BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

most of my family have been vaccinated.

the U.K. is now at 25% vaccination and well on target.

seeing the europeans weaponise the brexit bill and ireland border question, after accusing the tories of low politics and dishonesty for years of negotiations, was pretty fucking funny. von der leyen and her fake PhD looking very flustered. you know you’ve fucked it when even senior german ministers are calling your performance ‘shit’.

now on the back of it there’s widespread skepticism about the oxford vaccine, and very low take-up, in places like france and germany. you know, the oxford vaccine that received approval from europe’s own august medical regulator. so politicians have stirred up vaccine nationalism due to their own failures, and now europeans are turning down the best available vaccine to continue dying through spring. there’s huge amounts of stock just sitting around in germany.

the top french institute couldn’t make an effective vaccine. spent months on it and failed. seems to have cued endless and prolix remonstrance in the french press about ‘the fall of france’ and ‘france’s intellectual decline’, a favourite theme of theirs; but no actual remedies forthcoming, of course.

lmao europe, beacon of the sane, rational liberal order. the highest expression of human governance!

of course every vaccine is in an almost annual or seasonal race against its own redundancy. that's how vaccines work and it was never expected to be otherwise. covid-19 is a blessedly stable coronavirus compared to its relations, and even then we're in a constant arms race against them.

'low protective success' in elderly populations: show me the data. it was approved by the EU regulator and encouraged by the WHO.

the oxford vaccine might not stop you getting ill but it does prevent the vast majority from ever ending up in a hospital bed or a casket. people should be taking it now because it is cheap, widely available, and because it's fucking there. um'ing and ah'ing over the efficacy of a vaccine w/r/t future mutations is dumb as fuck.

lol too bad. i publish covid research as part of my day job. 'reddit-esque reference battle' .

but okay, trust away.

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-infec … a-56623074

german infection level stagnates at high level.

1.5 million germans vaccinated.

16.5 million brits vaccinated.

let's hope the german regulatory authority actually have their PhDs and not a bunch of plagiarized theses like most of the german-derived EU senior cronies, eh? i thought the rationale was to reserve the moderna/biontech vaccine for older people: well why haven't they all been vaccinated with it yet? why are so many EU states dragging their feet with vaccine rollouts? are you trying to wait for all the current vaccines to become ineffective, or what?

'we need more data'.
'new mutations are highly alarming'.
'let's wait, we definitely need more data'.

Last edited by uziq (2021-02-19 16:26:51)

sure, tell me so if one of your relatives dies in the next 2-3 months.

i know it's not the first time, duh, and never implied that in my post, either. just it's rare to see such a move backfire so tremendously. widespread declamation from the WHO, the EUs allies, and even dissent from senior german ministers. mega fail. von der leyen is hopeless.

Europeans weaponising the brexit bill give me a break. Literally EVERY possible configuration of a relationship with the EU encountered red lines from the UK. The 'switzerland type arrangement' touted by the leave proponents wasn't even possible because of the legal jurisdiction of the ECJ in the switzerland arrangement, which was apparently unacceptable by the 'sovereignty' standards of the UK leave idiots. The only possible outcome was either a canada style deal or the deal you have now, which resulted from the UK accepting whatever was possible just to make good on Boris' self imposed deadline. You all fucked up massively and were in denial every step of the way.

The fact that von der leyen is useless is besides the point here. She's not the entirety of the EU, and at the end of the day the commissioners report to the countries. It's also why the vaccine deals took so long, because every country still holds the right to agree or veto. Ultimately the EU acts as chair in meetings and is responsible for proposals, but the power of the commissioners to roll out policy independently is limited. So it's always amusing to see the shit slinging fest unfold after fuckups are made at the EU level. Invariably national governments will either ignore, downplay or deny their involvement in the decision making and on the other hand the EU will always blame the member states. Yet the next week they'll all be at the table again as though the bitching never happened because they know they can't go it alone.

One country with misplaced nostalgia for colonial greatness that did think it could go it alone was the UK. Inundated by misinformation and russian intelligence manipulation, your people voted to shoot themselves in the foot and 5 years later everyone's still sorrily confused about the whole affair. No matter to me anymore though, the Brexit fiasco has been the single greatest political advert against -exit movements.

Last edited by Larssen (2021-02-20 02:26:49)

The Ireland border fiasco was horrendously stupid and immediately reversed including an apology from the EU. The 'authority' of von der leyen did certainly not reach that far and failing to consult with one of your member states about their border access is ... not smart.

There are no vassal states and France and Germany do not hold some joint sway over the Union. When they do agree on something they have a lot of political pull, but it's a popular myth to believe that they're the ones making the 'actual decisions'. Their sway and means to pressure others are also limited.

The EU is the single greatest advert against its own existence, von der Leyen playing Hitler has helped it along.

UK universities have 40% less applicants because of a thing called covid annihilating the asian and middle eastern market. there aren't hordes of europeans queuing up for a place at manchester and bristol.

how do fascist strongmen get elected in those countries? do they stage coups or do they ride popular sentiment? work it out poindexter.

great generalization and very light on detail.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24919825?seq=1

major political parties in both countries are euroskeptic.

is the fall of the USSR as relevant to voters today as the financial crisis of 2008? figure it out clever boy!

Actually I would say the soviet union and its dissolution was infinitely more relevant to the people who lived in its constituent countries than a two term president in the united states. 1989 wasn't ages ago. People who consciously experienced the soviet union, worked and lived in it are now the people running these countries - they're the top of the bureaucracy and political class. Besides it being living memory for a large part of the population, the long-term generational effects caused by the transition of soviet society & norms to the current situation cannot be overstated. Do you think it's a mere coincidence that these countries went off the deep end into religiosity and ultra-nationalism? But if Uziq is to be believed, it's all the EU's fault alright. I suppose that for you dimwits that's a passable explanation.

Last edited by Larssen (2021-02-20 10:03:23)

Larssen wrote:

Actually I would say the soviet union and its dissolution was infinitely more relevant to the people who lived in its constituent countries than a two term president in the united states. 1989 wasn't ages ago. People who consciously experienced the soviet union, worked and lived in it are now the people running these countries - they're the top of the bureaucracy and political class. Besides it being living memory for a large part of the population, the long-term generational effects caused by the transition of soviet society & norms to the current situation cannot be overstated. Do you think it's a mere coincidence that these countries went off the deep end into religiosity and ultra-nationalism? But if Uziq is to be believed, it's all the EU's fault alright. I suppose that for you dimwits that's a passable explanation.

The issue isn't Hungary and other peripheral states collapsing into fascism, its that the President of the EU decided to behave like a dictator.
Thats the big deal in recent times.

Us dimwits need an explanation for this, is it that she's stupid or a Hitler in waiting?

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

If there's one thing I learned recently on BF2S is that the experiences of old people don't matter.

Old people are selfish cowards who enjoy COVID because it lets them live out their OCD with shoe boxes on their feet trying to get one more Christmas with their parents. I think that was what Jay was getting at.