TallGuyJohninBKK

Pretty rich posting a Fox News report on rich elites spinning political propaganda... When it comes to Fox, that's really the pot calling the kettle black!

Yes we need to worry so much about Soros buying a stake in radio stations (which for the most part aren't primary national news providers in the U.S.)... But meanwhile, let's ignore arch right winger Rupert Murdoch and his family's far right-wing influence over many more primary U.S. news sources, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, the Fox News network, and others. Who Owns Your News? The Top 100 Digital News Outlets and Their Ownership Who Owns the Media in the U.S.? About 15 billionaires and six corporations own most of the U.S. media outlets. The biggest media conglomerates in America are AT&T, Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, National Amusements (which includes Viacom Inc. and CBS), News Corp and Fox Corporation (which are both owned in part by the Murdochs), [emphasis added] Sony, and Hearst Communications. All of them save for Sony make an appearance in our online news sources chart. ... Who Owns the Fox News Network? Fox News is owned by the Fox Corporation, which is owned in part by the Murdoch Family (39% share). It’s also important to point out that the same person with Fox News ownership, Rupert Murdoch, owns News Corp with the same 39% share, and News Corp owns the New York Post, HarperCollins, and the Wall Street Journal." https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/who-owns-your-news-the-top-100-digital-news-outlets-and-their-ownership/ Strange, I don't see George Soros' name anywhere on the linked list of owners of the major news sources in the U.S. But the Murdoch family absolutely are. Forbes magazine in 2016 said Murdoch "may well be the world's most powerful media tycoon." https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2016/06/01/these-15-billionaires-own-americas-news-media-companies/#29ae3f3e660a And last time I checked, he's the only U.S. news media mogul whose corporation ended up having to pay a $787 million settlement to voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems because of Fox hosts' pervasive attempts to undermine the credibility of the U.S. presidential election system during the 2020 cycle with known false claims in an attempt to favor their favored candidate (Trump) and echoing his likewise false claims. "Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network (colloquially Dominion v. Fox) was a U.S. defamation lawsuit filed in March 2021 by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News Channel and its corporate parent Fox Corporation. Dominion's complaint sought US$1.6 billion in damages, alleging several Fox programs had broadcast false statements that Dominion's voting machines had been rigged to steal the 2020 United States presidential election from then-president Donald Trump. ... Dominion focused on allegations made between November 2020 and January 2021 by hosts Maria Bartiromo, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, and Jeanine Pirro. Guests who often appeared with these hosts included Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, both of whom have also been sued individually by Dominion in federal court.[a] During pre-trial discovery, Fox News' internal communications were released, indicating that prominent hosts and top executives were aware the network was reporting false statements but continued doing so to retain viewers for financial reasons. On April 18, 2023, as opening statements were about to begin, the judge announced that the parties had reached a settlement. Fox News agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million and acknowledged the court's earlier ruling that Fox had broadcast false statements about Dominion. The settlement did not require Fox News to apologize. It is the largest known media settlement for defamation in U.S. history. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems_v._Fox_News_Network

As an aside, interesting getting a feel for people's popular menu choices here... Chicken and chips (like french fries in U.S. parlance) seems to be a common theme! 🙂

An interesting explainer here on the differences between halogen ovens and air fryers... and the author definitely comes down on one side in terms of which cooks food more quickly and, to the author's taste, produces better food results. https://www.idealhome.co.uk/kitchen/halogen-oven-vs-air-fryer PS - this was one of the first search results that popped up in Google when I did a search on comparing the two types.

And in my experience, 90+% of condos in Bangkok where Thais live seem to come with no oven whatsoever when built, except for small microwaves.....

Entirely new and no experience with air fryers... Never had or used one... All I know is, my wife wants to cook salmon steaks and fresh veggies like broccoli.... I have no idea what kind of temp you'd use in an air fryer for something like fresh broccoli florets. But healthwise, afaik, there's no reason you couldn't or shouldn't cook those two items at the same time in the same device...

Is this the one you're referring to... a unit with a glass body? I can't tell if it's a halogen model or not... https://www.makro.pro/en/p/2xrtgq6-7352839438531?

Thanks for the advice! What exactly do you mean above re cooking things simultaneously? Do you mean the ability to handle larger, multi item portions that wouldn't fit in the unit? Or, that you can't cook things like fish fillets and vegetables in the same cooking cycle together, even if the air fryer size can handle them?

So what would you recommend as a minimum optimal size to get in terms of Liters capacity?

Got all those already, but not really fitting what we and she needs. When she fries fish on the stove, it stinks up the whole house (we have an open kitchen and living room area combined). When she steams veggies on a big steamer pot on the stove, it heats up and humidifies the whole kitchen and beyond. I think ideally I'd be looking for something cleaner in all the various respects when it comes to cooking -- not making our living area hot, humid or stinky.

I don't know what's going on with Xiaomi branded items being sold by 3rd parties on Lazada and elsewhere, but I ran into the same "dubious product" issue with them lately... I saw models of a home indoor PM2.5 monitor branded Xiaomi being advertised/sold on Lazada, AliExpress and elsewhere at very low prices... and I was interested. So one day when I was in the local mall, I stopped in when I saw the official Xiaomi company store there, and inquired about their PM2.5 monitor units... And was told by the Xiaomi store staff that they don't make or sell PM2.5 monitors, at least not in the Thailand market.... And a subsequent search I did of Xiaomi's global and various country-based websites surfaced no such product of theirs. So it seems something squirrely is going on.

Thanks for your post, since I was hoping someone would actually come along and address the gist of the OP's question... being the differences between and how to choose between buying/using an air fryer vs. a halogen oven. Can you offer an elaboration on how the cooked food emerges from the air fryer vs the halogen oven? And whether one or the other is better for cooking certain types of foods? My wife wants to get one (something) for our home to assist with her latest home cooking efforts. But I think it's going to be up to me to decide just what that something ought to be... We already have a good microwave oven and slow cooker units at home. So I think she's looking at wanting to cook things like salmon steaks and fresh veggies without frying in oil or heating up the whole house via stovetop steaming. PS - I had no idea the manufacture of halogen bulbs is being phased out, so that for me also becomes a consideration as well!

Since we're now throwing in random quotations, I'll add the following counterpoint opinion: Kent Sepkowitz is a physician and infectious disease expert at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York who takes issue with economists and others who faulted the early lockdowns in the U.S., and maintains they were absolutely warranted in the early going. Opinion: Were Covid-19 lockdowns a mistake? November 10, 2023 ... "In other words, I consider the “short-term benefits” [early in the pandemic] to be absolutely critical in allowing the medical world to steady itself and gain a much firmer grasp of the task at hand. One only had to work in health care in New York City to see the difference between early 2020, when the explosion of cases overwhelmed the city, versus later in 2020 when an effective therapy had been identified, supplies and diagnostic testing had been greatly improved (though still completely inadequate) and the makeshift ICUs and emergency rooms had been set in place. ... The “short-term benefits” at the start of the pandemic are simple to characterize: Every infection that was delayed due to the lockdowns was a day to the good, a day closer to the release of the mRNA vaccines in December 2020, a less-hectic day for the health care workers, a day for clinical trials to mature. Therefore, the authors’ statement that lockdowns “were a mistake that should not be repeated” because they had no “purpose other than keeping hospitals from being overrun in the short-term” is to me a fundamental misunderstanding of the day-to-day work that was being done. ... I do think that a practical conclusion that we may send to those caught up in a future pandemic of respiratory virus is this: Lock down hard and quickly until you and the world can get your bearings. Maintaining a functional health care system is crucial." https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/10/opinions/covid-19-pandemic-lockdowns-sepkowitz/index.html

My elderly father died of a non-COVID related cause during a brief hospitalization in the U.S. in the early months of the pandemic in 2020, months before the first COVID vaccines became available. The private hospital where he was admitted at the time had serious restrictions on out-of-hospital visitors, even for family members, though phone calls and video calls were fine. However, when it was clear his death was imminent, the hospital allowed a few family members in wearing face masks for a brief visit (he was unconscious at the time). The obvious purpose of such policies was to try to prevent and limit the further spread of COVID as a deadly infectious disease at the time among hospital staff and patients. I had no problem with the COVID policy the hospital enforced back then, and was glad they were doing their best to protect the health of both their patients and staff under extremely difficult circumstances, as Patong2021's post above illustrates. At least in the U.S., where there isn't any nationalized health care system, I don't think there was any single nationwide policy on such things among thousands of different hospitals, both public and private.

Other pertinent findings from the same OECD source, which looked at COVID related outcomes thru December 2021: --"Vaccination strategy matters. A higher COVID-19 vaccination rate was associated with lower excess mortality." --"The pandemic has claimed, and continues to claim, millions of lives. Across OECD countries, more than 3.1 million people have died representing nearly half of the 6.6 million reported global fatalities (as of December 2022). Reported COVID-19 deaths underestimate the true death toll, however, owing to a lack of testing and accurate reporting. [emphasis added] The document also addresses the differences between actual recorded COVID deaths and estimates of excess mortality during the pandemic compared to prior years: "While the number of reported COVID-19 deaths offers the most direct measure of the number of lives lost to the pandemic, differences in testing capacities, recording, registration and coding practices across countries hamper the international comparability of these figures. Additional indicators to assess the full impact of COVID-19 on population health are therefore useful. The indicator “excess deaths” offers a broader measure, reflecting both the direct and indirect impact of the SARS-CoV-2 virus on mortality, with standardised reporting across OECD countries. It is not affected by capacity limitations to detect COVID-19 fatalities in countries or other differences in the registration of COVID-19 deaths. However, it is not a direct measure of the impact of COVID-19, since it captures all excess deaths in a particular period, irrespective of their cause. This can include other health events, such as exceptional influenza seasons or extreme weather, which have differing mortality impacts across countries." https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/1e53cf80-en/1/3/3/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/1e53cf80-en&_csp_=da51eb48eaaeedf7fcdf3f0f2a953149&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book#section-d1e10677-66f043643c --

If you look at Sweden's per capita COVID death rate for 2020-2021, not looking so good compared to its comparable Nordic neighbors. From the same OECD source: COVID deaths for 2020-21 per million population: Norway: 242 Finland: 310 Denmark: 558 Sweden: 1,463 On the same broader OECD chart for "Country dashboard of COVID-19 outcomes, 2020 and 2021": Denmark did better than the OECD average on 3 out of 6 indicators Finland did better than the OECD average on 3 out of 6 indicators Norway did better than the OECD average on 4 out of 6 indicators Sweden did better than the OECD average on 1 out of 6 indicators https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/1e53cf80-en/1/3/3/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/1e53cf80-en&_csp_=da51eb48eaaeedf7fcdf3f0f2a953149&itemIGO=oecd&itemContentType=book#section-d1e10677-66f043643c

No lockdowns or other similar restrictions in the U.S. right now... More than three-fourths of the population at large are NOT up-to-date with their COVID vaccines, including about 60% of seniors NOT up-to-date. And COVID right now is killing 500+ people per week in the U.S. during the so-called annual spring COVID surge -- up from about 300 per week back in June, but still much less than the 2,500 weekly U.S. COVID deaths at the start of the year with the so-called annual winter surge. All of this 4-1/2 years into the COVID pandemic. The latest report from England tallied 174 COVID deaths per week, which was down somewhat from 211 the week before:

Well, the quote excerpt above that I posted was from the article that you posted earlier in this thread... So enough said about that.... https://theweek.com/news/science-health/956673/did-sweden-covid-experiment-pay-off

The above AIER article is from spring 2021. It cites a 1.1 million COVID deaths for the U.S. scenario using Ferguson's forecasts with social distancing and lockdowns, which were only sporadically and temporarily enforced in the U.S. (where a lot of policy decisions were left to individual states), and then does a one year after comparison as of the 2021 time of the article. And yet today, the U.S. has a cumulative COVID death toll for the U.S. -- AFTER vaccines and what various COVID control measures were employed for relatively brief periods of time -- of almost 1.2 million. That doesn't sound very wrong to me. Source:

Your post above is just repeating the same Sweden vs larger European country comparisons made above, while ignoring the more comparable Sweden vs. other Nordic country comparisons made in the same article, that you decided not to quote. From the above cited article, re Sweden: "Experts have suggested that socio-demographic factors could have played a huge part in keeping down excess deaths, meaning that the policy of shunning formal lockdowns may not have worked equally well in other countries. These factors include “having a high rate of single-person households”, therefore reducing opportunities for transmission, as well as a “low population density compared to countries such as the UK and Italy”, said the Daily Mail." AND Neighbourhood comparison "While Sweden’s death figures are lower than many European nations, comparing its figures to other Nordic countries shows you “cannot call Sweden a success”, Professor Paul Hunter, an epidemiologist at the University of East Anglia, told the Daily Mail. ... Sweden’s neighbours fared significantly better in keeping excess death rates down, with Denmark logging just 32 excess deaths per 100,000, while Norway logged “one fewer death per 100,000 than expected”, said the paper." https://theweek.com/news/science-health/956673/did-sweden-covid-experiment-pay-off As the above article points out, Sweden faring better than larger European countries re COVID mortality could have had as much or more to do with their very different socio-demographic characteristics among those countries than it had to do with their differing lockdown policies.

Sweden's king says 'we have failed' over COVID-19, as deaths mount December 18, 2020 STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden's king said his country had failed in its handling of COVID-19, in a sharp criticism of a pandemic policy partly blamed for a high death toll among the elderly. Carl XVI Gustaf, whose son and daughter-in-law tested positive last month, used an annual royal Christmas TV special to highlight the growing impact of the virus, in a rare intervention from a monarch whose duties are largely ceremonial. ... An official commission said on Tuesday systemic shortcomings in elderly care coupled with inadequate measures from the government and agencies contributed to Sweden's particularly high death toll in nursing homes. (more) https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN28S0BQ/

And then there's the bogus, false argument that all the older people in the UK who died from COVID were already on the verge of death anyway or had little time left to live. Average Covid-19 victim dies years before they otherwise would 20 July 2021 People dying from Covid-19 lose about a decade of life on average. https://fullfact.org/news/boris-johnson-whatsapp-covid-life-expectancy-cummings/ "However, we need to be clear that the Covid deaths we’ve seen so far have been despite the UK’s lockdowns. As we have said before, the evidence suggests that without lockdowns the death toll would have been higher. ... And while it is true that the pandemic has disproportionately affected older people, unlike previous large crises, such as the Second World War or the Spanish Flu, people dying of Covid have still lost about a decade of life, on average. https://fullfact.org/health/covid19-behind-the-death-toll/#:~:text=people dying of covid have still lost about a decade of life%2C on average.

We're just replaying arguments that have been raised and countered here many times before: No, death totals from COVID-19 in England have not been overstated ... "So, if a person did have COVID-19 but there was no reason to think that was at least part of the reason they died, the doctor or coroner would not write it on the death certificate. In other words, if COVID-19 is mentioned on the death certificate, it is always part of the cause of death, either on its own or in combination with other health conditions," he [the ONS spokesman] said. ... "Claims that COVID-19 deaths are lower than reported have been common throughout the pandemic from critics who argue the virus is not as serious as we are being led to believe. In fact, however, researchers have found evidence that overall deaths from COVID-19 have been undercounted, not overcounted, since the start of the pandemic." https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/24/youtube-videos/no-death-totals-covid-19-england-have-not-been-ove/ Then as for Sweden, it did fare better than some larger European countries like the UK, but also fared WORSE than its neighboring, more similar Nordic countries that did have and impose restrictions. So hardly the poster child for successful COVID control policies that many right-wing folks would attempt to paint it as. A year and a half after Sweden decided not to lock down, its COVID-19 death rate is up to 10 times higher than its neighbors ... Sweden decided not to implement a full-scale lockdown during the pandemic. It now has up to 10 times as many COVID-19 deaths per capita as its Nordic neighbors. Sweden also didn't fare much better economically, suggesting its gamble didn't pay off. ... Sweden has also recorded around 145 COVID-19 deaths for every 100,000 people — around three times more than Denmark, eight times more than Finland, and nearly 10 times more than Norway." https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-covid-no-lockdown-strategy-failed-higher-death-rate-2021-8 Scathing evaluation of Sweden's COVID response reveals 'failures' to control the virus Authorities misled the public about the benefit of masks, the report says. March 25, 2022 ... "As a result, Sweden had a higher COVID death rate than the surrounding Nordic nations. "The Swedish response to this pandemic was unique and characterised by a morally, ethically, and scientifically questionable laissez-faire approach, a consequence of structural problems in the society," the team wrote. "There was more emphasis on the protection of the 'Swedish image' than on saving and protecting lives or on an evidence-based approach." https://abcnews.go.com/Health/scathing-evaluation-swedens-covid-response-reveals-failures-control/story?id=83644832

And yet 230,000+ UK folks directly died from COVID during the pandemic, according to the UK government, and that was AFTER the lockdowns occurred and vaccines were widely deployed.... Which makes Ferguson's original prediction of hundreds of thousands of COVID deaths in the UK if NO action was taken pretty much in the ballpark -- all the political bloviating aside. All the posted comments above talk about all kinds of things, EXCEPT how many UK people in fact did from COVID in the UK, which seems to be a topic the anti-lockdown, Ferguson-focused folks attempt to avoid. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/ PS - You really don't want to be quoting Stanford's John Ioannidis, a popular anti-lockdown academic, on this subject, considering that he forecast early in the pandemic in 2020 that the U.S. might have 10,000 COVID deaths... and the U.S. officially is now at about 1.2 million and rising. "Despite warning about the hazards of forecasting with incomplete data, Ioannidis ventured a prediction of his own. Based on mortality figures from the Diamond Princess cruise ship outbreak, he wrote that the virus might claim only 10,000 lives in the United States. (Later he would seek to portray this figure as his “lower bound” estimate.) ... Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiology professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, recalled his bafflement at Ioannidis’s essay and said it was already clear that strict social distancing measures were necessary to avoid overflowing hospitals. “We had enough evidence to see that uncontrolled spread was very dangerous,” Lipsitch said. “The idea that we should just sort of sit by and gather data calmly struck me as incredibly naive.” https://archive.ph/QscVJ#selection-1653.0-1653.341 Talk about REALLY getting one's predictions wrong!

I realize Neil Ferguson is a favorite whipping boy of the anti COVID lockdown folks in the UK.... But did he get it "spectacularly wrong" as claimed above? History and the facts would say NO. Specifically, as the above-cited Wikipedia report recounts: "He said that the new coronavirus could affect up to 60% of the UK's population, in the worst-case scenario,[53] and "suggest(ed) that the impact of the unfolding epidemic may be comparable to the major influenza pandemics of the twentieth century."[45][54][55]" As it turned out, COVID in fact became one of the world's worst, deadliest pandemics of the past 100 years dating back to the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1920. Then further from Wikipedia on Ferguson: "His team's publication in mid-March [2020] of the projections that the UK could face hundreds of thousands of deaths [emphasis added] from COVID-19 without strict social distancing measures, gained widespread media attention.[56]" And as the BBC later reported looking back: "Prof Ferguson's modelling of the virus's transmission suggested 250,000 people [emphasis added] could die without drastic action. This led Prime Minister Boris Johnson to announce on 23 March that he was imposing widespread curbs on daily life aimed at stopping the spread of the virus." https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-52553229 Another report at the time in the journal Nature said Ferguson's estimate of COVID deaths if NOTHING were done reached 500,000. "updated data in the Imperial team’s model1 indicated that the United Kingdom’s health service would soon be overwhelmed with severe cases of COVID-19, and might face more than 500,000 deaths if the government took no action..." -- which, of course, was a scenario that did NOT occur as the UK government did act at the time. https://archive.ph/t8zOh#selection-1175.64-1181.182 And just to note, those Ferguson forecasts were made in spring 2020 BEFORE any COVID vaccines had been created or deployed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Ferguson_(epidemiologist)#COVID-19_–_2020 So where did the UK end up in terms of COVID deaths even AFTER the country finally, after some delays due to political dithering, made a series of on-again, off-again lockdowns? And after the impact of mass deployment of COVID vaccines that began in late 2020? https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/ And how much worse would COVID deaths have been in the UK in the absence of COVID vaccines, which didn't exist at the time Ferguson made his original forecast? Add several hundred thousand more deaths on top of those the actually occurred. "According to World Health Organization data, 400,000 lives in England are estimated to have been saved up to March 2023 due to the COVID-19 vaccine programme." https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2024/04/16/whos-eligible-for-the-2024-covid-19-vaccine-or-spring-booster/ All of the above pretty much shows that Ferguson was certainly in the right realm with his early 2020 forecast about what could have occurred in the absence of actions. And as the cited Wikipedia entry above further notes: "The COVID-19 computer model which Ferguson authored (see CovidSim) was initially criticised as "unreliable" and "a buggy mess,"[61][62] but subsequent efforts to reproduce the results were successful.[63]" Also, FWIW, the above cited assessment by Lord Sumption mainly faults the UK government for not adequately considering the follow-on economic and other impacts of the lockdowns. But he doesn't seem to say much at all about how close the COVID death numbers forecast by Ferguson ended up being to what actually occurred in the UK, after including the impacts of lives saved by the COVID vaccines that weren't and couldn't have been part of Ferguson's early 2020 forecast. https://www.thetimes.com/article/7bd50604-2559-11ed-a44e-83ef2a2167ff There also have been other, differing opinion assessments of the effects of the COVID lockdowns in various countries at least in terms of limiting infections, such as from the UK Royal Society of top scientists: Lockdowns and face masks ‘unequivocally’ cut spread of Covid, report finds Royal Society review looks at non-pharmaceutical interventions when applied in packages of several measures Measures taken during the Covid pandemic such as social distancing and wearing face masks “unequivocally” reduced the spread of infections, a report has found. Experts looked at the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) – not drugs or vaccines – when applied in packages that combine a number of measures that complement one another. The Royal Society report, called Covid-19: examining the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions, reviewed the evidence gathered during the pandemic for six groups of NPIs and their effectiveness in reducing transmission. (more) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/24/lockdowns-face-masks-unequivocally-cut-spread-covid-study-finds And from the Royal Society report itself, which looked at the experiences of various countries they studied, on COVID lockdowns: "Social distancing and ‘lockdowns’ Most effective of all the NPIs were the social distancing measures. Stay-at-home orders, physical distancing, and restrictions on gathering size were repeatedly found to be associated with significant reduction in SARS- CoV-2 transmission, with more stringent measures having greater effects. ... Social distancing measures aimed specifically at protecting the elderly, such as restrictions on visitors and ‘cohorting’ staff with residents in care homes (separating residents into groups, each cared for by a specific group of staff), were frequently associated with reduced transmission and reduced outbreaks within care homes. ... The effective application of NPIs ‘buys time’ to allow the development, evaluation and manufacturing of such therapies and vaccines at scale. So there is every reason to think that the application of combinations of NPIs will be important in future pandemics, particularly at early stages with novel pathogens when there are knowledge gaps and when therapeutics and vaccines are not yet available." https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/impact-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-on-covid-19-transmission/covid-19-examining-the-effectiveness-of-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-executive-summary.pdf