Re: Hmmm
Yes, but who believes the "rogue employee" script these days without lots of corroborating evidence?
4159 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
@MachDiamond: it is frustrating how often I have to make this point to intelligent people, some associated with medical schools! I have taken to using an example I think I stole from a commentard here a few weeks ago - if someone died as as a result of being hit by a dropped anvil*, but tested positive for Cov-SARS2, should the cause of death be put down as the virus? If yes (and a minority do say yes), then why? If not, where is the line, and why?
*Made by ACME, of course!
"How can the the vehicle tell you that you're about out of gas if it doesn't have acess [sic] to the audio system?"
The same way cars used to - a gauge with (possibly) a light on the dash and (maybe) a simple "bong" sound. No need for connection to the audio system.
When I started to drive (and a long time after), drivers were taught to monitor the fuel gauge. When the needle got to a certain point, it was time to look for a filling station - no lights, no audible alerts.
I watched "Idiocracy" for the first time recently, too. Some parts were almost too painful to watch because of the accuracy, the rest was quite boring (which I think the commentard @Kiwi told me on here a couple of years ago).
Speaking of Kiwi - I don't seem to have seen you on the boards recently. Hope you are okay.
I've had an interest in body dysmorphia for a while (eventually I'll get around to writing my paper on how laws will need to change in order for voluntary cyborgs to be created). I genuinely do not see how the law can allow elective body-altering surgery on the grounds of a person feeling that they are the wrong sex, yet not for feeling that they have the wrong arm or leg*. The difference between how people with gender dysphoria and those with anorexia are treated is also a significant bafflement - one is encouraged, the other is subjected to horrifying treatment**.
I don't care whether someone wants to have their body altered, but I do care that the law and medical treatment are inconsistent.
*People do feel this, and either commit suicide or do their own surgery - I have nursed people who removed limbs by train, shotgun and ligature.
**I refused to take part in force-feeding anorexic patients - it is barbaric.
"Remember, hand luggage only... Unless you want to wear the same undies for the time you're there..."
Transferring through CDG in 2002 was the only time I ever had luggage end up in a different location from me (this was before I learned that I can take enough clothes for a week in one hand-baggage, especially since I acquired an e-reader!) Of course, YMMV.
Research Ethics Committee member here: it would be unethical to deny an existing, approved, treatment to a control group whilst another group got an experimental treatment. It is NOT - repeat NOT - unethical to refuse an experimental treatment where no existing, approved, treatment exists. In fact, it is unethical in the extreme to do otherwise. So far, the evidence for H+A treatment is interesting but equivocal - only one step above opinion.
The Supreme Court has never done politics. Anyone with the vaguest knowledge of constitutional law knows that the review of the Brexit actions, or Johnson's prorogation of Parliament (for they are what you refer to, I suspect) have a long history of being in the Courts' purview, and quite correctly so.
"... its days as the Blair Broadcasting Corporation, its 24x7 British Broadcasting Corbynism of recent years.
I think you are talking about another broadcaster. The BBC news and current affairs I know and have avoided for many years is uncritical of whatever government is in power in Westminster*, with a general slant towards conservatism at best, and Toryism at worst.
*When it comes to Scotlad, the BBC is extremely anti-government. Its anti-SNP stance looks very biased, and don't mention the prosecution-biased reporting of Alex Salmond's trial!
This looks like the same panicking, cowardly troll who was on the boards the other day, berating people for wanting actual proof that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin works before handing it out willy-nilly, not just on the say-so of Trump and an inadequate trial.
Probably a troll best left unfed.
I'm interested in just how accurate any of these measures are. For example, A lot of houses (in the UK at least) have the living area separated from the street by two courses of brick and an air-gap, often pierced by a window and a door. Someone who is legitimately indoors following the self-isolation rules could wrongly be placed several metres outside the house. Alternatively, people walking on the pavement outside could be classed as contacts despite never actually having anything to do with the self-isolating individual.
I did specify "historically", and I stand by it. Labour, for much of its history, stood for correcting the imbalance between wealth and worker. It was a major supporter of women's voting rights. Many of its founders were Jews. The Labour Party of today is nothing to do with its roots. However, the Conservative Party adheres to its principles regardless (that isn't praise, by the way).
Photos show that most people were 2m apart from people not in their group. Physical distancing was being observed. There was no need for this response except, maybe, targeted on some cities. However, Boris and his crew know that would mean their vote in those places would go down, so we all end up with the same restrictions that will breed resentment and civil disobedience within the month.
Because legally competent adults should not be *told* what to do. Educate, explain, and persuade - sure. If you need to tell people how to behave, and then use strong-arm tactics to enforce it, you didn't explain properly.
In the current case, people outside cities don't understand why we need to be subject to the same restrictions as those cities. My village is around 800 people, and residents are walking around as normal, as they should be. I can guarantee our mental and physical health will be better in 6 and 12 months than those places that blindly enforce the rules.
I speak from a position of 40+ years of observation of government (NOT Parliament), and teaching and researching administrative and constitutional law for nearly half that time. Not unconnected is that I have effectively lived through continuous Conservative government (Blair's administration was Tory-lite). Maybe you can show *any* proof that government in the UK has done anything to help you, without helping themselves more - I'd be genuinely happy to see it, because my distrust of UK government weighs heavy on me.
"Later, in say a years time, we can get the long knives out and get him out of No 10 with all that wonderful thing called hindsight behind us. I would pay good money to be at ringside for that event!"
Lovely as that thought is, the fucking muppets that voted him and his terminally corrupt Party into power will vote them in again because they showed" strength" and "leadership" in a time of "war", as well as being anti-EU. I would much have much preferred someone who presented a plan, and the responded to changes with a timed response, not a "everything changed since yesterday, and our response is effective without warning!" We, the electorate, ate not being treated as autonomous agents (again) - the Westminster elite have responded to people making their own informed decisions (going out to get exercise and fresh air on a nice day) with "The plebs didn't listen to us. Bring out the cane!"
Remember that the government doesn't care about you only themselves. They want to be *seen* to be doing something - at the moment they are responding to pressure from the media and other countries (obviously an odd form of "taking back control") instead of looking at this calmly. They also don't want to end up carrying the can for decades of running down capacity in the NHS (if hospitals normally ran on 80% capacity, like the pre-Thatcher days, this virus wouldn't be such a big issue now). They are making deaths and serious health effects from isolation an externality - suicides, deaths and injuries from domestic violence, DVTs, ill-advised DIY... the list goes on - will be blamed on the individuals concerned.
Many of the people listed as dying from Covid-19 may not have died from the virus, but simply with the virus in them. The tests are not robust enough yet. For example, the only death attributed to Covid-19 in the Czech Republic was a 93-year-old with more than ten co-morbidities, yet, because SARS-Cov-2 was identified in the person, that has to be given as *the* cause.
Remember: don't trust government and work with and for your community to protect people from governmental actions.
The aim is not to avoid people catching the virus - we're all going to get it sooner or later - but to keep the number of serious cases *at any point in time* within what healthcare services can deal with. The UK's strategy is to keep a constant trickle over a period of time to avoid multiple peaks as far as possible - something China seems to be experiencing, and other "lock down countries have to come. We will be able to argue about whose measures were best in the future.
Thanks, moiety - you saved me making that point. I'm really tired of living in a first-world country where, in the great scheme of things, deaths are going to be low because science and technology have done such great work. There has never been a safer time or place to live than in the first world approaching the second quarter of the 21st century. The doom-sayers don't know how lucky they are, and, in some cases, actively want us to go backwards for bizarre reasons.
@DavCrav: I do wonder if the way the UK is dealing with it might not turn out to be a good middle path* - keeping the number of cases to a manageable level** whilst allowing sufficient herd immunity to develop. The curve may not be as flat nor as short as some health commentators might like, but will avoid multiple peaks. This is sort of your point 1.
*By accident or design.
**For certain values of "acceptable".
Just to clarify - education is a devolved issue. The Scottish government is still equivocating about what to do and how to do it. No official notification about closures has been sent out - at least by our council - leading to a large number of disgruntled and uncertain parents and schools.
@jake: I agree. To me, it feels as if there is something missing from the narrative. This bug is nasty, but the reaction is more appropriate to something with very high transmissibility and a >20% death toll and equivalent long-term morbidity across the population. I know young, for, healthy people who are isolating themselves and their children "in case they get it". Who benefits from this sort of misinformation that leads to panic? Governments, who were/are increasingly in fear of backlash especially in Europe and the USA.
(Wanders off muttering about risk illiteracy and becoming a conspiracy theorist...)
Went out today to stock up on a few items in case the nursery shuts and I have a pair of ravenous three-year-old at home unexpectedly (all it will take is a member of staff coughing three times and the deep-cleaners will be in). At Aldi - the only empty shelf was paracetamol. At Tesco - no pasta, toilet rolls, paper towels... Seems that the panicking is largely middle-class around here.