world back to near step 1, waiting on vaccine manufacturers to get their variant specific vaccines approved.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772
    rcs1000 said:

    Fishing said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    You're months behind the curve, at least as far as this country was concerned. It was downgraded from a pandemic to endemic or an epidemic in the spring.
    I'm not talking about official ratings. I'm talking about the possibility of us slipping from current ratings. I'm saying - from here - the only way is towards further loosening of restrictions and guidance,
    Where I do agree with you is that the latest models showing yet another surge of infections, hospital admissions and deaths this autumn and winter are almost certainly pants. We may well stay round about current levels for quite some time and that is disappointing enough but these models of exponential growth are (yet again) wrong.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.

    Somethings are better though, a cracking game of football against Napoli last night, albeit shame to let the lead slip to a 2:2 draw.
    The sequelae of Covid will undoubtedly last for years. In the Courts Scottish courts are running more High Courts than ever before but the backlog, especially for multiple accused trials where social distancing is problematic, is huge. I am doing my own modest bit and will be giving a jury speech for the prosecution in another rape case in Stirling this morning but the only realistic way to address the incredible backlog of summary crime is going to be to no pro thousands of cases. No politician has been brave enough to grasp this nettle yet.
    In England (looking at my twitter feed! the situation appears to have got to the point where even the prosecution service is so short of staff that cases are being adjourned due to no prosecution lawyer being available.

    Scheduling is such that there are cases from 2018 which now have court dates for 2023
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.

    Somethings are better though, a cracking game of football against Napoli last night, albeit shame to let the lead slip to a 2:2 draw.
    Hopefully the belated announcement of the booster programme will stop things going too Pete Tong this winter. But the way this government works, I think we should consider their Plan B to be just an early flagging of their winter Plan A.
    Rather wondering about the effect of reducing travel restrictions. Will be good to see relatives 'in the flesh' after being restricted to Zoom or FaceTime, but will that import, and indeed export, varieties of the virus?
    Variants will go where they go. All you’re really doing is buying a (small) bit of time with border action.

    Perhaps Charles or others can comment but I’ve heard it mentioned that in future years we can throw supercomputer modelling at the virus and seek to predict future variants. That way we don’t just get tweaked boosters for the variant of the day but also the variant of tomorrow. Certainly I expect the infectious diseases landscape to be utterly transformed by 2030.
    There are already companies doing what you say with viral mutation modelling. We do it every year with influenza so we can predict which strains will be out there and adjust the flu jab. COVID will be no different, I know that one major pharma is already quite far along the path, I'd be shocked if they all weren't doing it. Pharma isn't hiring the best and brightest data scientists for nothing.
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    Lost count of how many times people have called Covid over and done with.
  • Jonathan said:

    Lost count of how many times people have called Covid over and done with.

    That's because it is over and done with (in a pandemic/lockdown sense). It has been since July and should have been months earlier.

    Lost count of how many times people have said its going to get worse, to no avail.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    MaxPB said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.

    Somethings are better though, a cracking game of football against Napoli last night, albeit shame to let the lead slip to a 2:2 draw.
    Hopefully the belated announcement of the booster programme will stop things going too Pete Tong this winter. But the way this government works, I think we should consider their Plan B to be just an early flagging of their winter Plan A.
    Rather wondering about the effect of reducing travel restrictions. Will be good to see relatives 'in the flesh' after being restricted to Zoom or FaceTime, but will that import, and indeed export, varieties of the virus?
    Variants will go where they go. All you’re really doing is buying a (small) bit of time with border action.

    Perhaps Charles or others can comment but I’ve heard it mentioned that in future years we can throw supercomputer modelling at the virus and seek to predict future variants. That way we don’t just get tweaked boosters for the variant of the day but also the variant of tomorrow. Certainly I expect the infectious diseases landscape to be utterly transformed by 2030.
    There are already companies doing what you say with viral mutation modelling. We do it every year with influenza so we can predict which strains will be out there and adjust the flu jab. COVID will be no different, I know that one major pharma is already quite far along the path, I'd be shocked if they all weren't doing it. Pharma isn't hiring the best and brightest data scientists for nothing.
    Indeed. But this winter is we’re still using v1.0 vaccines. Which fortunately looks like it will be good enough still. But we better hope to be a step ahead next year.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
    No chance Trump will be in jail.

    Even if he's guilty, no Jury will be 12 Democrats (and if it were that'd be grounds for appeal surely). And no MAGA is going to convict.

    As Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
    Even as a non American I find the inability to hold him to account for his attempted coup in January deeply troubling.

    The American democratic system is broken and becoming more so. The Republicans claiming fraud in the recall election in California before the votes had even been counted was another sign. One of the major parties in the US is no longer signed up to democratic norms. If they lose they have been cheated even in a deep blue state such as California. There is no acceptance of democratic outcomes. This is not a stable situation and Trump is largely, if not exclusively, responsible.
    The 2024 election is going to be a five star, fur lined, ocean going shit show probably leading to the death of the Republic.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,083

    IanB2 said:

    Charles said:

    Has anyone been out in town recently?

    It is absolutely buzzing.

    More confirmation, were any needed, that London is the greatest city in the world.

    Went to Asia Ivy on Wednesday and it was completely packed
    Anywhere that gets tourist visitors is heaving right now, as so many travel plans have been focused into the last couple of months of the season. It was like that on the island when I left, and here I have never known the Alps so busy.
    Universities starting again, especially Freshers Weeks, perhaps contributing. Conversely, people having their last holiday before knuckling down?
    And it is quite obvious, from the scarcity of British cars and British voices spotted during my travels (indeed just a tiny handful) that the UK government restrictions have deterred a lot of foreign travel this year, while the Germans, Austrians, Dutch and Belgians are here in huge numbers. I’d guess London has a lot more UK visitors right now.
  • DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
    No chance Trump will be in jail.

    Even if he's guilty, no Jury will be 12 Democrats (and if it were that'd be grounds for appeal surely). And no MAGA is going to convict.

    As Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
    Even as a non American I find the inability to hold him to account for his attempted coup in January deeply troubling.

    The American democratic system is broken and becoming more so. The Republicans claiming fraud in the recall election in California before the votes had even been counted was another sign. One of the major parties in the US is no longer signed up to democratic norms. If they lose they have been cheated even in a deep blue state such as California. There is no acceptance of democratic outcomes. This is not a stable situation and Trump is largely, if not exclusively, responsible.

    Yep - the US is in a very, very bad place. It is hard to see how things don't get worse there.

  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited September 2021
    IanB2 said:

    Charles said:

    Has anyone been out in town recently?

    It is absolutely buzzing.

    More confirmation, were any needed, that London is the greatest city in the world.

    Went to Asia Ivy on Wednesday and it was completely packed
    Anywhere that gets tourist visitors is heaving right now, as so many travel plans have been focused into the last couple of months of the season. It was like that on the island when I left, and here I have never known the Alps so busy.
    Tourism is recovering generally. For both work and pleasure reasons, my wife spent a week in Italy and Greece in July-August, and again just now. She says the numbers in early September were three times the number of people in early August, which is usually the other way round.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,585

    Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
    The authorities are taking their time about it.

    I'd have had the seditious barsteward wearing an orange jump suit in Attica by now.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,083
    edited September 2021

    IanB2 said:

    Charles said:

    Has anyone been out in town recently?

    It is absolutely buzzing.

    More confirmation, were any needed, that London is the greatest city in the world.

    Went to Asia Ivy on Wednesday and it was completely packed
    Anywhere that gets tourist visitors is heaving right now, as so many travel plans have been focused into the last couple of months of the season. It was like that on the island when I left, and here I have never known the Alps so busy.
    Tourism is recovering generally. For both work and pleasure reasons, my wife spent a week in Italy and Greece in July-August, and again just now. She says the numbers in early September were three times the number of people in August, which is usually the other way round.
    Likely a reflection of the demographic that generally saved money during the lockdowns spending it now that travel is freeing up again. And Italy has of course lifted its quarantine restriction on British visitors for this month.
  • felix said:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/16/aukus-deal-showing-france-and-eu-that-biden-not-all-he-seems


    Buried deep in the article you can only imagine the angst in the Guardian having to write this:

    "But France’s exclusion shows the extent to which the US does not trust it with nuclear technology. This is a big win for Boris Johnson, and those that said post-Brexit Britain would remain more important to the US than the EU, even if it is going to alarm the pro-China business lobby in the UK. "

    They didn't have to write it. They chose to.

  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
    No chance Trump will be in jail.

    Even if he's guilty, no Jury will be 12 Democrats (and if it were that'd be grounds for appeal surely). And no MAGA is going to convict.

    As Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
    Even as a non American I find the inability to hold him to account for his attempted coup in January deeply troubling.

    The American democratic system is broken and becoming more so. The Republicans claiming fraud in the recall election in California before the votes had even been counted was another sign. One of the major parties in the US is no longer signed up to democratic norms. If they lose they have been cheated even in a deep blue state such as California. There is no acceptance of democratic outcomes. This is not a stable situation and Trump is largely, if not exclusively, responsible.
    Twas ever thus.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Catilinarian_conspiracy - Cicero resorted to murder because he didn't think he could get a conviction.
  • Good morning

    On holidays are masks still required on flights, especially long haul
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,784

    Jonathan said:

    Lost count of how many times people have called Covid over and done with.

    That's because it is over and done with (in a pandemic/lockdown sense). It has been since July and should have been months earlier.

    Lost count of how many times people have said its going to get worse, to no avail.
    Of all the times to declare the pandemic over the beginning of September, and with the hospitals starting multiples fuller of COVID patients than last year, is not it.

    - England went back to school with low initial incidence amongst youngsters, let's see if that is still true 3 or 4 infection cycles.
    - The current fall in incidence substantially relates to transmissions between 5-10/9, when we had a mini heatwave.

    There are things that will suppress rates, the reducing attack face from getting nearer herd immunity, immunity from vaccinations and boosters and so on, but I expect the next couple of months to be up and down, and perhaps more up than down in the next weeks..
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    edited September 2021
    Pro_Rata said:

    Jonathan said:

    Lost count of how many times people have called Covid over and done with.

    That's because it is over and done with (in a pandemic/lockdown sense). It has been since July and should have been months earlier.

    Lost count of how many times people have said its going to get worse, to no avail.
    Of all the times to declare the pandemic over the beginning of September, and with the hospitals starting multiples fuller of COVID patients than last year, is not it.

    - England went back to school with low initial incidence amongst youngsters, let's see if that is still true 3 or 4 infection cycles.
    - The current fall in incidence substantially relates to transmissions between 5-10/9, when we had a mini heatwave.

    There are things that will suppress rates, the reducing attack face from getting nearer herd immunity, immunity from vaccinations and boosters and so on, but I expect the next couple of months to be up and down, and perhaps more up than down in the next weeks..
    The age banding is interesting... One possible interpretation of the 15-19 fall is the vaccine starting to kick in for the 16/17 age group.

    image
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.

    Somethings are better though, a cracking game of football against Napoli last night, albeit shame to let the lead slip to a 2:2 draw.
    The sequelae of Covid will undoubtedly last for years. In the Courts Scottish courts are running more High Courts than ever before but the backlog, especially for multiple accused trials where social distancing is problematic, is huge. I am doing my own modest bit and will be giving a jury speech for the prosecution in another rape case in Stirling this morning but the only realistic way to address the incredible backlog of summary crime is going to be to no pro thousands of cases. No politician has been brave enough to grasp this nettle yet.
    In England (looking at my twitter feed! the situation appears to have got to the point where even the prosecution service is so short of staff that cases are being adjourned due to no prosecution lawyer being available.

    Scheduling is such that there are cases from 2018 which now have court dates for 2023
    Could do with widening the bottle neck of new barristers into the profession if there is a shortage
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
    No chance Trump will be in jail.

    Even if he's guilty, no Jury will be 12 Democrats (and if it were that'd be grounds for appeal surely). And no MAGA is going to convict.

    As Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
    Even as a non American I find the inability to hold him to account for his attempted coup in January deeply troubling.

    The American democratic system is broken and becoming more so. The Republicans claiming fraud in the recall election in California before the votes had even been counted was another sign. One of the major parties in the US is no longer signed up to democratic norms. If they lose they have been cheated even in a deep blue state such as California. There is no acceptance of democratic outcomes. This is not a stable situation and Trump is largely, if not exclusively, responsible.
    Twas ever thus.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Catilinarian_conspiracy - Cicero resorted to murder because he didn't think he could get a conviction.
    "Vixit!"
    the world cheers
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    Farooq said:

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
    No chance Trump will be in jail.

    Even if he's guilty, no Jury will be 12 Democrats (and if it were that'd be grounds for appeal surely). And no MAGA is going to convict.

    As Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
    Even as a non American I find the inability to hold him to account for his attempted coup in January deeply troubling.

    The American democratic system is broken and becoming more so. The Republicans claiming fraud in the recall election in California before the votes had even been counted was another sign. One of the major parties in the US is no longer signed up to democratic norms. If they lose they have been cheated even in a deep blue state such as California. There is no acceptance of democratic outcomes. This is not a stable situation and Trump is largely, if not exclusively, responsible.
    Twas ever thus.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Catilinarian_conspiracy - Cicero resorted to murder because he didn't think he could get a conviction.
    "Vixit!"
    the world cheers
    That action was about 20% of the destruction of the Republic. The Boni types saw it as saving the state. Everyone else saw it as the Senatorial oligarchy resorting to murder when they hit a speed bump.

    Between Sulla, Pompey and this (primarily - there were other incidents) , the Rubicon simply became a question of when, and who would do it.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.

    Somethings are better though, a cracking game of football against Napoli last night, albeit shame to let the lead slip to a 2:2 draw.
    The sequelae of Covid will undoubtedly last for years. In the Courts Scottish courts are running more High Courts than ever before but the backlog, especially for multiple accused trials where social distancing is problematic, is huge. I am doing my own modest bit and will be giving a jury speech for the prosecution in another rape case in Stirling this morning but the only realistic way to address the incredible backlog of summary crime is going to be to no pro thousands of cases. No politician has been brave enough to grasp this nettle yet.
    In England (looking at my twitter feed! the situation appears to have got to the point where even the prosecution service is so short of staff that cases are being adjourned due to no prosecution lawyer being available.

    Scheduling is such that there are cases from 2018 which now have court dates for 2023
    Could do with widening the bottle neck of new barristers into the profession if there is a shortage
    Solicitors with the right of audience?
  • DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
    No chance Trump will be in jail.

    Even if he's guilty, no Jury will be 12 Democrats (and if it were that'd be grounds for appeal surely). And no MAGA is going to convict.

    As Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
    Even as a non American I find the inability to hold him to account for his attempted coup in January deeply troubling.

    The American democratic system is broken and becoming more so. The Republicans claiming fraud in the recall election in California before the votes had even been counted was another sign. One of the major parties in the US is no longer signed up to democratic norms. If they lose they have been cheated even in a deep blue state such as California. There is no acceptance of democratic outcomes. This is not a stable situation and Trump is largely, if not exclusively, responsible.

    Yep - the US is in a very, very bad place. It is hard to see how things don't get worse there.

    Yep.

    There is going to eye popping levels of trouble at next POTUS election.

    The fabled constitution just about managed to keep Trump in check and eventually out of office without too much violence.

    I can't see it being able to cope a second time.

    Really sad to see a major democracy die like this through its own internal cancer.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718

    Good morning

    On holidays are masks still required on flights, especially long haul

    I really like the idea of a flight to Thailand in a mask!
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,784

    Pro_Rata said:

    Jonathan said:

    Lost count of how many times people have called Covid over and done with.

    That's because it is over and done with (in a pandemic/lockdown sense). It has been since July and should have been months earlier.

    Lost count of how many times people have said its going to get worse, to no avail.
    Of all the times to declare the pandemic over the beginning of September, and with the hospitals starting multiples fuller of COVID patients than last year, is not it.

    - England went back to school with low initial incidence amongst youngsters, let's see if that is still true 3 or 4 infection cycles.
    - The current fall in incidence substantially relates to transmissions between 5-10/9, when we had a mini heatwave.

    There are things that will suppress rates, the reducing attack face from getting nearer herd immunity, immunity from vaccinations and boosters and so on, but I expect the next couple of months to be up and down, and perhaps more up than down in the next weeks..
    The age banding is interesting... One possible interpretation of the 15-19 fall is the vaccine starting to kick in for the 16/17 age group.

    image
    Test and removal hump? Sixth formers tend to have to enrol so were probably tested a little earlier and more before term started than 10-14s. Probably an eye of faith thing at this point, but there are signs of the falls over the last week slowing a little beyond what exponential decay would suggest
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,784
    Pro_Rata said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Jonathan said:

    Lost count of how many times people have called Covid over and done with.

    That's because it is over and done with (in a pandemic/lockdown sense). It has been since July and should have been months earlier.

    Lost count of how many times people have said its going to get worse, to no avail.
    Of all the times to declare the pandemic over the beginning of September, and with the hospitals starting multiples fuller of COVID patients than last year, is not it.

    - England went back to school with low initial incidence amongst youngsters, let's see if that is still true 3 or 4 infection cycles.
    - The current fall in incidence substantially relates to transmissions between 5-10/9, when we had a mini heatwave.

    There are things that will suppress rates, the reducing attack face from getting nearer herd immunity, immunity from vaccinations and boosters and so on, but I expect the next couple of months to be up and down, and perhaps more up than down in the next weeks..
    The age banding is interesting... One possible interpretation of the 15-19 fall is the vaccine starting to kick in for the 16/17 age group.

    image
    Test and removal hump? Sixth formers tend to have to enrol so were probably tested a little earlier and more before term started than 10-14s. Probably an eye of faith thing at this point, but there are signs of the falls over the last week slowing a little beyond what exponential decay would suggest
    No - actually scratch that last sentence, the eye of faith is overruled.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
    No chance Trump will be in jail.

    Even if he's guilty, no Jury will be 12 Democrats (and if it were that'd be grounds for appeal surely). And no MAGA is going to convict.

    As Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
    Even as a non American I find the inability to hold him to account for his attempted coup in January deeply troubling.

    The American democratic system is broken and becoming more so. The Republicans claiming fraud in the recall election in California before the votes had even been counted was another sign. One of the major parties in the US is no longer signed up to democratic norms. If they lose they have been cheated even in a deep blue state such as California. There is no acceptance of democratic outcomes. This is not a stable situation and Trump is largely, if not exclusively, responsible.

    Yep - the US is in a very, very bad place. It is hard to see how things don't get worse there.

    Yep.

    There is going to eye popping levels of trouble at next POTUS election.

    The fabled constitution just about managed to keep Trump in check and eventually out of office without too much violence.

    I can't see it being able to cope a second time.

    Really sad to see a major democracy die like this through its own internal cancer.
    I wonder if the GOP vote twiddling machinery will be applied to their own primaries, to block Trump.
  • Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
    No chance Trump will be in jail.

    Even if he's guilty, no Jury will be 12 Democrats (and if it were that'd be grounds for appeal surely). And no MAGA is going to convict.

    As Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
    I guess it varies by jurisdiction but assuming the prosecution can detect who the MAGAs are by social media or demographic or whatever maybe they can get them kicked off the list? I think in a lot of places each side gets a bunch of free strikes?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,585

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    I'm going out on a limb:

    The Covid pandemic - in the UK, Western Europe, Canada and most of the US - is now over.

    Antibody levels are now sufficient to keep R below 1 almost everywhere. Now, sure, there will be isolated communities where it can go on a tear, but we've got kids going back to school, and we still have R below 1. And that's great.

    This doesn't mean that everything is over.

    Israel has shown that we are probably going to need Covid booster shots. And teenagers probably should get the shot too.

    In all likelihood, a Covid booster will join the influenza jab every year. But that's OK. It's a manageable problem. And one that probably slowly disappears as everyone ends up - at some point - getting a mild (or maybe entirely asymptomatic) case of the Covids.

    It depends on what you mean by over. It grinds on where I work, with numbers of inpatients and ICU at about a quarter of the February peak. They seem to neither going up nor down by much. Theatre lists are cancelled due to staff redeployments and absences. It will take years to recover, and I have some doubts that we will recover completely at all. Not just the hospitals, but other areas like the courts are years off normality.
    And this is the room of pain the Tories have just stepped into. Whopping pay rise for most working people. Punative UC cut for the poorest. To pay to fix services which by their own admission will stay broken and get worse.

    By the time we get to the next election people will be hopping mad. Which will leave the Tories with only two options. Lie - say that everything is great and that the professionals reporting problems are Talking Down Britain. Or blame someone else - crap medics, pinko commie judges, whatever.
    Whopping pay rise?
    *giggles* whopping TAX rise.

    More coffee needed...
    I thought you'd suddenly gone all @Philip_Thompson on us.

    P. S. Waiting for the incoming, "but all lorry drivers are now on £50k a year, as are care workers and fruit pickers. It's the Brexit supply and demand Labour bonus".
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    Pro_Rata said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    Jonathan said:

    Lost count of how many times people have called Covid over and done with.

    That's because it is over and done with (in a pandemic/lockdown sense). It has been since July and should have been months earlier.

    Lost count of how many times people have said its going to get worse, to no avail.
    Of all the times to declare the pandemic over the beginning of September, and with the hospitals starting multiples fuller of COVID patients than last year, is not it.

    - England went back to school with low initial incidence amongst youngsters, let's see if that is still true 3 or 4 infection cycles.
    - The current fall in incidence substantially relates to transmissions between 5-10/9, when we had a mini heatwave.

    There are things that will suppress rates, the reducing attack face from getting nearer herd immunity, immunity from vaccinations and boosters and so on, but I expect the next couple of months to be up and down, and perhaps more up than down in the next weeks..
    The age banding is interesting... One possible interpretation of the 15-19 fall is the vaccine starting to kick in for the 16/17 age group.

    image
    Test and removal hump? Sixth formers tend to have to enrol so were probably tested a little earlier and more before term started than 10-14s. Probably an eye of faith thing at this point, but there are signs of the falls over the last week slowing a little beyond what exponential decay would suggest
    I think reading signs in the falls hits the issue of signal quality.

    Hence "one possible interpretation" - the closest thing we will get to confirmation on this will be if the 15-19 age group joins the other vaccinated groups in terms of level and pattern of change.
  • DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
    No chance Trump will be in jail.

    Even if he's guilty, no Jury will be 12 Democrats (and if it were that'd be grounds for appeal surely). And no MAGA is going to convict.

    As Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
    Even as a non American I find the inability to hold him to account for his attempted coup in January deeply troubling.

    The American democratic system is broken and becoming more so. The Republicans claiming fraud in the recall election in California before the votes had even been counted was another sign. One of the major parties in the US is no longer signed up to democratic norms. If they lose they have been cheated even in a deep blue state such as California. There is no acceptance of democratic outcomes. This is not a stable situation and Trump is largely, if not exclusively, responsible.

    Yep - the US is in a very, very bad place. It is hard to see how things don't get worse there.

    Yep.

    There is going to eye popping levels of trouble at next POTUS election.

    The fabled constitution just about managed to keep Trump in check and eventually out of office without too much violence.

    I can't see it being able to cope a second time.

    Really sad to see a major democracy die like this through its own internal cancer.

    The Republican decision to upset the balance of the Supreme Court and to make it overtly partisan is the big problem.
  • DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
    No chance Trump will be in jail.

    Even if he's guilty, no Jury will be 12 Democrats (and if it were that'd be grounds for appeal surely). And no MAGA is going to convict.

    As Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
    Even as a non American I find the inability to hold him to account for his attempted coup in January deeply troubling.

    The American democratic system is broken and becoming more so. The Republicans claiming fraud in the recall election in California before the votes had even been counted was another sign. One of the major parties in the US is no longer signed up to democratic norms. If they lose they have been cheated even in a deep blue state such as California. There is no acceptance of democratic outcomes. This is not a stable situation and Trump is largely, if not exclusively, responsible.

    Yep - the US is in a very, very bad place. It is hard to see how things don't get worse there.

    Yep.

    There is going to eye popping levels of trouble at next POTUS election.

    The fabled constitution just about managed to keep Trump in check and eventually out of office without too much violence.

    I can't see it being able to cope a second time.

    Really sad to see a major democracy die like this through its own internal cancer.
    It wasn't really the constitution, the last few weeks were basically a coup d'etat where the military and everyone else just decided that Trump might technically be president but they were just going to ignore him.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,624
    edited September 2021

    Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
    No chance Trump will be in jail.

    Even if he's guilty, no Jury will be 12 Democrats (and if it were that'd be grounds for appeal surely). And no MAGA is going to convict.

    As Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
    I guess it varies by jurisdiction but assuming the prosecution can detect who the MAGAs are by social media or demographic or whatever maybe they can get them kicked off the list? I think in a lot of places each side gets a bunch of free strikes?
    Which was the Saki short story about the chap who was manifestly guilty of blowing up a building (he admits it in court and spends the trial planning his next attack), but was so politically popular that the government tries to get him off?

    EDIT : Canossa is the name of the story.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,400

    DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
    No chance Trump will be in jail.

    Even if he's guilty, no Jury will be 12 Democrats (and if it were that'd be grounds for appeal surely). And no MAGA is going to convict.

    As Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
    Even as a non American I find the inability to hold him to account for his attempted coup in January deeply troubling.

    The American democratic system is broken and becoming more so. The Republicans claiming fraud in the recall election in California before the votes had even been counted was another sign. One of the major parties in the US is no longer signed up to democratic norms. If they lose they have been cheated even in a deep blue state such as California. There is no acceptance of democratic outcomes. This is not a stable situation and Trump is largely, if not exclusively, responsible.

    Yep - the US is in a very, very bad place. It is hard to see how things don't get worse there.

    Yep.

    There is going to eye popping levels of trouble at next POTUS election.

    The fabled constitution just about managed to keep Trump in check and eventually out of office without too much violence.

    I can't see it being able to cope a second time.

    Really sad to see a major democracy die like this through its own internal cancer.
    It wasn't really the constitution, the last few weeks were basically a coup d'etat where the military and everyone else just decided that Trump might technically be president but they were just going to ignore him.
    But courts, politicians and states refused to listen to the shriller voices about ignoring votes and not certifying results etc, they followed the intent of the written rules - I'm not sure the latter two will do that next time, especially if they have the power to rewrite some of the state level stuff in the meantime.
  • DavidL said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    2020 Biden could run on not being Trump and that was enough. 2024 Biden will have to run on his record in office. Also his brain is clearly a piece of shit now so by 2024 you might as well have a cantaloupe with a hair transplant and Ray-Bans.

    As Trump will be in jail, that will ensure the field is clear.

    And, TBH, a very good thing, too.
    No chance Trump will be in jail.

    Even if he's guilty, no Jury will be 12 Democrats (and if it were that'd be grounds for appeal surely). And no MAGA is going to convict.

    As Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
    Even as a non American I find the inability to hold him to account for his attempted coup in January deeply troubling.

    The American democratic system is broken and becoming more so. The Republicans claiming fraud in the recall election in California before the votes had even been counted was another sign. One of the major parties in the US is no longer signed up to democratic norms. If they lose they have been cheated even in a deep blue state such as California. There is no acceptance of democratic outcomes. This is not a stable situation and Trump is largely, if not exclusively, responsible.

    Yep - the US is in a very, very bad place. It is hard to see how things don't get worse there.

    Yep.

    There is going to eye popping levels of trouble at next POTUS election.

    The fabled constitution just about managed to keep Trump in check and eventually out of office without too much violence.

    I can't see it being able to cope a second time.

    Really sad to see a major democracy die like this through its own internal cancer.
    It wasn't really the constitution, the last few weeks were basically a coup d'etat where the military and everyone else just decided that Trump might technically be president but they were just going to ignore him.
    If there is a next time the military won't get that chance. We already saw MAGA appointees inserted into the Pentagon at the end (too late). Next time it will be the old generals being hauled away.

    Trump should be in jail. That he and his coupers are instead planning to get re-elected tells you everything you need to know about the state of the place.

    Here is reality. The GOP has gone - replaced by hard right radicals. The Republicans are not Grand or Old or Republicans. How does the country pull itself back from this ledge? One side thinks the other are traitors and those views harden over time. When the enemy are traitors you don't pander to them by trying to pretend its a democracy - the DNC will have to copy GOP tactics or it will lose.

    All hail Gilead. It is coming.
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