rodshaw
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It’s interesting to compare the current pandemic with previous ones.
Asian flu in the late 50s (which I remember very vaguely) – an estimated 1-4 million deaths worldwide. A vaccine was developed within a few months. Lasted a couple of years and then went more or less dormant until it morphed into
Hong Kong flu late 60s (which I don’t remember at all actually) – again lasted a couple of years with an estimated 1-4 million deaths. A vaccine was again developed after a few months. Eventually changed into a weaker form and was dealt with from then on by the annual flu vaccine.
I don’t remember much fuss in the UK about those two though.
So we could well see Covid lasting for another year or so and then going quiet…until the next one.US freight infrastructure is something else entirely. Maintenance? What maintenance?
There are lots of video clips like this:
I was amazed to get asked last week to make a jab appointment for this week. I’m having it on Wednesday. I’m only just 70. Also it’s at a local GP practice, though not the one I’m registered with.
Could this mean that a lot of older or vulnerable people have decided not to have it and they’ve moved down early to the people in group 4?
I was also surprised by a stat that said nearly half a million people have had their second jabs. How can this be? Hardly a month has passed since they started the rollout, let alone 12 weeks.
The pet industry is, I suppose, like any other in capitalism – producing ever different and supposedly more appealing products to keep buyers hooked. I daresay there’s a lot of industry-induced guilt associated with keeping pets too, just like with bringing up children.
Meanwhile, not that I dislike animals, but I prefer inanimate pets in the form of model trains. They only need feeding with modest amounts of electricity, they don’t wee on the grass and they only move when you want them to (well, usually anyway). Though that industry is equally mad.
Eating insects and other small creatures may well become more normal but obviously isn’t any good for the seemingly growing number of vegetarians.
Rational decisions on the keeping and eating of animals can only be made when the pressures of capitalism are no longer there.
It’s consciousness, Jim, but not as we know it.
In a way this kind of thing is the same as, for example, the cells of our body ‘knowing’ where to go inside us so we stay more or less in shape. Or, for that matter, a computer program ‘knowing’ the difference between a click and a double click.
There is some kind of programming going on but it would also be interesting to know if there were any self-awareness involved.Maybe they are socialists by nature.
There are people who think you kill a plant when you pick it and eat it, and that it screams.
If more people start going down this way soon there’ll be nothing left to eat.“..in barely sixty years socialism has won itself a position which makes its victory absolutely certain.”
Try telling the young ones that today, they’ll not believe you.
According to YouGov a majority who expressed an opinion now think the decision to leave was wrong:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-55416939I think “higher level” football in a socialist society would maybe be played at the level of whatever administrative regions were set up, with players from their own locality. I do somehow envisage these as being more at county level than current national level.
But if some existing nations were more or less kept as is for administrative purposes, there’d be nothing to stop people from still having a “national” footie team.
“Welcome to the first World Cup final of the socialist era, where the team formerly known as England take on the team formerly known as Brazil…”
Maybe not. Anyway I wouldn’t be sure of the wisdom of teams in any sport travelling halfway round the world to play one another.“She said: “There’s nothing wrong with the values of the Conservative party, which is to create more wealth … ”
Ho-hum, that shows the limits of her politics. As if a level playing field would ever be reached, for black, white or anywhere in between, by any party creating more wealth, assuming they were capable of that.
“But, surely, just as we don’t campaign for reforms even if they do improve things for workers so we don’t campaign against reforms that make things worse — especially as in both the above cases this would involve campaigning and voting for a status quo which is far from satisfactory.
So, basically, we campaign only for socialism and neither for nor against particular reforms, while denouncing some proposed reforms as counter-productive and/or anti- working-class.”
Actually, ALB, I was thinking in terms not of campaigning as such, which of course the WSM wouldn’t do, but of individual members voting, in much the same way as a future socialist MP might be instructed to vote for or against a specific reform without compromising their anti-reformist stance. It’s all water under the bridge now, but when things get made worse and nobody seems to benefit it’s a bit hard trying to tell people to see the bigger picture and that remaining in the EU would have been no big deal.
But that’s the story of our political lives, I suppose.
From a working-class point of view, was leave/remain the non-issue we said it would be? In terms of the WSM’s core aim of abolishing capitalism, obviously it was, but there are so many ways things are going to be more awkward for a lot of people. Even the problems for business and trade are going to cascade down to the workers – more general frustration all round.
Also, if many of the British working class as a whole will be worse off, to balance that out is there any section of the working class anywhere in the world that will be better off?
In other words, with hindsight could we have regarded voting remain as a ‘beneficial reform’, or at least an attempt to not make things worse?
Problem with this ‘rational attitude’ is, if it’s rational for you to wait and see what happens to other people, it’s also rational for them to wait and see what happens to you, ergo, it’s a quasi-antivaxxer argument.
I disagree. As we are seeing by people’s different attitudes here, some think it’s rational for them to wait, some think it’s rational to take the plunge. It may depend on your circumstances. If you have a fairly healthy diet and lifestyle, live in a relatively low-risk area and are obeying the social distancing rules, it may be more rational to wait if you’re afraid of potential long-term side effects. If you have bad health and/or diet, live in a more high-risk area or do a high-risk job, it’s probably more rational to have the vaccine.
I think far more people will consider it reasonble to have the vaccine than to wait.
Whether to be a guinea pig, or be one of the first in line for a new treatment, I’m sure would be one of the issues faced by people in a socialist society. It would be interesting to see how that played out. I daresay much like today, with some willing and some not, but without the financial and political complications. If only.
