Proboscis

2 hours ago, FarFlungFalang said:

You mean like the dosage stuff up by Astra Zeneca during trials?

You mean the dosage "stuff up" that showed that if you gave a different dosage in the initial shot, you could vastly improve the effectiveness of the vaccine? Yes, it is called serendipithy. As in life, science is full of it. Isn't it wonderful?

17 hours ago, Blumpie said:

Diets are rubbish if you ask me.

Just eat properly and watch the weight hopefully fly off.  If you diet, it will all just go back.  If you are suffering and eating causes you to suffer, you will simply revert back to your prior habits sooner or later.  

I've been overweight by 10 kilos, maybe 13.  By changing my diet long ago and eating properly, I am completely normal and feel great.  

That's just me, I'm no dietician, and some people do have problems with metabolism.  No judgement here.  

Well, it depends on what you mean by "eating properly." I used to eat 3 meals a day - a bowl of muesli every morning with skimmed milk, a sandwich for lunch and something like green curry with rice for dinner with some salad thrown in somewhere along the way along with some tropic fruits. My significant other ate what I ate except larger portions and also sweet stuff - at that time, I was big into portion control and reduced fat as that is what we were told.  I played tennis three times per week. My significant other was not really into sports apart from the odd jump into a pool. Neither of us drank much - about the equivalent of three large bottles of beer each per week.

My significant other stayed at between 65 and 70kg for 10 years. I went from 95kg to 125kg over about 10 years.

I drew from this that there was a huge difference between how my significant other's body worked and how mine did.

Since then, after much research I discovered what worked for me. While my significant other seemed to thrive on carbs such as white rice, it was slapping the weight onto me. I managed to stop the weight going on by cutting the high carb foods out - no rice, bread, muesli nor even pasta. The added benefit of dropping these foods was that it made me less hungry. Due to injuries, I had to give up tennis and took up cycling instead, now taking in about 80km per week. This regime stops me putting on weight.

But for me to actually lose weight, I have to go on a fast, usually for about 5 days at a time, living on tea/coffee and bone broth combined with mild exercise. There is no other way for me. Then once I start back eating again, I stay off the alcohol, keep to zero carbs and hit the cycling hard. It is the only way. Nothing else works for me - I have tried them all.

So telling people to "eat properly" is not helpful. Some people are eating properly but slapping on the weight. Some people eat properly and lose weight.

4 hours ago, placnx said:

In this narrative, all the CDC people questioned by Reuters, who declined to comment and referred Reuters to the CDC press office, should now be questioned, interrogated, by Congress!

 

Whoever made the "ethical" judgment that cancelled testing for asymptomatics should be sent for advanced ethics training. Their ridiculous decisions based on superficial ethical criteria probably caused many deaths.

In fairness to federal workers of all kinds, it is standard procedure to refer all inquiries from journalists to the press office of the organization. Otherwise, you become a whistle-blower with all the ramifications that has for you, your career, your family and your friends.

As a whistle-blower in the USA Federa government service, be prepared for investigation by any of a number of law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, be prepared for your home to be "tossed," for hateful and wrong stories to be aired about you in the press. And woe betide you if anything, and I mean anything, you said to a reporter or anyone else appears in something resembling a classified document. By the time you get in front of a congressional subcommittee, you may have spent time in prison and will very likely be both bankrupt and unemployable.

Now, tell me that you will talk to the press about such matters!

11 hours ago, internationalism said:

Up to 2g of vit C can be taken daily as a food supplement, to boost narural intake and improve immune system. 
Higher doses and by injection can be prescribed by doctor, rather during treatment, than as prevention. 
as prevention it would have to be given every day, as this vitamin doesn't accumulate in the body for long. Doses for injection in thailand are only 500mg, so anything bigger would be given as a drip. 
but punishing clinics for false claims is stupid and counterproductive, just a show of power by authorities. Making a statement by this anti-fake news centre only propagates this treatment. Only very few people would otherwise heard of it. 

vit C is such dose is harmless, as exess will be removed from the body

Whilst you are theoretically correct that high doses of vitamin C are not harmful, there are harms involved in clinics making false claims about high dose injects. First, it gives the patient a false sense of security instead of following proper medical protocols. Second, and much more important, injections of vitamins should be avoided except in the case of the extremely ill in a hospital setting. Vitamin injections are difficult to keep safe and go off very easily. And any medical intervention that is unnecessary is a risk that is unnecessary. Vitamins can be taken orally - much safer.

Only 7 years for murder. Must be the lightest sentence for murder on the planet!

14 hours ago, Mama Noodle said:

 

I have no issue with the LGBT crew, no issue with anyone sexual orientation or what they do in their bedroom, or what anyone as an adult does. 

 

I draw a very firm line when it involves children, federally funded schools, and biological sex. One of Joe Bidens EO's involves forcing federally funded schools to treat transgender people 100% as the gender of their choice. 

 

This includes allowing biological males to compete in biological female sports, get womens scholarships, and more. 

And this needs to be fought tooth and nail in the courts as it puts women and girls at a disadvantage, especially during their formative years when sports provides a pathway for scholarships to higher education. 

 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-preventing-and-combating-discrimination-on-basis-of-gender-identity-or-sexual-orientation/

I think that you will find that those born male or mosaic (you can look it up - not everyone is biologically divisible into a phenotype that is strictly male or female) need to jump through a bunch of hoops when competing outside their individual school setting. In many cases it is quite strict, involving hormone testing. In fact, there was a case last year where an international sports body found that a woman, not trans, not intersex, but a woman who produced above normal male hormone was told to either take hormone blockers to bring the male hormone down or not compete. So it is not in the hands of your government.

3 hours ago, bluedoc said:

What do you mean, the EU diplomat is not recognised in EU member countries or the UK diplomats will not be recognised in EU countries?

There are NO EU Delegations to EU countries for the same reason as there are no British Embassies in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England.

So s/he must mean that UK diplomats might not be recognised in EU countries or the British Ambassador to the EU in Brussels.

Vietnam will probably enjoy a certain amount of flexibility from the USA during the Biden first (and probably only)term. But if it wants to have a reliable friend in the USA and to enjoy the flexibility in setting the value of its currency, it needs to reduce the number of issues that members of both the Republican and Democratic parties in the USA will find uncomfortable, especially the new president. Top of the issues would be the treatment of the Catholic Church and other religions. There is no reason for Vietnam to manage religions too roughly.

Vietnam would be well advised to avoid immitating the Chinese Communist Party's highly dictatorial and authoritarian approach to human rights, expecially with respect to imprisoning journalists and bloggers for legitimate criticism or heavy handed treatment of individuals and groups who have legitimate grievances. Vietnam now has the opportunity to set out clear blue water between it and the China. It is already clear to anyone who lives there how different both countries are.

China is already made uncomfortable by the fact that Taiwan is so clean and generally well-behaved with low levels of corruption and yet both places share the same history and culture. If there were another Communist country that was not so repressive that could show that there is a Single Party State that does not have to execute so many that it has to be kept a state secret, that would also be an example to make the CCP uncomfortable too.

19 hours ago, Loiner said:

No, its for the UK decide his diplomatic status or not in the UK.

That is a dangerous argument on two counts.

First, there is the practicality of the UK diplomatic representation to the EU. If the UK does not recognise the EU, then the EU cannot recognise the UK. This could go wrong for the UK if other member states take it upon themselves to not recognise the UK.

Second, there is the theoretical argument. There are other federations of states, including the USA. Once could take the British Foreign Office argument and say that the individual states of the USA are like countries and therefore the USA is really in the same category as the EU - therefore the USA cannot be represented, only the individual states (by the way, individual states are often represented in certain parts of the world but mostly as commercial offices encouraging investment or trade).

The argument against the USA being a mere "international" organization as in a federation of states is that it has its own currency, central bank, parliament, president, law and judiciary. But then, so does the EU.

There is also another argument. Taking away full diplomatic status because you are a sore winner (well, the UK got what it wanted!) is terrible foreign policy. In fact, often one has to hold one's nose over strict protocol matters just so as to get the job done - take any of a number of instances involving Donald Trump where he managed to cause trouble and insult leaders and whole nations - many of those leaders just swallowed the insults just so as to get the job done.

16 hours ago, Patong2021 said:

It is those rich countries who will pay for the poor country vaccines.

If you destroy the economy of the well managed and responsible nations how do you expect them to help those less developed and worse managed?

Maybe if poor countries not build palaces and  armies they have money for vaccine?

There is though a sad fact about pandemics. If there is not a global effort to deal with them, they will come back again and again. So if you use the fact, and I agree it is a fact, that some of the leaders of some developing countries build palaces and armies instead of their countries, to deny those countries access to vaccines, then those locations become the petrie dishes for the viruses/bateria to mutate and return in a new pandemic.

So if you don't want the economies of rich and well-run Western countries to be shut down again and again and again, better get with the global vaccine program.

9 hours ago, timendres said:

 

 

Precisely. The mRNA approach is very new and, to my mind, a very big leap. I do expect that over time mRNA will prove to be a positive advancement in medicine, but I am certainly not interested in being at the front of the line in terms of testing it.

But the Oxford/AstraZenica jab is also mRNA too. mRNA vaccines are not new. The first successful attempt at using mRNA to transport information into cells was done in 1989 and as part of vaccines in the early 1990s. 

What you may be referring to is that pharma companies did not pursue mRNA vaccines all the way to full licensing, which is very onerous and attracts massive costs because it was vastly uneconomic - basically, the only people who could pay for them, Western Governments or consumers, just did not see the point. They sure as hell do now!

The cases of the very very old frail people in Norway dying after receiving the vaccine is simply a instance where the vaccine ought not be provided to the extremely old frail and extremely ill. Same as with many medications.

The Thai government choice of the Oxford/AstraZenica vaccine most likely has less to do with the cases in Norway and much more to do with two other factors: the cost (the Oxford version costs a fraction of the others) and the fact that it can be stored for months in a normal fridge between 4 and 8 degrees C and does not need to be stored at very extreme cold temperatures.

6 hours ago, John Drake said:

 

Uganda is a private country. If Twitter and Facebook don't like it, they can start their own Uganda.

Actually you are correct but in a sense that you may not mean. Uganda IS a private country, privately owned by President-for-life Museveni's family, relatives, friends and associates. It is well-known that any sizeable company or project requires one third of it to be given gratis to someone associated with the First Family. For that reason, the ordinary folks do not stand a chance. The government wanted to put a social media tax on all users - it would have meant that every user would have had to pay $4 per day, which is more than most people receive in wages.

Museveni's son is now a general and primed for the sideways move into power if anything happens to the old man. The first family cannot step down - otherwise they would have to explain all their wealth. But Museveni is not foolish - he does not have any real wealth to speak of - it is all in the hands of family members. But then he considers the State House to be his home, anyway.

I have lived in many countries, including in Africa. Uganda is the only place where the population has increased from 9 million when Idi Amin was in power to over 30 million today but the economy is in terrible shape and get worse every day. The only foreign investment is Chinese or North Korean. The health system is in terrible shape and even people with university qualifications do not have any prospects unless they are connected. The stranglehold that the First family has on the economy makes criminals of everyone as the only way people can get ahead is by corruption, stealing or lying. It is a very sad state of affairs.

And if you believe the election results, well, I have another few sick jokes for you to hear . . . .

8 hours ago, Moonlover said:

That's my game plan anyway. I have never felt vulnerable to Covid and once the herd around me, have been vaccinated  (I don't mean herd in an unkindly way!) I shall feel even less so.

 

Get this program rolling Anutin, as quick as you like.

While herd immunity is possible through vaccine, it will be some way off. And while herd immunity will give the unvaccinated protection on a diminished basis, it will not solve the problem for many falang who need to travel either for work or other reasons. It is not unforseeable that because of the uneven nature of roll-out of vaccines throughout the globe, a system akin to the "yellow certificate" in countries in West Africa will become the norm, at least for a while (yellow certificate shows that the named bearer has received a vaccine for Yellow Fever - no certificate, cannot even get on the plane to certain countries predominantly in West Africa). Besides needing the vaccine certificate, older expats would feel better getting on a plane if they were already vaccinated.

If no credible vaccine is made available to foreigners either through payment or otherwise, and this is not beyond the realms of possibility given the demand worldwide and the inability of the manufacturers to make enough of it fast enough, foreigners could be stuck in Thailand being unable to travel for some time even if herd immunity were to be achieved in the Kingdom.

17 hours ago, Tug said:

MAGA Many Are Getting Arrested for the life of me I cannot understand how people can fall for the bs coming out of trumps mouth we really do need to legislate consequences for (news organizations) that spread lies and hate to think thease MAGA idiots think trump is the answer it just beggers belief 

Clearly you have not spent time with people with certain kinds of mental illness or those who are easily led.

Dealing with the mentally ill first: people who have a proclivity to get hyped up over nothing, perhaps having some mental issues with reality that happen to fall into the Facebook charm of keep feeding you the stuff that you keep liking. Start off by liking the wrong stuff and before you know it that is all you will see.

The gulible are also in the same boat. If they are around people they admire or like or people they see on Facebook or social media who they see as their peer group - while that might not be you or me, there are plenty of people who are inclined like that. I have a brother who has a PhD in a rather technical subject. Very intelligent guy. But he believes that covid-19 was manufactured in a lab by the Chinese. His issue is that once he has made his mind up, he never changes it. He read something convincing somewhere and now he wont change.

Finally, America is beginning to realise that while you may not be able to fool all of the people all of the time, you can fool some of the people some of the time, if you are diligent and never let up. This is what we are looking at now.

21 hours ago, RichardColeman said:

Like him or hate him, sure hope Trump releases his 'smoking gun evidence'  on China and covid before he leaves or gets evicted.

Trump has no smoking gun evidence on anything. And even if it were the case that the Chinese had released (accidentally or otherwise) the virus from a lab, the real fact remains that humanity lives in a petrie dish called planet earth and insists on creating conditions in that petrie dish that make an outbreak inevidable. In the case of covid-19, we are lucky that it is not as lethal as it could have been. It could have been another Spanish Flu or much worse.

Instead of wishing or hoping that something that a narcissist liar said just might be true (and if there were even a scintilla of truth about it, why did he not just spit it out?), why not get to work to get back to normal by reducing this virus to a cold through vaccines and set up the conditions so as to avoid further outbreaks of other viruses and bacteria pandemics in the future.

20 hours ago, Psimbo said:

Well they can get their MPs out of Westminster while they are at it. Now they have their own Parliament <deleted> are they still doing in Westminster anyway? Talk about having your cake and eating it.

 

'We want independence but want back in the EU where we will do what we are told'. Anybody else spot that oxymoron?

 

They HAD a referendum and it was defeated. Are we now in a world where we keep having referenda until the 'right' result is achieved? 

Well, give them what they want and "take back control" by giving Scotland their Independence and thereby kicking them out of the English Parliament (well, some of it is Welsh but they never get a look in). Let them have their oxymoron, as you put it and let us all get on with our lives instead of complaining about everyone.

23 hours ago, ukrules said:

A woman named 'Rebel' was kidnapped by rebels....sounds a little suspicious to me.

I doubt you were ever in Mozambique. They don't really care whether your name is Rebel or Mary when they kidnap you.

On 1/7/2021 at 5:05 PM, placnx said:

Writing fruitless letters to politicians, as many of these WHO assembly members are, is out of style. Today people use social media to shame WHO and its executives. This analysis of WHO and the proposed visit to Wuhan is informative:

 https://www.wsj.com/articles/world-health-organization-criticizes-china-over-delays-in-covid-19-probe-11609883140

This is a bit like shaming the managers of a company who were put in by the owners and doing the owners' bidding. As long as people don't raise these issues with their politicians and make them political issues, the electorate will get the politicians they deserve - populists who spin tales of fear, throw them a bone coming up to the election in the form of tax cuts that are usually ineffective and unfair, take huge amounts of money from special interests and business and vote accordingly so as to gain the cash to bombard voters with half-truths and some blatant lies on TV and social media. Yeah, way to go there, placnx!

I think that this is just a case of getting your revenge in early, as in hurting the other guy before he hurts you. In the case of Biden, I think that is a bit stupid of Kim but there you are. But then he has to create the "evil other" in order to keep his own people on side. It is Totalitarianism 101. Alway have an enemy that you can blame and use to scare the population.