Elerond

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

Maybe this new 'study' will help people get over their fears 😋

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

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)

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.

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.

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. https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/herd-immunity-lockdowns-and-covid-19#:~:text='Herd immunity'%2C,exposing them to it. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/media-resources/science-in-5/episode-1

Trump assets were controlled by his sons

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

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.

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.

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.

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 😋)

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

We can just close borders from them, as there is clearly no need to follow EU's agreements 😉

Again we will see Trump leading and then massive cheating dumps will turn the vote for Biden 😋

You seem to mix things. But that is usually what whataboutism is based on

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

They have not done nothing to me (except money), my statement was more general, as when you make profit on life saving drugs and vaccinations especially during global pandemic you aren't making people like you even if you are producing thing that saves them, because people feel that you are profiting on their need. And optics don't get better when pharma companies get public money and protection from litigation in case they have screwed with their supposed cure. I mean it is just business where you make people hate you and bigger the crisis more people will resent you for making profit on people's lives

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/04/covid-vaccines-offer-chance-for-big-pharma-to-improve-its-image Big Pharma may hope that vaccines make them more liked but at end of the day they usually just can't help themselves and they probably end in worst position than where they started.

Funny thing is that all the EU members are free to give medicines and vaccinations emergency approval instead of waiting EMA's approval, but as far all the members states have decided not to do so and just blame EU that their citizens need to wait vaccination. So Hannock may be right that UK's quick approval was because of Brexit, not because it made bureaucracy faster but that they weren't able to use EU as excuse for the wait and buckled under pressure to approve the vaccine even if they can't say its safe with 100% certainty.

In my understanding you cannot do that in USA either. According to that article police didn't know who had hurt the child when they charged said woman of lying them. And I don't think person is providing alibi when they hide existence of person in question from police. As woman brought child to hospital where doctors called police because child injures show that they were caused by another human. Then woman in question tells police that child has been with her whole time and she doesn't know how child has sustained the injuries. Then during investigation police finds out that child had been in care of someone else than woman in question for sometime, which lead police to charge her for lying to them, even though they had at that time determined who had hurt the child. Flynn case isn't really that different, even if its more political https://apnews.com/article/d47a5be3e46442d0a1243c7dc52278f3

Suspect of crime can't be arrested or charged for lying to police about crime they have accused of committing But if I am asked did Zoraptor stole a car and say 'no' , when I know that you have stolen the car in question I will commit crime even if I lie because I paid Zoraptor to stole the car in question. EDIT: It seems that also in New Zealand it is crime to lie to police https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/93962601/woman-admits-making-false-statement-to-police http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1961/0043/latest/DLM328799.html

"And if by your own words he was lying to avoid charges" It was comment to this claim that I have never made You were claiming that FBI were investigating Flynn because of some crime they suspected him to have committed and your evidence was that FBI was investigating him, which is why I pointed out that FBI investigates all the members of the government, because that is their job. I see that you have hard time to come up with actual arguments, but you could at least be honest about it

Yeah Federal Bureau of Investigation 's job is to investigate things. Their job is also investigate backgrounds of all the members of government in order to ensure that there is no surprises there that could cause problems for the nation suspect of what? avoid what chargers? again suspect of what? and what charges? They investigated if Russia had something over Flynn, as he had done opposite to what he told VP to have done. But giving false information to VP in briefing is not crime, which is why Flynn was only forced to resign. Flynn himself pleaded guilty of lying to FBI in court, you don't need to take my word, just his own words.