Harry

I agree with you that vaccination of kids isn't a big issue, but at the end of the day we are talking about a virus that killed 6 times more people than a bad flu season despite an absolute fuck ton of lockdowns preventing things from getting worse.

You know people in car accidents wearing seatbelts get big imprints on their chest and bruising from the belt, and can even get cracked ribs.

I'm fully onboard with the science of vaccination and climate change and generally everything else. However I can also spot BS within science. I've seen science manipulated for political purposes during the pandemic. For example in Australia there's an organisation called OzSage who are based on the UK independent Sage. This is comprised of epidemiologists, economists and other specialties and has been characterised by dishonesty, with ideology coming first and data/science second. They produce modelling designed to generate hysteria to apply political pressure towards extending lockdowns and continued border closures. None of their work would get published in a journal but it gets published in the newspapers to keep hysteria high. Everyone should think critically when presented with information.

I fully support your defence of science, but whilst we're on the subject of its flaws, some criticisms I have of science and expertise: 1. The biggest flaw of science is the way it gets written up by the media. Dramatizing it, exaggerating the level of certainty of uncertainty. "May cause" gets presented as "probably does cause". And then secondary reporting on the report by cable news and agenda driven outlets amplifies the inaccuracies. 2. Experts in a particular field can be biased towards the importance of their field in a complex multi variate situation such as a pandemic. 3. Universities, and the pressure they're under to churn out research results in some shite getting published because jobs are on the line. 4. Similar to 3, the body of knowledge is affected by confirmation bias. For example climate change becomes a point of investigation of every facet of life (E.g global bird population). Numerous papers with a hypothesis that is "climate change may explain change in this particular system". I think this does result in some incorrect conclusions at times. Correlation is not causation. For example the conclusion may be that a certain observed change is caused (or may be caused) by climate change however in fact it may just be correlated, and the actual cause may just be increasing global population (which itself causes climate change). Most likely the published science will be properly inconclusive but the media reporting will go a step further than the paper itself. 5. Its absolutely possible to follow the science but still make incorrect (or at the very least questionable) decisions. I think those are fair criticisms. However science is far more right than wrong, and a bigger problem is the exploitation of the uncertainty by bad actors (on both sides), such as the type that make dodgy YouTube clips that anti vaxxers latch on to or that exaggerate things to keep the Greenies at maximum passion.

Sorry I don't mean to downplay that death post Vax is still an issue, but it was always going to be, and any suggestion otherwise was media misrepresentation. But in terms of raw numbers, the Vaccinated are still a huge block of the population, (with a skew towards the older bracket,) who have reduced their contribution towards the healthcare overload situation as much as possible. Waning immunity is an issue but I think the bigger one is that northern winter is coming. And that is sure to drive a wave.. Booster jabs are needed, kids can soon be vaccinated to drive higher immunity in the total population (although their contribution to hospitalisation is low) but I think if Europe starts going back to lockdowns this winter is hard to see this pandemic ever ending.

Genuinely shocked by the video of this but it was Twitter comedy gold. https://twitter.com/guillotexeneize/status/1459031284756406280?t=P5mNJJL8DSVFfrALpGyJHA&s=19

I know but raw rates are pointless when 90% of the population, and even higher in the worst affected age groups are vaccinated

Really hoping Europe hold its nerve and does NOT do lockdowns again over winter. The deaths are majority unvaccinated, which is almost exclusively by choice.

Not sure how this thread ever got made about just two streaming services when there's an out of control number of different competing options... You could drop $10 on each of those to get basically everything available which is utterly shite. We use Disney plus and get amazing value from that with the kids. We pay for Netflix and Stan but don't watch it much. I'm contemplating moving back to just pay per view, or purchasing the season of a show on the iTunes store as it would probably cost less and result in me actually feeling more excited about having something to watch

Also it gives a sense of fulfillment in the protestors.

There's a pretty uncomfortable marriage between conservative elites and the Trump coalition of voters. I don't think those groups want the same things. Trump voters seem to just want "death" to democrats and to upend the status quo. Elites just want to deregulate and enable corporate pillaging. They don't want civil war and want to keep the status quo.

One thing Australia can offer is insight of how quickly the virus spreads from a single case. There's so little COVID out there that we trace the fuck out of it, and Below is a map of the current Melbourne outbreak. We'd had zero cases for a couple weeks, then had a pair of covid positive removalists come to pack up an apartment in Melbourne. They had the delta strain, and have COVID to 4 people in other apartments in the complex on the same floor. One of those guys went to the footy and gave it to 6 people in the bay of the stadium he was sitting in, 1 of those 6 went to the rugby the day after and it took off from there. We found the removalists cases on day 1 ( 3 days after they'd done the job), 10 new cases on day 2 and announced a lockdown with another 12 cases on day 3. That was all that was known about at the time we locked down, and yet in every case in yellow on the chart below was already positive by that point, just had not been found and contained. Today was the 7th day we've been locked down and announced 26 new cases, but 24 of them had been in quarantine for 100% of their infectious periods, so no risk to have spread it further... Current plan is to reopen in 4 days time provided all detected cases were in quarantine for their entire infectious periods. That's 3 lockdowns this year for Melbourne, which have been 5 days, 14 days and (fingers crossed) 11 respectively.

I'm back in lockdown.

Yep Australia is pandemonium at the moment (winter) although I'm out of lockdown and my son has only done 2 weeks of homeschool this year. Sydney are in lockdown now and have taken a less risk averse approach, being reluctant to lock down, so now rather than a 10 day lockdown it looks to be 6+ weeks... The threat of imminent COVID spread might finally get us back around to letting people have the AZ vaccine which our medical association had turned their noses up at... But for now, we continue on our logic circuit...

People wanted Britney freed, but the universe thought they said Bill.

Not hugely improved. 20% of people have their first shot. But only essential workers and over 40s are eligible and that isn’t likely to change before the end of winter. So it’s a second winter of clenching and hoping we can keep COVID under control for another flue season. issue was our government had AZ as the vax that was going to be doing the bulk of the work, but then the Australian medical association recommended it only for use on over 50s. So we are using that on them, and only have enough Pfizer for 40-50 yo at this point, with more to come by Christmas.

We live in such different places... In Australia one COVID positive person drove 2000km from Victoria to Queensland over 5 days stopping in 8 different cities. That is front page news, and there are now 10 million people shitting themselves that there will be other infections in those locations from their travels.... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-10/covid-exposure-sites-nsw-qld-cases-victoria-sunshine-coast/100204044?utm_source=abc_news_web&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_web

Yeah agreed. It's not just an overblown liberal freakout, there really is a fight for democracy. Trump might be too inept to pull it off but a more clever person who recognises that the GOP base have the strongest ideological resonance towards rebellion against democrats and rejection of expertise can harness that to much more dangerous effect. And when you consider that the majority of GOP politicians for years have worked for the big money corporations and found democracy inconvenient and something to be worked around, you see the peril that is there. Every forner Republican president except Trump is more politically aligned with Biden democrats than the current GOP, and the centre right college educated types have recognised that. For now the lunatics are running the asylum, and many of the politicians who are still there are just holding on for the ride.

So many of the GOP members were bad faith actors long before this latest wave of Trump. Shills appointed by big business backers to occupy a senate position in a red state.

Im sympathetic to her current situation, and of giving her 'time to get into the right space, or changing things around as a one-off. Thats all fine. But I have some concerns that she seems to be alluding to more than this. It seems like she's done a bit of a mic drop in the back end of that message, and has now left it to the media to fight the issue on her behalf. I may be wrong about that, but I think to some degree, if you do a difficult job, and get paid a great deal of money to do it, and are the envy of 'so many in the world, you have a responsibility to round out the job description as best you can. For sure, journalists and staff be respectful of her more introverted nature, and try to minimise the extent to which you put her on the spot, and keep the questions to a minimum, but she's there to inspire kids, and I think its better to do that with a positive message through what she communicates in an interview than in a message of hey I dont do interviews because it makes me uncomfortable, and thats bad for my mental health"". I'm not insensitive to her social anxiety. I take mental health seriously, have had my own brushes with it, and am already readying myself to be a parent in a world with a very high prevalence of youth mental health issues. But in that world I am also concerned about a continuing trend towards hypersensitivity, which is something that gets reinforced with situations such as this, and I think has a negative psychological impact on the individuals involved and the broader collective when we start catering to each individuals particular concern, and sends a message of mental health is a weakness and excuse to have rules changed. There is some truth there, but its also very important that we continue to push people outside their comfort zone at times, and that we teach our kids that there are some aspects of our lives that are a bit shit but we still have to get on in and do them anyway.

Moana Gosh that movie makes me happy. 10/10

Interesting tactic from Ohio on driving uptake of vaccination. Will surely get some sceptics out to the vaccination centres.

They aren't lying mate. What you claim as lies is mostly cherry picked examples or imperfections in the systems dressed up with a motive of conspiracy. In actual fact any tallied data at a national level on any issue or cause is imperfect as fuck. I would have more respect for an argument that took all the government data as fact but then argued still we should not lock down, and yes should let a fuck ton of people die, and yes it will cull the aging population, and leave a significant portion of people with lifelong physical impacts but it's better than bankrupting the government and racking up debt your children will be paying off until they retire. That you fundamentally believe more in an "only the strong survive" mentality than a "leave no man behind" one.

I think it would be weird to date an identical twin, that's for sure. Like, you'd just sound so fake saying "nah, I'm not even slightly attracted to your sister".