Please stop posting off-topic remarks like these, lest this thread goes the same way as the previous. Esp. without sources.

BTW, listening to moderate mainstream media like the BBC might help getting a more temperate picture of things. That's all I'll say about it, so I repeat: stop posting off-topic.

Sad thing is we are suffering of this pandemia but nature benefits of it. During tight lockdown - here in my city - after a week I noticed something strange about air. It smelled different. Completely different. I noticed that birds were so alive. I was afraid of this air - I was thinking it is like virus smells. I was just plain stupid. It was just fresh air. Full of fragrances. Not that heavy, smelly, dirty air we used to breath every day. Now situation just came back to normal. Irony is we have all around city electronic boards one reads: air is clean.

I don't think either of those points were off topic as such, they both related to the Oxford/AZ vaccine. OK, the sources could have been better, but the information was accurate.

I suppose your concern is that this threatened to politicise the topic: I concur with that point and I think we have to be careful not to go too deeply down that rabbit-hole. It's hard though, I admit, since the EU's behaviour yesterday was deplorable - threatening a hard Irish border to control the vaccine supply and occupation of the AZ facility is like something out of Fallout 3. To be fair to hazel, it was rather shocking, and I was sitting here aghast as well. But yes, we should not get too political otherwise 'those posters' will return and that's only going to mean one thing.

Perhaps I was too quick to post, but like Lysander I was shocked. I don't have a high opinion of the EU at the best of times but I didn't expect them to behave like that. And I deny that I was off-topic. This was news about covid after all. But if they have stepped back from the brink, then of course I am glad they did so.

To placate Ondoho, here is a left-wing take on the story lifted from the same aggregation site. This one comes originally from the Independent, a liberal broadsheet which he may consider a more reliable source than the Telegraph (which is also a long-standing and well-respected UK broadsheet but with a conservative slant). It tells an almost identical story, only in sorrow rather than in anger. We are not dealing with "fake news" here.

I hope this is not going to be the future of vaccine politics, or God help the developing world when it comes to vaccinating their people!

Yes, I agree.
But apparently this is getting politicized (in a populistic sense - it is a politicum anyhow) far more on your & Lysander's side.
I still don't know enough to form an actual opinion though, but once again on the BBC I heard that this tit-for-tat might have started almost a year ago.

And hazel, I understand your mother's agitation, but quoting that here & now was simply deplorable. How do you think that made me feel? Let's just leave it at that lest we invoke Godwin's law (and the wrath of the mods).

This story managed to nail down two facts among a lot of the usual hand wringing.

1. The new, more infectious variant were caused by a locally bungled Coronavirus resp[onse, causing the virus to be in contact with hhuman antibodies enough to develop a level of immunity. Notice that whereas as Trump called it "The Chinese Virus," we don't have a 'Chinese variant!'
2. The version of the story that the variants were brought about by interface with vaccines is fake news. None of those nations had vaccines when the vaccines were being developed.

And congrats to everyone. We're up to 35*posts here and the thread hasn't been closed yet.

EDIT: It takes an Irishman to know the full implications of the Northern Border situation. It's like this:
1. The border between the North & South of Ireland must stay invisible at all costs. Customs posts, border checks, etc cannot exist. If that is changed, 4 opposing terrorist groups (2 vs 2) will start the fighting & bloodshed again. This same border is also the only land border between the EU and the UK.
2. The UK (Including the North of Ireland) must leave the EU and be seen to be an independent nation.
3. The political imperative is that the NOI is part of the UK, so there must be no border down the Irish sea.
4. From the EU perspective, there must be no fudge. Particularly, there must be no import path to the EU for subsidized or sub-standard UK goods into the EU.
5. Whatever farting about is done (and there has to be some, as you will see from points 1-4), Britain must come out worse off.

To put it mildly, the EU overthought it, and when both sides in the North of Ireland, the UK PM & the Irish PM all raised a middle finger at their proposal, they wisely reversed course.

Bad news! Captain Tom Moore has tested positive and is in hospital with pneumonia. Given his age, that's very worrying. I hope he pulls through. He's become something of a national mascot.

Here's an image containing the official statement by his daughter, (to save people searching and reading crappy news articles):

https://nitter.net/pic/media%2FEtE2VY6WMAIN_NY.jpg

(Posted via Twitter; script-free proxy: https://nitter.net/captaintommoore/status/1355924707816726532)

He was the guy who did a marathon in his garden, isn't it? On a walker, iirc? Must have an iron will.

In other news. Ireland is still knackered. We peaked on our 14-day incidence of new cases around the 15th January. Now the 14-day incidence/100,000 is only ~550/100,000. Deaths are still quite high, although we past the peak of that, it seems, we're in serious lockdown for another month . Deaths should stay up for another week or two, according to previous figures.

Well, he's dead. He had a good end, better than a lot of covid patients, as they let his family stay with him. Probably scared of the bad publicity if they didn't! The Queen sent a letter of condolence and Boris Johnson flew the flag at half-mast over No.10.

That's the second national icon we've lost after Vera Lynn.

My sympathies. He was hugely respected. I saw the agony on his face as he finished that marathon. I hope people expressed their feelings to him, as it's no use keeping that to yourself, and then feeling: "I wish I'd said …"

Here, our deaths are diminishing, but our cases are not - probably as a result of lockdown fatigue and the (no offence) UK variant which pushes up the 'R' number. That hasn't been controlled properly in any country that has much of it to date AFAIK.

In other news, in Post#36, I laid out the rather tricky situation vis-a-vis The UK, NOI & Ireland (The republic of). In today's news, I see that the UK took out the customs posts it had set up in Belfast after activity by Loyalist terrorists, targetting individuals, writing down registrations, etc. Customs posts would be a direct breach of point #3 I laid out. The IRA can't operate in the docks really. It's a strong Protestant area. They would happily finger known loyalist terrorists if they knew any. Somebody blowing up British stuff makes the IRA happy too.

It gives you an idea what kind of minds you're dealing with. Loyalists - Loyal to the British Government; But they're prepared to take out the British Government's customs posts because if they have customs posts, that makes them a different country, and they want to be the same country

Fyi, the current Brexit agreement gets away with fudges on points 2,3, & especially 4. It means that we(Ireland & NOI) pretends there are no fudges and everything is working out, and the EU pretends to believe us. As soon as EU trade has moved out of Britain, plugs can be pulled.

Of course it's a fudge. How else can you do an international deal? But it really is a bit thick for the EU to tell us for 5 years that keeping the Irish border open is essential to keeping the peace there, and that they alone really care about the issue while we apparently don't give a damn, and then closing it unilaterally over such a trivial spat. And without even telling the Taoiseach in advance!

Now they've changed tack and have apparently instructed the national governments to tell their people that the AstraZenica vaccine doesn't work anyway. It would be hilarious if it weren't so sad.

I haven't had a chance to watch these yet, I will watch them later, but here they are.

Frontline China's COVID Secrets (770 MB at 768x432)
https://www.pbs.org/video/chinas-covid-secrets-fvxx8y/
The cover up of the century (550 MB at 1280x720)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cav-OCuNmBI

Get the best quality video/audio in 720p, and still a reasonable file size.

The EU was out or order, imho.

OTOH, because of the entrenched positions, keeping the Irish Border (as agreed in 1998) IS essential to peace keeping.
What was actually done was put border posts in Belfast Docks, in effect putting a border between the UK (Britain) and the UK (NOI). That's why the Loyalists got out of bed.

It's funny really. The EU wanted to check that the Astrazeneca vaccine wasn't being exported en masse "to the NOI" whereas actually it was being rerouted South and sent wherever Astrazeneca wanted to send it except Europe Thus they are actually acknowledging that the fudge they insist is working is actually unenforceable. There must be an umbilical chord type link between the UK & NOI, AND between the NOI & Republic of Ireland. Otherwise, violence erupts. Ireland, however is in the EU, and the UK now is not. That is set to provide entertainment for some years to come.

If there's any readers on this list, a good but nutty take on this is Spike Milligan's Puckoon. It was done in the 1960s when the border was policed by the British and the IRA was active. The idea was that in setting up the Border, the Committee couldn't agree. So they decided to all put a hand on the same pencil, and draw it to the sea. The resulting border sliced straight through the small village of Puckoon. It's hilarious.

On the late Captain Tom
https://www.mail.com/int/scitech/hea...-stage-hero1-9