Difficult to say without knowing the specifics, but there are in general many complicating factors. For example my country is highly vaccinated, but our number of Covid cases is nearly at a record high. Why? Vaccination has meant that now a far lower proportion of people who contract Covid experience severe symptoms, and the overall death rate is low, so the government has decided not to implement a lockdown, and is progressively easing social restrictions.
Your figures suggest that vaccination in your country has not reduced the death rate amongst people who contract the virus. I'm skeptical.


Total cases or new cases? Obviously there will be a lag of a number of weeks, either way. If it's not improving after a month or so, then I'd suggest that the lockdown is not strong enough, or people are ignoring it.


I don't know, it may be pointless if people are allowed to gather freely at other times.


But this isn't about whether lockdowns and social distancing are a good idea, it's more an objection to the specifics of the implementation. A poorly implemented idea doesn't invalidate the idea.


Then I think your friend's contention is morally abhorrent. Having to show ID when you enter a shop is somewhat different to being imprisoned in a Nazi death camp.

Thanks for trying to get some data; many people don't even bother to do that.
However, your highlighted timeframe is a year out. The pandemic arrived in Europe in early 2020, not 2019. The huge spike in deaths in early 2020 coincides with the first wave of Covid, prior to the initial lockdown. Many countries then experienced a second wave, which tailed off quite dramatically in the first half of 2021 as population vaccination levels increased.

But religion is based entirely on assumptions, with no evidence. Isn't that what faith is? I suppose you could argue that faith is tied up with an inherent feeling or sense of God, but science would argue that feelings, intuition etc., have a biological basis.

One big difference is that that science is falsifiable, it can be proven wrong. That is how science advances, through the testing of hypotheses. But religion won't accept even the idea that elements of it might possibly be untrue or imperfect, it reminds me of a child who, on being told not to do something, puts his hands over his ears and sings 'I can't hear you'.



Radiocarbon calibration means that dating is accurate to around 50,000 years. I'm not sure it can be taken back much further given the half life of 14C is only around 5k years. But it would only be used to date biological specimens anyway, not the Earth itself. We can use radio dating of isotopes of elements with much longer half-lives to determine, for example, the age of rocks... the Earth is around 4.6b years old.

There shouldn't be one player who is bigger than the tournament, but unfortunately there is. Nadal and Federer are on the way out. Djokovic is by far the biggest draw in men's tennis, the only superstar left at the top... and there is also his record in Australia to consider, winning it year after year after year. If Djokovic wasn't allowed to compete, then whoever won the title, everyone would be saying that Djokovic would have won if he'd been there... the whole thing would be a joke. So I think their hands are tied really, they have to accommodate him. But to be honest, regardless of what the AO officials want, I'm surprised the government has allowed it.

The grid penalty had a lot to do with it this time around. But yes, you do get the feeling that even if Bottas had started say in 4th behind Perez, he would have dropped away as time went on.


And this was a circuit where Mercedes were expected to dominate. I'm not sure how much the unusually high temperature affected that, but either way, Lewis is running out of races now to catch up, and of those that are left a few are at high altitude, which always favours Red Bull. Max has to be a strong favourite for the title now.

I would say that atheism can be scientific, in the sense that you find the world-model that contains God to be unsatisfactory due to an absence of evidence, or just logically unconvincing. But an atheism that is based on the unproveable conviction that "there is no God", is perhaps less scientific, as it's founded on an ideological position.

My personal position I suppose is that I believe that God doesn't exist, but can't prove it, although the absence of evidence is overwhelmingly strong... but this is a secondary consideration, because I also believe that no-one should worship anything (a deity or otherwise), so even if God was proven to exist, he/she/it shouldn't be worshipped, and religion should not be followed.

I don't think Mercedes made a strategy error, either. They did what they could, with the options they had. And yes it was all decided at the pit stops.

The crucial thing here was the role of the second driver. Because Red Bull had Perez up at the front, and Mercedes didn't have Bottas there, it gave Red Bull a 2-1 car advantage, which meant they could control exactly when Hamilton stopped.

They stopped both Verstappen and Perez early, which meant Hamilton had to stop quickly in order to remain ahead of Perez, otherwise Red Bull could just have used him as a slow-moving roadblock whilst Verstappen disappeared into the distance. Alternatively, if Hamilton had stopped first, they could have kept Perez out, run him long, and done exactly the same thing... either way if you have an extra car, you can use it to control the other team's driver.

This is quite a depressing revelation. I have never been close to a disaster zone, and have no experience of such a situation. Do you think an element of the joy might be poorly-expressed relief from the survivors that they themselves could have been victims, and are thankful for having a narrow escape? Or is it really merely an absence of empathy?

It's rare that I say this, but the drive from Verstappen was fitting of a champion-in-waiting. He's fast of course, everyone knows that, but I often think he's also a bit foolish and overly impetuous, but today he wasn't. At the first turn, he didn't try to force Hamilton off the track, he actually gave the position... perhaps aware that with Perez right behind him and Bottas nowhere to be seen, Red Bull still had the tactical advantage. So this was perhaps evidence of some new maturity. And then again at the end, the coolness under pressure was impressive. Many drivers who are leading with a few laps to go might buckle and make a mistake when they have Hamilton on fresher tyres bearing down on them and taking chunks out of their lead every lap... but no, Verstappen was cool and professional, and kept the lead with relative ease in the end. Overall an impressive drive.

I thought Red Bull had this under control, with Max and Perez both up there they could control when Hamilton pits... but then Max pits on lap 10??? Seems like a strange move, he has plenty of overtaking to do now and Ham has a clear track. It seems odd. Very very early, not sure why they're risking it. Unless of course the plan is keep Perez out forever and use him as a roadblock on Hamilton later on?

Edit: nope, Perez in now as well. So maybe the undercut is ridiculously strong here, and they're hoping to get Perez out ahead of Lewis, so force him to stop now?

I for one expected Mercedes to be dominant in the US. Not sure how much the very high temperatures play into Red Bull's hands, as this isn't a Merc strength.
Either way, if Red Bull can win here, they have other tracks where they are expected to dominate, e.g. Mexico... so it's looking like Max should be favourite for the title... unless something dramatic happens here. Max and Lewis side by side on the front row... nothing could possibly happen... surely?

I've been saying it for a while, but 5-0 surprised me, too. Man United are really under a lot of pressure now, and they have a very tough run of fixtures coming up. I'm not sure they are going to even maintain their current position in the table, they seem likely to be slipping for a while. Their only chance maybe is that the 5-0 is a big humiliation and it triggers a fierce response in their next game... I'm just not sure that's likely.

No, it wouldn't be worth the time or effort. I just took it from their YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/JNJhealth



If you're trying to suggest — and I think you are — that marmalade can be spread on the road in order to deter reckless driving in Australia/New Zealand, then I'd argue that you'd be better off using something that has been scientifically designed and tested for that specific purpose, with proven results.

You could do, but there would be little difference, as they're both highly effective. As are the Moderna and AZ options.

But has the number of deaths as a proportion of cases reduced?


Really? A full lockdown had zero effect on the exponential rise in cases? This seems unlikely. Do you have the data?


I find it both preposterous and morally abhorrent when people compare having to show a vaccine passport to the holocaust. If you believe that vaccination is a prelude to a global extermination programme, then you're an imbecile. Do you really think that living in 2021 and having to show a vaccine passport to get into certain places is the same as being a Jew in 1943, and on a train bound for Auschwitz?

The people who control modern media platforms are ultra-rich, and will tend to favour content that promotes their own self-interest. But this has generally been the case with traditional media, too. It's just somewhat more of an issue now partly because the sources are more atomised, and partly because the pace has picked up, because web news is right now.

I'm not sure what the answer is. You will never have rigorous impartial oversight over a web news source that works almost in real time. And retrospective punishment for the dissemination of fake news would only affect the more legitimate sites. Some of the crazy lone-wolf BADecker sites would just shut up and open somewhere else, faster than you can police. Maybe some sort of quality certification could be applied to impartial, truthful news, kind of the opposite to the "this guy talks crap" tag that Twitter used to attach to Trump posts before they banned him. I imagine even that though would only have limited effect.

It's partly that Federer and Nadal are on the way out. For most recent years we've had Murray at his peak, too... who would consistently beat anybody other than the big three. We still have Djokovic, but that's it. So the players that are rated #2 to #10 this year, would in prior years have been #5 to #13. The depth of talent right at the very top isn't there any more. Whilst it's good that more players can realistically compete for tournament victories, this is a direct consequence of the fact that Djokovic is the last invincible player still out there.

There's a difference between equality of outcome and equality of opportunity. It's inequality of opportunity that needs to be addressed. I don't think many people would advocate for absolute equality of outcome irrespective of talent, skill, ambition, risk-taking, ingenuity etc. But I believe most people can see that it is unjust that some people are basically guaranteed success from birth, whilst many others are all but guaranteed failure. I mean, most of the political leaders in my country over the last hundred (and more) years went to the same fee-paying school as kids, the self-perpetuating elite, born to rule.

If someone from a poor background breaks through and becomes a success, they're rightly lauded... but the entire reason it is newsworthy is because it's such a rare occurrence.

I think much of the anger in society stems from people feeling cheated, not that they never got a reward, but that they never got much of a chance. Disparities of outcome is a secondary issue.

The reason that he calls himself the 'father of the vaccine' is that he is an egomaniacal imbecile. This is not news.

We should make clear that this was an experiment on a human patient who was already brain-dead and being kept alive artificially; there's no suggestion that we are ready to perform this sort of transplant on live patients.
But it's intriguing, and an advance, yes. I think pig heart valves have already been used in human transplants for decades, but the kidney is a new one.

As for whether this will be a viable option in the long-term, I'm not sure. Tissue engineering is a rapidly developing field, and it may be that we will be able to grow new organs (with zero chance of rejection) artificially in the near(ish) future. But I'm no expert; this is just uneducated speculation.