hah! That's still a thing in the UK? :)
My impression (which may be wrong) is that lots of things are covered well by taxes, like health, some education, public infra, the usual. Also (which may be wrong), my impression is that the UK has become more progressive since, at least in some ways. The Randians and evangelicals, for example, don't seem to have the same foothold as in the US. But I could have the wrong impression.
Then again, maybe Brexit was seeded by Thatcher (1988).
(Not sure what to make of all the public camera coverage.)

The UK is a neoliberal power player due to having the largest financial markets in the world. They eclipse NY. Yes, they do offer bread and circuses. That's great, but let's not confuse that with socialism.

Holy cow... @Benkei :yikes:

Boris Johnson's secret plot to invade The Netherlands with British forces and seize Covid vaccines

Disgraced and humiliated former Prime Minister Boris Johnson drew up a half-brained secret plot to invade The Netherlands and swipe Covid-19 vaccine supplies, he happily reveals in his ludicrous new memoir.

The brazen ex-PM’s shameless memoir, titled ‘Unleashed’, details just how detached from reality the ludicrous Tory leader had become during one of the worst crises to ever befall the UK. Johnson claims he devised plans for the UK armed forces’ elite units to covertly raid canals in The Netherlands and seize vaccines, following what the bumbling toff claims were months of “futile” negotiations with European Union leaders to release five million Covid jabs.

It's easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission. Especially if it's the Netherlands.

:rofl:

The 1665/6 history of Eyam (Derbyshire Dales, UK) is kind of inspiring.
Their actions during the Plague likely saved a large number of lives.

Eyam » 1665 plague outbreak
Eyam Village in the Peak District » Plague

Idiotic mask-refusers of today could learn a thing or two, but they likely won't.

212,000 lives, $105 billion ...

Universal healthcare as pandemic preparedness: The lives and costs that could have been saved during the COVID-19 pandemic
^{— Alison P Galvani, Alyssa S Parpia, Abhishek Pandey, Meagan C Fitzpatrick · PNAS · Jun 13, 2022}

Study: More Than 335,000 Lives Could Have Been Saved During Pandemic if U.S. Had Universal Health Care
^{— Jenny Blair · Yale School of Medicine · Jun 20, 2022}

3-year-old data from the UK remains consistent with US data from 2022

Deaths involving COVID-19 by vaccination status, England: deaths occurring between 2 January and 2 July 2021
^{— Charlotte Bermingham, Jasper Morgan, Vahé Nafilyan · Office for National Statistics · Sep 13, 2021}



The Vaccination Effect on Covid-19 Deaths
^{— Martin Armstrong · Statista · Sep 13, 2021}

"At least six studies have reported T cell reactivity against SARS-CoV-2 in 20% to 50% of people with no known exposure to the virus." -- BMJ

With Germans, it's 1/3. In the middle of the epidemic everyone (including German doctors) wondered why Germany was having an easier time with the pandemic. A few speculated native immunity, which seemed nuts at the time because how would they have ever been exposed to this virus? Now we have a mystery to solve because it's confirmed that a significant portion of the human population is naturally resistant to COVID19.

How is that a mystery? T-cell reactivity to a virus can be learned from an infection of a different virus, a phenomenon known as cross-reactivity or heterologous immunity. Such cross-reactivity has been observed with regard to SARS-CoV-2 and Influenza A: https://insight.jci.org/articles/view/158308

How is that a mystery? — Benkei

Unfortunately, we don't know how it works. If pre-pandemic, you had an infection with one of the old coronaviruses, what are your chances of having resistance to one of the COVID-19 strains? If you had a flu shot, what are your chances? We don't know because that data isn't available.

What do you mean, we don't know how it works?

If viral strains are sufficiently similar in their immunodominant epitopes, then populations of cross-reactive T cells may be boosted by exposure to one strain and provide protection against infection by another at a later date. This type of pre-existing immunity may be important in the adaptive immune response to influenza and to coronaviruses. Patterns of recognition of epitopes by T cell clonotypes (a set of cells sharing the same T cell receptor) are represented as edges on a bipartite network. We describe different methods of constructing bipartite networks that exhibit cross-reactivity, and the dynamics of the T cell repertoire in conditions of homeostasis, infection and re-infection. Cross-reactivity may arise simply by chance, or because immunodominant epitopes of different strains are structurally similar. We introduce a circular space of epitopes, so that T cell cross-reactivity is a quantitative measure of the overlap between clonotypes that recognize similar (that is, close in epitope space) epitopes.

source= https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8472275/?utm_source=perplexity

What do you mean, we don't know how it works? — Benkei

If pre-pandemic, you had an infection with one of the old coronaviruses, what are your chances of having resistance to one of the COVID-19 strains? If you had a flu shot, what are your chances? — frank

That's equivalent to asking why some people get sicker then others. But there are models available to predict this. So again, not very mysterious just difficult to predict as there are a lot of confounding factors aside from immunilogical imprinting.

But there are models available to predict this — Benkei

Where? I've been looking into this for a while because I've been exposed countless times and never got it. I'd like to know if someone has done some substantial work on it.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2023.1108303/full

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2024.1377259/full

Are you serious?

Sorry, I'm researching some things on cancer at the same time and chatgpt got confused offering examples. IEDB.org is an option if you can figure out how to use it.

Frontline healthcare workers do appear to have a higher likelihood of cross-reactivity even for viruses they never had before.This is suggestive but not definitive: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55989-4

Cool :up:

Well that sucks

Long COVID: SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Accumulation Linked to Long-Lasting Brain Effects
^{— Helmholtz Munich · Nov 29, 2024}
Persistence of spike protein at the skull-meninges-brain axis may contribute to the neurological sequelae of COVID-19
^{— Rong, Mai, Ebert, Kapoor et al · Helmholtz Munich & Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität · Dec 11, 2024}

Animation (— Ali Max Erturk · Nov 29, 2024 · 1m:33s)

A bit more fatigue after infection it seems:

Incidence and Prevalence of Post-COVID-19 Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: A Report from the Observational RECOVER-Adult Study
^{— Suzanne D Vernon, Tianyu Zheng, Hyungrok Do, et al · NIH · Jan 13, 2025}

About 5 years ago I wrote that the pandemic was China’s Chernobyl, one of the worst industrial disasters ever.

But virtue-signalling even into death and tyranny is the modern impulse. For some reason officials wanted us to believe the virus came from a market, even though there was a coronavirus research lab just down the street. I recall they blamed the innocent pangolin. For some reason many of us believed it.

Remember that those institutions who cry most about misinformation are greatest historical purveyors of it. Here’s another example we can add to the list. The German, British, American, and the Chinese governments knew about the origin of the virus but spread misinformation instead.

A classified dossier compiled by Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, was passed to then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the start of the outbreak in March 2020 which stated: 'It is now beyond reasonable doubt that Covid-19 was engineered in the Wuhan Institute of Virology'.

The file, marked 'Secret – Recipient's Eyes Only' argued that Beijing was pushing a fake narrative that the virus had originated in an animal market. The dossier, compiled by a group of eminent academics and intelligence experts and seen by The Mail on Sunday, said China even retrospectively manipulated viral samples to give credence to the deception.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14503159/Labour-Wuhan-lab-leak-pandemic-Boris-johnson.html

Now we know for certain that influential scientific journals, the “experts” and authorities whom we are taught to listen to, privately believed the lab-leak theory but publicly refuted it.

German spy agency believed COVID started in a lab

Let's say China is to blame. What is Trump going to do about it?

Which theory did you believe, and why?

I thought there was a 50/50 chance it came from a Chinese lab when it first hit. Now I think there's probably a 70% chance it came from a lab.

, the theories, speculation and available evidence sure have pointed in whatever directions over time. Fifty/fifty seems as good a guess as any. Or 33% with a third possibility.

Let's say China is to blame. What is Trump going to do about it?

Trump always said it was the China virus, in a snide way. Implying that it was a Chinese plot, dastedly deed, or something. The lab theory is right up his street.

They’re called the security services for a reason. And what you are doing posting articles from the gutter press here, I don’t know.

After five years of one of the worst pandemics we humans faced, I still meet people who suffer from 'long COVID' or 'long-haul' COVID.

Long COVID comes after the initial infection. The main consequence is that when the symptoms disappear, then they appear again. Most of the symptoms are fatigue, shortness of breath, and sleep disorder. Long COVID can last years, or possibly lifelong...

According to Long COVID science, research and policy, the cumulative global incidence of long COVID is around 400 million individuals.

Main issue and inconvenient: There are no standardised tests to determine if symptoms persisting after COVID-19 infection are due to long COVID. It seems difficult to determine the causes and how to approach it. We only have one area in a hospital in Barcelona that takes care of it. How does it work in your countries?

Work-related impacts: The impact of long COVID on people's ability to work is large. But it is not recognised as a paid sick day (at least here) yet...

COVID is still an issue, even though we are no longer talking about it...

Now we know for certain that influential scientific journals, the “experts” and authorities whom we are taught to listen to, privately believed the lab-leak theory but publicly refuted it. — NOS4A2

Those pushing for gain of function research and involved even distantly to the Wuhan lab had the most incentive to hide it. So for a long time the media went with it.

The most likely explanation is simply a lab accident.