Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Compound2632]

Why memorialise folly?

[Nearholmer]

Ozymandias.

 

A very useful tutor.

[Annie]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Why memorialise folly?

I was employing a touch of irony.

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Ozymandias.

 

A very useful tutor.

 

In Brandi's case, look upon my spray tan and despair!  You can be young and beautiful, lithe and alive and a glamorous social media influencer, but none of that will influence Covid not to kill you if you've been unwise enough to refuse the vaccine; it's not just Gloria who gets sick in a Transit. 

 

The website is, IMHO view, sadly effective, because it goes beyond statistics to individual human stories relatable in the way the celeb stories in those magazines that adorn the shelves of my local filling station presumably are, and that underscore the fatal folly of anti-vaxxers. It is very much to be hoped that anti-vaxxers read it!

 

It is poignantly tragic; it's tragic enough when someone is struck down by the Grim Reaper, but surely all the more so when it was avoidable, yet not avoided because the victim got hooked onto the latest batsh1t crazy conspiracy theory.

 

I cannot be dispassionate because so-and-so died as a result of a susceptibility to believe idiotic things. I cannot help but think these people could have been saved.  In death they cease to be a threat to others' safety and become rather another tragic victim, and, perhaps, a warning. That more people may become victims by being influenced by the idiots still spouting this suicidal crap on social media or, now in the UK, picketing school gates to stop teenagers getting vaccinated, makes me spectacularly cross.  

[Edwardian]

In other news, you'll be glad to know that, for yet another year, Edwardian hawl i ymarfer fel cyfreithiwr.

 

 

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

In other news, you'll be glad to know that, for yet another year, Edwardian hawl i ymarfer fel cyfreithiwr.

 

Ah, so there's still the chance to tread in the footsteps of the Welsh Wizard?

[drmditch]

18 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Yeah, but you have to love Brandi Lyn.  You have to love anyone whose porn star name is also their actual name.  

 

 

This is all getting serious and depressing.

It is time for a reference from the works of the late, great, Sir Terry Pratchet; from I think 'Thud'.

It concerns the pole dancer who changed her name from Candee to Brocolee. because she had heard it was better for you.

 

Slightly more seriously, a short while ago I observed a battle at the bottom of my garden between a rather prosperous looking Magpie and quite a large Rat. They appeared to be competing for food spilled from the bird-feeders. 

So some questions:-

Which of these two animals would you prefer to be the victor?

Which of these two animals do you think could develop into a successor species to Sapiens as the dominant life-form on the planet?

 

All answers to kept brief and to-the-point.

Edited November 10, 2021 by drmditch
Wrong book referenced

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, drmditch said:

Which of these two animals do you think could develop into a successor species to Sapiens as the dominant life-form on the planet?

 

Not magpies but their close relatives the crows. The rats are more in the morlock category.

Edited November 10, 2021 by Compound2632

[Nearholmer]

If you were a rat, a magpie, or indeed a squirrel (they fight magpies on the lawn outside my window), you may well think that, hereabouts, you are already the dominant species.

 

Rats. Global reach. There are magpies in a lot of parts of the globe, but rats are in more. I think they breed quicker, and are more omnivorous too.

[Not Jeremy]

2 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

In Brandi's case, look upon my spray tan and despair!  You can be young and beautiful, lithe and alive and a glamorous social media influencer, but none of that will influence Covid not to kill you if you've been unwise enough to refuse the vaccine; it's not just Gloria who gets sick in a Transit. 

 

The website is, IMHO view, sadly effective, because it goes beyond statistics to individual human stories relatable in the way the celeb stories in those magazines that adorn the shelves of my local filling station presumably are, and that underscore the fatal folly of anti-vaxxers. It is very much to be hoped that anti-vaxxers read it!

 

It is poignantly tragic; it's tragic enough when someone is struck down by the Grim Reaper, but surely all the more so when it was avoidable, yet not avoided because the victim got hooked onto the latest batsh1t crazy conspiracy theory.

 

I cannot be dispassionate because so-and-so died as a result of a susceptibility to believe idiotic things. I cannot help but think these people could have been saved.  In death they cease to be a threat to others' safety and become rather another tragic victim, and, perhaps, a warning. That more people may become victims by being influenced by the idiots still spouting this suicidal crap on social media or, now in the UK, picketing school gates to stop teenagers getting vaccinated, makes me spectacularly cross.  

But please let us not lose sight of the fact that it was the virus that "got" them, not stupidity.

 

Which commodity is pretty fairly spread amongst us I would say.

 

As is and will be Coronavirus, whatever measures are or are not taken by any of us.

 

But cheer up everybody, because the virus doesn't kill everybody, in fact it kills very few.

 

I thought you lot were supposed to be champions of free speech and the toleration of alternative points of view?

 

Not Jeremy

 

[Compound2632]

Just now, Not Jeremy said:

I thought you lot were supposed to be champions of free speech and the toleration of alternative points of view?

 

Yes, but that increasingly runs into conflict with a widely-shared old-fashioned belief in objective reality.

[Nearholmer]

5 minutes ago, Not Jeremy said:

I thought you lot were supposed to be champions of free speech and the toleration of alternative points of view?

 

An alternative view might, for instance, be to suggest that the human race has over-reacted to the virus, and would have been better in the long-run allowing it free rein, because it very largely kills old people, who have had a good innings already, and otherwise fragile people, who are a net drain on resources, while the precautions we've taken against it have caused lasting harm to younger, fit people, for barely any benefit to them.

 

I don't agree with most of that, but I can imagine a person being able to construct, and make a good show of defending, such a view, and I'd defend their freedom to do so.

 

What I'm unhappy to defend, and frankly happy to attack up to a point, is any person's ability to spread patently delusional nonsense that endangers others. Now, that might be a slippery-slope to quashing all non-mainstream views about anything, so needs to be deployed with care, but once it is crystal clear that what is being spouted is dangerous, delusional nonsense, the gloves are off.

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

What I'm unhappy to defend, and frankly happy to attack up to a point, is any person's ability to spread patently delusional nonsense that endangers others. Now, that might be a slippery-slope to quashing all non-mainstream views about anything, so needs to be deployed with care, but once it is crystal clear that what is being spouted is dangerous, delusional nonsense, the gloves are off.

 

After all, such people are not, by and large, extending the same courtesy to conventional or mainstream views. However, I do think that rather than fighting fire with fire, fire is better fought with buckets of cold water - and lots of them.

[Edwardian]

8 minutes ago, Not Jeremy said:

But please let us not lose sight of the fact that it was the virus that "got" them, not stupidity.

 

Which we don't.  The words were not "killed by stupidity", but killed by Covid "as a result of a susceptibility to believe idiotic things"

 

Covid can kill. Believing something idiotic can allow that to happen. Both things can be, and are, true. 

 

8 minutes ago, Not Jeremy said:

 

As is and will be Coronavirus, whatever measures are or are not taken by any of us.

 

Yes, it will always be with us. With infection rates through the roof in the UK, that is obvious. But that really is not the point.

 

The point is that we are dying and becoming seriously ill in vastly smaller numbers despite vastly more infections.

 

How can this be? Oh, yes, vaccination. Possible because the vast majority of people don't believe in stupid things.

 

8 minutes ago, Not Jeremy said:

But cheer up everybody, because the virus doesn't kill everybody, in fact it kills very few.

 

Very cheerful except for those dead or grieving, the numbers of whom would be far higher if a significantly higher proportion of the population were "vaccine hesitant".

 

But, yes, it does kill very few people. Very very few people who are fully vaccinated, in fact. 

 

Enlightenment comes in many guises.  One way might be to track down the segment on a Today Programme episode of a few weeks back.  The interviewer expressed surprise at the fact that all the recovering Covid hospital patients he had spoken to were there despite being vaccinated. The Doctor replied that this was because he couldn't interview the non-vaccinated Covid patients they were also treating, because they were all in comas.

 

8 minutes ago, Not Jeremy said:

I thought you lot were supposed to be champions of free speech and the toleration of alternative points of view?

 

Not Jeremy

 

 

Not sure we're supposed to be anything. Never know what I'm supposed to be. Not sure I care.

 

Be that as it may, there is a whole website featuring people of who died or were made seriously ill by Covid who had refused the vaccine (and promoted hesitancy in others). Res ipsa loquita, one might have thought. But, some people are resistant even to the reality staring them in the face, like the guy Mak who called Covid "Convid", and who made a video talking about how ill he was, speculating as to why he was suddenly so ill (he never got ill), describing what were potentially Covid symptoms and genuinely perplexed as to what was wrong with him.  "Could it be Covid Mak?" I hear you cry. No, insisted Mak, that's the one thing it couldn't be, because "Convid doesn't exist". He was dead a few days later, probably of blood clots as a complication of Covid, sorry, Mak, "Convid".

 

Now, this site has it's fair share of contrarian keyboard warriors who refuse to let their relative ignorance on a given subject tame their emphatic opinions.  Whether consciously or not, this is because they deep down believe that their opinion is as valid as anyone else's. Now, often, here, that may actually be the case, and well, if all you're doing is parading your relative ignorance about some aspect of the prototype, I say "no harm, no foul".  But there are contrarians who, apparently, for all purposes in all areas, act as if convinced their opinion*  is as valid as anyone else's. Sorry, mate, but it's not.  That's why we recognise different bodies of knowledge and specialties. Sometimes, some people are simply more knowledgeable, and better qualified to comment than you.  One should embrace that, it saves one from such inanities as "well, Darwinism is only a theory, just like Creationalism".  There is a reason I don't do my own conveyancing or pull my own teeth out.  There are specialists who have studied and trained how to do this. They literally know better than I do about such things.

 

Thus, I have been doubled jabbed without hesitation because I accept the advice of the scientific and medical communities and because I reasonably conclude having considered that advice that vaccination will help to protect me and others. In other words, I chose to respect the fact that there are some better qualified than myself to reach sensible conclusions on the matter. I apply critical reasoning to the risks and the pros and cons before making a decision, but I do not question the underlying science because I am in no position to do so. I prefer an expert view on that to my inexpert one.  

 

Now, I'm not as polite on this subject as Stephen or Kevin, because my tolerance of the Harmfully Moronic is, right now, precisely nil. So, whereas the contrarians of RMWeb might be mildly irritating at times, the crap they spout is not likely to result in someone else's serious injury or death.  The people who don't wear masks in crowded indoor spaces or cause "vaccine hesitancy" in others, are. 

 

Again, the answer to why fluffy liberal snowflakes are becoming somewhat steely in their attitudes on this issue has already been given; J S Mill's classic liberal precept; you are free to do what you like provided that it doesn't harm others.

 

Anti-vaxxers are harming others because they think their individual rights take precedence over the protection of others and because, as has also been pointed out, they prefer their own prejudices and the unscientific b0llocks peddled by 'some bloke down the pub' to the consensus adopted by the overwhelming majority of those with the necessary expertise in the pertinent fields of knowledge such as to qualify them to give advice on the subject.

 

Of course, we have freedom of speech, and I would defend that right.  That is not the same as leaving the content unchallenged, and I am pretty sure that I have never stood for defending opinions that are demonstrably both stupid and harmful.  

 

Never quite sure where people are coming from with a post such as that, but I hope at least that my response settles any lingering doubt as to the position a number of us have adopted on the issue!

 

* Laying aside for the moment the interesting issue of who might have influenced their opinion and how and why.

 

  

 

. 

[alastairq]

<<  Gulp!  >>

 

Now seriously considering scrapping any thoughts of buying a subscription to BRM, and going for a sub to Private Eye! 

Especially as they currently have a deal on a pack of Christmas cards as well!

[Regularity]

There seems to be some misunderstanding of what a vaccine does, or at least this one. It doesn’t prevent the disease, but it does protect against it. I.e. it makes the symptoms less serious. This means (a) you are less likely to die if you get it and it develops, and (b) you are less likely to spread the disease, both of which are supported by the facts.

[Regularity]

43 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Of course, we have freedom of speech, and I would defend that right.  That is not the same as leaving the content unchallenged, and I am pretty sure that I have never stood for defending opinions that are demonstrably both stupid and harmful. 

Totally agree: freedom of speech does not mean freedom from responsibility, nor indeed freedom from criticism, correction, or from saying something stupid and appearing an idiot.

As has been said oftentimes, we are entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts…

(And we should interpret those carefully and objectively, not selectively.)

[Compound2632]

53 minutes ago, alastairq said:

Now seriously considering scrapping any thoughts of buying a subscription to BRM, and going for a sub to Private Eye! 

Especially as they currently have a deal on a pack of Christmas cards as well!

 

Ah, but have they commissioned a RTR 00 gauge locomotive? (Not that, AFAIK, BRM has, but others have.) Or got a card kit stick to the front cover? (Ditto, and how does that work for a digital subscription?)

[Andy Hayter]

2 hours ago, Not Jeremy said:

 

 

But cheer up everybody, because the virus doesn't kill everybody, in fact it kills very few.

 

 

I thought you lot were supposed to be champions of free speech and the toleration of alternative points of view?

 

Not Jeremy

 

Current death rates i the UK are running at 50,000 per year and that is with vaccination and without largely Covidiots.  A tad more than very few I would politely suggest.

 

Given that we have just celebrated the positive impact of the HPV vaccine that "only" saves 750 people per year, I would suggest that your perspective of "very few" is tending towards the nonsense that many of us object to.

[monkeysarefun]

3 hours ago, drmditch said:

 

This is all getting serious and depressing.

It is time for a reference from the works of the late, great, Sir Terry Pratchet; from I think 'Thud'.

It concerns the pole dancer who changed her name from Candee to Brocolee. because she had heard it was better for you.

 

Slightly more seriously, a short while ago I observed a battle at the bottom of my garden between a rather prosperous looking Magpie and quite a large Rat. They appeared to be competing for food spilled from the bird-feeders. 

So some questions:-

Which of these two animals would you prefer to be the victor?

Which of these two animals do you think could develop into a successor species to Sapiens as the dominant life-form on the planet?

 

All answers to kept brief and to-the-point.

Is that a European Magpie or an Australian Magpie?

 

If the latter then its the  certain winner since it's a death dealing Stuka dive bomber that you can't  escape from even if you hide away in your house playing Call Of duty.

 

 

Edited November 10, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[wagonman]

2 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

Current death rates i the UK are running at 50,000 per year and that is with vaccination and without largely Covidiots.  A tad more than very few I would politely suggest.

 

Given that we have just celebrated the positive impact of the HPV vaccine that "only" saves 750 people per year, I would suggest that your perspective of "very few" is tending towards the nonsense that many of us object to.

 

The 50,000 deaths a year from COVID is not an inconsiderable figure, but to put it into context there are around three times as many deaths from cancer. Or, to put it another way, about 10% of the total deaths in the country (in 2020).

 

[Andy Hayter]

That sounds like because it's not the worst we can ignore it.

 

Why on earth did we bother with HPV vaccine for a mere750 deaths per year?

[Nearholmer]

Comparing cancer, heart disease, or dementia, all big causes of deaths, to Covid is a bit odd anyway, because the usual big killers are either unpreventable within present medical science, or so heavily influenced by lifestyle as to be practically unpreventable in the near term, whereas Covid is actually (thanks to a ton of science in a very short time) at least semi-preventable, and is being semi-prevented.

 

It might be fairer to compare deaths from Covid with deaths from something else preventable, measles maybe, but even that doesn’t factor-in the treatability of some conditions as compared to others.

 

On the other hand, it can be educational to compare our current risks of serious illness or death as between different causes, including Covid, as a way of getting some calibration on Covid risk. I’ve done the sums for my own age group and concluded that, right now, Covid and what the doctor terms “a cardiac event” represent roughly the same levels of risk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 10, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Andy Hayter]

I think it is also worth saying that comparing Covid (one vector) with Cancer (many types) is not a correct analysis.

 

Breast cancer, the most common cancer in the UK, affects 55,000 people each year and thankfully many survive with 17,000 or so deaths per year.  

Lung cancer is much worse in terms of survivability with just under 50,000 cases per year and over 37,500 deaths. 

 

But note in both of these "common" cancers, the number of cases is around the number of Covid deaths.  

 

 

[monkeysarefun]

Apparently (because its  statistics......)  COVID deaths  have been high enough to reduce the average life expectancy in the US and the UK, wiping out gains caused by better treatments of other diseases, decline in smoking etc:

 

(Cut and paste job from Sydney Morning Herald, edited to remove the jingoistic bits while still allowing a comparison)

 

 Life expectancy in the United States fell by a year and a half in 2020 to 77.3 years, the lowest level since 2003, primarily due to the deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, a U.S. health agency said on Wednesday . The average life expectancy  dropped by 1.5 years, the biggest drop since World War II. COVID-19, which accounted for three-quarters of the decline, and an increase in deaths from drugs, alcohol and suicide in a nation ravaged by opioid addiction drove the fall. 

 

The UK Office for National Statistics last month revealed male life expectancy had dropped for the first time in 40 years, with a boy born between 2018 and 2020 expected to live until he is 79 years old, down from 79.2 in 2015 to 2017. Life expectancy for British girls remained static at 82.9 years. Combined average life span is just under 81 years.

 

In comparison life expectancy in Australia has continued to rise despite the pandemic, with the nation’s success in controlling the coronavirus helping boost the average expected lifespan to 83.2 years.

 

A baby boy born in Australia between 2018 and 2020 is expected to live to 81.2 years – up from 80.9 in 2017 to 2019 – and a girl to 85.3 years, up from 85, according to the latest figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday.

 

In 2020, just 0.6 per cent of all deaths in Australia – 898 – were due to COVID-19, compared with 73,766 in the United Kingdom (12 per cent, making it the leading cause of death) and 345,323 in the United States (10 per cent, the third leading cause after heart disease and cancer.)

 

 

Edited November 10, 2021 by monkeysarefun