Post Covid19 (astrologers need not apply)

[brian777999]

I think a lot depends on immunity : are you immune if you have recovered from Covid-19 and, if so, for how long ? I am a bit puzzled that nobody still has a definitive answer to this. It will have a lot of influence on how society reacts and changes.

I think we can forget about a vaccine ; I put that in the same category as waiting for Godot !

 

Silver linings : 1. The end of Trump

                         2. An increase in the number of people modelling railways for a hobby.

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by brian777999

[Nearholmer]

Shouting racist abuse at people isn’t a “thought crime”, it’s a “deed crime”. If she’d been charged with racist thought the copper who charged her would have been laughed out of a job. [next sentence corrected] She was charged with racially aggravated disorderly behaviour likely to cause harassment or distress. She did something illegal, not thought something illegal.

 

The other case is b complicated, and TBH I’m too busy right now to re-familiarise myself.

 

But, outside specifically of anti-terrorism legislation, which does/did get way too close to creating thought crimes, this whole cry about thought crime is a soufflé of nonsense concocted by people who don’t like having their ability to bully others curtailed.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Nearholmer

[Andy Hayter]

22 minutes ago, brian777999 said:

I think a lot depends on immunity : are you immune if you have recovered from Covid-19 and, if so, for how long ? I am a bit puzzled that nobody still has a definitive answer to this. It will have a lot of influence on how society reacts and changes.

I think we can forget about a vaccine ; I put that in the same category as waiting for Godot !

 

Silver linings : 1. The end of Trump

                         2. An increase in the number of people modelling railways for a hobby.

 

 

I am puzzled as to why you are puzzled Brian.

This virus has only been inside humans for 6 months at most.  It is hardly surprising that no one knows how long immunity will last.  What I think is now accepted is that you do get immunity.   A very few cases that seemed to contradict this with people apparently getting sick from the virus twice are now being put down false testing in the early stages of the epidemic.

 

It will only be through empirical experience that we will find out how long immunity lasts.  Will antibodies remain in the body at an effective level or will they slowly diminish leaving the individual susceptible to reinfection after a period of time?  Will the evolution of the virus lead to antibody resistant variants?  Time will tell.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Andy Hayter

[rockershovel]

2 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

 

I am puzzled as to why you are puzzled Brian.

This virus has only been inside humans for 6 months at most.  It is hardly surprising that no one knows how long immunity will last.  What I think is now accepted is that you do get immunity.   A very few cases that seemed to contradict this with people apparently getting sick from the virus twice are now being put down false testing in the early stages of the epidemic.

 

It will only be through empirical experience that we will find out how long immunity lasts.  Will antibodies remain in the body at an effective level or will they slowly diminish leaving the individual susceptible to reinfection after a period of time?  Will the evolution of the virus lead to antibody resistant variants?  Time will tell.

 

My best understanding is that immunity is partial and short-lived, if other coronavirus types are any guide; and that the successive epidemics which appear every few years, are caused by mutations or evolutions in which previous immunities are of no value 

[Reorte]

5 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

My best understanding is that immunity is partial and short-lived, if other coronavirus types are any guide; and that the successive epidemics which appear every few years, are caused by mutations or evolutions in which previous immunities are of no value 

 

If it's the ones that cause colds (although most colds are caused by other types of virus), isn't that simply because there are already so many about? I believe that it's established we tend to get fewer colds as we get older because we've built up immunity to various strains that are still out there, but there are so many we still get them. New ones will be mutating all the time, sure, but it's taken humans living with them for many millennia to reach this point. I'd have thought that if virus mutation into significantly enough different strains was that rapid evolving an immune system in the first place would've been fairly pointless.

[rockershovel]

58 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Shouting racist abuse at people isn’t a “thought crime”, it’s a “deed crime”. If she’d been charged with racist thought the copper who charged her would have been laughed out of a job. [next sentence corrected] She was charged with racially aggravated disorderly behaviour likely to cause harassment or distress. She did something illegal, not thought something illegal.

 

The other case is b complicated, and TBH I’m too busy right now to re-familiarise myself.

 

But, outside specifically of anti-terrorism legislation, which does/did get way too close to creating thought crimes, this whole cry about thought crime is a soufflé of nonsense concocted by people who don’t like having their ability to bully others curtailed.

 

"Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed – would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper – the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it"

 

note that Orwell, the originator of the term, draws no distinction between the thought and the deed.

 

[rockershovel]

30 minutes ago, Reorte said:

 

If it's the ones that cause colds (although most colds are caused by other types of virus), isn't that simply because there are already so many about? I believe that it's established we tend to get fewer colds as we get older because we've built up immunity to various strains that are still out there, but there are so many we still get them. New ones will be mutating all the time, sure, but it's taken humans living with them for many millennia to reach this point. I'd have thought that if virus mutation into significantly enough different strains was that rapid evolving an immune system in the first place would've been fairly pointless.

 

which isn't QUITE my point, but is IS related to it - that in  a world where coronavirus strains appear periodically, there can be no doubt of one thing; that we probably won't see THIS one again, and any acquired immunity will be worthless against the NEXT variant

 

[Reorte]

2 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

which isn't QUITE my point, but is IS related to it - that in  a world where coronavirus strains appear periodically, there can be no doubt of one thing; that we probably won't see THIS one again, and any acquired immunity will be worthless against the NEXT variant

 

True, but that'll be the next pandemic, whenever it arrives, and not this one.

[APOLLO]

Visions of the future ?  We may well go beyond anything Orwell could have imagined. Or hopefully may not.

 

 

Annie lennox- wonderful voice, haunting song.

 

Or will (Orwell !!) David Bowie's vision be the future ?

 

 

Songs are better than words. David Bowie's Diamond Dogs was released in 1974. I bought the cassette - and still remember as an apprentice back then playing it in my dads Daimler Majestic at Wigan gas works - mutch to the consternation of the district engineer !!!

 

Happy days - will THEY return ?

 

Brit15

 

[Andy Hayter]

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

 

My best understanding is that immunity is partial and short-lived, if other coronavirus types are any guide; and that the successive epidemics which appear every few years, are caused by mutations or evolutions in which previous immunities are of no value 

 

The problem with using other coronaviruses as a guide is that we have no proof that C19 behaves like the others.

By analogy C19 should start to die back as we move through spring and into summer, and indeed if you look at the European numbers that is happening - but of course we have also had lockdowns.

There is some evidence that C19 may not be behaving like similar viruses which are impacted by higher levels of UV light (summer sunshine).  If C19 was behaving the same way we need to explain why the USA has so many cases and climbing, when much of the country is further South and receives higher levels of UV light than Europe.  (For reference New York is about as far south as Madrid.)

[adb968008]

Personally the virus and model trains behave the same way.

 

You get infected, you acquire one, they multiply.

After a while you become immune to some and shed them out.

Others grow on you, but then you take a knife to it and it mutates, sometimes recombining with locos to make different versions.

After a while different versions trigger new waves of slightly differing interests, and again new strains grow into your collection and others die out triggering economic attacks on your savings.

occasionally an extinction event happens, one hits the floor, mazak rots and sadly its game over, except for spares.. that strain hit a dead end.

Other strains just dont take off... they linger in the stores desprately trying to get a foothold into the modellers population, but nothing, no matter how low the price works.. these strains just don't take over.

Suddenly and just as quickly they can dry up and dissapear... months go by, nothing is seen, no new models arrive, your wallet grows fat, then all of a sudden a new model arrives by the bucket load, and you start infection all over again.

 

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by adb968008

[Pete the Elaner]

3 hours ago, brian777999 said:

 

I think we can forget about a vaccine ; I put that in the same category as waiting for Godot !

 

 

I don't think it is that uncertain, but neither do I think it is worth pinning all our hopes on. Any vaccine will take time to test, manufacture & distribute. 

 

I heard some alternatives on the news recently though.

 

Viruses have been observed to weaken as they mutate. Will this be true of Covid-19 & could it reach a stage where it is no longer considered dangerous?

Could it be possible to transfuse white blood cells (plasma) from someone who has recovered from the virus?

The virus doesn't kill directly. It causes the immune system to react & this is what causes problems. Could it be possible to treat this reaction?

 

These are all unknowns at the moment. but they are possibilities which are allegedly under investigation.

Prevention is always better than treatment & only the second is a prevention but this is not currently very scaleable if it works at all because it is not yet known whether antibodies can be artificially produced.

 

Surely these & other potential forms of fighting the virus are all worth pursuing? Maybe a combination of different products/treatments can bring this under control?

[Reorte]

7 minutes ago, Pete the Elaner said:

Viruses have been observed to weaken as they mutate. Will this be true of Covid-19 & could it reach a stage where it is no longer considered dangerous?

 

Mutations can be either more or less dangerous, but particularly dangerous diseases kill off their hosts rapidly so die off themselves, which is why mutations that are less harmful do better and hence viruses as a whole become less harmful over time. In the case of Covid-19 it's not deadly enough in itself to do that but people isolating will have a similar effect (if it works well enough). But a less harmful strain will only manage to be more successful if it also produces a different change in behaviour. If it doesn't it's just as likely to die out as the more dangerous one (and good riddance). But we won't get a less dangerous version spontaneously replacing the current one.

[Gibbo675]

18 minutes ago, Lantavian said:

 If you are not sure what will happen but the newspaper needs some words to fill space.....

 

Hi There,

 

The above quote is the very definition of a "Word Salad", in that it might be quite tasty but has no real nourishment.

 

Gibbo.

[rockershovel]

6 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi There,

 

The above quote is the very definition of a "Word Salad", in that it might be quite tasty but has no real nourishment.

 

Gibbo.

 

Probably less harmful than the fear-mongering and emotional blackmail the BBC fill their schedules with...

[Ceptic]

[jjb1970]

6 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

"Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed – would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper – the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it"

 

note that Orwell, the originator of the term, draws no distinction between the thought and the deed.

 

 

But Orwell's writing isn't the basis of English law.

 

I'm a libertarian and consider that freedom without the right to be offensive isn't freedom.  And it is impossible (with existing technology) to legislate for thought. However there is a difference between expressing an unpleasant view which is offensive and expressing the same view as part of disorderly behaviour in public in a way which is threatening to others. In any society there has to be boundaries on what is considered acceptable behaviour in public. It's notable that American society tends to be much less tolerant of antisocial behaviour than ours despite being generally more individualistic. 

 

The second case you originally referenced was a much more thought provoking one since it did result in an individual losing their job and then basically being pushed out after being being reinstated for expressing a view. I didn't especially like his view (notwithstanding the fact that some of his concerns were valid) and can understand why it would be offensive to many but I do believe he had a right to articulate it in the way he did without being dismissed from his job.

[adb968008]

7 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

which isn't QUITE my point, but is IS related to it - that in  a world where coronavirus strains appear periodically, there can be no doubt of one thing; that we probably won't see THIS one again, and any acquired immunity will be worthless against the NEXT variant

 

the 1918 flu pandemic was the same H1N1 strain as seen in 2009.

Its also periodically popped up across the globe several times... theres an active outbreak of it in India right now, competing with Covid.

 

https://qz.com/india/1795332/covid-19-isnt-indias-only-battle-as-swine-flu-h1n1-resurfaces/

Part of the issue of antibodies was that very few people were still alive from 1918.. immunity isn't necessarily hereditary, which makes H1N1 an ongoing problem for the future too... but the current mutation is a bit harder to catch and milder than Covid it would seem though...but the potential is there.

The virus can dissapear, and pop up later in humans, as the virus isnt exclusive to humans, but mammals...so it is entirely possible it can drop out of our gene pool, into a farm animal for a while, mix in the herd and come back, especially if the incubating mammal has immunity to, but ability to host... Its known animals can catch covid, but passing it, as yet for Covid is unknown (or at least not yet tested) , but other viruses certainly can.

 

it only takes 1 mammal to pass a virus back to humans to start it off again, which is why we are encouraged to stay away from the wild ones as we dont know what they are carrying.

 

Travel no doubt plays a part, Africa as a whole has been less affected, but then economic ability for travel is also much less reducing spread, South Africa stands out here, as they have more ability to move than much of the rest of the continent..., Egypt has a strong airline too they both have the highest number of cases in Africa. Without a vaccine, travel will keep moving it around.

 

 

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by adb968008

[Nearholmer]

7 hours ago, rockershovel said:

note that Orwell, the originator of the term, draws no distinction between the thought and the deed.

Yes, that’s why it is such a chilling work of fiction, which acts as a brilliant reminder of the dangers of permitting “thought crimes” to exist.

 

Sounding-off in public isn’t thinking, its doing, and English law has recognised the potentially harmful affects of sounding-off for a very long time through ‘breach of the peace’. I think (but am only a trainee barrack room lawyer) that breach of the peace concerns expectation of physical harm to person or property, and that the more recent laws effectively extend that to ‘mental harm’ in the form of intimidation and harassment.

 

Either it is or it isn’t acceptable to intimidate and harass people. Personally, I hold that it isn’t.

[Nearholmer]

11 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Ray Honeyford

A bad example to use as a victim of unjust laws, I think having checked, because as far as I can see the only time the matter went to law it was found in his favour. He may or may not have been done badly to, but not it would appear, by the law.

 

He seems to have finally taken early retirement, with a substantial settlement, rather than resigning and taking a case for constructive dismissal, but (a) I have no idea how the law stood on constructive dismissal that long ago, and (b)  people who have been ‘got at’, or perceive that they have, often opt for early retirement and the certainty of a pension rather than the stress and uncertainty of a legal case, so it probably wouldn't be wise to read much into that either way.

 

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by Nearholmer

[APOLLO]

Well there are times to "have a do" at the establishment, and times to keep your gob shut. One things for sure, the small guy rarely "has a go" and wins. I have witnessed this several times (though not involved). Life is to short etc etc.

 

There are other ways, best not mentioned here.

 

Brit15

 

 

[rockershovel]

Interesting point, about the H1N1 strain reappearing, but any accrued immunity having been lost over time ... at which point, it is effectively a new strain, for practical purposes? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[iL Dottore]

On 06/05/2020 at 11:44, Lantavian said:

 

I really don't like the tone of the Guardian's coverage; there is too much "gleeful miserabilism".

I’ve been reading this thread with some interest and would certainly agree with all the posters who argue that the above is the case.

In order to get a handle on British politics and society, I read The Guardian, The Times and The Daily Mail. I have noted that The Guardian, at least in the form of its opinion pieces and columnists, has become very much a “one trick pony” and “gleeful miserabilism” is but the half of it. There is one columnist who, whatever the topic, manages to shoehorn in (as some would put it) the “race card” (can’t get the latest Hornby offering in a sink estate corner shop? It’s because of racism!) another regularly issues, from the comfort and safety of their privileged position and location in London, instructions on how “the working class” should think, act and vote (safe in the knowledge that whatever is inflicted on Britain in the name of this-ism or that-ism, they will be isolated from the consequences through wealth, position and location).

 

Regardless of your political affiliations and your views on Brexit, the changes caused by this vote will be accelerated, if not magnified, by the COVID-19 pandemic. If BREXIT caused consternation amongst the establishment (which is something that crosses party lines), because people “didn’t vote the right way”, I wonder how ”the establishment” will react when the (probably) inevitable backlash over the UK’s mishandling of the pandemic occurs.

 

Certainly the current UK government has much to answer to, but the mishandling of the crisis goes far beyond the government, whether it’s the Police abusing their powers, private parking companies handing out “fines” to people “parking illegally” whilst delivering supplies to vulnerable people or multimillionaires jostling to be first in line for government handouts for things that they could well afford themselves. Like all national crises, it has brought out the best and the worst. And the question is, post COVID-19, how long will people’s memories last? Long enough to do something about “the worst”? We’ll see.

Edited May 8, 2020 by iL Dottore

[rockershovel]

The late James Callaghan once said that from time to time, a “sea change” occurs in politics, and those in office are powerless to influence it. He put the interval at “thirty years or so” but it seems more like twenty - 1979, 1997, 2016. The problems and contradictions just build up, the tensions increase and there is a general realignment. 

 

We seem to be living through such a period now.

 

Nothing effective was done about the problems which burst forth in 2007 (Northern Rock) and in the financial world (mortgage over-lending, over-trading In increasingly complex and unsound “derivative products”) leading to the 2008 crisis, and these problems are still with us. Uncontrolled mass immigration has passed beyond any semblance of order. Obsessions with “hate speech” and its derivatives run amok in Westminster, while discontent spreads in the country and the police take it upon themselves to act as arbiters of public thought, rather than addressing ever-rising levels of violent crime and drug dealing. 

 

The housing market continues to be over-inflated by speculative syndicates from overseas, and tax evasion through offshore havens remains rampant among the wealthy. Privatisation has become a litany of failure, from Olympic security to the railways, whilst those responsible cry ever more loudly for more, and more public money. Interest rates remain at zero, or as near zero as makes no difference, while usury in the form of consumer lending grows apace. 

 

The systematic destruction and erosion of employment rights continues unabated. Public utility sales (Royal Mail) are rushed through Parliament without scrutiny, while already-privatised utilities like the railways become hopelessly dependent on the public purse. 

 

I don’t quite know how to describe the aftermath of the 2016 Referendum, but it certainly gave a clear demonstration of a ruling elite which had completely lost the power to govern, and this continues into the present shenanigans. 

 

The electorate have simply had enough. I rather suspect that the current nonsense will prove to be the balance point at which the consensus will simply break down, and new players emerge. It won’t be easy, because the incumbents have sought to protect themselves by removing or jamming the mechanisms by which such realignments occur: but I think we will see radical change, quite soon.

 

 

 

[jjb1970]

14 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

A bad example to use as a victim of unjust laws, I think having checked, because as far as I can see the only time the matter went to law it was found in his favour. He may or may not have been done badly to, but not it would appear, by the law.

 

He seems to have finally taken early retirement, with a substantial settlement, rather than resigning and taking a case for constructive dismissal, but (a) I have no idea how the law stood on constructive dismissal that long ago, and (b)  people who have been ‘got at’, or perceive that they have, often opt for early retirement and the certainty of a pension rather than the stress and uncertainty of a legal case, so it probably wouldn't be wise to read much into that either way.

 

 

 

Very true, but I think that actually indicates the deeper underlying problem. The genius of Britain over very many years has been to use putative peer pressure and social structures to achieve what many other countries do with heavy handed laws. If expressing an opinion risks losing your job, being made a social and professional pariah and risking financial ruin if you seek legal redress then that is a pretty effective way of keeping people in line. It's very easy to support such pressure when we agree with the prevailing orthodoxy, but it becomes much more problematic if we ourselves ever find ourselves holding a different position and having to make a choice between a ruinous professional and social price for being honest about what we think or just shutting up. 

And it isn't an abstract idea that doesn't affect "normal" people. As some of you know a lot of my background is engines and emissions. I am 100% full and square behind decarbonising, reducing emissions and making the planet less polluted. That to me is absolutely the right thing to do. However, not every technical paper from academia or NGOs promoting green technology is correct or even helpful. I've identified numerous errors in basic math, extremely questionable assumptions and modelling analysis which is not great yet I've found myself in a similar position to a lot of peers - do I speak up and risk being denounced as a climate change denier, a right wing crank, in the pocket of Exxon, a baby killer blah blah blah and find myself much less employable and on the margins of things, or just shut up? At the margins of conferences it's not uncommon to find discussions among people who do know what they're talking about seething about it at the same time as having an attitude of "yeah, but I'll let someone else say it publicly" (I'm guilty). I did once point out that an esteemed academic didn't know the difference between a numerator and a denominator in an equation and identified a glaring error in an equation and that this cast doubt on his conclusions and was criticised for just nit picking, being "in the weeds" and not seeing the bigger picture etc. This really is quite an issue now, and it is one of the reasons I think we have seen a rise in social media and alternative media sites feeding niche bubbles of opinion.

Then there is the issue of fake new. Fake news is bad, but what is fake news? It's easy to recognise some fake news, but most world events cannot be presented in terms of binary logic (good/bad, big/small, black/white etc) and once you accept that news is inherently nuanced and subject to underlying pre-existing bias then what is fake news enters something of a grey zone. For example, in the current crisis is reporting a story that someone disagrees with WHO advice and recommendations fake news? It may be in some cases, but it may not be.

None of this is a left - right political issue, it's multi-dimensional and cuts across many traditional political distinctions (personally I think the old left - right political paradigm is largely irrelevant but that's another story) and I find it all rather worrying.