Off Topic Thread 5.0

Dog Botherer

Dog Botherer wrote: »

yeah true. i don’t really understand why they’ve gone after Hunter for being a paedo when there’s a million pics and videos of Biden sniffing little girls’ hair. now i don’t think Biden is a paedo, just a weird creepy handsy old man, but it seems a much easier sell.

I don't think Biden is handsy nor does he 'sniff' hair. He's spent the last 40 years being filmed repeatedly and whilst I think he comes across a little creepy in one or two vids, I'm not familiar enough with the context to form a particularly strong opinion.

On the contrary, there is decades of evidence that he is a reasonable person who is liked across the political spectrum and there are no credible accusations or scandals levelled against him.

Either way his most important attribute right now is that he isn't Trump!

Richie_Rich89

Dog Botherer wrote: »

i think the real question that piece raises is how often is Giuliani in the situation where he’s being offered an underaged girl in exchange for political favours that he finds the situation entirely normal

Underaged girl? The actress is 24 (possibly 23 at the time) and seems to have been posing as a journalist?

Dog Botherer

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I don't think Biden is handsy nor does he 'sniff' hair. He's spent the last 40 years being filmed repeatedly and whilst I think he comes across a little creepy in one or two vids, I'm not familiar enough with the context to form a particularly strong opinion.

On the contrary, there is decades of evidence that he is a reasonable person who is liked across the political spectrum and there are no credible accusations or scandals levelled against him.

Either way his most important attribute right now is that he isn't Trump!

disagree with all of this bar the last part. there is indeed no case to be made for Biden that isn’t “not Trump”.

Richie_Rich89 wrote: »

Underaged girl? The actress is 24 (possibly 23 at the time) and seems to have been posing as a journalist?

the actress is playing a 15 year old girl.

Richie_Rich89

Dog Botherer wrote: »

the actress is playing a 15 year old girl.

Not sure if serious. Giuliani didn't know a film was being made. How many 15-yo TV journalists are out there?

Dog Botherer

Richie_Rich89 wrote: »

Not sure if serious. Giuliani didn't know a film was being made. How many 15-yo TV journalists are out there?

upon rereading it does seem less clear if Giuliani had prior knowledge of her alleged age. supposed we’ll see on Friday. or sooner if it leaks.

underage TV journalists are fairly common here in the US, especially for smaller right wing outlets. bigger outlets would also have younger TV journalists for youth outreach.

not the first time SBC has inadvertently exposed shady practices amongst the rich and powerful.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/12/sacha-baron-cohen-vegas-pedophile-ring

Borat.

:eek:

Was a bit concerned after the first debate but Biden was light years better than Trump last night. If someone had thought to mute the microphones in 2016 there might not have been a Trump presidency.

thomond2006

Marcus Rashford's Twitter timeline put a smile on my face today. He comes across as a genuine person who is using his platform to do good.

Buer

He's a good egg.

swiwi_

Opinions people. LED or OLED for a TV?

dregin

swiwi_ wrote: »

Opinions people. LED or OLED for a TV?

Also QLED. As far as I know there's no comparing LED and OLED. Bought an LG CX during the week. The image is stunning.

Bazzo

swiwi_ wrote: »

Opinions people. LED or OLED for a TV?

Dragging this from the depths of my memory so I may be miles off but an electrical engineering mate of mine who's a keen hobbyist and works in this sort of thing(and a bit of a genius) tried to explain it to me a couple years ago.

I seem to remember him saying that OLED is a better screen if you're going to be watching in a dim room and QLED would be better in brightly lit rooms because of the way they each display blacks vs colours...

swiwi_

Switzerland giving Ireland a run for its money. My impression is that it's now absolutely rampant here. Unlike the first "wave" in March/April, I know a heap of people with Covid, such as half my rugby team!

hahashake

swiwi_ wrote: »

Switzerland giving Ireland a run for its money. My impression is that it's now absolutely rampant here. Unlike the first "wave" in March/April, I know a heap of people with Covid, such as half my rugby team!

Yeesh...Stay safe!

awec

The April spike is likely way higher than the graph shows, since testing was a bit of a mess back then.

Podge_irl

swiwi_ wrote: »

Switzerland giving Ireland a run for its money. My impression is that it's now absolutely rampant here. Unlike the first "wave" in March/April, I know a heap of people with Covid, such as half my rugby team!

Restrictions now worse than they were in March/April - border aside. Was no restriction on numbers back then, max of 5 now is quite strict. We seem to be making a mess of it considering the benefits that Switzerland have.

swiwi_

If you're a bit in the same situation as me, where finding a TV show that the other half agrees to watch can be tricky (in my case, nothing too violent or too scary, which rules out a lot of the shows I like to watch...), I can recommend "My Brilliant Friend". We are only half way through season 1, but it's pretty well done, especially the cinematography. Season 3 of Babylon Berlin is also pretty decent, but that one I had to watch by myself.

prawnsambo

Podge_irl wrote: »

Restrictions now worse than they were in March/April - border aside. Was no restriction on numbers back then, max of 5 now is quite strict. We seem to be making a mess of it considering the benefits that Switzerland have.

It's pretty bad in Belgium and NL too. Ambulances can't discharge patients, Belgium has asked Netherlands if they can take some, but they are already airlifting patients to Germany. Also see Altnagelvin Hospital has no more ICU beds.

Stheno

Its looking pretty grim all over Europe

I'm hoping six weeks of level five ends up with us avoiding the worst, I'm not a supporter of level 5 tbh but if we had the case levels the likes of Belgium have it would be horrific

dregin

Stheno wrote: »

Its looking pretty grim all over Europe

I'm hoping six weeks of level five ends up with us avoiding the worst, I'm not a supporter of level 5 tbh but if we had the case levels the likes of Belgium have it would be horrific

Is there an alternative to level 5 restrictions?

What is worrying me more than the current spike is the increased evidence around anti body decline. The Imperial College London has released data that suggests a rapid decline in antibodies after recovery. Antibodies aren't the only part of the immune response but increasingly it looks likely we may not just need to get vaccinated - we'll need to get vaccinated several times per year.

The logistics of that are staggering and likely unachievable in parts of the world.

Stheno

dregin wrote: »

Is there an alternative to level 5 restrictions?

Properly enforced level three?

molloyjh

Stheno wrote: »

Properly enforced level three?

But we can't enforce it. Even with a police force multiple times the size of what we have. How can we police everyone's activities all of the time? It can't be done. This is our big problem. We've bought into personal freedom to a massive degree while at the same time ignoring personal responsibility in the larger societal sense that we were always going to be in trouble.

An effective response to this lies primarily with enough of the population being heavily compliant with guidelines/rules/laws. Enough obviously being a very large percentage of the population in this case. No amount of law or policing is enough. Its up to us. Level 5 is required because not enough of us will comply to a high enough degree for lesser levels to be effective.

An anecdotal example of the issue with policing is from when I worked on Adelaide Rd at the top of Harcourt St. There was a road that went from Adelaide Rd to Charlemont St (the Luas runs along part of it now). Traffic coming from Adelaide Rd couldn't turn left onto this road (Peters Place IIRC). Every now and then there would be police presence at the junction and during that time, and for a few days afterward, cars wouldn't turn left. After a few days though they'd start doing it again of course. The only way to stop them doing what they should not be doing was to have a permanent police presence at the junction. Which, of course, was impossible. There are just too many junctions to be policed. So plenty of people continued to ignore the law for large periods of time.

This is fundamentally the problem with relying on the State to police anything. There are simply too many people, too many places and too many things to enforce to be able to police them all. And in a society that puts so much emphasis on personal freedom and nowhere near enough on personal responsibility, we are left vulnerable to things like this.

EDIT: Its probably worth noting that we are far from the worst for this stuff and overall are doing fairly well, even though we need to deal with these tighter restrictions.

Zzippy

Deleted User wrote: »

What is worrying me more than the current spike is the increased evidence around anti body decline. The Imperial College London has released data that suggests a rapid decline in antibodies after recovery. Antibodies aren't the only part of the immune response but increasingly it looks likely we may not just need to get vaccinated - we'll need to get vaccinated several times per year.

The logistics of that are staggering and likely unachievable in parts of the world.

IIRC. The level of circulating antibodies is not a great way to determine immunity. What is more important is the response of B cella, and how quickly they mobilise T cells and killer cells. Unfortunately that is quite hard to measure. So far there is very little evidence of second infections, granted this may be an artifact of a low prevalence meaning very few people have been exposed a second time, or it may be an indicator of good immunity following recovery. Not saying you're wrong, more that it is so early in this pandemic that these are very much unknowns, and speculation about limited immunity and repeated vaccinations is just that, speculation.

bilston

Deaths and hospital cases in NI are getting to quite a worrying level now. 13 deaths in the last 24 hours. The situation seems like it could end up worse than the 1st wave.

On a slightly more optimistic note, the number of 7 cases in the last 7 days has stabilised and actually started to decline...albeit slowly...sonsigbs that restrictions are working, and their true impact won't be felt for another week or so.

Unfortunately the hospitalizations are an echo of 2 weeks ago which means those numbers will continue to rise for a while yet.

aloooof

bilston wrote: »

Deaths and hospital cases in NI are getting to quite a worrying level now. 13 deaths in the last 24 hours. The situation seems like it could end up worse than the 1st wave.

On a slightly more optimistic note, the number of 7 cases in the last 7 days has stabilised and actually started to decline...albeit slowly...sonsigbs that restrictions are working, and their true impact won't be felt for another week or so.

Unfortunately the hospitalizations are an echo of 2 weeks ago which means those numbers will continue to rise for a while yet.

Leo had a tweet on this last night, giving the example in Israel. Slowly at first but then the drop off accelerated. Hopefully we'll see similar here:

https://twitter.com/LeoVaradkar/status/1320822159153991680

bilston

Deleted User wrote: »

What is worrying me more than the current spike is the increased evidence around anti body decline. The Imperial College London has released data that suggests a rapid decline in antibodies after recovery. Antibodies aren't the only part of the immune response but increasingly it looks likely we may not just need to get vaccinated - we'll need to get vaccinated several times per year.

The logistics of that are staggering and likely unachievable in parts of the world.

I'm no expert, but I don't think this should come as a big surprise. It is a coronavirus and we get them all the time, so immunity was never going to permanent. I don't think it was ever going to be a case of one jab and done.

I guess younger people will need an injection less often than older folk. It will be costly, but the alternative of constant lockdowns will cost a lot more.

Neil3030

Zzippy wrote: »

IIRC. The level of circulating antibodies is not a great way to determine immunity. What is more important is the response of B cella, and how quickly they mobilise T cells and killer cells. Unfortunately that is quite hard to measure. So far there is very little evidence of second infections, granted this may be an artifact of a low prevalence meaning very few people have been exposed a second time, or it may be an indicator of good immunity following recovery. Not saying you're wrong, more that it is so early in this pandemic that these are very much unknowns, and speculation about limited immunity and repeated vaccinations is just that, speculation.

I'm in the optimistic camp on reinfection. The virus mutates, but not as quickly as regular cold and flu. That's a good sign. Also, 43m global cases, we'd surely have a sample large enough to identify more cases of reinfection, were it common. Also, consider the behavioural implications for people who recover and think they're immune. They will likely get more complacent with their behaviour, and be at a higher risk of infection (if it's possible). So the low numbers give me hope.

molloyjh

Neil3030 wrote: »

I'm in the optimistic camp on reinfection. The virus mutates, but not as quickly as regular cold and flu. That's a good sign. Also, 43m global cases, we'd surely have a sample large enough to identify more cases of reinfection, were it common. Also, consider the behavioural implications for people who recover and think they're immune. They will likely get more complacent with their behaviour, and be at a higher risk of infection (if it's possible). So the low numbers give me hope.

The flip side to this is, should immunity exist, how long does it last? Its unlikely to be indefinite. What if its, say, 8 months? Those infected in April would be fine until December.

The simple fact is at the moment that we know precious little about immunity, how it affects different people, how long it lasts or even overall how effective it really is. Its entirely possible that "immunity" could just mean reduced symptoms. Without being an infectious disease expert, could it lead to being unable to contract the virus entirely or just prevent the onset of symptoms? Could "immune" people simply be the same as asymptomatic people? I dont think we'll really have any sense of the immunity side for some time yet.

Neil3030

molloyjh wrote: »

The flip side to this is, should immunity exist, how long does it last? Its unlikely to be indefinite. What if its, say, 8 months? Those infected in April would be fine until December.

The simple fact is at the moment that we know precious little about immunity, how it affects different people, how long it lasts or even overall how effective it really is. Its entirely possible that "immunity" could just mean reduced symptoms. Without being an infectious disease expert, could it lead to being unable to contract the virus entirely or just prevent the onset of symptoms? Could "immune" people simply be the same as asymptomatic people? I dont think we'll really have any sense of the immunity side for some time yet.

Well you and I mightn't know a much, but people who study this sort of phenomenon for a living are figuring more and more out every day. Even knowing that people can be immune for 8 months is helpful, and tells these people more than we can imagine.