Random Rant Thread

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The new variant is likely to spread like wild fire all over England now.

Mobility really is everything. You can wash your hands 100 times a day, wearing masks all the time, but high mobility, when the infection rates are already high, trumps everything, rendering almost every measure powerless.

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The South African variant seems different from the SE England one.

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Will everybody start shaking hands again after this is over?

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The latest theory is that the new variant infects specifically *children* more easily, hence more transmissibility.

Well, the schools were kept open in England. Without many drunk Englishmen available at pubs, the viruses had to try their luck with children, I guess.

SARS-CoV-2 is extremely contagious to begin with anyway, but not quite so with children. That was the only weak point, so if that's the source of the "increase in R," well, that makes sense. +0.4 still sounds fishy though.

Anyway this is just a theory at this point. May be bull.

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In any event, you really ought to stop fucking around and get serious about bringing down the infection rates everywhere, or you'll get a much, much nastier variant some time down the road, which would likely be able to beat the current immunity and vaccines easily.

Yes, the vaccines can be updated relatively easily, but it takes some time. A "much, much nastier variant" would probably entail more lethality too. That can easily happen by an evolutionary accident, and you are raising the odds by that house party.

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So many household transmissions. So many. Everywhere. Way more than half of the cases in many places.

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The sentence sounds harsh indeed, but you know, Cayman Islands is not just a tax haven. There are actual people living on the islands, and if there's an outbreak there, the health care system will be kaput, just like that, gone.

Is it wrong to expect an 18-year-old "pre-med" girl to understand the reason for why tiny island countries are very nervous? No, I don't think it is.

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Sweden has the highest rate of people living alone in the world: 42.5 per cent of households are single people, compared to just 29.9 per cent in the UK.

Holy shit, I didn't know these stats. 42.5%... crikey. That's a huge percentage.

I always said that most countries would be absolutely Covid-fucked if they tried the "Swedish model," but "Covid-fucked" was probably an understatement. "Obliterated" would've been better.

42.5% of your country's households being "single" enormously, enormously helps with this viral disease. As I just said, a huge part of this pandemic is household transmissions.

I think it's possible to model what it would look like if the current infection rates in Sweden were extrapolated to a country with a "normal" household composition, and I'd expect the result to be absolutely horrendous.

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You know, there are zero elements of surprise here. This is exactly how I thought he would behave after a loss. Of course he wasn't nearly as bad as this as a narcissist when he was younger, but I saw all the necessary ingredients that were already there, on top of his extreme susceptibility to conspiracy theories. "So, who's pulling the strings?" "So, what's he trying to hide? Can you dig it up?"

Yes, people often do pull strings, and do try to hide something. But in most cases, he lost the deal simply because people didn't trust him. But he only remembers the few occasions where he was "set up."

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In this round of Compulsive Ranting I've been kind of Britain-heavy, but that's mostly because pretty much all major English-language newspapers/publications except for the Guardian are behind the paywall now. I'm a subscriber to many of them, but can't link to the articles here.

And I do pay the Guardian too. What I'm saying is that I think that's a good thing.

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This is an old Japanese TV commercial, but still a good one.

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I don't mean to get on the podium and start singing We Are The World now, but if we go back on our timeline for three thousand years, somewhere on our way we will find a common ancestor between me and you, and I'm talking about me and a random you, who could be anyone on this planet, or up in the International Space Station for that matter.

Three thousand years, tops. Think about it. It's not that hard to count up to 3,000.

I always find that amazing.

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This is a fantastic column on Brexit. It's such a haunting story of wounded ego that just cannot let go of it.

The paranoid fantasy behind Brexit
www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/nov/16/brexit-paranoid-fantasy-fintan-otoole

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Today's Nugget of Right-wing Wisdom:

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I never bought the idea that *fishing* will jeopardize the deal between the EU and UK. That's a major reason why I thought that No Deal was unlikely, and that much of it was just a political show.

We are not talking about, say, Japan here, and Norway is not part of the deal either. Who cares about fishing unless you are Japanese, Norwegian, Peruvian or Russian?

OK, that's hyperbole, but how much of the British economy does fishing account for? Fish and chips and all that, all right, but it must be fucking tiny. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Europeans (French, Danish, etc.) who rely on the British sea must be heavily subsidized low-profit outfits to begin with.

I mean, I heard them talking about "Flemish fishermen" who could tear Belgium apart as the Flemish nationalists would be outraged at any deal to damage their business and go for independence.

Er, what? How many of them are there? I did live there, and never heard of such a huge fleet of "Flemish fishermen."

I always thought it was just a red herring. Fishing is one of the very few areas where the EU loses more than the UK does due to Brexit, hence the UK plays it up. That's all there is to it, isn't it?