Coronavirus Pandemic

[Niall_Quinn]

[Letters]

The disease was never really that serious (for the majority)

This is basically true. BUT, in the West we have an aging population and a lot of people with the infamous "underlying health conditions".
So sure, if you're young and healthy then you're unlikely to get ill from Covid. A lot of people aren't those things.

and now the vaccine isn't working to well.

If that were true then why is life pretty much normal now? I'm in the office today, the trains were quite busy - and I noted that fewer people are wearing masks now. Everything is open - I was at the theatre last week, it was packed and very few people were wearing masks. We had a pre-theatre meal in Chinatown, all the restaurants were open and busy. Everything is open and there are very few restrictions. Nightclubs are open if you want to come back and start banging here. And the reason for that is while cases are high right now, deaths are not. I'd suggest the vaccine is a pretty likely explanation



No-one is claiming the vaccine is 100% reliable - the people making it certainly aren't. But at the moment we are living a normal life.

it's never going to finish boosters every 6 months for life.

This seems extremely unlikely. They are certainly being rolled out in the hope it will get us through this winter. The only comparable pandemic is the Spanish Flue which had 4 waves over 2 years. But it didn't go on forever, this is unlikely to either. Hopefully the vaccine will mean that last winter was the last big wave of deaths.

[Mac76]

Case in point.

The disease was never really that serious (for the majority) and now the vaccine isn't working to well. A total farce from start to finish, though it's never going to finish boosters every 6 months for life.

how many people do you want to die before something's serious?

plus people keep missing teh point it was the fact that too many cases at once overloads the health service and then people die of other things too because they can't get treatment.

i admit it doesn't help when some people go to A&E every time they stub therir toe or sneeze but still they needed to contain it for that reason

[Letters]

plus people keep missing teh point it was the fact that too many cases at once overloads the health service and then people die of other things too because they can't get treatment.

Right. But this was made worse by the lockdowns which caused a lot of cancelled appointments.
And the lockdowns were done too late and with so many exceptions to render them ineffective.
The government's response last year was shambolic which led to us being "top" 5 in the world for deaths per million.
But they did get the vaccination rollout right which is why we aren't in the top 20 in the world now.
If only they'd got the first bit right we'd have actually done quite well.

[Niall_Quinn]

Letter's graphs show another, much more likely possibility with, say, a 99.99% chance of being true based on a million years of biology. It's the natural immunity curve. But that's not going to stop evil bastards abusing children.

[Niall_Quinn]

Para 1

I did. You've said you don't believe in government. So without that structure who builds the roads and maintains them and other infrastructure?
I remember you saying you had answers to all that, I don't remember you ever elaborating. If you want to call me a liar about that then fine, I guess.
We can go round the "am not!", "are too!" loop if you like but it's a waste of both of our times.

You did not ask a simple question and I explained why, but you ignored the explanation. Your question is pre-loaded. You ask me, in the context of providing public services, if your coercive system is to be replaced then what coercive system do I suggest as an alternative. Of course I don't suggest any form of coercive system, that's the whole point I'm making. By trying to shoehorn me into suggesting an alternative system I would never endorse you are essentially asking me to endorse the current system, albeit with different rules, regulations and other abuses sustaining it. And you may say, no, that wasn't your intention, but you discount the possibility of being misinterpreted by subsequently asking who will build the roads, who will pay for the schools, etc. In other words, provided I stick within the rigid framework of the existing system and suggest a different configuration for that system the answer will be within an acceptable boundary. However, I suggested liberty as an alternative which means no part or aspect of your system could ever exist, regardless of the configuration.

I did not say I don't believe in government. I said, in summary, government is a violent and illiberal abuse of human beings. It's not a matter of belief to non-statists, it's a matter of fact. I said you may have your government if you need it so badly, but it is immoral and violent to force it on others who don't want it.

The question about the roads is really difficult for me to get my head around. I don't know why anyone would ask such a question to which the answer is so glaringly obvious. I did elaborate in the past, for certain, but it must have been lost in the last trip around the bowl. Simply and obviously put, the people who build roads right now would build the roads. The people who want to use roads would pay for roads. We can achieve this in so many common interactions, if you want to buy bread a baker will bake it and sell it to you. What is the different between bread and a road? Why does the road require a huge and unbearably inefficient bureaucracy to sit between the consumer and the supplier? I guess you might say, ah, the roads need to be planned. Well let them be planned. The people who plan roads now could be hired to plan roads. If people want to build 10 roads in parallel all leading to the same place then let them, it's their money. If they prefer to pay for useful roads that serve a purpose then they will end up with useful roads that serve a purpose. This is how it used to be done in the past. A transport company or a development company or maybe a corporate arrangement between the state and the citizenry (the original purpose of the corporation) would build the infrastructure and then charge for its use. You pay to use a bus. You pay to enter a football stadium. You pay when you want to buy groceries. You pay multiple times a day, every day, for the goods and services you choose to consume. What makes a road so special? Want to walk on it? Pay. Want to drive on it? Pay. And you might say, damn, that would be really expensive. You mean like the ridiculous taxes on untaxed earnings and ridiculous taxes on the remaining, already taxed, earnings are not expensive? Everything could work just as it does today, only better because huge bureaucracies that exist only to justify their existence would be wiped away. Everything would be cheaper by significant margins. And if you still can't wrap your head around freedom of choice and lawful contracts, why is the state contemplating cost per mile charges? Despite the fact they already charge through taxation? They'll soon be wanting you to pay twice for the same product. Private enterprise would only see you paying once and only when you chose to consume. It's a no-brainer for everyone except the thieving bastards who insist government is essential.

You mention going around the loop (I'm sure with a straight face) as you instigate another lap with your insistence I refuse to answer your "simple" questions. Alright, I won't call you a liar, but you should probably try not to so easily appear as one.

[The Wengerbabies]

Iceland Joins Nordic Peers in Halting Moderna Covid Vaccinations!

Iceland is joining its Nordic peers in halting inoculations with Moderna Inc.’s Spikevax shot on concern over side effects.

The Moderna jab, which has mostly been used in Iceland for second doses, won’t be used until more information over its safety has been collected, the chief epidemiologist said on Friday.

Sweden, Denmark and Finland have this week suspended the jabs for younger people because of the risk of heart inflammation as a potential side effect. Norway said men under 30 should consider choosing the Pfizer Inc.’s and BioNTech SE’s rival vaccine, and the other Nordic nations also recommended that as an alternative. Both vaccinations use messenger RNA technology to prompt an immune reaction.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...d-vaccinations

[The Wengerbabies]

This is basically true. BUT, in the West we have an aging population and a lot of people with the infamous "underlying health conditions".
So sure, if you're young and healthy then you're unlikely to get ill from Covid. A lot of people aren't those things.



If that were true then why is life pretty much normal now? I'm in the office today, the trains were quite busy - and I noted that fewer people are wearing masks now. Everything is open - I was at the theatre last week, it was packed and very few people were wearing masks. We had a pre-theatre meal in Chinatown, all the restaurants were open and busy. Everything is open and there are very few restrictions. Nightclubs are open if you want to come back and start banging here. And the reason for that is while cases are high right now, deaths are not. I'd suggest the vaccine is a pretty likely explanation



No-one is claiming the vaccine is 100% reliable - the people making it certainly aren't. But at the moment we are living a normal life.



This seems extremely unlikely. They are certainly being rolled out in the hope it will get us through this winter. The only comparable pandemic is the Spanish Flue which had 4 waves over 2 years. But it didn't go on forever, this is unlikely to either. Hopefully the vaccine will mean that last winter was the last big wave of deaths.

Could be natural immunity but to even discuss that as a possibility makes you a tin foil hatter.

But even so, I don't necessarily dispute the vaccine may be good for the vulnerable but this obsession that everyone must be jabbbed including kids is sheer lunacy. See the post above, why take an experimental drug for something that is unlikely to affect you?

[Niall_Quinn]

So why did they use it in the first place. All those who sanctioned it should be tried and imprisoned if a rational reason can't be provided. And "it was an emergency" is not a rational reason. Using that reason you could do anything you wanted. The Pfizer vaccine is just as bad, if not worse. There's no way they have a handle on the potential long term positive or negative outcomes of unleashing a new, untested and (quite obviously from their point of view) misunderstood drug. The guy who invented the damn thing has told them not to do it because it could potentially bring about the very outcome they claim they are seeking to avoid. But their real interest is profit and they couldn't give a shit about anything else. That much is obvious and that's why all their bullshit rules are contradictory and ridiculous to the honest observer.

[Niall_Quinn]

Could be natural immunity but to even discuss that as a possibility makes you a tin foil hatter.

But even so, I don't necessarily dispute the vaccine may be good for the vulnerable but this obsession that everyone must be jabbbed including kids is sheer lunacy. See the post above, why take an experimental drug for something that is unlikely to affect you?

It is natural immunity. You can expect one more spike and then a repeated, but manageable, infection cycle thereafter. Like ever other endemic infection that ever existed. If proper science can win the argument we could actually get back to normality and start picking up the pieces from what will go down in history as the 21st century equivalent of the witch burning hysteria that gripped humanity when they still thought dunking stools were the cutting edge. It's incredible to see how far we can regress due purely to panic.