[spidermonkey09]

Forget why they do it. What do you think they should have done?

You may have to "go Paxman" on this one.

I'm sorry, I'm going to be frightfully rude, but did you threaten to overule him?

[Loos3-tools]

Haha

Focussed protection of the elderly and vulnerable, the channeling of cash spent propping up the economies into the improvement of the social welfare and health system part of which would be dedicated to those isolated and vulnerable as well as clear separation of public private partnerships with 'emergency' funding of scientists and resources needed to develop the appropriate treatment and care. A balanced approach to all other aspects of health care maintained throughout. oh and no criminalisation of normal human behaviour

[galpinos]

I was reading recently about death amongst young adults during the 1918 Influenza pandemic.
Only 10-15% of deaths were caused by Influenza, the majority were attributed to subsequent aggressive Bacterial Pneumonia.

Totally off topic but this happens most winters to my youngest. She gets a virus, fights it off fine but, for a currently undiagnosed reason but there are lots of theories, she gets a secondary bacterial respiratory infection. She's collapsed a lung twice through bacterial pneumonia (she's just turned 5).

[andy popp]

I suspect Andy was making an offhand generalisation to illustrate a point, in response to your simplistic dismissal of all individuals involved in the global response to Covid.

Yes. My comment was undoubtedly offhand, and was not meant as an endorsement of Slab_Happy's comment on Freud as 100% accurate and complete. I was merely pointing out Freud would not be my go to in trying to understand the behaviours and motivations of the actors involved here. Personally, if I believed power corrupts (as per Will's post) then I would first want to understand the relevant institutional context.

[Will Hunt]

With regards his philanthropy consider dirty drinking water and lack of good sewerage systems and the consequent diseases it generates. Billy Goats foundation does describe some involvement in making this better. I'm pretty sure it doesn't take an army of scientists to sort this problem out so why hasn't he done it? and why has he developed a toilet that turns excrement into drinkable water? A better metaphor for the behaviour of these characters I could not come up with

I'm sorry, but this must be the most naive, simplistic, dumb thing I have ever heard in my life. I don't consider myself an expert on the topic but just by musing for a few minutes I can think of lots of reasons why problems of water scarcity and sanitation haven't just been "sorted out". Think about the places where water is scarce. Different geography, different cultures, different everything.

As for "turning excrement into drinkable water", what is it that you think the water cycle does? Do you think the water you're drinking hasn't been inside a living thing before? On a shorter time-frame, what do you think happens to the waste you flush away? You live in Sheffield, yes? Well then your waste heads on down to the big set of tanks opposite Meadowhall. The solid component of the waste gets separated from the liquid component and the liquid component is treated to reduce the concentrations of things like ammonia and BOD, and then it is discharged to the River Don where fish, (increasingly including salmonid fish), swim around in it. As it happens, this water then flows down to the sea. If you lived in York your water supply would most likely come from the River Ouse. Upstream of York there are sewage works which discharge their treated waste to the river from which you extract your drinking water. To say you were drinking other people's excrement would be fantastically simplistic and would be to ignore the complexity of the issue - your specialty.

How nice for you to sit comfortably in a region with a water surplus and to wrinkle your nose at the thought of drinking clean water that's been recycled from waste. I expect if your circumstances were different you might have a very different  view.

[SA Chris]

I'm more concerned with the verbal sewerage LT releases here daily.

[tomtom]

Back to CV19.

Here in Manchester there has been an uptick in case numbers (c20%) in the last week. I suspect thats driven partly by the large number of lateral flow tests being taken by school children at the moment (the figures show reported test results increasing massively). Wondering how much of this uptick in cases is down to increased testing or increased transmission (e.g. schools going back)? Or of course both.

[Oldmanmatt]

With regards his philanthropy consider dirty drinking water and lack of good sewerage systems and the consequent diseases it generates. Billy Goats foundation does describe some involvement in making this better. I'm pretty sure it doesn't take an army of scientists to sort this problem out so why hasn't he done it? and why has he developed a toilet that turns excrement into drinkable water? A better metaphor for the behaviour of these characters I could not come up with

I'm sorry, but this must be the most naive, simplistic, dumb thing I have ever heard in my life. I don't consider myself an expert on the topic but just by musing for a few minutes I can think of lots of reasons why problems of water scarcity and sanitation haven't just been "sorted out". Think about the places where water is scarce. Different geography, different cultures, different everything.

As for "turning excrement into drinkable water", what is it that you think the water cycle does? Do you think the water you're drinking hasn't been inside a living thing before? On a shorter time-frame, what do you think happens to the waste you flush away? You live in Sheffield, yes? Well then your waste heads on down to the big set of tanks opposite Meadowhall. The solid component of the waste gets separated from the liquid component and the liquid component is treated to reduce the concentrations of things like ammonia and BOD, and then it is discharged to the River Don where fish, (increasingly including salmonid fish), swim around in it. As it happens, this water then flows down to the sea. If you lived in York your water supply would most likely come from the River Ouse. Upstream of York there are sewage works which discharge their treated waste to the river from which you extract your drinking water. To say you were drinking other people's excrement would be fantastically simplistic and would be to ignore the complexity of the issue - your specialty.

How nice for you to sit comfortably in a region with a water surplus and to wrinkle your nose at the thought of drinking clean water that's been recycled from waste. I expect if your circumstances were different you might have a very different  view.

Ha ha ha!

Biological treatment plants on ships have been doing this for several decades, in a rather compact form. On long deployment submarines (bombers) there is a facility to recycle into the drinking water supply, should RO and Evap options go down.
I’ve not looked, but is there some sort of recyc, built into the likes of the ISS?

[slab_happy]

Focussed protection of the elderly and vulnerable,

How, if you're going to let the virus run free through the rest of the population? We've had this discussion before. In this very thread, I think.

EDIT: nope, it was in a different thread: https://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php/topic,30540.msg619432.html#msg619432

The "elderly and vulnerable" are not some nice neat segregated population that can be hermetically sealed off from everyone else.

Even people in care homes -- especially people in care homes -- have high levels of interaction with other human beings.

"Vulnerable" includes, say, a 40-year-old with diabetes, who goes to work in an office and lives with their partner and school-age children.

How do you propose to seal them and everyone who comes into contact with them in a bubble for years?

Practicalities aside -- "Lock the disableds in a box and forget about them so the rest of us don't have to inconvenience ourselves by changing our daily lives in any way" is, I would suggest, a shitty approach morally.

with 'emergency' funding of scientists and resources needed to develop the appropriate treatment and care.

This actually happened, and is happening. It produced vaccines (which you think are going to kill everyone) and info on the usefulness of treatments like dexamethasone (which one of your links seems to suggest is some sort of evil scheme by the Wellcome Trust, though it'd be a pretty crappy one since dethamethazone is a generic -- i.e. the patent's expired).

oh and no criminalisation of normal human behaviour

What's "norma|" human behaviour?

And why do you think the government isn't allowed to regulate behaviour that causes harm and potential death to others?

As already noted in this thread: I think some of the government and police decisions (e.g. re: protests) have been stupid and unecessary and have far more to do with power tending to consolidate itself than anything to do with covid risks.

However, the general principle that the government has the right (especially in a dire emergency) to prevent people from causing harm to others seems hard to argue with.

[slab_happy]

P.S.

the channeling of cash spent propping up the economies into the improvement of the social welfare and health system

I would note that I am ALL IN FAVOUR of this anyway, and that decades of government erosion of the welfare and social care systems and exacerbation of wealth (and thus health) inequalities have undoubtedly made things worse.

However, "have benefit payments that people can live on without starving", while a baseline moral requirement for a decent society (which ours is not), is not in itself going to prevent a contagious airborne virus from spreading.

[abarro81]

I think I'm beginning to understand where Dan's coming from...
- If you're in a position of power it's because you're a 
- If you're in a position of power and don't do anything good, you're very much a
- If you're in a position of power and try to do something good but don't succeed you're even more of a
- If you're in a position of power and succeed in doing something good it was for the wrong reasons so you're the biggest of them all
- If you stay at home doing the gardening and reading Freud you're all good.

This is good, because that means my mum and dad are/were very much not a since they tick(ed) those boxes with ease. Although my dad did do management and editorial work as well as clinical, so maybe he was a during the week but ok on weekends. Nope, I'm still confused I guess.

+1 to both Will's and slab's posts. I like the idea that fixing drinking water and sewerage for the whole world is really damn easy, BG's just too much of a prick to do it. Also that by the time anyone's in a position to do any major good in the world they're automatically too much of a prick to do it (I'm sure this does apply to many of the types of people who seek power, but the idea that it applies to all seems a little bit of a jump to say the least).

[duncan]

At slight tangent from fixing the world, I donated plasma yesterday, specifically for the convalescent plasma research but it's all useful. Apparently I have good veins, that AeroCap has been useful for something. I'll find out shortly how good my antibodies are; the holy grail is a combination of both.

They are very keen on male donors with good forearm circulation which might apply to a few here. Because they only take a minimal amount of cells and platelets you can donate weekly and it doesn't stop you training your arms for more than 24 hours.

Plasma Donation.

[Loos3-tools]

With regards his philanthropy consider dirty drinking water and lack of good sewerage systems and the consequent diseases it generates. Billy Goats foundation does describe some involvement in making this better. I'm pretty sure it doesn't take an army of scientists to sort this problem out so why hasn't he done it? and why has he developed a toilet that turns excrement into drinkable water? A better metaphor for the behaviour of these characters I could not come up with

I'm sorry, but this must be the most naive, simplistic, dumb thing I have ever heard in my life. I don't consider myself an expert on the topic but just by musing for a few minutes I can think of lots of reasons why problems of water scarcity and sanitation haven't just been "sorted out". Think about the places where water is scarce. Different geography, different cultures, different everything.

As for "turning excrement into drinkable water", what is it that you think the water cycle does? Do you think the water you're drinking hasn't been inside a living thing before? On a shorter time-frame, what do you think happens to the waste you flush away? You live in Sheffield, yes? Well then your waste heads on down to the big set of tanks opposite Meadowhall. The solid component of the waste gets separated from the liquid component and the liquid component is treated to reduce the concentrations of things like ammonia and BOD, and then it is discharged to the River Don where fish, (increasingly including salmonid fish), swim around in it. As it happens, this water then flows down to the sea. If you lived in York your water supply would most likely come from the River Ouse. Upstream of York there are sewage works which discharge their treated waste to the river from which you extract your drinking water. To say you were drinking other people's excrement would be fantastically simplistic and would be to ignore the complexity of the issue - your specialty.

How nice for you to sit comfortably in a region with a water surplus and to wrinkle your nose at the thought of drinking clean water that's been recycled from waste. I expect if your circumstances were different you might have a very different  view.

It was a metaphor

[Will Hunt]

and why has he developed a toilet that turns excrement into drinkable water?

This is not a metaphor. It is a question.

[Loos3-tools]

You’re right it was overzealous rhetoric in an attempt to highlight the metaphor with unforeseen offensive consequences. Accept my apology

[Will Hunt]

Accept my apology

I will not. I demand satisfaction. You and me at dawn. Two unmarked syringes. One AstraZeneca, one Pfizer. The winner will just clot out, the loser becomes an immortal genome super-soldier - a slave of the government for all eternity.

[Oldmanmatt]

Accept my apology

I will not. I demand satisfaction. You and me at dawn. Two unmarked syringes. One AstraZeneca, one Pfizer. The winner will just clot out, the loser becomes an immortal genome super-soldier - a slave of the government for all eternity.

Actually, the latter sounds neat.

Will there be strength gains for minimal training penalties?

Who should I talk to?

[Loos3-tools]

Accept my apology

I will not. I demand satisfaction. You and me at dawn. Two unmarked syringes. One AstraZeneca, one Pfizer. The winner will just clot out, the loser becomes an immortal genome super-soldier - a slave of the government for all eternity.

haha as long as he doesn't tie off pegs, have a wad for returning me to sanity

[Loos3-tools]

Apparently there's been a bit of research into what drives conspiracy theorists during Covid, the dark triad test of personality has been used to identify problematic aspects of personalities in these groups including sadism, narcissism etc. I found this one online on the BBC website. I scored 'infrequently vile' haha. I wonder what BilL would score 

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20151123-how-dark-is-your-personality

[SA Chris]

I think Dunning Kruger is also in effect.

I know some people who have just managed to get a PhD in something that could be seen as vaguely related to the pandemic who suddenly regard themselves as some sort of Illuminati, with a towering intellect, who see "the real truth" more clearly than the mere sheeple out there.

[Oldmanmatt]

Apparently there's been a bit of research into what drives conspiracy theorists during Covid, the dark triad test of personality has been used to identify problematic aspects of personalities in these groups including sadism, narcissism etc. I found this one online on the BBC website. I scored 'infrequently vile' haha. I wonder what BilL would score 

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20151123-how-dark-is-your-personality

A bit OT, but moderately fun:

Moderately Nefarious, apparently.

[Oldmanmatt]

I think I missed a thread split, or some deletion.

Anyway.

Jab done.

I fully intend to experience the full range of the milder side effects as a superb excuse to lie in bed and watch Netflix for the next 2-3 days.

I believe I am already developing the headache and it’s only been 50 minutes since the jab.

I better find the remote before I become incapacitated...

[SA Chris]

I think a couple of days of "light duties" is wholly justified.

Just hope my getting the jab coincides with a spell of decent weather. Or good waves. Either will do.

[Offwidth]

A report on some research based on extensive data on reinfection numbers from  Denmark:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/17/older-people-more-likely-to-catch-covid-a-second-time

[battery]

Back to CV19.

Here in Manchester there has been an uptick in case numbers (c20%) in the last week. I suspect thats driven partly by the large number of lateral flow tests being taken by school children at the moment (the figures show reported test results increasing massively). Wondering how much of this uptick in cases is down to increased testing or increased transmission (e.g. schools going back)? Or of course both.

My folks' area have rising rates which are being blamed on the local prison. It is certainly true that prisons are in crisis with covid cases rising rapidly (3 times the infection rates within the community was the stat I read yesterday) and with HMP Manchester being a huge prison (well over a thousand people housed there plus staff) I wonder if there might be a link...?