It seems unlikely there will be any change. I can't really think what new evidence there could be, other than my suggestion above. As with all sports, important decisions have to be taken very quickly whilst the event is still in progress, so they are forced to rush to quick judgements... and then afterwards, when the officials have time to view everything and make a more considered ruling, it is of course too late as the event has already ended. It is difficult for them, and I'm not surprised that both Red Bull and Mercedes feel aggrieved. It's impossible really for both teams to come away happy with whatever the final decision is.

Yep. They're doing a great job. In the UK we are currently in a third wave of cases from the delta variant, but thanks to the vaccines hospitalisations and deaths are very low.


Anti-vaxxers are an obstacle to herd immunity, yes, but I do think some of them will change their minds as there are geographical clusters of high vaccine hesitancy (e.g. Alabama in the US), which will quickly become apparent in the data... if people see that highly-vaccinated parts of the country have lower case numbers and better outcomes, it should cause a degree of behavioural change. If anti-vaxxers form a small enough minority, then effective herd immunity within a nation is perfectly feasible. The other issue is the low availability of the vaccine in poorer nations... the higher the amount of virus circulating anywhere in the world, the higher the number of mutations, and dangerous or vaccine-resistant mutations. So it's likely that we will need annual boosters to compensate for concerning variants. As for 'beating' Covid, that's only going to happen when cases numbers across the whole world start to drop to very low levels.

My country (UK) will I think do worse than usual. We have had some success in swimming in these games, an event where we are normally weak. But in other sports there have been quite a few disappointments, and our overall team is I think weaker than has been the case in the last few Olympics. Athletics in particular, we don't have a lot of serious contenders for golds. Once cycling hits the velodrome we have a chance to increase our medal count - but whilst the UK used to be by far the best velodrome nation, in recent years other nations have caught up a lot, and there is no longer the situation that UK just sweep to gold every time.

Everyone knew that there would be new variants. At least everyone who understands how evolution works. If there is a global pandemic, how much virus replication is happening? It would be impossible for zero mutations to occur in such a vast population.

It's also self-evident that because the vaccines were created to combat the initial strain, some new variants would arise that required new vaccines. Your post doesn't need the inverted commas around 'new strains'. Nor does it need the phrase 'gene therapy'.

Red Bull are appealing the Hamilton penalty, with the hearing due tomorrow: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/57988419

It's difficult to see how they can provide new evidence - perhaps they will be aiming to prove that Hamilton wouldn't have made the corner. Equally Mercedes will be pressing their case about Hamilton's move complying with the stewards' overtaking guidelines.

Hard to see any outcome for either team that causes a change in what has already been decided, as everything hinges on there being new evidence that wasn't available at the time. But it's understandable that Red Bull are making the attempt, given the financial implications of rebuilding the car, and then a potential grid penalty for Max at some later point as a result of taking replacement parts.

The pressure on her must be immense. She's the face of the US at these games, and a huge favourite to win multiple golds. It's impossible for us as viewers to understand the amount of stress she must be under... for any athlete there would be nerves, but for someone in her position we just can't imagine it. It's brave of her to speak out, and comes on the heels of Naomi Osaka's withdrawal from the French Open. I think Biles has been brave, and it is good that people are understanding that despite their physical excellence, these athletes aren't unfeeling robots.

Me too. You'll be pleased to know that today has been a historic day in this regard. Flora Duffy won gold in the women's triathlon for Bermuda. This makes Bermuda the smallest country ever to win an Olympic gold. Their only other medal (of any colour) was a bronze in boxing in 1976. Fantastic achievement... particularly as their whole team at this Olympics comprises only 2 athletes! The other is competing in men's rowing

I don't know if there are many smaller nations. Perhaps the Vatican could send a team?

You can't use absence of evidence as evidence. There may be no smoking pangolin (can't get that image out of my head)... but I could equally well say: Covid was not developed in a lab, because we haven't found a lab that developed it.


SARS? MERS?


Yes, agreed. But this is not relevant to the vaccine, or to the novel coronavirus that emerged at the end of 2019.


Pfizer and Moderna are ~95%, AZ is ~90%


Not true. We can't instantly vaccinate everyone in the world who wants it. There are many people who want to be vaccinated, but are still waiting, and being put at increased risk by anti-vaxxers spreading the virus.


The vaccines are new. Nothing that is new can have known long-term implications. But this doesn't mean that everything that is new is bad.


Thanks for admitting you're not an expert. I'm not an expert either, but obviously have a different point of view to you. I want everyone to have long and healthy lives. Your frequent advice on diet and healthy lifestyle is something I agree with wholeheartedly. I also agree that over-medication can be an issue, due in part to healthcare being provided with a profit motive. But vaccines save lives.

This is speculation. You can't state it as fact. Whilst we can't 100% rule out a lab leak, and whilst Chinese government secrecy hampers any investigation, the data still suggest quite strongly a natural origin.


^{[CITATION NEEDED]}
Again, this is baseless speculation, and flies in the face of the evidence.


Either being suppressed, or doesn't exist. One or the other.
Of course with something of this scale, there will always be a few individual medical professionals, a few individual cases, that can be used to suggest anything. But there are also huge, publicly available datasets from all around the world.


Natural immunity is great if you can get it. The problem is that you get it by contracting a potentially fatal virus. Taking the vaccine is far safer.


Insulin resistance and more generally metabolic syndrome are certainly areas of concern, and certainly poor dietary choices and sedentary lifestyles play a role. Yes, it is always a good idea to improve your health through natural processes... but this isn't a panacea, and doesn't make you immune to everything. Vaccination is still the best route to protection against Covid.


Again, yes, these are all areas of concern... but again, as the data demonstrate, vaccination is still the best route to protection against Covid. Spyware and location tracking have zero relation to vaccine efficacy.

I suppose the issue is that it's planned so far in advance. Almost all of the vast amount of money involved in hosting the games is spent well in advance of the event itself. This being the case, there is little to lose financially with going ahead rather than cancelling at the last minute. Economically there is nothing to lose now.

The big issue obviously is the virus, and the low vaccination rate in Japan. Hopefully it won't make the situation any worse.

There will certainly be a financial reckoning from the bailouts, yes, this is unavoidable.
But you will need to show some evidence for "the damage that vaccination is doing to the nation's health" - because this statement is in opposition to available data. You can't just make a statement that goes against the evidence, and expect people to believe it.





"any virus that your body has not encountered yet is "novel"" ... Don't be silly. I'm not sure whether you are trolling or whether you genuinely don't understand. I will humour you, and explain. Yes, every virus you have not encountered before is new to you... but that's not really the point, is it? One reason that this novel coronavirus has caused such chaos is that it spreads so easily amongst the population. This is because no-one has any initial immunity. You may wish to consider the historic example of the conquistadors bringing new diseases to the Americas, and nearly wiping out the native population - who had no pre-existing immunity.

One common issue with anti-vaxxers is selfishness; they say they are fit and healthy and don't need the vaccine. This overlooks the fact that the purpose of the vaccine is not merely to protect yourself, but to help to protect everyone. Given your previous posts, I am not at all surprised that you are considering the word "novel" to refer to yourself rather than to the whole population.

It will certainly help, yes... but perhaps not as much as we might expect. A big part of home advantage is having the roar of thousands of fans cheering you on. In this strange pandemic Olympics the competitors are performing in front of rows of empty seats. But still home advantage will certainly count for something. And it will help that as host nation, Japan are allowed to compete in every event.

The earth is roughly 4.6 billion years old. The evolution of life is certainly a fascinating subject, and we know a surprisingly large amount. Below are simplified (and extremely simplified) examples of the tree of life.


https://i0.wp.com/flowingdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/tree-of-life_2000.png?w=2000&ssl=1


https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life_(biology)#/media/File:Simplified_tree.png

And the study of how humans evolved is particularly interesting. Below is an image of the evolutionary history of hominins (scale is millions of years, so starting 10 million years ago). Obviously we don't have the full detail, but you will note that in the genus homo, the pattern is somewhat more convoluted than is commonly represented, notably the fact that divergence is not simple branching, but a lot messier and with elements of convergence. Most notable perhaps for those of us with European ancestry is the interbreeding between 'modern' humans and Neanderthals in the last few tens of thousands of years, which bequeathed us modern Europeans a couple of percentage points of Neanderthal DNA.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Hominini_lineage.svg/1280px-Hominini_lineage.svg.png

He's one of those players that only a few clubs can afford. When you get into world-class level, the options for which clubs these players can go to really narrows... especially when you consider the huge cost of paying out hundreds of thousands in wages each week for however many years the contract lasts.

Yeah. I'm from the UK, and I've been cheering the various athletes on today as we secured 3 golds. Tom Daley's was the best, in the diving - in his fourth Olympics
But I'm not sure our UK team is as strong this time around. We still have high hopes in the velodrome as usual, plus a few contenders dotted around other sports, but I don't think we're quite as strong in athletics as we were.

The gold medal race by nation depends largely on scheduling. The US are stronger in some areas, China are stronger in others. It's very early days at the moment, and I don't think we can really read anything into it... other than that these two are very likely to finish above everyone else.

Okay. The PCR thing has been comprehensively debunked. Also your city must be very small if you know the Covid outcomes of every single person... either that or you're making it up. Also, as I keep saying, if you don't believe diagnoses, then just look at number of excess deaths (which is regardless of reason).

The second argument about emails, I'm not from the US, and I don't know what point you're trying to make, so I'll leave it for someone else to respond. But based on everything else in this thread, I'm very confident that whatever you are implying is utter nonsense. Also I watched a short clip of your "news" programme. I'm surprised they're allowed to call it news. They tried to launch it here (UK), but they fell foul of the regulator because there are standards on impartiality and accuracy.

Sorry, I can't see that you're applying any logic. Football pitches and dollar bills are both rectangles - are they the same thing? Are they interchangeable? SARS-CoV-2 is not the common cold. Humans aren't gorillas.

Why, did you post something that was worth responding to?


We actually disagree on many subjects. It's just that we try to have reasoned debates based on facts and logical arguments, rather than... well, whatever this thread is supposed to be.


Thanks! That cartoon sums it up perfectly. Reminds me of this smallpox anti-vax campaign pamphlet from 1885...


https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=aeu.ark:/13960/t7wm29713&view=1up&seq=5

I don't understand this argument at all. Human life expectancy has increased dramatically over the last century. This is true around the globe. Technological advances in medicines in particular have had a profoundly beneficial impact. Look at the data. I don't know where you get the idea that human lifespan is decreasing; this is not supported by any data.