China
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they’ve completely given up on trying to track Covid here now. No more PCR testing unless you’re immunocompromised or hospital staff or work at a care home. if you show up at a testing site, they send you back home with an antigen test and a phone number/website to report a positive test. So our numbers will be completely unreliable at this point. We all know antigen tests are pretty much useless for false negatives. So it appears that the government is letting it run its course.
the Canadian trucker’s “Freedom Convoy” to protest forced vaccinations and idiotic restrictions is hitting Ottawa today… Apparently Trudope is hiding out somewhere with a covid exposure. the leader of the Opposition O’Toole is meeting with the delegation from what I understand. I hope this is the final nail in the Liberal coffin, they have been the worst leadership in this country since Brian Mulroney and his selling off of the nation’s assets (plus signing the original NAFTA).
But at this point…Although I think I’ve had it twice, I’ve never had a positive test so should look good on an insurance disclaimer form… Hopefully I can start crossing the border again soon.
Back home in North Wales now. We emigrated out in 75 and moved back in 85. Damn long time ago now.
We had a wheat field across the road from us, fields up and down the road. All full of houses now. Our back garden had an almond orchard to the back, beyond our normal garden, then a gully which was probably a dried creek bed. There’s a house there now. 
I emigrated from Ireland with my parents when I was 10 but none of us ever had a desire to return!
I understand the northern suburbs of Adelaide have expanded significantly since the 70s as Adelaide largely went out instead of up.
I can understand that. It wasn’t on our radar either until we had a holiday back home. Game over after that. I miss some of it, but not all. The size of the place is overwhelming.
Great Southern Land thread 
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Been back many times but just couldn’t imagine living back there. We’ve got Oirish passports for the boys and have considered purchasing some land there as longer term insurance option if things turn ugly climate/geopolitically in 30 years but I just can’t get enthusiastic about it. While Oz is big much of it empty and can be skipped. I’m happy in my tiny half acre bubble at present and even without covid iso would be happy to be (mostly) restricted to a 10km circle around my home with the occasional trip to visit family and friends in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne or Thredbo or Noosa or bushwalking in Tasmania or NSW. Happy to completely miss the other 98% of the country.
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Yeah Sorry! Can I move posts?
Not goalposts
In retrospect it might not have ever been possible, depending on what we mean by “zero”, but the potential to limit the baseline level of tranmission to a low enough ebb such that outbreaks can be managed by well known targeted public health measures I think also died by summer 2020 IMO. By that point it was less a case of biological certainty, but social impediments to doing what was necessary to implementing a proper response. To many just way too quickly settled into refusing to do the right things.
Here in the US in most places restrictions are pretty much zero. Compared to our Spring 2020 lock down there is almost nothing you could do prior to then that we now cannot do. The only difference is that in many places you may still be asked (not required) to wear a mask. I cannot get my head around the difference between this reality and all the cries that “we need to get back to normal” as if what is actually happening now is so far a deviation from our normal. The differences are not in practical, tangible things, but in the mental and emotional scars carry with them, that for a portion of the population means that any acknowledgment of the existence of covid is triggering to the point that they want to act like being asked to wear a mask is too much of a burden. And they are the ones accusing everyone of living their life scared and calling people snow flakes.
On top of hte above, I think one of the issues is that too many people cannot (refuse to?) understand that many circumstances they see as nanny state covid practices keeping business/services understaffed or closed is actually the direct result of covid infections. It continues to be a case where the ones who cry the loudest about needing to get back to normal are the ones actually preventing us from getting there.
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I think it’s also important to point out that “endemic”, the new word de jour for people wanting to just “get on with it” does not mean what they think it means. Something can be endemic and still result in an enormous public burden and significant risk to the individual in the community. Obesity is endemic in the US. Malaria is endmic in sub-Saharan Africa. Both result is significant public health problems for the community and risk to the indivuals in those communities. Endemic simply means that the case rate, and therefore the risk/burden, has stabilized at a steady state. And to that point, this is never likely to get to a true endemic state, rather will exist in differing stages of fall backs and outbreaks.
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Further evidence that he probably faked his tests
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Equally as funny have you seen Jordan Peterson’s thoughts on Climate Change? Joe Rogan podcast strikes again.
The kick back from the scientific community that specialise in Climate Change has been worthy of a read
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It is amazing that he has any credibility left at all with anyone. The moron basically induced collapse in his own body and nearly died because of an all beef and salt diet (yes, beef, not meat), largely his own invention.
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I was aware that he’d gone on the carnivore diet claiming it helped with some alleged autoimmune disorder he and his daughter seem to share, but I was not aware it nearly killed him. I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise.
It’s the same old thing though. People claiming to be experts saying whatever they like without challenge.
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When you can talk as eloquently and authoritatively as he can, you can.
Goes for some seriously mad shit health treatments though. Regardless, a good podcast.
I read but didnt pick up anything in this piece that added to the earlier piece from Der Spiegel that they cited. Did anyone pick up on that?
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It’s only small, but what the bbc did was source multiple test results from the two labs where Djokovic got tested. Then plotted them by date. They all matched perfectly except Djokovics.
On face value that does not add a lot to what was originally reported.
However it strongly counters those that dismissed the original journalism. It was argued that because it was different labs, that meant the numbering system was not perfectly sequential. This now seems highly unlikely. It also raises other issues as we can estimate when he was positive(if he ever was). This puts it around Boxing Day. This raises further questions of his further travel.
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