LongTimeLurker

One of the arguments for a more laid back Swedish sort of approach is that if you obsess over COVID-19 too much there will inevitably be collateral damage elsewhere. Politicians in a UK context have provided plenty of oil to the proverbial squeaky hinge that the tabloid media was going into a feeding frenzy over, but it may turn out with the benefit of hindsight that they didn't provide the optimal outcome from an overall public health standpoint because that involved placating mass hysteria rather than doing what was rational.

It's outdoors where transmission is very difficult for the most part involving young supremely fit adults under 40 and hence should be very low risk, if organised responsibly. Vaccines could be literally just days away from emergency approval now that are already in mass production and that should quickly start to protect those that actually do have something to worry about from this virus. There is light at the end of the tunnel and it isn't an oncoming train.

It's not ideal, but really they only need to do people 70+ (especially in care homes), health professionals and some other high risk groups to put a massive dent in deaths if it really does have 95% efficacy, and these companies have been in mass production already in anticipation of approval. The largest unknown right now is how long these mRNA type vaccines will be effective for. If it's a few years before people need some sort of booster shot the end is very much in sight.

Education has many roles. There was no implication in what I wrote that the babysitting role was its only one.

If they were serious about driving case numbers down to zero, education would move online. That's not happening because of education's role as a baby sitting service to keep a large portion of the workforce working normally. Most workplaces are not being closed down in the same way as schools because keeping the economy running also takes priority over driving case numbers down to zero. With schools and workplaces open what happens with non league professional football at this point doesn't matter much in the larger scheme of things and is in no way pivotal. Fortunately vaccines now appear to be just around the corner, so there will be no more excuse for having politicians imposing absurdly detailed sets of lockdown rules just so they appear to be doing something when they are really just letting it rip to a large extent like we do with the flu every winter. The news on vaccines is better than we could ever reasonably have expected.

...and at a time when the news on vaccines is beyond anything we could have reasonably expected a few weeks back: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54986208

If my grandparents were still about (born 1900-1910 so long gone) I am sure they would already be warming up the "Ah used tae huv tae work on Christmas" patter delivered with the most greetin-faced expressions imaginable at the slightest indication that anyone was enjoying themselves. The Queen's Speech should be replaced with something along these lines this year.

Absolutely, and at a time when the numbers were starting to head in the right direction anyway, so they have a pretty good idea already that they'll be able to lift it again OK on Dec 11th. There's a Holyrood election coming so it's all being done with one eye on opinion poll numbers. If there was a serious public health crisis unfolding that really merited this level of ongoing media fuss over lockdowns, schools and workplaces would be affected much more by the regulations but that would cost them votes.

...because we are heading into winter and the time of year when respiratory infections are most problematic rather than the summer months when people are out and about in the sun in a way that boosts immune systems would be the obvious answer. The uncomfortable truth that they still have a significantly lower cumulative mortality rate and a significantly smaller second wave than the UK still calls into serious question whether the UK's more Draconian nanny state approach was necessary.

Can't trust a word they say at this point, but this blatantly obviously is about having the curves heading in the right direction so they can be seen to save Christmas and New Year as vaccines hopefully start to arrive.

Nothing I can find on their social media, which isn't a good sign on it only being a temporary abeyance sort of thing. Lockdown changes make no difference at this point as professional football has an exemption at all levels and West Lothian was already too high for spectators to be allowed.

Worth looking into how different countries compile their statistics before cherrypicking direct comparisons to fit a preferred narrative. My understanding is that Norway was going out of its way to make it difficult to classify a death as COVID related if comorbidities were involved earlier this year, while Sweden were attempting to be as accurate as possible with a similar approach to the UK. Having said that Sweden's now apparent second wave is definitely not good news and it is probably just as well that vaccines with > 90% efficacy appear to be just around the corner. Beyond that maybe just as well that Cardinal Winning is no longer with us: https://twitter.com/Bishopoftyler/status/1328421474806468610

...and nothing like as well spread out as they are at Newtown Park to at least make it look like they are doing something useful. EK don't look that strong in those highlights. Don't think that's the sort of quality Kelty were at last season, if highlights are enough to judge that sort of thing. Time will tell I guess.

They'll talk up the free speech angle and the first amendment in an American context. The difficult part is building up enough users to hit a critical mass but Parler appears to be getting there given they were at 500,000 downloads per day early last week and the messages from Twitter added to Trump's tweets will no doubt have been a huge part of that: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/nov/13/parler-conservative-social-network-free-speech The mainstream platforms were happy to host Alex Jones for years given all the traffic he was generating for them right up until he stopped backing no hope fringe Libertarian leaning candidates like Ron Paul and started to seriously subvert what was happening in mainstream politics by backing Donald Trump with Roger Stone very much coordinating everything that unfolded. There has been a massive siloed media market in the flyover states for cranky right wing talk radio over the years. The idea that could never extend into cyberspace seems naive to me and in line with the complacency that there was in liberal elite circles pre-Brexit referendum in the UK and pre-2016 presidential election in the US.

This will probably be the last election where Republican supporters are on Twitter to the same extent as their Democratic counterparts, so the American electorate will probably be even more siloed in information terms next time around. An app called Parler is emerging as the alternative.

During STV elections in NI you won't find too many TUV to SF transfers to the point that when you do it is likely to have been a ballot filled out incorrectly. When an electorate is sufficiently polarised you wind up with something very close to a tribal headcount. American politics have not reached that point yet. What I think some people are missing on here is that if you go back a few decades Democratic politicians were also capable of being blatantly racist and Joe Biden has been around long enough to have been active in that era. He was selected even after being called out by his future running mate during the primaries over some of his past actions probably because the calculation was that the path to victory was more likely to be to shore up support amongst "Reagan Democrat" type voters in the "blue wall" states (he's from Pennsylvania originally) rather than to push an AOC agenda. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/27/harris-attacks-bidens-record-on-busing-and-working-with-segregationists.html It should not be surprising that things would became slightly less polarised along racial lines given that backdrop. There were plenty of other issues that some voters may have viewed as more significant to their personal circumstances this time around. In a Texas context, for example, Latino voters who are or have recently been active in the fracking industry were not necessarily automatically going to back Biden if they believed that was more likely to mean prolonged unemployment.

The main changes on moving from level 3 to level 4 where lockdown regulations are concerned are that non-essential shops, hospitality and gyms close. For many people that makes little practical difference from what is already happening and it's difficult to see what the relevance is to this thread given professional football remains exempt from restrictions even at level 4. Beyond that angle, schools stay open and most workplaces remain open to the same extent as before, so level 4 isn't a move back to late March and April. There's no level 5 in place for what to do after that, which means there is no obvious scenario under which the WoS season would be ended at this point. The SNP seem to be downplaying the idea that level 4 is inevitable and seem upbeat about having a vaccine before Christmas: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-54950003 Level 0 is the scenario that has been designed for a post-vaccine introduction environment, so if the Pfizer vaccine unfolds as hoped there appears to be an obvious pathway to crowds being back before the end of the season if that optimistic timeline on first vaccine arrival proves to be accurate.

Over the course of a 32 game season Edinburgh Uni are currently on course for 12 points. You really don't need to be worrying about relegation at this point. Hopefully there is no runaway big spending leader this year and the top 7 or so keep taking points off each other regularly and slipping up from time to time elsewhere as that would be the receipe for an interesting second half to the season when fans are likely to be back.

1-1 definitely suggests that something higher than midtable can reasonably be aspired to now this season. Tried to get on a webstream link that was on twitter but gave up as nothing seemed to work.

Why is it only the WoS that has people like this actively campaigning on here to get the season shut down, while the rest of Scottish professional football just gets on with it?

America's influence in Africa has always been benign. The World Bank never had any economic hitmen tricking African leaders into placing their nations into a debt trap. It was a wonderful idea not to back Patrice Lumumba and install Mobutu Sese Seko instead, and the good ole US of A really burst a gut combating the Apartheid regime in South Africa and never encouraged them to invade Angola. No Siree Jimbob. Given that sort of backdrop it's completely baffling why anyone would be suspicious of the motives of a rich billionaire from a country with such a stellar record of treating its black African population with equality and respect over the past few centuries after he takes a sudden interest interest in Africa's problems. To draw an analogy with Austria for no obvious reason, it was completely absurd that anyone would be concerned about Jorg Haider just because he was a right wing Austrian politician with pan-German nationalist sympathies with a name beginning with H and ending in r. We just forget about the past and assume everything is going to be OK this time.

dizzy from all the roundabouts

My understanding is that the issue that has discouraged mask use in western countries is more that you have to use them properly for there to be a net positive effect rather than there being an overall lack of efficacy when the instructions are followed.

They've been doing it in Japan and other Asian countries for a long time. The flu has been deliberately downplayed as a public health issue in western countries to the extent that you can't make a comparison between the mortality rates of COVID-19 and influenza pandemics on here without having scientifically illiterate posters taking umbrage.