Elerond
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Posts posted by Elerond
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Police seems to have different approach to these things in 2021 than they had in 2020
Looks like some people didn't read their master's tweets
From "kneeling during national anthem being insult towards USA's flag and military" to
Guesses will this fine impartial real news journalist from the Blaze get visit from FBI any time soon, considering that he tweets having access to information that is classified.
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https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1346920198461419520
My **** post seems to be closer the truth than I thought
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Just now, BruceVC said:
Elerond !!! Im shocked by your anti-American sentiment....I thought we agreed we would only be anti-American when it was absolutely necessary ....please dont be naughty again
Sorry but I need to correct you, I am just speaking alternate patriotic truth by stating that true patriotic Capitol troops support true and only leader of America, God Emperor Trump
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Just now, IndiraLightfoot said:
For once, I am shocked. Storming Capitol Hill. What is this? Some near-future dystopic computer game? What happened with that superb security that the US usually excels in?
Last four years they have done their best that there are only Trump supporters working in all governmental organizations , so security probably is part of those who are storming in the Capitol
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Democrats winning both seats seems most likely out come. They have become quite good with their strategic vote dumps
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At least Trump knew it already year ago.
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Sometimes I wonder is it actually possible that people don't actually understand that these things are bidirectional which is why there was agreements in first place
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Maybe this new 'study' will help people get over their fears
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35 minutes ago, BruceVC said:
Elerond how do the people of Finland feel about the Swedish experiment, what is the general view if any?
For example are Finnish people disappointed with Sweden, angry that they tried something controversial or maybe they feel bad it failed and Sweden suffered more deaths ?
I don't think there is any general feeling towards it, it is seen as swedes doing swede things. Although majority of people think we should fully close borders for swedes and swedes tourist feel like they aren't welcome in Finland and make effectively this old meme as reality
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3 hours ago, Gfted1 said:
The UK will be stronger than every other EU member except Germany? Delicious. I guess they were right.
Rank Country/Territory GDP
(US$million)World[19] 83,844,988 1 
United States
20,807,269 2 
China[n 2][n 3]14,860,775 3 
Japan
4,910,580 4 
Germany
3,780,553 5 
United Kingdom
2,638,296 6 
India
2,592,583 7 
France
2,551,451 8 
Italy
1,848,222 9 
Canada
1,600,264 10 
South Korea
1,586,786 11 
Russia[n 4]1,464,078 12 
Brazil
1,363,767 13 
Australia
1,334,688 14 
Spain
1,247,464 15 
Indonesia
1,088,768 16 
Mexico
1,040,372 International Monetary Fund (2020 estimates)
Rank Country/Territory GDP
(millions of current Int$)World 130,186,703 [8] 1 China
24,162,435 2 United States
20,807,269 — 
European Union[n 2][10]19,397,267 3 India
8,681,303 4 Japan
5,236,138 5 Germany
4,454,498 6 Russia
4,021,733 7 Indonesia
3,328,288 8 Brazil
3,078,901 9 United Kingdom
2,978,564 10 France
2,954,196 11 Mexico
2,424,511 12 Italy
2,415,410 13 
Turkey
2,381,594 14 South Korea
2,293,475 15 Canada
1,808,995 16 Spain
1,773,364 List by the IMF (2020 estimates) (PPP)
They predicting that order among European countries don't change and general increase of GDP in Europe, Japan and USA will be minimal and there is massive economical growth in India, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia
Although they use PPP estimate, which estimates how much local priced goods they could by with their GDP (USA prices are used as baseline), instead of nominal GDP. Above you can see how these two methods differ from each other
People in rich EU states would be probably bee more interested to see predictions for this list
Rank Country/Territory Int$ 1 
Luxembourg
112,875 2 
Singapore
95,603 3 
Qatar
91,897 4 
Ireland
89,383 5 
Switzerland
68,340 6 
Norway
64,856 7 United States
63,051 8 
Brunei
61,816 — 
Macau
58,931 9 
United Arab Emirates
58,466 — 
Hong Kong
58,165 10 
Denmark
57,781 11 
Netherlands
57,101 12 
San Marino
56,690 13 
Austria
55,406 14 
Iceland
54,482 — 
Taiwan
54,020 15 Germany
53,571 16 
Sweden
52,477 GDP (PPP ) per capita International Monetary Fund (2020 estimates)
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15 hours ago, Zoraptor said:
It seems unlikely they ever went for 'genuine' herd immunity, but more 'managed infection'. The theory was that you'd have a sort of ping pong situation with lock downs where you'd lock down, the rate would drop, and then rebound as soon as the lock down ended resulting in a perpetual up/down cycle- andor perpetual unsustainable restrictions- so they wanted to smooth out the cycle while exposing only those at least risk. That would result in similar overall infection numbers, increased immunity in the overall population and less economic damage with no spikes in infection numbers that would overwhelm the health system and cause a lot of excess deaths. They got aspects right and had some unusual circumstantial situations (very rapid vaccine development) that made them look more stupid than deserved, but overall you can't really argue that the approach was a success when the death rate is considerably higher than their neighbours, and they got no economic benefit either.
They also didn't take account some important factors, like that keeping things open does not prevent big hit on economy when their main trade partners go in lock down and then close borders to them because their corona strategy don't work with strategies their trade partners chose. Also their strategy had big risk that those with least in risk would spread infection to vulnerable populations and that risk ended up to actualize, which is main reason that Sweden has so much higher death toll compared to its neighbors.
Considering that first vaccine against corona was already working in lab in January, the rapid development and approval should not been surprising factor for experts creating the strategy.
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Natural immunity and immunity from vaccination is not usually same. Also level of immunity isn't necessary same.
Immunity against SARS-CoV-2 last at least 8 months, but for some individuals antibodies created during infection disappear in weeks and they are able to get infection again.
SARS-CoV-2 is also slowly evolving virus and at least for now all new strains use same spike protein, which means that same vaccinate work against them at least with good efficiency
SARS-CoV-2 also don't seem to spread fast enough in population that there would ever be natural immunity against it, as prediction scenarios estimate that it will take close to 50 years that 70 % of current world population has had infection, during which there will already be new generations of population that also needs to be infected. So without vaccinations it seems that SARS-CoV-2 would become another seasonal flu and as it deadlier than most flu trains it would most likely significantly increase yearly fatalities from the 'flu'
So in order to prevent SARS-CoV-2 and its future mutations become permanent fixture in our global disease we would need to do our best now to eradicate it from the earth through vaccinations. Full eradication at this point will probably decades of vaccinating children against it in order to keep 'herd immunity' level high enough long enough to ensure that it can't cause new epidemics or at least prevent new pandemic from it.
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1 hour ago, Gromnir said:
oh, they changed the definition, but is understandable 'cause more than a few idjits were false reading "vaccination" and "previous infection," as being equivalent approaches for reaching herd immunity 'cause such appeared in same sentence authored by WHO separated by nothing save a conjunction. only an a-hole or complete yutz would take the june 2020 definition and ignore lethality, transmissibility and projected body counts when out-of-context quoting o' the WHO definition, and yet...
am suspecting previous to 2020, the november revisions woulda' been deemed unnecessary by WHO as the additions woulda' been considered self evident. who knew?
HA! Good Fun!
Yeah they changed definition because they were often asked what they think about exposing people to virus in order to build herd immunity. Which lead them trying to make sure that their definition did not leave any room for idea to build 'herd immunity' against disease doesn't include exposing people to the disease, because scientific support for it is questionable and it is seen ethically wrong. But change in definition doesn't mean that WHO thinks that immunity that people (may) get by having infection doesn't build population's 'herd immunity' against disease. I think one big reason why WHO decided to change their definition is how media often uses 'herd immunity' concept as alternative for vaccination, but I think their efforts in that front will be quite vain.
QuoteWhat is WHO’s position on ‘herd immunity’ as a way of fighting COVID-19?
Attempts to reach ‘herd immunity’ through exposing people to a virus are scientifically problematic and unethical. Letting COVID-19 spread through populations, of any age or health status will lead to unnecessary infections, suffering and death.The vast majority of people in most countries remain susceptible to this virus. Seroprevalence surveys suggest that in most countries, less than 10% of the population have been infected with COVID-19.
We are still learning about immunity to COVID-19. Most people who are infected with COVID-19 develop an immune response within the first few weeks, but we don’t know how strong or lasting that immune response is, or how it differs for different people. There have also been reports of people infected with COVID-19 for a second time.
Until we better understand COVID-19 immunity, it will not be possible to know how much of a population is immune and how long that immunity last for, let alone make future predictions. These challenges should preclude any plans that try to increase immunity within a population by allowing people to get infected.
Although older people and those with underlying conditions are most at risk of severe disease and death, they are not the only ones at risk.
Finally, while most infected people get mild or moderate forms of COVID-19 and some experience no disease, many become seriously ill and must be admitted into hospital. We are only beginning to understand the long-term health impacts among people who have had COVID-19, including what is being described as ‘Long COVID.’ WHO is working with clinicians and patient groups to better understand the long term effects of COVID-19.
QuoteVismita: Is it the right way to think about herd immunity in the context of COVID to say the vaccine is far away, why don't we just let everyone get infected?
Soumya: So, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is a highly transmissible virus. We think it needs at least 60 to 70% of the population to have immunity to really break the chain of transmission. If you allow this to happen naturally, it will take a long time, of course, but more importantly, it's going to do a lot of collateral damage. So even if 1% of people who get infected are ultimately going to die, then this can add up to a huge number of people, if we look at the global population. And that is why we believe it's not a good idea to try to achieve herd immunity by just letting the infection run wild in the population and infect a lot of people and that we should talk about herd immunity in the context of a vaccine.
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34 minutes ago, Guard Dog said:
Trump did not have control of his assets while in office. I’m not sure who did. The presidents finances are managed in a blind trust while they serve. When it comes to corruption in Congress there are many, many forms it can take. Insider trading is probably the least and easiest to detect. I’ll be honest I don’t really have a strong opinion on this one way or the other. But it seems like a pretty hard sell because you’re going to have to get the Congress critters to agree to do that to themselves.
Trump assets were controlled by his sons
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4 hours ago, 213374U said:
Heh. No, it's not democratic if just because you won a vote for something else, you automatically get appointed to a different office or position at the Union level and the only way to prevent that is abstaining from the whole process or getting some other prat indirectly elected to that instead. It's not democratic because you were appointed by someone who won a vote, either. That's really stretching what "democratic" means.
People don't even elect people to cabinet positions. At least not usually. People elect group of people to represent themselves and then those people negotiate with each which parties will form government/cabinet and then those parties decided who will which cabinet positions. And those who get cabinet positions will also represent their countries in international bodies which include Council of European Union. Cabinet also names their representative to Commission of EU.
So saying it is not democratic is changing meaning of democratic representation as it has been for centuries
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2 hours ago, HoonDing said:
Every game released is the buggiest ever.
In my experience Fallout 3/4, Witcher 3 had little issues and I got them on release.
At least this was not The Witcher 1 release level buggy, where game crashed every time when prologue ended and I had to edit save file in order to skip part that caused the crash.
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3 hours ago, 213374U said:
That's a fair question. "Indirectly" elected isn't the same as just plain elected and while perhaps technically correct, the devil is in the details. Neither commissioners nor the president have to be MEPs. Parliament doesn't actually propose a candidate for the presidency, that's up to the Council, which is itself not "directly" elected either, even though Parliament has to confirm the nomination. Parliament cannot veto individual commissioners, only threaten to vote out the whole Commission. Which would be a fine check to the legislative power if there was such a thing as EU presidential elections, but there aren't. It's all backroom dealing.
So yeah, all in all, I think democracy is rather diluted in the workings of the EU, an issue further compounded by the issue you brought up about the weird way national parties sometimes align with EP formations. From the point of view of this anti-EU populist, the EU tries hard to sell the idea that it is democratic while being designed to be strongly insulated from the bedlam that is the European people's voting habits, political sensibilities and mood swings.
Commissioners for individual states are selected by governments of those states and Council if formed by members of governments of member states. President of Commission is selected by consensus of Council and confirmed by Parliament
So Council and Commission are democratically elected (as long as all the member states select their governments democratically), but current way don't give people option to elect Council members or commissioners that goes against their government's wishes
But if people of member states want to directly pick their representatives then they could either change their states ad direct democracies or just change their laws so that state has to organize elections where people can directly elect their cabinet members and commissioner candidate (and of course new election if Parliament rejects proposed commission).
Selecting Presidency of Council or President of Council is not democratic anyway as position goes to every member one after the other every six months. But otherwise governing institutions are result of direct or indirect democratic selection. Most anti-democratic thing of EU is that most of its citizens don't care enough who represents them in EU so that they would take that account in their state elections and also Parliament elections usually have low turnout, so there is usually quite little accountability for decision makers based how they have done their job and everything mostly depends on state politics.
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On 12/16/2020 at 7:47 PM, Skarpen said:
Except Poland is not breaking the Treaty, EU tries to force Poland into things that are not in the Treaty and they know if they try to blackmail Poland with cutting the money then either Poland will win in EU Court of Justice or plain leave.
Yeah that is why it is against Rule of Law mechanism, which puts sanctions to countries that follow principals in article 2 of the treaty of the European Union
But I know that other EU member states are conspiring against Poland and Hungary with their unfounded beliefs that democracy and human rights are something that EU member states should respect, just like how president Trump was cheated from having second term by tyrannical opposition that conspired with media to take power from poor and defenseless government.
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2 hours ago, Lexx said:
Poland and Hungary are pretty much blocking for each other, which in hindsight is hilarious that this alone works and is able to grind the whole EU mechanism to a halt.
Only because I allows it. Normally there needs be at least four countries with enough population to block resolution. But in case of corona relief they already moved so grey interpretation of EU's rules that they decides that vote needs be unanimous.
It is reason why Hungary and Poland weren't able to prevent new directive that will demand that member states follow same values as they had to follow in order to become a member state. So called Rule of Law mechanism (I find it funny that Hungary's and Poland's current governments opposite mechanism with such name
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56 minutes ago, Skarpen said:
Wouldn't be the first time EU wouldn't follow its own agreements in favor of pushing ideological agenda.
If by EU mechanism you mean turning a economical union into Fourth Reich then it's the best thing ever.
Yeah I know, like giving Poland, taxes I paid even though Poland is breaking Treaty of European Union even though rules say that EU should give money to countries that break the Treaty
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We can just close borders from them, as there is clearly no need to follow EU's agreements
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1 hour ago, Gromnir said:
gonna admit to not knowing exact what am looking at.
in any event...
Tracking the 2020 electoral college vote
HA! Good Fun!
Again we will see Trump leading and then massive cheating dumps will turn the vote for Biden
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25 minutes ago, Skarpen said:
No, they weren't. They were applauded at the time by the media and liberal media.
Did those celebs that spewed hateful nonsense for the past 4 years apologized? Maybe two on a dozen. Did Nancy Clinton or Pelosi appologized for Madonna comment or dozens of other comments? Since when this is even required? Oh, right because it's Republicans and not Democrats.As always you will do any mental somersault to explain that Dems doing something is perfectly ok and Republicans doing the exact same thing is reprehensible and evil to the core. As said before, pathethic.
You seem to mix things. But that is usually what whataboutism is based on
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8 hours ago, BruceVC said:
But if no profit was made surly these companies would go out of business, this is the basic rule of all listed companies as investors only buy shares if they expect a positive return meaning they expect the company to be profitable which means the share price generally increases once these companies make there target?
Also there are much more deadly diseases out there than Corona. If your point around profit is reasonable why should any pharmaceutical company ever make any profit at all on any product they sell? Why stop at Corona if the argument is " these companies are profiting on peoples need ".....why dont we demand that there is no profit ever made on any medicine ?
I mean regardless how reasonable it is to ask money for the medicine it is still always question give us money or die/suffer, which just creates resentment regardless of how well you justify it
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Politics... US election edition (2020 almost over, read all about it!)
in Way Off-Topic
Posted