Elerond
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Posts posted by Elerond
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23 hours ago, Sarex said:
I was not discounting that the study was botched, just saying that there are proponents of the drug in the scientific world. The more interesting thing is what they talked about and that is that any discussion about the drug is being actively censored.
For some reason drug's manufacture speaks against the drug
Earlier this year ivermectin manufacturer Merck said there was “no scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against Covid-19” and “no meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with Covid-19.”
Although Finnish drug manufacturer Therapeutica Borealis says that in combination with other drugs and targeted correctly it will prevent infections. Although they have not yet proven that in clinical trials.
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7 hours ago, BruceVC said:
13th century !!!! Thats amazing, what a long time. Do you know what your family use to do through the years, were they soldiers, blacksmiths , Vikings, reindeer hunters ? I am always interested when people can see what their ancestors did
Its easy for people with an ancestry to England to trace their family trees if you want to because the English keep excellent records and preserve family trees. But I have only really been concerned when my family arrived in SA and most of them came with the British army in 1899 to fight the Boers. My great grandfather had 4 brothers and after the Second Boer War (1899-1902 ) 2 brothers stayed and lived in SA and 3 went back to England. So you can see how my family was split from that day on with a UK side and a SA side
Viking era ended before we started keep records and Finnish were mostly receivers of viking raids instead of doing them, but probably there were some Finns that become vikings.
There have been all sort of people during years. Cotters, serfs, teachers, blacksmiths, yeomen, soldiers, prisoners of war (maybe surprising but when you are kept as ransom for several decades you probably could count it as occupation I guess) etc.
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7 minutes ago, Guard Dog said:
@Gromnir exactly when did you think the protesters NEEDED support? Before after the police started beating the hell out of them, arresting them, or disappearing them? Whatever. You know exactly what I’m talking about and your intentional verbal obstinacy he has become tiresome.
That is question that people asked during last summer protest in USA
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45 minutes ago, Sarex said:
That is the rigmarole they went through to circumvent the 1971 provisions that the article linked talked about. Even when you read the "law" you mentioned above and combine that with this, you get Germany breaking it's own laws.
Cool. You seem really passionate about Kosovo, so I was wondering what your deal was.
They are breaking EU's policies not sell weapons to countries that use them to start conflicts or break human rights, but that policy has never been strong until, but lately Germany has started to act like it should be actually be followed.
I am not really any way passionate about Kosovo, just commenting your post because I by chance knew that it wasn't that accurate
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2 hours ago, Sarex said:
That number is pretty fluid. Countries are retracting their recognition while some are giving it.
Do you want me to list the institutions that don't recognize it, because I think mine trump (haha) yours.
1971 provision prohibits in principle the export of weapons to non-NATO countries.
That transformation was in name only and doesn't change what it actually is, a glorified police force. It's still under the direct control of NATO and can't do anything without their say, like, for an example, cross the border in to the north of Kosovo.
That they find ways to circumvent their own laws doesn't really have any bearing on the matter.
Look harder, there is a German article on it.
I'm curious, where are you from originally?
That article don't isn't accurate about Germany's law
QuoteThe updated version of the Principles adopted by the federal Cabinet on 19 January 2000 introduced the following substantively new elements: The observance of human rights is of special importance for every export decision, regardless of the potential consignee country. Military equipment exports are therefore fundamentally not approved where there is "sufficient suspicion" of the involved military equipment's misuse for internal repression or other ongoing and systematic violations of human rights. The human rights situation in the consignee country plays an important role in connection with this question. And the Political Principles are more restrictive here than the EU Code of Conduct (more detail on this aspect below, under II.3.), which rules out export licenses only where a "clear risk" exists. 9 Following the General Section, the updated Principles, like their first version, distinguish between the group of EU, NATO, and NATO-equivalent countries (Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Switzerland) and the group of other countries (so-called third countries). For the first group of countries, licenses are to be the rule and denials the exception; for the second group, there is to be a continuation of the restrictive and reserved policy with respect to license issuance
I am originally from Finland, my family has lived here at least from 13th century when church started to keep record of Finnish people.
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5 hours ago, Sarex said:
Kosovo is not a country recognized by any formal institution, it doesn't have a standing army nor was it ever allowed to have one. Even disregarding all those things, Germany is breaking it's own laws by selling arms to a non NATO country.
Germany recognizes Kosovo as independent state with 96 other countries.
Kosovo is also member of World Bank, World Customs Organization and International Monetary Fund, so at least two formal institutions recognize it. Kosovo is also member of Venice Council
Also Germany has banned sales of small side arms to non-allies (EU, Nato, Switzerland, New Zealand and Australia)
Kosovo has standing army, Kosovo Armed Forces transformed form Kosovo Security Force in 2018.
Germany didn't ban from bigger weapon systems, because French and British manufactures who use German parts were effected by them as they could not sell stuff to Saudi Arabia.
I am only able to find that H&K was seeking license to sell weapons to Kosovo. Not that they have got such license.
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Soap is best against SARS-CoV-2, because it destroys it protein shell and prevents it from infecting cells.
Sanitizer is bit less effective but good to use if you aren't able to wash your hands with soap.
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3 hours ago, Gfted1 said:
Why did the powdered milk kill thousands of infants?
Millions.
infants died in malnutrition, caused by combination of several factors.
- Powdered milk was already lacking some nutriments
- Water in poorer countries contained impurities that caused that powdered milk didn't mix well which caused that babies bodies had difficulties to adsorb nutrients from the milk and leading to diseases in infants.
- Powdered milk was relatively expensive, lots of people used too much water in order to save powder, causing nutrient amount that babies got from the milk to close to zero.
- Using milk powder often leads in decrease of milk that mother produces
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18 hours ago, Gfted1 said:
US has bought and will donate 500 million doses of Pfizer's vaccine worldwide.
Youre welcome, world.
COVAX aims to deliver 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year, which should be enough to protect high-risk and vulnerable people, including frontline health workers. Its goal is to ensure equitable access for all participating economies across the globe, regardless of size or income level.
So far, COVAX has shipped over 40.5 million COVID-19 vaccines to 118 participants. This includes both self-financing and funded countries and territories. Within the Region, COVAX has delivered initial batches of Pfizer–BioNTech and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses to Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, the Republic of Moldova, Serbia, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, as well as Kosovo (in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 [1999]).
Team Europe, which brings together the European Union and its Member States, is one of the lead contributors to COVAX, with over €2.2 billion pledged to help secure 1.3 billion doses of vaccines for 92 low- and middle-income countries by the end of 2021.
We need only 10 billion dozes more and we can put this pandemic behind us.
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10 minutes ago, BruceVC said:
WSJ is a credible source of objective information in most cases, it would be imprudent to ignore their pithy and erudite words
I would not call it objective source of information when your source itself says that it is just their opinion
EDIT: It seems that neither of the authors of that opinion piece have any expertise on virology
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10 hours ago, Zoraptor said:
The EU has given Ukraine ~5bn euro in loans since 2014, so not much really. The big loans were from the IMF (17 bn usd, in 2014 alone) and World Bank (13bn USD, not all since 2014 though). Those can't be granted by fiat by EU leadership though, only member taxes can. Though in this case the chance of that money actually being allocated any time soon is... low.
Must be terrified of Lukashenko and Putin progressing the Union Treaty in Sochi since their meet has been extended for a day unscheduled. That would really put a cherry on top of the Borrel/ van der Leyen disaster show. Maybe EU bigwigs shouldn't be people judged too incompetent for government by their host countries and kicked sideways to appease their egos? Just an idea. That offer is the epitome of 'something must be done! this is something, so this must be done!'; literally only done so they can say they're doing something.
EU doesn't have funds to offer, as it doesn't have any taxation or borrowing powers. All its money come from member states in members fees, which are negotiated by member states during EU's budget negotiations and EU's budget is usually decided for 7 years to future. EU's budget has some unallocated funds, which EU's commission can use in situations like this, but usually if there is need for billions of euros worth funding then member states need to either decide emergency funding or renegotiate EU's budget.
3 billion euros may sound quite small when you compare it to sums that are thrown around in negotiations between western economies, but it is ~5% of Belarus GDP, and offer also includes 'magical' promises of lifting sanctions against Belarus, which value is difficult to calculate, but it would have massive effect in Belarus economy even in most pessimistic estimates.
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Basically they are barring direct flight from central Europe to Moscow, which are currently almost non-existent, as almost all other flights that enter in Russian air space don't go over Belarus
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1 hour ago, rjshae said:
I like to think of it this way: if those nations didn't fund new vaccine development in record time, it would take even longer for everybody else to get a vaccine. The fact that they are getting the vaccines first is what motivated the spending in the first place. Sure it's selfish, but it's human nature to take care of your own first.
It was really funding of development issue considering that BioNTech got their vaccine working already in January 2020. Issue has been to test it and mass produce it. Even though they got their vaccine working lab in January 2020 it wasn't until April 2020 when they were able to start clinical tries after signing agreement with Pfizer (who gave them 113 million dollars. EU then gave them 100 million euros and Germany gave them 375 million euros, so that they could finish clinical tries and start mass production. Pfizer for some reason decided not to take money from US warp speed fund ) and it took all the way to December 2020 to get approval for the vaccine.
Scaling up vaccine production has not been easy for Pfizer as vaccine is produced in three stages. First stage is molecular cloning of DNA plasmids which is done in one factory in USA where it is transferred to stage two facilities, which there are two, one in USA and one in Germany, where they produce desired mRNA strands. From these facilities mRNA strands are transferred to stage three facilities, where mRNA strands are combined with lipid nanoparticles and filled in vials and frozen. There are also only two stage three facilities, one in USA and one in Belgium. All the vaccine dozes outside of USA are finalized in factory in Belgium (meaning that Pfizer vaccines that go to other parts of america than USA need two flights over Atlantic ocean). Whole production sequence according to BioNTech-Pfizer took from start to finish 110 days in February 2021 and they were aiming to reduce it 60 days. Also Pfizer revealed that they use 280 components produced in 19 different countries to make the vaccine.
BioNTech signed contract with German production facility to expand their vaccine production capacity (using those funds they got from the government) in September 2020. Expansion is estimated to be ready end of this year and then facility should be able to produce 750 million dozes per year. In April Pfizer got authorization to scale up their production facility in Belgium.
So it was more of question of where existing production facilities were located and as building new facilities just takes their time.
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20 minutes ago, Hurlsnot said:
Pfizer is going to be approved for 13 and up soon. I have no problem getting my 14 year old daughter vaccinated. She is a fully grown person for the most part. My wife and I had the pfizer vaccine and it was a breeze.
I'm a little more nervous about my 10-year old son. He's still pretty small. But that is probably silly.
Consider that 1-year old has usually got ~15 vaccination shot against more deadly diseases.
Even though medical experts use high caution principal towards covid vaccines, all the vaccines that have been approved so far have been effective and safer than almost all the medicine that you commonly use.
And even though covid is only rarely dangerous for children, vaccines have been so far much much less dangerous to anybody.
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51 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:
They've scaled up fine for their existing production base though, and gone from zero to multiple tens of millions of doses per month per company. That's facilities that would have been used to make other vaccines and the like under normal circumstances. It's new production facilities that require certification etc and some raw material supply that are limiting numbers, and some one off batching issues like for AZ in Belgium and one US plant making J&J's being contaminated (plus the Brazilian and Slovak Sputnik issue, assuming it isn't just politics).
Brazil is making vaccine domestically now, but they started later and are producing less than they really should have given their theoretical capabilities.
They didn't start from zero, adenoviruses are used in quite lot other medicines (cancer etc.) which is why they were able to reach their current capacity. But they estimated that they could increase their capacity to hundreds of millions dozes in months, which proven to be much more difficult than they anticipated. And it is even more difficult if there isn't existing facilities to produce adenoviruses.
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"Brazil should be licensing then producing their own vaccines en masse (as with local Sputnik)"
That is easier said than done, as scaling up adenovirus has turn out to be more complex than was anticipated which is why AZ, Sputnik and J&J all have failed to match predicted production numbers
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2 hours ago, Guard Dog said:
They look great but where it the power going? Their output is DC power. Which means the end-user must to be located very close by. Meters away not kilometers. Additionally a mass storage and mass inverter assembly must be located very nearby. this does not absolutely have to be the case. If the end-user wants DC power the inverters are not necessary. If power is not required except when the sun is up and the batteries are not necessary. But if the power is meant to serve as a supplement to a C utility power than you need both.
The problem with DC power is ohms law. As resistance increases current decreases. The longer the transmission line the less usable it becomes. The lower the voltage dropped over the length of the run makes it less usable because inverters require a certain power level to work. And at peak efficiency thy are only 70.7% efficient.
Take my own home system as an example. The solar panels used to be 120 feet from my house. 35M give or take. I cleared some trees and moved them to just 12’ about 3.9 M. I’m still using the same 6 AWG stranded cable but my battery charge rate increased by + 25%. That after a change of just 30m. It makes that big a difference.
Best explanation how they have connected those solar fields is following
11.1 Transmission and distribution Most solar power systems in Germany are connected to the decentralized low-voltage grid (Figure 21) and generate solar power consumption. As a result, solar power is mainly fed in decentrally and hardly demands to expand the German national transmission grid. High PV system density in a low voltage grid section may cause the electricity production to exceed the power consumption in this section on sunny days¸ due to the high simultaneity factor. Transformers then feed power back into the medium-voltage grid. At very high plant densities, the transformer station can reach its power limit. An even distribution of PV installations over the network sections reduces the need for expansion.
PV power plants are decentralized and well distributed thereby accommodating the feedin and distribution of the existing electricity grid. Large PV power plants or a local accumulation of smaller plants in sparsely populated regions require that the distribution network and the transformer stations are reinforced at certain sites. The further expansion of PV should be geographically even more consumption-friendly, in order to simplify the distribution of solar electricity. For example, Brandenburg or Mecklenburg-Vorpommern have installed 3 to 4 times more PV power per inhabitant than the Saarland, NRW, Saxony or Hesse [AEE2].
Page 31.
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4 minutes ago, Guard Dog said:
Practical on a small scale yes. On a city wide scale that is a no. It is not realistic to expect to produce power in the order of megawatts from mass storage. Particularly since the inverter efficiency will never be better than 70.7%.
that is not to say the technology will not improve going into the future. But as it stands today solar energy production for a single home it’s not only practical it’s a good idea. More than that is a pipe dream.
Germans at least try to prove you wrong, or at least it feels like that Germany is full of solar panel fields like in above picture
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4 minutes ago, BruceVC said:
For example Nokia already introduced process to reuse 100% of materials in lithium batteries in early 2000s. But battery recycling has seen some downturn after Nokia left cell phone making business. And of course larger batteries need larger processing systems than those which Nokia developed for cell phone batteries.
Also in case of soil and water pollution, coal mining, fracking and drilling oil also cause massive amount of that, so badly recycled lithium batteries aren't really adding amount of soil and water pollution (in comparison if same energy would be produced using either coal or oil) in world put moving it to different locations.
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3 minutes ago, Skarpen said:
Guys, those are backups that can sustain essential systems in case of emergency. In no way those are reliable ways to keep up the energy on a scale that a country needs on regular basis as a part of power grid. Those are neither reliable nor they can store large amounts of energy as rjshae claims.
30.000 houses for 8 hours sounds nice, but when you have 1mil+ population cities with hospitals, factories and other heavy energy consumers it will last how long? Minutes? And after that how long for those backups to be repowered? And how much energy have to be put into this? Compared with solar and wind poor efficiency we will either hit a point where they will constantly be recharging the backups in a pointless cycle, or we would need to constantly increase the number of wind and solar plants ad infinite. And since the components for wind and solar plants are in no way degradable we will end up with half the world in wind and solar plants and the other half in wastage from those.
As always "green" solutions tend to be more of a burden ecologically than traditional solutions.
Some of those energy storages are used regular base to sustain load in electric grid and district heating here.
All the dam here have artificial lake, so that water flow can be controlled. (Hydropower makes 20% of Finland's total electric production)
Wind parks have batteries and hydrogen production plant in order to balance output to electric grid and store overproduction. (Wind parks make 10% of Finland's electric production)
Geothermal storages are used to store excess heat during summers to increase production capacity during winters. (geothermal heating, makes 33% of FInland's heat production)
But there is no point for example to first transform kinetic energy from wind to electricity and then transform it chemical or potential energy and then back to electricity unless it is excess energy that can't be fed in electric grid. Because there isn't way where you can transform electricity to another energy form with 100% efficiency (some of that energy always transforms in form that can't be stored )
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5 minutes ago, Skarpen said:
Did I missed this tremendous development in science that allows to store electricity?
You store energy which can be used to produce electricity
Potential energy storages like artificial lakes have been used from beginning of hydropower
Batteries are also quite old invention.
Using electrolysis to split water to hydrogen and oxygen is also couple hundred years old invention
Geothermal storages are bit newer invention
Compressed air/steam/liquid can also be used store energy
NASA has experimented with FES/Flywheel energy storages in which energy is stored as rotational energy
By lifting solid masses to high can also used as potential energy storages
And there are quite lot other ways to store energy.
So storing energy/electricity isn't the problem. Problems are scale and poor efficiency, especially when form of energy transformed multiple times.
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33 minutes ago, ComradeYellow said:
Eh, they are both really good and destroy other sources. The drawback of turbines is mostly space, whilst nuclear plants leave lots of room for more research into safer and more efficient ways. Lot's of potential here.
https://energypost.eu/15052-2/
Also Rosatom and China's CNNC are state owned, so that gives them a huge geopolitical advantage to strategically setup shop and influence as they see fit, as Americans are still way to obsessed with privatization.
https://hir.harvard.edu/rosatom-the-cnnc-and-the-nuclear-energy-arms-race/
Unless the U.S. pulls their head out of their backwards rear end this could really haunt them later on.
There are other drawbacks in turbines than space. Like for example it is more difficult to control how much electricity is produced and you need temporal storages, like batteries, hydrogen etc.. Also noise pollution and turbines killing birds are problems. Need to build in windy locations, which creates its own challenges for transmission. Also repair routes and recycling materials from the mills need to be taken in account.
Nuclear plants also take lots of space and they need much more additional infrastructure. Like for example hundreds of kilometres of tunnels to store the nuclear waste. Massive cooling systems (which of course can be utilized in district heating). Uranium mines, storages for uranium ore. Processing plants for uranium ore, urania/yellowcake, uranium hexafluoride,uranium oxide and nuclear fuel (uranium rods). Storage spaces for ore, intermediate products and fuel/rods. Transportation for ore, intermediate products and fuel/rods. Cooling storages for used rods. Transportation for nuclear waste. Also you need lots of work force and automation from start to end of the supply line. Also you need to have complex repair plans and workers with know how to repair such complex systems. And addition to that you need natural disaster and force major plans. Also transmitting so much energy quite lot infrastructure and controlling systems.
It isn't that easy for Rosatom and CNNC and they also need to work with lots of private companies and state owned actors in their projects.
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Sorry for double post. Even though video is 30 minutes long I would recommend to watch it as it gives nice insight what industrial partnerships may cause
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1 hour ago, ComradeYellow said:
The Russians are actually dabbling in clean nuclear power. Their state industry Rosatom in championing it.
20th century: Nuclear power means death, destruction, and environmental catastrophe.
21st century: Nuclear power means clean, efficient, and perfectly safe power generation.
Take that 20th century dinosaurs still lusting over vanquishing their adversaries with nuclear waste.
They are dabbling nuclear power, but it is far from clean. But much better than coal, especially old coal plants.
Rosatom's nuclear plant projects seem to face multiple problems.
- Currently their best reactor VVER-1200, is only capable to produce 1,198 MWe of power, which is 300-400 MWe less than its competitors reactors
- Single reactor plant still cost lot (Rosatom's estimate for their single VVER-1200 reactor plant in Finland is 7 billion euros [estimated building time 7 years after 11 years of project planning]), compared to Areva's 1600 MWe EPR reactor plant which was estimated to cost 3.2 billion euros, although it costs increased to ~10 billion euros because building it took 12 years more than Areva estimated.
- Financing Rosatom's plants is difficult thanks to sanctions put in by USA
So nuclear power gives cleaner and some what safe power generation, but it isn't that efficient as you can build much more power generation and faster with same money by building wind turbines.
Small modular rectors (SMRs) would be much better choice if you want efficiency, although they are best suited to heat generation instead of electricity. Because they don't need massive plants around them, which make it possible build them into cities. And because they can be in middle of city, it is much easier to connect them to city's district heating.
A Fifth of Coronavirus
in Way Off-Topic
Posted
Merck is manufacturer of Stromectol which is one of fewq ivermectin product that is approved for humans in USA and EU and they don't have any other products that compete against it when it comes to covid.
Their statement sound more like that they fear law suits because of adverse effects without proven positive effects.
https://www.merck.com/news/merck-statement-on-ivermectin-use-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/