Random Rant Thread

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One thing that I learned in this pandemic is that there are two countries in Europe who stand out in the habit of massaging charts - God knows why they do this, you know! - and they are Spain and Sweden. An unusual combo, I must say.

I rarely see this kind of blatant attempts in the US or Japanese or German media, as bad as they are. It's kind of amazing to be frank.

SVT is the public broadcasting network, the BBC equivalent.

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Extremely dangerous IMO.

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One thing about Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Gaetz is that you don't even have to know who they are to see some screws loose in their heads. Those eyes, yikes. But they are the future of the death cult party, I suppose.

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For the n-th time, it's completely wrong to say that it was started by Trump, though.

People like that trio preceded Trump by years on the state GOP level. Trump certainly exacerbated it, but they were bound to be a force in Congress sooner or later.

Everyone should be against "expelling" Marjorie Taylor Greene. That deranged fucker does represent a significant faction of the Republican voters. We should keep that fact plain and visible. The Republican leaders feigned "concern," and then turned around to ask people like her to campaign in Georgia. That's the reality, and we should keep it clear.

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The fact that the Pfizer vaccine has to be stored in super-freezing condition has been causing so much logistical trouble even in the places with the technology and resources that we should absolutely celebrate the decent test results of the Novavax vaccine. It can be stored in regular fridge, and you can't overstate how important that is.

But everyone should read this thread.

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I know if you are middle-class enough to be able to do remote work and all that, it's absolutely frustrating to see the new Covid cases not going down nearly as fast as you wanted or even expected despite the lockdown-curfew combo.

But many of those cases are "essential workers" getting infected at work (and then giving it to their families). For many people it's pretty much unavoidable, and you can afford to do your remote work largely thanks to those people running the basic socio-economic needs.

I mean, this should be obvious, but I see many ungrateful, insensitive bastards online.

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The definition of talking out of your arse.

I don't know and am not interested in who the hell this liar/idiot is, but such complete bollocks can be passed off as expertise by the BBC is scandalous. 

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The sectors in which the UK can offer lucrative services or goods to the outside world will be limited after Brexit. And I can guarantee you that the Free Market won't be able to sort out the mess caused by those limitations. Try it if you want.

It would fail, because it's not capable of doing so. Global economy is not a virtual reality. It's real. Location matters. Physicality matters.

It's just inevitable that the state/government will have to play a huge role in managing the economy, a la Japan in the 1960-70s. Can the British conservatives pivot to that from decades of the limited government ideology? I don't know, but they will be forced to do so by the new environment.

And it's telling that there's been pretty much zero reporting on Brexit on the US media. And it's even more telling that you don't get much on the British media either.

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Great result:



It's a one-shot vaccine. That's huge, too.

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It seems that AstraZeneca overpromised on their contracts. They basically promised the EU to use the UK factories if needed; Then they promised the UK they wouldn't. It reminds you of what Britain did to Jews and Arabs over Israel/Palestine.

This is sloppy as hell, and it's interesting that AZ decided to honor the UK contract at the expense of the EU one. I don't know why, but I suspect that in the legal bullshit world the UK contract is possibly a tad more binding due to how it is phrased.

We would've been a lot happier if Oxford went ahead with their initial plan to open-source the vaccine, I guess. Blame Melinda and Bill Gates for brokering this unfortunate marriage.

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This is what I've been wondering for weeks too.

This mutation is not complex at all. It occurred with a single nucleotide. So if it's as transmissible as it seems, why did it take so long to emerge and spread? There was always a very high probability of this type of mutations occurring, and chances are that they actually did, especially in places where there were a lot of infections. But we detected them only recently as they started spreading at this particular timing.

That's puzzling. The nature is mysterious.

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But one thing is absolutely certain, and that is the possibility of new strong variants emerging and spreading dramatically increase as you fail to contain the community spread in your country. DRAMATICALLY increases the chances.

Because most of the mutations are simple genetic errors that have little or nothing to do with evolutionary pressure. The more viruses there are, the higher number of ones with errors, hence the higher chances of mutations. Most mutations are stupid ones that only make the virus weaker, but there are a few who are lucky. We are dealing with those few now.

It's as simple as that.

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This won't bring in much for British businesses. There isn't much more than low tariffs in it, and the tariffs between the UK and most of these countries (Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, and possibly more to come) are already very low.

The "free trade" that the UK used to have inside the EU went far beyond the tariff issue. If anything, what this can and probably will do is to throw much of British agriculture further into the brutal competition against Aussies.

On a related note, the US really does't have much interest in a free trade with the UK. You should read the room, really.

The UK has a substantial trade surplus with the US.

What makes you think that in the current climate there would be much appetite around the White House and Congress for a trade deal with the UK?

I watched some BBC footage, and got the impression that they don't quite understand that.

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If you've been reading this thread since the spring, you know I was saying for months that we should just get rid of that "if you can't do social distancing" condition and wear masks at all times indoors. Because arbitrary "cutoff" distance like 1m-2m/3ft-6ft didn't actually have good scientific basis behind it, and it's actually a whole lot easier to simply wear a mask and keep it on indoors than to be worried about the distance from each and every one of other people in the same goddamn space.

The latter is a very simple sociological insight, but utterly absurd pseudo-sociological dumb-amateur crap like "a mask gives you a false sense of security" was widespread instead.

I still don't know what the hell was wrong with those people. I don't think it's a "Western" thing; It's just an intellectual failure that happened to manifest itself in the supposedly advanced societies.

In case you didn't know, the WHO finally upgraded its masking guidance to "masks at all times indoors" in December 2020. December 2020!

And perhaps if your country is one of those smarty-panty contrarian ones, a Sweden-lite, your government is still parroting that "wear a mask if you can't do social distancing indoors" crap.

This is a good Twitter thread to once again remind ourselves of the total failure, particularly on ventilation and masks = FACTS about indoor transmissions. I know you guys were sick of me whining all the time about these things, but most people were simply wrong back then. I had to yell.