rotting sea cow

I mean that having PCR positive (having the virus in your upper airways) doesn't mean that you are going to get sick (i.e. have COVID by some clinical definition). I'm aware it has been talked before, but as more people get vaccinated and we reopen cases of SARS-CoV-2 positive are going to be more common (or should be if testing continues), but hopefully few end in the hospital.

Well, a prominent virologist in Germany is saying that people are going to become immune either via vaccination or via infection, which means that probably vaccines cannot completely curtail transmission but with them you can avoid to get severely sick. Choose wisely people! As I said before, is past due to make the distinction between being PCR positive and having COVID. It's not the same.

The german interior minister Seehofer is also infected. He hadn't received the second dose thought. I think people need to make a distinction between being PCR positive and having COVID19 https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-german-interior-minister-horst-seehofer-tests-positive/a-57482202

First they need to setup the methane and oxigen plant, which won't be available immediately. How is the plan for that? I don't follow things too closely. You are reading it wrong. The Lunar Starship doesn't come back, but it goes from the Gateway to the Moon surface and back. Notice this maneuver is energy expensive, in comparison to the Apollo scheme. The 11 launches are necessary because you need 5 to fuel the Lunar Starship in LEO so it can reach the lunar orbit. Another tanker to LEO and 5 more launches to get the tanker to the Gateway so it can transfer enough fuel to the Lunar Starship so the later can get to the surface and back. It sounds about right. It might be they are assuming a different more efficient orbit than the Gateway. OK, I see. It might be that the Gateway is detrimental from the energy perspective. There have been critics before.

It's the same in Europe and it's BULLSHIT and tells you that the "vaccine passports" has nothing to do with public health but with politics, both internal and external.

Even in that, SpaceX has really little competition. They have completely turned over the space industry. Other launch actors are mostly stuck with government payloads or with particular niches, like small payloads, etc. Many countries are companies are now trying to catch with SpaceX developing similar and alternative designs and well, SpaceX is developing the next generation. No country or company is thinking in anything remotely similar. The weak point for interplanetary travel using the Starship concept (either metalox or hydrolox) is the huge logistical challenge to launch that many refueling missions. For example. This is apparently the scheme to get the Lunar Starship to the Moon. https://imgur.com/a/4J0yb20 Of course NASA thinks it's feasible, but if 17/18 launches are required to get to the Moon, how many are required to get to Mars? I think the only competition in that respect might arrive from nuclear powered space ships assembled in LEO by relatively modest (and cheap!) rockets.

Yeah, I agree. Full stop to air travel for one or two months. Trace all visitor from China and others with growing outbreaks (chinese and otherwise). It might have worked and save us of much pain. It might have not but it could have still delayed the first wave long enough to have better preparations in place. Air travel is still disrupted now, so... hardly any loss. If glass candles existed.... but on the other hand people warned that this virus had all the landmarks of a pandemic one.

In China worked because the outbreak was regional and the rest of the country could provide assistance. It wasn't the case in most countries. I agree that it still requires high compliance. Well, one of the problems of COVID is the IFR is high enough to be pose a severe public health threat, but still low enough that the menace seem negligible at individual level, specially considering the age stratification. My opinion is that health authorities and policy makers were either sleeping or were stupid/evil. The time for harsh measures was 24 Jan 2020 at the latest. This was people with more knowledge were writing at that time https://threader.app/thread/1220919589623803905 EDIT: An old article about the topic https://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2020/03/why-was-it-so-hard-to-raise-the-alarm-on-coronavirus.html

I don't think it was feasible in Europe after February 2020 or so. For example, the very harsh Spanish and Italian lockdowns were never able to cut the transmission chains to a level where eradication seemed possible. Even if some countries tried even harder, the ones who didn't or those were measured failed would doom the others sooner or later. At that point you would have to choose between maintaining the Union or try manage the crisis. Another possibility would have been a harsh lockdown amid summer 2020 where spread was quite minimal. This was also impossible to sell politically.

As a matter of fact China is doing a lot of launches. Only last year US surpassed China in the number of launches thanks to SpaceX. China still has a relatively high failure rate and first stages often fall in their own territory and damage to property is not unheard. Most of the launch sites are in the west of the country and launches are typically towards the east and pass over densely populated regions. But it's true, other countries are also at fault. I didn't know about the Washington incident. I remember a different one in Uruguay or Paraguay where the second stage of a Falcon 9 fell over a house and there were interesting tidbit about it. In the end US embassy had to intervene so the locals didn't start selling advanced technology. Other "out-of-control" satellites also fall to the ground. Yes, it's not the best practice and hopefully will be regulated. However, this widely publicized incident hid something more serious: China launched the rocket in the general direction towards the ISS It's highly unlikely they didn't realize that. As you may know, China was explicitly left outside of the ISS treaty and the political hurt is still felt.

Lot of people freaked out because the "out-of-control" chinese rocket stage without realizing that similar things happen relatively often. What it doesn't happen often is this and it might have been intentional.

Could you please explain it a little bit more? What do the Russians have to do with all of this? I saw somewhere that speculation that Bill-Melinda divorce *might* have something to do with Epstein, but as with many things found in the interwebs I didn't even give it a second though. Is there really a connection? That for sure. Maybe QAnon was right all along...

There are probably other factors of course. But if there are vaccines available and they are easy to get uptake is going to grow. There are a number of places in the World with similar experiences, Maldives, Seychelles, maybe others. See the example that JoannaL gave. They just send a mobile team to the people and uptake was excellent. Governments needs to be smarter at approaching this. If people have to miss work to get the vaccine, they might not take the later. If they are afraid they will miss work because of side effects, they might not take the vaccine. If people feel is too much paperwork or too complicated to make appointments they might not get the vaccine. Or they have to travel too far from the day-to-day errands. Etc. Governments are assuming that COVID19 is a big thing for everybody when for most of the people is just another complication in their difficult lives. In the case of Gibraltar, I'd guess their economy is highly dependent at the individual level of traveling, so not being vaccinated is a thing it affects them directly.

That is an excellent initiative! Availability and accessibility.

For some reason the prevailing narrative on this issues has been between vaxxers and anti-vaxxers and how to vaxx the later category. Maybe I'm mistaken but hard-core antivaxxers (I've never met one) are just a tiny, loud and mostly privileged minority who haven't really felt the burden of the pandemic. One the other hand, you have a no so small minority of people without readily access to health care, who often live in appalling conditions and their children have been practically shut out of the educational system. These people have really felt the burden of the pandemic. I hear how the ICUs in Germany are full of people of immigrant backgrounds, how many children haven't learn to read and write because of school closures (90000 in UK, 100 millions in the world). How the pandemic have driven them deeper in poverty. This should be the focus of the discourse, imho. At least in parts of US, it seems that getting the vaccines is as easy as walking in. In Europe is otherwise. There is often a lot of paperwork involved and little effort to reach out and help the migrant communities. There is no word how they plan to vaccinate the millions of undocumented migrants because they aren't part of the social security system. The current and planned policies might just further alienate them from the society at large, unless the vaccination campaign is accompanied with a big social drive to tackle those issues. I don't see that happening. So every time you see problems with the vaccine uptake, ask yourself how different minorities are being approached. Because they are the ones who will be hit harder - again - in case of a new outbreak and they often perform key invisible jobs in the society like mopping the floors of that nursing home.