Rancid

The BBC is politicized, it offers opinions not news, just like Australia's ABC. A sad joke that so many citizens can't even stomach their twisted version of reality and tune out, why would the Chinese cop it?

On 2/10/2021 at 8:55 AM, Bkk Brian said:

Thailands C.P. group will be pleased, they invested 515 million dollars in Sinovac

 

CP Group, through its subsidiary in Hongkong and operated by CP Pharmaceutical Group, has investe 515 million US dollars (approx. 15,450 million baht) to acquire 15% stake of Sinovac Life Sciences, which is a Chinese vaccine developer responsible for the development of CoronaVac under Sinovac Biotech.

https://www.kaohoon.com/content/413496
 

Yes, its always about follow the money. If CP wants this vaccine then Thailand will have it, seems too many countries these days act on behalf of corporate wishes, read profits, regardless whether good for the country or not.

Ironic how those dystopian sci fi stories of corporate governance are coming true. Seem to recall it generally ended up with a small elite living in luxury as the majority gets half starved. The fools attacking and cancelling each other online haven't woken up that they are just useful idiots who will also be trodden on later. The poor think there is left and right, the truly wealthy know its really about rich and poor.

Yeah, always wonder where they get these volunteers, the deluded that its actually safe or the very poor doing it for money. There was actually a very funny Two and a Half Men episode where one of the bothers was broke so got paid to take experimental drugs. I would feel a lot more confident if politicians, the wealthy and Pharma executives were the ones undergoing the trial.

13 hours ago, asiasurfer said:

You can keep all of those stinking rip-off tuk tuks and other "taxis" marooned indefinitely. Not feeling any pitty at all. 

Live here too long and they become like Songkran...just a pain. Sometimes though you need to cast your mind back to your first trips, most of us found tuk tuks to be an integral part of the whole Thai experience and lots of fun. They are not compulsory, just an option.

If you consider why people get into politics then there is no surprise, obviously though she was not well connected enough. Until we find a way to have politicians that don't want to be politicians then corruption and incompetence flourishes. Perhaps the ancient Greeks were right, just do a lottery to appoint politicians. Couldn't be any worse.

A couple of views on God you may not have encountered:

“I will point out the greatest, the chief cause of nearly two thirds of the evils that pursue humanity ever since that cause became a power. It is religion under whatever form and in whatsoever nation. It is the sacerdotal caste, the priesthood and the churches; it is in those illusions that man looks upon as sacred, that he has to search out the source of that multitude of evils which is the great curse of humanity and that almost overwhelms mankind. Ignorance created Gods and cunning took advantage of the opportunity. Look at India and look at Christendom and Islam, at Judaism and Fetichism. It is priestly imposture that rendered these Gods so terrible to man; it is religion that makes of him the selfish bigot, the fanatic that hates all mankind out of his own sect without rendering him any better or more moral for it. It is belief in God and Gods that makes two-thirds of humanity the slaves of a handful of those who deceive them under the false pretence of saving them. Is not man ever ready to commit any kind of evil if told that his God or Gods demand the crime?; voluntary victim of an illusionary God, the abject slave of his crafty ministers. The Irish, Italian and Slavonian peasant will starve himself and see his family starving and naked to feed and clothe his padre and pope. For two thousand years India groaned under the weight of caste, Brahmins alone feeding on the fat of the land, and to-day the followers of Christ and those of Mahomet are cutting each other’s throats in the names of and for the greater glory of their respective myths. Remember the sum of human misery will never be diminished unto that day when the better portion of humanity destroys in the name of Truth, morality, and universal charity, the altars of their false gods.”

- Master K.H.

“We reject the idea of a personal, or an extra-cosmic and anthropomorphic God, who is but the gigantic shadow of man, and not of man at his best, either. The God of theology, we say – and prove it – is a bundle of contradictions and a logical impossibility. Therefore, we will have nothing to do with him. . . . if infinite – i.e., limitless – and especially if absolute, how can he have a form, and be a creator of anything? Form implies limitation, and a beginning as well as an end; and, in order to create, a Being must think and plan. How can the ABSOLUTE be supposed to think – i.e., to have any relation whatever to that which is limited, finite, and conditioned? This is a philosophical, and a logical absurdity. Even the Hebrew Kabala rejects such an idea, and therefore, makes of the one and the Absolute Deific Principle an infinite Unity called Ain-Soph. In order to create, the Creator has to become active; and as this is impossible for ABSOLUTENESS, the infinite principle had to be shown becoming the cause of evolution (not creation) in an indirect way . . . It is an eternal and periodical law which causes an active and creative force (the logos) to emanate from the ever-concealed and incomprehensible one principle at the beginning of every maha-manvantara, or new cycle of life.”

- HP Blavatsky.

My understanding is that he skipped bail after being convicted in two large fraud scams. Having returned he was jailed for those. Hardly seems a political event involving other countries. As to the "poisoning" when are those Russians going to learn to make a decent nerve agent, all their targets survive. You'd think they'd make sure and just suicide inconvenient people as is so popular in some other countries. All these survivors just seems to generate bad press.

Sounds like trying to justify your currently redundant job...

So everyone is salivating to be injected with a virtually untested vaccine with unknown side effects, to be saved from a virus with a 99.7% recovery rate? There's a little thing called Karma that governs everyone's life, it basically ensures that we get exactly what we deserve or need, it will have no small bearing on what ones fate will be. In fact traditionally pandemics etc are seen as a Karmic reaction to humanity's collective depravity.

The woke West in particular have adopted the mad idea that every aspect of our lives has to have all danger removed, hence the onslaught of restrictive senseless laws in which we wallow today. Not that our Karma doesn't have wriggle room, but if you are meant to go you will one way or another. Even many phycologists argue that this attempt to insulate us all from life achieves just that.

I'm not really sure what the governments attitude to casinos is as opposed the public, but would imagine it could prove very lucrative to the bureaucrats in charge. Now of course we have the tourist industry on its knees due to lock downs and fear, with certain bar cities all but wiped out, it does offer a good excuse to bring in casinos to "save Pattaya/Phuket and bring back employment".

3 hours ago, EricTh said:

 

Modifying any vaccine means they have to start all the phases of clinical trials again which may take another one year.

 

It's not like Windows update when you can just download without any human trials. What may work in the past may not work now and vice versa.

 

Actually if you look at Pfizers documentation their trial was scheduled to finish January 2023. And that was a rush job, it finished 2 years early, albeit with little useful information obtained, due to greed and political pressure. We are the test subjects, except many of us are not dopey volunteers.

14 hours ago, ourmanflint said:

Sounds like a sensible way to get people mixing together safely!

Yeah, everyone loves another holiday, but really...the timing.

1 hour ago, hotandsticky said:

 

 

Well, that UK variant won't hit the streets here if the government maintain their quarantine programme.

Yes, been reading up about the UK variant as found the timing interesting, here are a few facts that might cause one to think a little bit.

Health officials, politicians and the media around the world turned their focus on the variant right after the publication of three theoretical-modeling papers on B.1.1.7, the one originating in the U.K. None of the three papers was checked over for accuracy by objective observers – a process called ‘peer review', nonetheless, all three were portrayed as solid science. So yet again no checking allowed.

So who was behind this new modelling? Why our old friend Neil Ferguson, the UK government has relied on his mathematical modeling for many years, despite his work turning out to be highly inaccurate time after time. In fact this insider has rarely gotten anything right. He  also supposedly stepped down from his government-advisory role last May after being caught secretly meeting with his gik during lock downs, but was then quietly restored to positions of influence. Funny how some get a free pass while the public gets arrested.

In the one paper published the authors state in the last section of their paper that “It is important to remember that our maps define biochemical phenotypes of the RBD, not how these phenotypes relate to viral fitness. There are many complexities in the relationship between biochemical phenotypes of yeast-displayed RBD and viral fitness.”

Translation: Just because our experiments showed that the presence of N501Y or other changes in the RBD seems to make the RBD bind tighter to the ACE2 receptor, we don’t know whether any of these changes make the virus more transmissible. 

So is it more dangerous? Maybe, but no one actually knows. It is all 100% conjecture.

19 hours ago, Pattaya Spotter said:

The final word is still out on the Chinese vaccines but the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine has been shown to be right up there with the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, despite using an older vaccine technology. Effectiveness was above 90% and serious Covid disease was basically zero. The main problem being the Russians don't have a lot of production capacity to crank out large volumes of the vaccine. 

 

A peer-reviewed article in The Lancet shows the vaccine has an impressive 91.6 percent efficacy rate against the virus and is completely protective against severe cases of Covid-19.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/world/europe/russia-vaccine-safe-effective.html

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55900622

The Russian vaccine appears to be the best (as in least harmful) on the market, those that brought us the fake Russiagate story seem to be obsessed with Russia, thus lots of political pressure from the US to not use it. The Chinese vaccine is yet to prove that it is viable.

1 hour ago, jonclark said:

These beds will never, I repeat never be used. Thailand will never have 100'000 publicly acknowledged cases.  More chance of Prayut resigning gracefully.

True, but its a good story to keep up the level of fear with the local population. A population without fear tends to get a little boisterous about having their livelihoods destroyed. Those in fear will accept anything.

Vaccines do not guarantee either immunity or that you can't spread covid. The idea presumably is vaccinate everyone reducing the amount of potential hosts until it dies out itself. I would imagine many countries will be vaccinated by the end of this year, then give it 6 -12 months of watching to see if it pops up again. If not then travel should restart. Remember the Australian city of Perth went into lock down for a week as one (1) person in a city of 2.5 million tested positive.

If you have a non-covid fever resulting from a flu or a cold then getting the PCR test may well see you identified as covid positive. The reason is although they call it the covid-19 test it isn't specific to covid, never was and wasn't even designed for testing viruses. It will show up strands of any virus you have circulating if amplified enough, it will then be assumed to be covid as everyone runs in terror from you.

Of course if it actually is covid this is OK, but if a common cold you may still see yourself in quarantine for two weeks. In these times best to make sure you stay healthy, use the proper supplements that help.

It's sad that so many have lost their objective thought, and just believe what the talking heads tell them. We are self conscious and capable of rational analysis, why do so many abrogate that to the dunderhead on TV?