jonattonyeah jesus. it’s -1 here today, 5 cm of snow, and the overnight low is -10 with a -14 windchill.
The General Covid19 Thread
That is Baltic 303!
oh i’m not happy. it’s 15 degrees below normal and we’re supposed to have a brutally long and cold winter again. last year was october to april and we haven’t had a proper summer since 2014. climate change has fucked the jet stream and we’re on the wrong side of it.
jonattonyeah i almost down voted you 
Do you live in Antartica 303?
Hey I get it. Neither are ideal even if moaning about clear skies seems daft. But we don’t have the infrastructure to support constant triple digits. The housing isn’t built for it; air conditioning is rare.
Furthermore, the places we could go to escape the heat - libraries, bars, coffee shops - ,the places with air conditioning, are all shuttered for indoor activities. We bake outdoors or we bake at home.
jonattonyeah for sure. we basically have the opposite issues. i’ve been running outside and going to patios to maintain my sanity, but as winter creeps in, running sucks at -25 and i’m not pumped about going into restaurants with the virus floating around (which is also likely to get worse with short, cold days).
Labour in NZ got over 50 % of the vote, so I’m sure they’ll be the next Venezuela soon.
My understanding is also that Venezuela is all eggs in one basket situation with oil.
- Edited
And we sanctioned the shit out of their oil companies. Here is a recent example…
On 28 January, the United States imposed sanctions on the Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company PDVSA to pressure Maduro to resign during the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis. … In February Maduro ordered PDVSA to move its European office to Moscow to protect PDVSA’s overseas assets from US sanctions.
we have a very simple play book for crushing socialism: cripple them with sanctions, leave them to deal with Russia, televise their shitty situation and say “look how bad it is folks!” Bernie wanted to classify sanctions as an act of war.
- Edited
From the BBC:
When Mr Chávez became president in 1999, he promised, among other things, to drive down Venezuela’s huge levels of inequality.
While he managed to reduce inequality during his time in power, some of the socialist policies he brought in backfired. Take price controls, for example, which were aimed at making basic goods more affordable to the poor by capping the price of flour, cooking oil and toiletries. The controls meant that many Venezuelan businesses stopped production because they no longer made a profit, eventually resulting in shortages.
A recent loosening of foreign currency controls originally brought in by President Chávez in 2003 has eased those shortages as traders can sell goods in dollars but that means they have again become largely unaffordable to the poor or those without access to the US currency.
Years of lack of investment in infrastructure further exacerbated by the more recent US sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector have crippled this key industry, which provides almost all of Venezuela’s government revenue.
I have to say, Andy Burnham has went up greatly in my estimation, he is the one speaking the most sense in all this and standing up for the working poor. Totally ridiculous that people earning high wages got an 80% furlough scheme while people on low wages are now getting two thirds. If you can’t afford to pay them, don’t take their jobs away.
Our middle-class Venezuelan friends don’t blame the US for their problems, they blame the state. They have came close to starvation and are moving to the US this year.
C_J Not surprising, they prob love America and want to be American. There’s no helping those people.
My original point was that the US have made it impossible for that country to thrive regardless of who was in charge. Its a conundrum for most developing nations, get in bed with the devil and sell your country out for prosperity or say fuck the oppressor, stick to your principles and let your country go to shit anyway.
There were middle class in America who blamed Obama for the crash in 2008, not the hedge funds and bankers on Wall St, the middle classes seem very confused at the best of times.
Branding large sections of society as one homogenous stereotype is a bit of a red flag mate. Imo.
LT42 My original point was that the US have made it impossible for that country to thrive regardless of who was in charge. Its a conundrum for most developing nations, get in bed with the devil and sell your country out for prosperity or say fuck the oppressor, stick to your principles and let your country go to shit anyway.
exactly. look at what the americans and the IMF did to jamaica as another shining example.
The Pfizer vaccine is already being manufactured…. it’s coming lads!
Can’t say I’ll be rushing out to put the vaccine in my arm just yet. I’ll wait and see how the first wave goes I reckon. There’s been some weird feedback from some trials of the ones in the States from Prof. Hotez. The fact they’re all being rushed isn’t helping either.
Jules72 Not working across the board for trial subjects, making some very sick, side effects etc. Hotez reckons even if one came next Summer it would be way too fast to roll out, a world record actually. We still don’t know enough about it and scientists are still disagreeing on certain aspects. The pressure to roll one out is immense and unfortunately profit margins are being put before safety.
Jules72 He’s talking specifically about trials done in the US also, I’m not aware of any details with Euro labs but there has to be similar outcomes as that’s how trials go. I’d just be wary of any company who says they have the answer given the time frames involved. Herd Immunity might increase, that’s a positive anyway.
Count me in for the vaccine.
And see you on the d-floor lads!
Do you want to know what my vaccine is?
Minerals.
So Ireland has 3 deaths on average per week most recently, but has implemented a 6 week lockdown…. complete overreaction imo
If the short term consequence is I can get back to ledging it at the coalface, then I’m all in 303.
303abuser Yeah that’s it, it’s too early to be diving in for me. Defo going to wait. Remains to be seen how it will work aswell in terms of “ledging it at the coalface”, are you going to have a barcode stamped on your neck to say you’ve had it? That whole era is yet to be known and judging by how things are being run now I can see it being another massive clusterfuck.
Brilliant
