scientific-thoughts

 Antibiotic resistance bacteria are apparently now rife with 20% of illness related to said stuff [ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59310099 ] . Health officials are appealing according to that article to only use the stuff if needed . So far as I'm aware, the greatest use of antibiotics is for livestock as it helps them grow better, which is still allowed. Which do we want , healthier humans or cheaper [ and possibly better quality ] meat . Its been a no-brainer up to now. Protein wins !!! 

A lot of procrastination [ and work] has been involved by nations in tackling the above problem, which is obviously not a great surprise given the cost /complexity and social changes required. Reasons vary: states that produce lots of greenhouse gases don’t want  the loss of revenues associated with cutting that production, resource companies use lobbying power to deny the scope of the problem. Poorer countries state they need finance to help. Newer industrialising nations feel hard done by if asked to cut down their growth for wealth, which might make rich countries being possibly forever out of reach of being overtaken financially.. Some countries are just [possibly justifiably] suspicious of anything rich nations say. Some are …. The list goes on …… What is the world being asked to do ? To keep within a 1.5C warming over pre industrial levels.  What are the consequences of not doing so ? More extreme weather conditions  That is a basic summary, I think .  The prob...

Briefing By Boris Johnson 20/4/21 This was a strange briefing. Normally Boris comes to deliver good news or put a gloss on bad [ at the start of the 1st lockdown was the only 1 I recall as it happens] .  This time , we had a briefing saying people should get vaccinated , and nothing else ; primarily by his GP sidekick . The nothing else bit was emphasised by Boris forgetting about the mandatory graphs and needed to be reminded at the time . In short, a bit of a mess saying nothing . Remembering that briefings were only going to be public for important things , which this categorically did NOT qualify . Finally the length was much shorter than others .  It is barely possible that HMG was trying to get UK vaccination rate above the 85+% ? it's already achieving and someone managed to persuade Boris to forget his normal reticence of staying in the foreground and delivering what to him would be something below his attention span , but does seem very unlikely. If one looks at the n...

I was wondering what serious conspiracy theories there might be . Let's consider the bug in a small amount of detail : 1. It doesnt seem to attack kids 2. It does attack older people / people with medical problems And what do these mean in terms of coronavirus being a weapon . SO  1. WEapons target armies . These tend to be young and fit. Neither of the above apply QED it aint a weapon for warfare . It could however be a delivery system to help it's host country to aid economic growth [ no care homes for instance]. The virus has been shown to almost certainly originated naturally -but these things could be wrong SO There's lots to choose from , but everybody agrees that the problem originated in CHina : 1. There is a biological weapons factory in Wuhan . It could have escaped from there . If so, [ assuming China serves its own purposes] it would have been developing it for its own people. If found out, that would bring about the downfall of its government. Prob...

Well I don't know about you , but herd immunity is a bit like, we all know what it is , 'cos we've been told - So it's easy like ????? its about 90% innit ? So far, so good. A standard definition is the amount that would stop an infection getting out of control, in that for every person infected, they, in turn , would infect [ on average] no more than one other person . For this reason epidemiologists often quote the reinfection rate for clarity. Coronavirus is 2.4 , ie for every person getting it, on average 2.4 people get it from that person [ assuming no other situations affect this] . Let's take a reinfection of 1.00 for simplicity,ie for every person catching it, they reinfect another person. So for a family of 4 , one person gets it- 1-2 family members catch it ..... Wrong.... this is about statistics [ long word, so just call it odds if you know a little about betting] . If one family member gets it, it becomes likely that the entire family may well su...

OHHHHHHHH F...........ck  :( Looks Like Trumpo is after a war now . Hopefully other countries can stop him ,but history with Donnyboy aint hopeful. Forced nationalisation , and banning sales of Covid drugs and associated paraphernalia presumably would follow quickly if not resolved; to the US , that is ..... Last night , HMG didn't acknowledge Google for the data it supplied [ see yesterday post] and passed it off almost as it's own Berlin officials say 200,000 masks have been diverted to the US under a law invoked by Donald Trump.

Figures are courtesy of Google . They will be issuing loads of data, with  different countries to show how we are responding to the virus. Data are for UK... It indicates that for the UK as a whole, trips to : retail and recreation sites were 85% down. Well mostly shut , so 85% seems a bit low almost...... grocery and pharmacies were 46% down.  Interesting , it would appear that maybe we are going for bigger shopping trips or combining , especially if you compare that with the reports of supermarkets running out of stock ? parks were 52% down .  A low reduction and maybe why HMG was concerned about people going out when the weather got warm the other weekend ?  transit stations were 75% down . well , no work and no play makes for empty buses ?  workplaces were 55% down. See above . So 45% of us still working then ?  places of residence were 15% higher. Yeah , well , people social distancing at a distance of maybe 1 seat on a sofa, or a sheet thi...