Chatterbox Thursday

Great, but what's the exit strategy?

Absent a vaccine, 60 - 80% of the population are likely to get COVID-19 eventually, the only question is about the speed and the ability of health services to cope with the worst cases.

If a vaccine is developed, Mongolia's strategy looks brilliant. If COVID-19 continues to circulate and mutate over several years (or decades), Mongolia's strategy looks ostrich-like, or, worse, a deeply brutal and unprecedented level of long-term control over the day-to-day freedoms of its populous.

The UK's strategy of killing 40,000 people so far from COVID-19 and a further 20,000 excess deaths is utterly morally repugnant, but it does make sense in economic terms, especially since the deaths are heavily weighted towards the parts of society that are net users of economic resources and government services. If the UK's strategy works, it could put the UK at the forefront of economic and social recovery from the pandemic.

Edit: this sounds too critical of the Mongolian response. I think it's admirable, and they've probably thought about their exit strategy, but I haven't bothered to find out. Also, I don't think "utterly morally repugnant" is a strong enough representation of the incompetent and wicked actions of the UK government, nor a strong enough balance to my overly-rosy economic idlings.

Switched it on a minute ago, booted first time.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You fucking trekkie nerd

That's quite the euphemism.

"Nook's Cranny"

I checked with my legal team, and they suggested strongly that I shouldn't pounce on randoms.

You shouldn't, not after the restraining order.

Hello, I've been busy, very busy monitoring Shenguin's tag.

Thanks Tent - *shameface* I had 580 this morning - had my island open to all - and made 70k in tax

I’m now mortgage free and have six million bells in the bank. I’ve been wanting to do some rock farming and move the rock spawn points to my ‘zen’ garden - I think now is the time to do it.

I’m close to giving up on the rest of the game - time to move on.

I'm almost certainly the most at risk here... but sorry amipal, he who doesn't read messages, but there's a problem with your reasoning, or more likely your premises ...  Firstly, the words 'cold' amd 'flu' cover a great multiplicity of variants.  2. Vaccines aren't developed for 'colds' because the effects are inconvenient not deadly.  3. Vaccines are developed for 'flu' and various at risk groups get punctured in late Autumn after WHO has developed a targetted vaccine against the most likely candidates for global dispersion. Those vaccinations are not effective outwith the targets. This is because influenza mutates like crazy. 

4. Covid 19 is  a coronavirus which, like SARS, is a beta coronavirus (an alpha coronavirus is 229E aka the common cold).  Like SARS and the annual 'flu mutations they all originate in the far East; The likely hosts of these viral mutations are vampire bats who breed quickly; the animals they suck blood from, the bats inject an anaesthetic agent into and take blood from so that mutated strains rapidly promulgate throughout both primary and intermediate species.

The intermediates are either farmed beasts like pigs or trapped wild creatures including rare and endangered species such as Pangolins (the suspected intermediate for Covid-19). These creatures are sold and slaughtered on the spot mainly in China in so-called 'Wet' markets... with blood, urine and faeces acting as transfer agents between species including the humans who operate these markets. The animals are mainly used in Chinese medicines.

"dried scales are roasted, ashed, cooked in oil, butter, vinegar, boy's urine, or roasted with earth or oyster-shells, to cure a variety of ills. Amongst these are excessive nervousness and hysterical crying in children, women possessed by devils and ogres, malarial fever and deafness. So much are pangolin scales in request for these purposes that yearly the scales from some 4,000 or 5,000 individuals were imported from Java, with a value of 3,700 guilders. But recent regulations in Java, which prohibit capturing and killing of pangolins and the export of scales, will turn the attention of the Chinese medicine men more forcibly towards the native product."  From www.nature.com/articles/141072b0

The pangolins are also used to 'cure' erectile dysfunction. The Chinese government closed the Wuhan wet market, but has now allowed it to reopen.  They choose to ignore the manifest risks because they are more interested in appeasing their suppressed populations to underscore political stability than they are in destroying this engine of disease or addressing their unhygienic practices.  They are even now starting to claim that Covid-19 was brought into Wuhan by foreigners ...  This video is a Chinese woman's tour and commentary which shows some of the systemic problems in the China...  

Thanks! There's still loads of work to do now that I no longer have the mortgage weighing me down. I need more time, though. As you've seen, the garden is a bit overgrown (and that's putting it mildly).

Unfortunately I hadn't had time to visit Redd before and didn't realise that visitors were able to buy from him, and I already have the Jolly Painting (Arcimboldo's Summer) which is the only other genuine work of art (it happened to ge my starter artwork). I've bought it now, so let me know if you anyone else needs it and I can put it in the post.

This means that it's a good idea to let others know when Redd is visiting as long as there is enough genuine art to go around. Theoretically all 4 could be genuine (or fake) although I've always had the 2 genuine, 2 fake pattern so far.

I've had enough of this reality ...