bb123

The fact that we are even able to realistically compare a CPU in an ultralight laptop with no fan to an i9 is absolutely amazing. To me that would be an upgrade even if performance is a complete wash.

I mean how else would you describe it? Mutated? New strain? Genetically altered? all the alternatives seem considerably more alarmist to me.

Even with vaccines it seems to me quite likely that this will go on past the summer, no? By then only a fragment of the population will have been vaccinated, and it seems likely much of the social restrictions we have today will need to stick around. The pessimist gut feeling in me says it's more likely to be 18 months to 2 years until things have a semblance of normal again. I have nothing to back that up, but thats what I'm preparing for.

Scots aren’t a race?

A few years? They still repair the iPhone 6, a phone thats 6 years old now. If that gives you another 2 years of use, thats a total of 8 years.

There's plenty of precedent for this. For example many countries require evidence of yellow fever immunisation upon entry, if coming from a high risk region.

This is why I mention legislation. I think we could see it becoming illegal to exclude people based on their vaccine status. Or maybe we have some sort of exemption card.

I mean obviously not yet? But it seems pretty clear that within a few months that situation is going to change.

My understanding is that with the exception of the Oxford vaccine, all the front runners use the same technology. This limitation could well apply to all of them.

The NHS is providing a certificate to show vaccination has taken place. I imagine other countries will follow suit. I could even see it ending up as an official stamp in your passport or similar.

I'm very interested to see how this sort of situation will align with the increasing number of countries/airlines/music venues/hotels/theme parks that are stating they will only admit people who have been vaccinated.

It will probably take careful legislation to prevent those who can't be vaccinated from being relegated to second class citizens alongside those who won't get vaccinated. At the end of the day both groups still pose an infection risk.

Sounds like an intelligent business decision.

You're right, I grabbed the absolute numbers by mistake. I'm not sure it dilutes the point as much as you are suggesting though. Absolute numbers do matter - as the difference is still huge (~10x). It a far harder problem to contain 10,000 infections than 1000 even in a country with resources because of the nature of exponential growth. Things are going to take off faster and more aggressively with a higher seed number, so even with proportionally the same resources, you have less time to react.

I actually never at any point said that I thought the UK was doing things well (I'm not from the UK). My point is that I don't think NZ's success was down especially to brilliant leadership so much as a combination of factors that make it a uniquely hard place for a disease like COVID to enter and spread.

Sure, source: https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/bymap/AirTrafficPasse...

I don’t believe the tourism argument holds up in the slightest either. The UK has the fourth largest number of yearly inbound tourists visitors in the world. New Zealand is 69th. Source: https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/ST.INT.ARVL/rank...

The degree to which the UK is connected to the world is just on a different scale to New Zealand. That’s before you even consider the geography, population density, and wealth distribution sides of the argument. It was always going to be more difficult to control it in the UK. I don’t think lack of will is a valid excuse either. What country doesn’t want to get back to normal as quickly as possible? Why is it that only this tiny island in the Pacific has managed to do it? Is every single other country is simply that incompetent? It just doesn’t make sense. There has to be other factors involved.

I mentioned this in a comment above but the U.K. and New Zealand are on Different scales when it comes internationalism. The U.K. ranks 4th worldwide for international travellers per capita, and New Zealand 38th. Looking at the numbers for international trade as a percentage of GDP, NZ quite below the global average, whereas the UK way above it. NZ has the advantage of size and geography too. It’s largest city is 1/10th size of London and it’s overall far, far less densely populated - the UK has pop density of 279/km2 vs 19/km2 for NZ. So while what they have been able to achieve is admirable, if there was one country that should be able to do it, it was New Zealand. Tiny, wealthy and isolated. Expecting other countries to be able to do the same doesn’t make sense.

I disagree. The UK’s economy is far more international than New Zealand’s. The U.K. ranks 4th worldwide for international travellers per capita, and New Zealand 38th. Shutting down air travel to the financial centre of the world would have been an incredibly risky move at the time. It may have been the right move in hindsight, but at the time it was far easier for the tiny island on the edge of the world to even consider doing it.

Your example proves exactly the opposite of the point you think it does. Every year the flu virus comes back slightly mutated, and the immunity process starts all over again. In the summer the southern hemisphere acts as of reservoir of the virus and vice versa in the winter. This exact process could happen with COVID too. You are right that it does mutate more slowly, but there are upwards of 4 billion people in these countries. A very small number times 1 billion is still a much larger number.

Not for developing countries. And ultimately it is important for them to get vaccinated too, otherwise they will form a huge reservoir of COVID that will inevitably mutate and come back around to us.

Is therapy the same as counselling?

This is pretty damming to anyone who claims "its just the flu":

“More than three times as many deaths were recorded between January and August this year where COVID-19 was the underlying cause compared to influenza and pneumonia."

“The mortality rate for COVID-19 is also significantly higher than influenza and pneumonia rates for both 2020 and the five-year average."

“Since 1959, which is when ONS monthly death records began, the number of deaths due to influenza and pneumonia in the first eight months of every year have been lower than the number of COVID-19 deaths seen, so far, in 2020.”

Your comment about car insurance is incorrect. Actually in the UK you do not need to carry any evidence of insurance, MOT, or your licence. If you are stopped, you have 14 days to present it to a police station. Which I think is actually evidence for the exact opposite of what you are describing.

Road tax used to be sticker based (as it is in many many counties), but is also now just an online database edit.

Is your company ok with you using a personal computer for work? I would love to be able to do that, but the firm I work for would sooner let me work from the moon.

Are we just engaging in lazy cultural generalisations now? This feels in poor taste.

That is really cool, thank you for taking the time to answer my question. I really consider the BBC is a national treasure and I hope we can preserve it.

I wonder how many more times we are going to have to go through this political posturing game with this 'revoked-but-not-really-revoked' licence system. By now we all know there is no real possibility of Uber not actually operating in London, and all of these threats by TfL et al. are completely empty. I'm sure Uber knows this too.

Thats very interesting, you seem to know a lot about how the BBC is structured. Do you mind if I ask how the for-profit prohibition of their charter aligns with the ad-supported international BBC News websites and broadcasts on BBC Worldwide?

Eh, it can be handy to have cheat sheet like that if you're comfortable conceptually with Git but need to quickly change something and don't know the exact syntax. After all git is a tool not a lifestyle, sometimes I just need to get something done.

Does anyone with experience with this sort if thing know what kind of deal this is? It seems quite cheap.

How does "massive international deep state conspiracy to censor reporting on a trial" vs "innocently/negligently flagged due to x" not hold up to Occam's Razor?

In most developed countries driving on the beach is illegal, except for specific areas.