donnacha

2 minutes ago, John Drake said:

I can hardly see approval coming for any vaccine that has not published its trial data and made the results available to the appropriate authorities. I know the Chinese have not done this? Have the Russians?

I presume all manufacturers everywhere have the same motivation to eventually tick whatever boxes need to be ticked.

Again, it is a huge market, most people will just want the documentation that allows them to travel again.

7 minutes ago, John Drake said:

Is it the EU or those specific nations? If the latter, will they be able to go around EU non approval? 

As the article quotes from an EU official, they are minded to approve the Sputnik vaccine.

And, yes, if for some reason the EU does not want to give approval, their authority to stop countries making their own arrangements has collapsed due to their bewildering three months delay in ordering any vaccines. I believe a couple of countries have already used Sputnik.

13 minutes ago, OJAS said:

What has the fact that this protest was held 6 months ago got to do with it? It was just as illegal then as it would have been now.

You must surely know that the mood music has changed massively over the past six months.

The pandemic itself an entirely new situation. It took quite a while for the politicians to get a clear idea of how much they needed to enforce, and how much they could even get away with.

Famously, the different police forces had wildly different interpretations of how they should enforce the laws. Some even came up with imaginary laws.

Now the government is grimly determined to get the population vaccinated with as few new outbreaks as possible. Emerging from lockdowns a year earlier than the EU will give the UK a massive advantage at a crucial time. It is zero surprise that they are they now taking a far tougher line.

 

48 minutes ago, John Drake said:

The Chinese and Russian vaccines, especially the Chinese ones, are not going to be approved for use in the West.

I'm very surprised to hear that there has already been a concrete decision. My understanding, from the news last Wednesday, was that several EU countries wanted to use Sputnik and that Italy is preparing to manufacture it this summer. Of course, things are moving quickly and you may have some more up-to-date information.
 

48 minutes ago, John Drake said:

And if they're not approved, I doubt they will be able to be used as a vaccine passport into Western countries.

There is no possibility that any internationally accepted vaccine passport can leave out the vaccines of two massive countries. There is no way China or Russia would sign off on that.

The world will coalesce around one standard, nothing else would make sense. A tit for tat battle would paralyse international travel for decades to come.

Here is the article I mentioned from last Wednesday. If I have missed some more recent news that contradicts this, I am sure many members here would appreciate it if you could provide a link.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/russias-sputnik-v-covid-vaccine-gaining-acceptance-in-europe
 

Quote

The EU is reportedly also planning to include Sputnik V and Chinese jabs in the vaccine passport that would ease travel restrictions for those who have been immunised against the virus, plans of which are to be unveiled next week.

The “EU Covid card” is expected to comprise of three digital and paper documents showing whether the holder has been injected with not just the EMA-approved vaccines but also Russian and Chinese ones, according to a report by Bloomberg.

1 minute ago, OswaldBastable said:

From her skin texture and colouring I would venture her hair is entirely natural and beautiful.

Please stop licking your screen.

20 minutes ago, RuamRudy said:

From what I have seen, teaching is not the walk in the park you suggest it is. 

I suggested no such thing. Again, I have worked as a teacher. What I said is that, while there are some fine individuals, the profession also happens to be a refuge for those who would not flourish in situations where they had to interact with adult peers rather than children.

Three of my sisters washed up in teaching, mainly because they couldn't manage in the various other jobs they tried in their twenties. They are all astonishingly lazy, petulant, and selfish. That did not endear them to fellow employees in regular jobs. I don't believe any of them has a vocation for teaching, but it pays well and is relatively handy.
 

20 minutes ago, RuamRudy said:

I am certain that there are many adults who would crumble at the thought of having to take responsibility for educating a room of snotty, ungrateful and uncooperative brats.

Again, I said nothing to suggest that the kids are a joy to be around, although I did rather enjoy it. Clearly, the fact I only spent a month or so doing it proves that it isn't something I consider it a poor deal overall and I'm glad that other people are willing to do it rather than me.

 

Just now, Pilotman said:

perhaps London should go its own way, or maybe it already has done  so. This sad business is just one more manifestation of it. 

Some half-cracked teachers and lesbian librarians deciding to spend the weekend engineering their own Schindler's List movie hardly marks the downfall of one of the world's great cities ????

16 minutes ago, OJAS said:

Whereas, on the other hand, stopping the protest linked below under COVID laws proved far too inconvenient for the Metropolitan Police Force to carry out, for some reason or other

That was six months ago. The situation is a lot more serious now. The UK is in a desperate fight to get the population vaccinated before more variants emerge. As the weather improves, these super-spreader protests will start popping up all over the country, just as they did in the US last summer (social justice warriors don't like getting wet and cold).

If I remember correctly, the London protest was fairly contained and the organizers were fined £10,000. The police also let this memorial event go ahead despite being illegal. They only moved in to disperse the crowd when most of the people had gone home. That is actually reasonably restrained policing and only the antifa nut-jobs were left.

 

My strong hunch is that, once it becomes clear that international travel will only be practical for the vaccinated, most people worldwide will take whatever vaccine they can get, purely for the vaccine passport.

If China or Russia can manage to produce their vaccines in higher quantities than the Western vaccines, and if they are happy to sell them internationally, and if most governments eventually get around to authorizing them for private use, they will become the quick n' easy solution for anyone who wants to get on with life and accepts that many things we do entail a certain amount of risk.

 

1 hour ago, webfact said:

British Airways's new boss said vaccinated people should be allowed to travel without restriction and non-vaccinated people with a negative COVID-19 test

Intermediate step all airlines will adopt before phasing out all non-vaccinated adults on international flights.

 

I have heard that Argentina offers terrific value due to the collapse of the Peso. I would expect the wine, steaks, and Italian-influenced cuisine to be excellent.

Have also heard that Chile is very civilized, forward-thinking, and has a Californian climate. Some coastal area such as Valparaíso sounds pretty good.

Ultimately, though, it all comes down to cost of living. How well would any Latin country compare with the cost of living in Spain or Portugal? My impression is that crime is far more of a problem than in Europe.

 

On 3/12/2021 at 1:42 AM, mfd101 said:

And no even quarter-decent trade union movement in this country to protect anyone. ..

This was a company that exported its products.

Are you suggesting that increasing the amount of red-tape and expense required to run a factory in Thailand, as opposed to the dozens of cheaper countries, will somehow increase the number of such jobs in Thailand?

The things that work in advanced economies such as Germany are not necessarily suited to more basic economies. Your "protection" is more likely to leave low-skilled Thais without a job in the first place. Sad but true.

 

I find the Apple Watch very handy for keeping track of various things, including heart rate, irregular rhythm notification, electrocardiogram, blood oxygen, sleep monitoring etc. The slick design makes me inclined to actually use it in a way I was not inclined with various other devices I have used in the past, including a FitBit.

No blood pressure yet but I've heard the next model will include blood sugar monitoring, something I feel could be useful to everyone, not just diabetics.

The integration with their Fitness+ service (essentially workout videos that display the heart rate from your watch on the big screen while you exercise) is clever and motivating, one of the few things that has encouraged me to exercise more often than I otherwise would.

 

27 minutes ago, nausea said:

now is probably the worst time to buy - buy low sell high, I say

This is low.

16 minutes ago, MikeyIdea said:

This is a no brainer. Of course we should respect rules as the Thai's want them if we are gusts here. What's next? Should we accept that Chinese cut lines all the time in Europe because that's what they do in China?

I understand what you are saying, but he neither disrespected nor broke the rule.

A vital component of any rules based system is that people share their experience of those rules. @LittleBear57 was pointing out that this new rule, and the excess zeal with which one jobsworth was enforcing it, was having unintended consequences. The people who enacted the rule could improve it by listening to such feedback and making some sort of alternative arrangement for those who do not have a decent phone.

His wife's suggestion was a pretty good workaround: as they were a group, her phone alone could adequately fulfill the goal of the rule. If anyone was listening to that feedback they could improve the rule, make it better.

People should speak out when a rule needs to be adapted to match reality. The tragedy for Thailand is that so few people bother to speak out.

Chinese cutting lines are both disrespecting and breaking a rule. More importantly, they are also disrespecting the other people present. I would calmly advocate that this is precisely the sort of awkward social situation that machine guns were invented for.

 

5 hours ago, mtls2005 said:

That the city and their insurance carriers are offering $27 m now means, well the obvious...they expect they'd have to pay more later.

I think it is the opposite in this case. The city know that it is going to be very hard to make a murder charge stick in the criminal case, even if every member of the jury wants to punish Chauvin. The prosecutor, under obvious political pressures, aimed a little too high in setting the charges.

An acquittal in the criminal case will obviously lead to extreme public anger and violence. So, the city have pre-empted that by making an astonishingly high civil settlement to insulate their administration and their own political careers from the likely blowback. 

In normal circumstances, it would be very difficult to pin any civil liability on the taxpayer because of the astonishing levels of fentanyl in his system and his career as a violent criminal. Even in these highly-politicized circumstances, and even though the burden of evidence is far lower in a civil case, if the city had mounted even a basic defense, any award would have been limited to around a million. The figure of $27 m was carefully chosen to be both an offer the family couldn't refuse AND a big enough sacrifice to shield the city administration from the coming storm.

Bear in mind that the "mostly peaceful protests" last summer caused $2 billion in direct damage, $500 m of that in Minneapolis alone, 19 deaths, and contributed at least partly to the US having among the worst Coronavirus statistics in the world, which will ultimately cost trillions. The Biden administration are extremely eager to avoid a replay of that and will have made that abundantly clear to their party colleagues in Minneapolis.