blackprince

Sadly GBP dropped out of my reserve currency 25 years ago ???? Not that I've all the subsequent time here in Thailand. Anyway I'm glad to hear that you're in Thailand and you're happy. From what I can make out that's a minority of posters.

I think it depnds a lot on the country in question. In the UK... 1. Johnson (the Prime Minister) initially went for "herd immunity" also known as "let it rip" 22 months ago. He went to the Cheltenham horse race meeting which hosts 10s of thousands over a few days. He shook a lot of hands. He got sick with covid, put into ICU, was unsconscious and reputed to nearly have died. 2. When he came out the mantra changed to "follow the science" - ie lockdown, the UK was one of the last to lockdown and had the 3rd highest covid mortality rate in the world as a consequence. 3. The mantra was changed to "save the NHS" (by acquiescing to longer lockdowns). At the same time Johnson was reputed privately to have said "let the bodies pile high". This new mantra was driven by the recognition that the collapse of the NHS would create huge civil unrest and Johnson would ne kicked out as a result, rather than any noble motivation. (NHS workers received a derisory pay increase this year, despite Johnson & Co initiating a "clap for the NHS" every Friday I think it was.) 4. The vaccine rollout was a success domestically, but received a lot of flak from the EU about vaccine contracts. 5. Complacency following the vaccine rollout has started a new surge. At least he never proposed bleach. I really do understand the anguish that US progressives feel, I just wish they'd calm down a bit, some of them sound like the Spanish Inquisition to me (Monty Python - "Oh no not the Spanish Inquisition").

Absolutely right. From the BBC a day ago... "With nine in 10 of those aged 12 or over having had a single jab and eight in 10 having had a second, the focus has shifted to boosters", yet the case rate and hospitalisation rate is soaring again, and the mortality rate is inceasing too. In adults this is largely to do with the vaccinated population throwing caution to the wind and not observing simple hygiene practices like masks and distancing. Understandable after so many months of on-off lockdown, but not very smart. And needless to say the boosters will only offer temporary relief too. Vaccines reduce the risk of serious illness and death. They do not eliminate the virus. They work by reducing the viral load. This is agreed by everyone except a few of the anti-anti-vaxxers here. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55274833

In the UK the highest correlation of non-vaxxers is in the black community. Covid vaccine: 72% of black people unlikely to have jab, UK survey finds Are they right wing extremists? Surely not, that wouldn't fit your narrative. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/16/covid-vaccine-black-people-unlikely-covid-jab-uk

I have spent around 4 years working in Germany. It's true that the German way of doing things is very process-oriented. But I think the "following orders" cliche is very unfair. Germany has rebuilt its political system from the ground up over the last few decades. Its form of democracy now, being based on PR (Proportional Representation) is more reflective of what the population actually wants than the UK with its "first past the post" system, or the US system. When I look at what's currently going on in my native UK I shudder at the massive erosion of government accountability that has gone on over the last couple of years. I've also worked in the US for several years. And I'm even more stunned at recent US politics than by the UK. I would never have believed QAnon could have become such a serious in force in the Republican party. Because of that I can understand why some US progressives are so incensed about this. One effect unfortunately is that some of the progressives see conspiracy theory everywhere, almost like McCarthyism in reverse.

That's not how representative democracy works Jeff. If it were, then every decision would be subject to a referendum. And look where that got the UK with Brexit.

There is a branch of linguistics called "discourse analysis" - it proposes among other things to examine the framing of a proposition. The framing of the proposition of this thread in the OP is that there are two character types - A and B. As a Liberal of half a century's standing who believes in diversity of opinion as a core principle I cannot accept such a simplified binary view of the world. It's obviously not possible to reduce complexity to binary splits such as this. I don't believe that there is only QAnon and angels. Interestingly, QAnon sees a different binary- QAnon and devils. I'm sure I'm not the only person here who sees the irony.

Going back to my idea of multiple legitimate narratives. Here's a perfect example of 2 legitimate narratives on a key covid issue from the BBC yesterday. Mandatory vaccinations: Three reasons for and against https://www.bbc.com/news/world-59506339 The kind of balance seen in this article is rarely if ever seen here because the people at the conspiracy end of the spectrum will refuse to accept one set of arguments in this article. And the people on the militant "progressive" end of the spectrum will refuse to accept the other set of arguments. As a Liberal of half a century's standing I accept both sets of arguments, even if I have a personal preference for 1 of them, I recognise that they are both legitimate.

Misrepresenting other people's posts, as you have done to mine repeatedly in the last few days, would characterise someone as an "A" personality type rather than a "B" type in Jing's OP diagnosis.

I haven't obfuscated. I have given you a clear answer. You have chosen to omit the part of my post that answers your question. You have done this several times in the last few days.

I have answered that questions 5 times in the last few days. In fact I answered it in the post that you half-quoted.

It's true as Jing states in his OP that there is a distinction between those who are driven by data (facts) and those who are driven by fake news. But that's only part of the story. These days there are so many legitimate stats on the net, that it's possible to construct different narratives which are all true, and this is especially true of stats on covid which change every day. Many heated exchanges on this forum arise because of these different but legitimate narratives. This is another reason to emphasise that tolerance of diversity of opinion is core to Liberalism. Anyone who cannot tolerate dissent and diversity cannot honestly call themselves Liberal. Of course, many people are not Liberals and do not call themselves Liberal, and as a Liberal of half a century's standing I must defend their right to define themselves as they wish.

Well I'm just taking a quick coffee break, and a fast scan through the posts seems to confirm that there is indeed an internet-borne mental virus that impedes communication 555. Am I the only person to have attempted a diagnosis (apart from Jing whose initial diagnosis I don't entirely agree with, for the reasons given earlier)? Coffee-break over. Have fun.

I agree that there is a huge problem of dialogue on the net. However I do not entirely agree with your diagnosis as presented in the quote above. I have been a British Liberal Progressive for half a century (I mention "British" simply because these things mean different things in different English-speaking countries). Conspiracy theories have always been with us. Some are pure fantasy, some have a highly distorted kernel of truth, some are genuine and discovered by painstaking investigative journalism. But I was stunned at the growth of QAnon type conspiracies. So far so good. But what alarms me almost as much as QAnon is the growth of what I'd call militant progressives who are as closed-minded as QAnon, though perhaps not as pernicious. In some ways this new brand of militant progressive alarms me even more than QAnon, because I expect the hard core right wing to be a bit nutty. But I never used to expect that from people who consider themselves to be hard core left (even if some of their interpretations of Marx have always seemed inappropriate to the modern world). There is also a brand of alternative (left leaning) Libertarians. I knew many in my youth. "Tune in, turn on, drop out" was the mantra. Numerous friends went to live in tepee villages in Wales. I myself lived in a commune. Sadly for some of those people, their anti-authoritarianism has morphed into QAnon territory. Liberalism requires tolerance of dissent. That is essential to the Liberal process. If someone cannot tolerate dissent, they are not a Liberal. (Dissent is not to be confused with fake news of course.) Just for clarification of terms, as I know these terms may mean different things in the US. I am a social Liberal Progressive (in British terms). I am not an economic neoliberal. In US politics I would probably identify with Bernie Sanders who advocates the type of society that I grew up with in the UK - universal free at the point of use healthcare and free at the point of use university education. Without these two policies I personally don't believe a country can call itself civilised. Nor do I believe the carrying of automatic assault weapons to indicate a civilised country (or any weapons for that matter). It's a fascinating subject, but today I work, so I can't spend a lot more time on it.

I've mentioned before that all cannabis variants contain CBD & THC in varying amounts. And that the sale of THC per se or THC ganja is illegal in Thailand, and there are no plans to leaglise it. So. let's think about this again: 1. Lets's say your oil did contain traces of THC. As I've mentioned a couple of times - the process for extracting oil is not a chemical process as such - it does not extract a single chemical (eg CBD or THC), so even the CBD seed variants authorised by the authorities here will produce an oil with small traces of THC, but not enough to get "high". 2. Opiates are illegal almost everywhere in the world, yet some patients are given opiates by doctors for certain conditions. I think this is an unlikely explanantion for your case because the THC variant is not legal in Thailand, and the THC seed variant is not authorised. 3. The fact that you said you did not feel anything is conclusive proof that what you took did not contain a significant amount of THC (just the inevitable traces for reasons I've described). If you had taken anything that had a high THC content you would inevitably have felt it, just as you would feel half a bottle of whiskey or a bottle of wine. I do actially know of a case where a doctor who was conducting CBD research in a hospital in Thailand was visited by the police about 18 months ago because they heard he was processing "cannabis". When they came to understand what he was doing there was no problem of course. In your case, It's also possible there was a simple labelling error, as CBD legalisation is a very new thing here. But one thing is absolutely clear - in your own words you felt nothing. That's because what you took did not contain enough THC to be correctly labelled THC, even if it did inevitably contain traces. CBD is for medicinal purposes, not for recreational purposes. If you are looking for recreation in that area, Amsterdam or certain US states are probably the best bet, though I've heard that the police rarely enforce the laws on recreational use in the UK these days. Have a good day Ivor.

Hover away my friend. I didn't say I'd been linking Johns Hopkins here for 15 months. I rarely use this forum. And I do have a life outside it. But I am very familiar with Johns Hopkins, 15 months is actually an underestimate, 18 months more like, right back to the time when the UK had the 3rd worst covid mortality rate in the world in fact. Then it had a great vaccine rollout and then another nosedive as "the nine in 10 of those aged 12 or over having had a single jab and eight in 10 having had a second" (BBC 200 hours ago) believed they had covid licked and started massing in so called "super spreader" events without masks and proved to the world that vaccines don't kill covid, they merely reduce the risk of transmission, serious illness and death. And it's not unknown for people to lose passwords on old accounts or even change accounts. Anyway, duty calls my friends. Have a good evening. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55274833

You are confusing South Africa, which currently has more vaccines than the facilities required to get it into people's arms - what the NYT article that I posted a couple of days ago describes as an "over supply problem", with the rest of Africa. Prior to that SA was more or less in the same boat as the rest of Africa (actually worse in a way, because the EU was manufacturing vaccines there but shipping them to Europe - something the WHO Covid Finance Ambassador described as "neo-colonialism" - I linked that one a couple of days ago too). If it turns out that Omicron evolved in Africa (and that's by no means certain at the moment) it's not because of anti-vaxx or vaccine hesitancy, which is still not the limiting factor in Africa, but due to the well documented western hoarding which was actually forecast months ago to create this very problem (I've linked that too). There is a chronology here that needs to be fleshed out (actually I did flesh it out last week in a post). The limiting factors for vaccinating Africa are in time sequence: 1. Lack of vaccines due to hoarding by the west (documented, posted and linked) 2. Lack of infrastructure (documented, posted and linked) 3. Vaccine hesitancy - still not a limiting factor for Africa as a whole and according to the NYT aricle I linked it's still not THE limiting factor even for South Africa. Anyway, duty calls. I must be elsewhere. Have a good evening.

It's easy enough oz. Go on to my profile and click the relevant posts.

Here’s yet another article, this time from Relief Web from June 2021, that demonstrates the variety of issues affecting the vaccination of Africa. I chose June to demonstrate that this issue has been known about for a long time, all the way back to the initial release of covid vaccines. I could offer this kind of article for every week of the last year, but would it ever convince those people who believe that vaccine hesitancy is the key issue? “Through its involvement in the region, including COVID and vaccine science trainings for health workers, Project HOPE identified several challenges and gaps contributing to a low vaccination rate in Africa. While insufficient COVID-19 vaccine supplies remains a top issue for African countries, other reported issues include the lack of funds, lack of trained professionals and hesitancy among the population to get the vaccine. In addition, many countries were not able to reach priority groups because they are not equipped with up-to-date registration systems that allow to locate and register these priority individuals. Finally, because of a severe lack of vaccine doses, many countries were using different vaccines, which created challenges such as keeping track of who gets what type of vaccine, differing logistics and storage requirements and training vaccinators to give different vaccines.” https://reliefweb.int/report/world/africas-lack-vaccine-not-only-reason-slow-vaccine-rollout

I'm also very aware of Johns Hopkins stats, I've been linking them for 15 months at least, and as a trained statistician at Bachelor & Master's levels I'm very capable of interpreting them and even identifying their occasional weak spots, but rather than trying to blind people with science as so many do here, I'll simply reiterate something that everyone can understand: In the UK "nine in 10 of those aged 12 or over having had a single jab and eight in 10 having had a second" yet transmission and hospitalisations and deaths continue within those groups, albeit at a reduced rate. (BBC 20 hours ago) In other words 90% of Brits over 12 have been single vaxxed and 80% of Brits over 12 have been double vaxxed, yet covid is still spreading within those groups. I've stated repeatedly that vaccines reduce transmission and death. It's equally clear that vaccines DO NOT ELIMINATE COVID. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55274833 It's just as dangerous to assert that vaccines eliminate covid risk as it is to assert that vaccines don't work.

This is exactly what I said oz: "Vaccines don't necessarily reduce the chance of getting covid, they reduce the chance of getting seriously ill from a bad dose of covid, or transmitting a bad dose of covid. They work not by eliminating the virus but by reducing the viral load." I am at a loss how you could interpret that as me saying "unequivocally that vaccines do not work against infection." I very clearly did not say that I have never said that vaccines do not work against infection, not in this post, not anywhere online or offline. And my longer explanation simply clarifies the detail.

Ok now I undestand what you're saying. Here's the reality: 1. Vaccines cannot stop a covid dose coming into your nose, mouth or through your skin, obviously. 2. Once the covid dose is inside your system your immune system starts working against it. 3. If you have been vaxxed (and if the vaxx is still active in your system) your immune system will act more effectively against the covid that you've just received. But it won't remove the covid - that's not how covid or the vaccines work. 4. If you're lucky you will feel no symptoms; if you are slightly less lucky you will feel symptoms but won't be hospitaised; if you are even less lucky you will be hospitalised; if you are even less lucky you will be in ICU; if you are even less lucky you will die. You may also get "long covid" which can be debilitating. Having the vaxx active in your system will increase your luck; it will not change the basic equation. It is well documented that the covid vaccine reduces the risk of serious illness and death, but it DOES NOT ELIMINATE IT. If it did then we would not be seeing the surge in adult cases in the UK, where "nine in 10 of those aged 12 or over having had a single jab and eight in 10 having had a second" (BBC 20 hours ago). https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55274833 The vaccines DO NOT eliminate covid, they work by reduction of viral load. There is no doubt about this whatsoever. Now that I've explained the situation in greater depth, I hope we can agree.

Sorry Oz, can you explain what you think is the lie.

I guess the people who are so obsessed by politicised anti-vaxx might eventually open their eyes to the reality in the undeveloped world: Time December 1, 2021 “So far, just 7.3% of Africans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19…. Meanwhile, just 12% of the 1.9 billion doses promised to low and middle income countries had been delivered as of early November. But in order to improve Africa’s vaccination rate, it will take more than just a flood of COVID-19 vaccine doses. A lack of coordination on vaccine shipments, weak health infrastructure and vaccine hesitancy sowed by mistrust and misinformation are already slowing vaccination efforts when doses are available, African health experts say.” https://time.com/6124974/omicron-africa-vaccines/

In the UK at that time you were free to wear a mask or not, agreed. And the choice is yours. But It's this bit that I don't get "Surely we can agree that, in such circumstances, the chances of me catching covid again and giving it to anyone else during my month in the UK in November were as close to zero as they could be". Vaccines don't necessarily reduce the chance of getting covid, they reduce the chance of getting seriously ill from a bad dose of covid, or transmitting a bad dose of covid. They work not by eliminating the virus but by reducing the viral load. For what it's worth I'm double vaxxed and I wear a mask whenever I'm in a room with people other than family (actually 2 masks lol). My philosophy is that the masks and distancing are effective in reducing the risk of the virus coming in to my system, and that the vaccine will reduce any incoming viral load for any infection that gets past the mask.