Covid - coming out of Lockdown 3 - no politics, less opinion and more facts and information.

[boxbrownie]

2 hours ago, Bernard Lamb said:

A State of Fear. A book by Laura Dodsworth.

Claimed to be a "true" account of the story behind the pandemic.

I have not read it, but have seen various reviews.

What I find frightening is that it has been in the best selling list for several weeks.

Bernard

Well so long as she didn’t get her information from advisors 

[rocor]

16 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

They thought the app detected Covid?!

 

Wow!

 

Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

[Oldddudders]

1 minute ago, rocor said:

 

Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

DCC seems to come into that category for some people....

[Reorte]

1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

DCC seems to come into that category for some people....

And it still hasn't replaced the simplest, oldest technology there is - doing things manually! If the number of "hand of god" incidents I've seen at exhibitions is anything to go by... (not that I can talk )

[rocor]

On 13/06/2021 at 12:14, Reorte said:

And it still hasn't replaced the simplest, oldest technology there is - doing things manually! If the number of "hand of god" incidents I've seen at exhibitions is anything to go by... (not that I can talk )

 

Same old!, same old!. Dirt build up effecting data transfer over the course of the exhibition day, in the same manner as its result has always been upon energy pickup.

 

Maybe the hand of God can wield the key. Clockwork locomotives programmed with mechanical computers.

[Hobby]

Or just use radio control with batteries on board... 

[Nearholmer]

Looks as if the combination of Old Kev's Almanac, and Hayfield, who said that the "sweetie2 i predicted would be weddings, was about right.

 

 

[Pete the Elaner]

4 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Looks as if the combination of Old Kev's Almanac, and Hayfield, who said that the "sweetie2 i predicted would be weddings, was about right.

 

 

 

It does indeed.

 

Having paid some attention to the infection/death rates recently, I think that it would have been a bad decision to relax restrictions as hoped.

 

In a way it is a shame we cannot take a step back towards normality but it was not a random decision. The facts (can we call the figures facts?) made the decision a no-brainer.

[John M Upton]

This will rumble on beyond 19th July into August though I would wager....

[hayfield]

12 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Looks as if the combination of Old Kev's Almanac, and Hayfield, who said that the "sweetie2 i predicted would be weddings, was about right.

 

 

 

When so much is made of looking at the science when making any decisions, plus we all act as one nationally. I don't think there was any other decision when we have 7k+ infection rates daily. The date was always the earliest date!!

 

Rates on mainland Europe are now very low, the question being "can they keep the Delta variant at bay whilst they vaccinate the rest of their populations. 

 

We desperately need to get infection rates down, mostly in the North west but also everywhere else, as infection rates have climbed in most areas.

 

As you say there are sweeteners and a cleaver caveat of reviewing the situation in 2 weeks time  

 

57 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

This will rumble on beyond 19th July into August though I would wager....

 

The catch phrase for weeks is its a disease that we will have to live with. It will be like influenza something that we will learn to live with. Things will get back to normality, but it will be a new normal which will continue to develop over time

[Nearholmer]

13 minutes ago, hayfield said:

The catch phrase for weeks is its a disease that we will have to live with.

Which, I suppose, is a lot better than the alternative: a disease that we will have to die with.

[alastairq]

1 hour ago, hayfield said:

but it will be a new normal which will continue to develop over time

 But, it seems to me a huge percentage of the population will have to be dragged kicking & screaming towards the 'new normal?'

 

We will have to get used to ever more nasty diseases spreading , as long as we are 'in love' with the idea of 'freedom of movement' around the world.

 

Perhaps there was something to be said of a more ''parochial'' society? 

 

[Dunsignalling]

33 minutes ago, alastairq said:

 But, it seems to me a huge percentage of the population will have to be dragged kicking & screaming towards the 'new normal?'

 

We will have to get used to ever more nasty diseases spreading , as long as we are 'in love' with the idea of 'freedom of movement' around the world.

 

Perhaps there was something to be said of a more ''parochial'' society? 

 

I think that's the direction the world will slowly move anyway. If we want to save the planet, transport emissions need to be reduced and one quick way to achieve that will be a substantial increase in air travel prices.

 

That won't go down well with the "unlimited sunshine and cheap booze" sector of the travelling public so we'll probably need another couple of (possibly worse) pandemics before the message gets through and such a "new normal" can become firmly established.

 

Mind you, a pal of mine maintains that, because the Earth is a self-regulating system, what we have recently been experiencing just is an early indicator of nature developing ways to eliminate, or drastically thin-out, an over-dominant species that constitutes an existential threat to all life - us!

 

John

 

 

Edited June 15, 2021 by Dunsignalling

[Nearholmer]

14 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

Mind you, a pal of mine maintains that, because the Earth is a self-regulating system, what we have recently been experiencing just is an early indicator of nature developing ways to eliminate, or drastically thin-out, an over-dominant species that constitutes an existential threat to all life - us!

If I may be so cheeky as to say so: that is an anthropomorphic view of systems theory, the sort of thing that tips gently over into believing that the system has a consciousness or a will.

 

Its far more likely that the system is simply(!) very complex, and that we don’t yet anything like fully understand it. It may well transition to a new equilibrium state under the influence of human activity, and humanity may, or may not, get reduced in number or die out altogether in the process, but that isn’t the same at all as “nature developing ways to eliminate”.

 

The upshot is the same, though: we need to be a bl@@dy sight more careful than we have been, for our own good, but the philosophical difference is deep.

[Flying Pig]

13 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

If I may be so cheeky as to say so: that is an anthropomorphic view of systems theory, the sort of thing that tips gently over into believing that the system has a consciousness or a will.

 

Its far more likely that the system is simply(!) very complex, and that we don’t yet anything like fully understand it. It may well transition to a new equilibrium state under the influence of human activity, and humanity may, or may not, get reduced in number or die out altogether in the process, but that isn’t the same at all as “nature developing ways to eliminate”.

 

The upshot is the same, though: we need to be a bl@@dy sight more careful than we have been, for our own good, but the philosophical difference is deep.

 

 

Thanks @Nearholmer, you said it better than I could. Just to add, there have been plenty of extinction events in the past where once-common species died out due to changed conditions. Life went on, they didn't.

[Reorte]

1 minute ago, Flying Pig said:

 

 

Thanks @Nearholmer, you said it better than I could. Just to add, there have been plenty of extinction events in the past where once-common species died out due to changed conditions. Life went on, they didn't.

Humanity will be one of the last to go (at least of any size, the cockroaches will still be marching on when we've gone). Nothing else is as adaptable and capable of changing its environment to survive in environments significantly different from the one we evolved in. There are threats to society, threats to large numbers of lives, but no real threat to the species that wouldn't pretty much take out all life.

[Dunsignalling]

32 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

If I may be so cheeky as to say so: that is an anthropomorphic view of systems theory, the sort of thing that tips gently over into believing that the system has a consciousness or a will.

 

Its far more likely that the system is simply(!) very complex, and that we don’t yet anything like fully understand it. It may well transition to a new equilibrium state under the influence of human activity, and humanity may, or may not, get reduced in number or die out altogether in the process, but that isn’t the same at all as “nature developing ways to eliminate”.

 

The upshot is the same, though: we need to be a bl@@dy sight more careful than we have been, for our own good, but the philosophical difference is deep.

I agree that viewing the natural world as having the capacity of intent, is (to say the least) far-fetched.

 

However, human activity has for long been placing many other species under stress, which is likely to cause defensive mechanisms present within some members of such a species, through natural selection, to become the norm across it.

 

The more severe and prolonged the stress exerted, the quicker, more varied, and more extreme such changes are likely to be, with unknowable consequences for everything else, us included. 

 

In short, the "Wuhan Bat" was not the only carrier of pestilence waiting to spread consternation among us, just the first in modern times, to make a major breakthrough. Future ones may quite conceivably be make the last year and a bit look like a cakewalk.

 

John

Edited June 15, 2021 by Dunsignalling

[friscopete]

I felt since day one of my daughter telling me about what was happening in Italy that the planet was altetred forever.There are only two types of humans .The ones who grasp it and the ones who dont .The ones who dont are slowly killing us  by stupidity and sheer ignorance.

[Reorte]

13 minutes ago, Dunsignalling said:

In short, the "Wuhan Bat" was not the only carrier of pestilence waiting to spread consternation among us, just the first in modern times, to make a major breakthrough. Future ones may quite conceivably be make the last year and a bit look like a cakewalk.

That's nothing to do with human pressure though, disease outbreaks have been a feature of life for people throughout history, often with far more serious consequences than Covid (the Black Death killed about a third of the population of Europe). There was much less travel so they didn't spread as fast but they still spread.

[Flying Pig]

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

Humanity will be one of the last to go (at least of any size, the cockroaches will still be marching on when we've gone). Nothing else is as adaptable and capable of changing its environment to survive in environments significantly different from the one we evolved in. There are threats to society, threats to large numbers of lives, but no real threat to the species that wouldn't pretty much take out all life.

 

I think that's excessively sanguine.  My view is that we are only beginning to understand the complexity of the ecological processes that support us and really have no idea of the tolerance of those systems to changed conditions.

[rocor]

2 hours ago, Reorte said:

Humanity will be one of the last to go (at least of any size, the cockroaches will still be marching on when we've gone). Nothing else is as adaptable and capable of changing its environment to survive in environments significantly different from the one we evolved in. There are threats to society, threats to large numbers of lives, but no real threat to the species that wouldn't pretty much take out all life.

 

We could unwittingly create our successors.

[Reorte]

24 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

I think that's excessively sanguine.  My view is that we are only beginning to understand the complexity of the ecological processes that support us and really have no idea of the tolerance of those systems to changed conditions.

 

There's a big gulf between causing enough damage that it makes life impossible for anywhere near the size of the population we've got to making it impossible for any humans to survive. I don't think there's any reason to believe we're at any threat from extinction from anything short of full scale nuclear war. That still leaves plenty of room for causing a lot of suffering though.

[woodenhead]

3 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

Mind you, a pal of mine maintains that, because the Earth is a self-regulating system, what we have recently been experiencing just is an early indicator of nature developing ways to eliminate, or drastically thin-out, an over-dominant species that constitutes an existential threat to all life - us!

 

Mother Nature is the dominant force on the planet, we believe somehow we can beat her, but all we ever do is delay the inevitable unless keep adapting and find ways to make Mother Nature a little less bothered by us.

[Rivercider]

2 hours ago, Reorte said:

That's nothing to do with human pressure though, disease outbreaks have been a feature of life for people throughout history, often with far more serious consequences than Covid (the Black Death killed about a third of the population of Europe). There was much less travel so they didn't spread as fast but they still spread.

In the past there has always been room for humans to spread out whenever disease (or fighting over assets) broke out, this must have helped to minimise the risk to humankind. Now across much of the planet we are running out of places to colonise that don't bring new problems, either locally or globally,

 

cheers

[woodenhead]

4 minutes ago, Reorte said:

 

There's a big gulf between causing enough damage that it makes life impossible for anywhere near the size of the population we've got to making it impossible for any humans to survive. I don't think there's any reason to believe we're at any threat from extinction from anything short of full scale nuclear war. That still leaves plenty of room for causing a lot of suffering though.

We don't need nuclear war, over population will push us to the brink and it will cause a cataclysm at some point when the level of food and water can no longer sustain the number of humans on the planet.

 

We will self adjust through conventional warfare and famine if disease doesn't do it first.