Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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Taiwan, out of an abundance of caution, has decided to go into lockdown as the capital, Taipei, recorded its worst daily infection numbers since the start of the pandemic: 207. Yup, in a country of 25.5 million people, they are going into lockdown mode because 200+ reportedly tested positive for Covid-19 in one day. To date, TWELVE Taiwanese citizens have died of the coronavirus. Information are deemed trustworty because all data is posted live on their health department website withing 48 hours of collection from the National Health Insurance database and many news outlets are actively keeping an eye on this story.

This is apparently the FIRST such lockdown since the worldwide pandemic started. Taiwan has thusfar been able to contain the spread of Covid-19 so well among its population by a strict quarantine procedure by all travelers and an efficient Universal Healthcare System where all patient information is kept in a single national database .
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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Bisbee wrote: Sun May 16, 2021 11:29 pm This is apparently the FIRST such lockdown since the worldwide pandemic started. Taiwan has thus far been able to contain the spread of Covid-19 so well among its population by a strict quarantine procedure by all travelers and an efficient Universal Healthcare System where all patient information is kept in a single national database .
Last week, Health and Welfare Minister Chen Shih-chung said the island was in "critical condition," according to Taiwan's official Central News Agency (CNA). CNA reported the outbreak was first detected among pilots, but cases have since been found in the community. Taiwan is now reporting a number of clusters, including cases linked to hostess teahouses in Taipei and an amusement arcade in northeastern Yilan city.

The spike in cases caused some alarm in Taiwan, prompting some residents to rush to get vaccinated, CNA reported. After weeks of concern over low vaccination uptake, Chen said he was now worried stocks may run out, CNA reported.

The island has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the world, with fewer than 1% of its 23 million-strong population inoculated, according to data compiled by CNN. The elderly, medical personnel and other emergency or high-risk workers, as well as diplomats, police, care workers and some other professions are currently eligible for vaccination under the government program.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/17/asia/tai ... index.html

Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea show the benefits of a strong unitary government in high density countries over 50 semi-sovereign states in terms of quarantines and other public health measures. Hope Taiwan can get enough vaccine to immunize more of their population.


lurker wrote: Mon May 17, 2021 5:56 am meanwhile, here in the BEST-EST, FREE-EST nation in the world, yesterday (sunday, a slow day) JHU is reporting 16k new cases and 271 deaths. these numbers are as low as anything we've seen since this time last year, before we had 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, nay, FOUR THOUSAND DEATHS PER DAY. if The Fucked-up Goon hadn't decided to make it about him (everything in his world is about him), maybe those extra HALF-MILLION DEAD americans would be alive.
It's a lesson to Americans not to elected a narcissistic goon again to run the country, because you never know when a national emergency will hit. I doubt Americans will learn that lesson.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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Taiwanese are an opinionated lot. They like to argue with each other and talk as if their own position is unassailable. Yet when it comes to saving their own asses, they usually use their heads and choose self-preservation. The government has thus far been able to take advantage of that by providing raw data and information in real time via government websites while also providing a forum for critical feedback.

Americans? Not so much... American government is clearly not as transparent about its dealings and many people here seem willing to cut their nose off to spite their face.

I’ve posted this interview before but Audrey Tang, Minister of Digital Information, provides amazing insight into how modern government can work for people when tools of the internet are put to work sharing facts and dispelling misinformation:

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/onde ... o/2058645/
Image
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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Much-needed COVID-19 vaccines should be coming to Taiwan soon, the GAVI Vaccine Alliance said on Monday, as the chip-producing island's limited supplies run short during a spike in cases that has left the government scrambling for supplies.

A surge of coronavirus infections in Taiwan, one of the world's COVID-19 mitigation success stories, has led to its stock of 300,000 doses rapidly running out, with only about 1% of its 23 million people vaccinated.

Taiwan has been a model of how to control the pandemic but over the past week has reported more than 700 domestic cases, out of a total of 2,017 infections recorded in all, triggering panic buying at supermarkets as the government tightened curbs.

The GAVI Vaccine Alliance, which with the World Health Organization is jointly running the COVAX scheme to provide doses to countries that may have difficulties obtaining them, said more AstraZeneca vaccines were coming to Taiwan.
COVAX expects Taiwan should receive allocated doses by the end of June at the latest, the alliance said in a statement to Reuters.

"The target remains to have 76 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from AZ delivered between February and June to supply up to 80 countries and we expect next tranches of deliveries of vaccines to Taiwan soon," it said.

Taiwan has ordered 20 million vaccine doses, mostly from AstraZeneca Plc (AZN.L) but also from Moderna Inc (MRNA.O), though global shortages have curtailed supplies.

Taiwan has said it expects to get more than 1 million AstraZeneca shots via COVAX.
U.S. President Joe Biden announced on Monday he will send at least 20 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to other countries by the end of June, marking the first time the United States is sharing vaccines authorized for domestic use. read more

Biden announced he will send doses of the Pfizer Inc PFE.N/BioNTech SE , Moderna and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) vaccines, on top of 60 million AstraZeneca doses he had already planned to give to other countries.


The White House has not said which countries will receive the shots and the U.S. State Department did not respond when asked what specific assistance was being offered to Taiwan, which counts Washington as its most important security ally.

Taiwan only has AstraZeneca vaccines and last week health authorities stopped giving shots to people who are not on priority lists that include the elderly and medical staff.

AstraZeneca said that through the COVAX facility it was committed to broad and equitable access to the vaccine, including to supply Taiwan.

Moderna did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Taiwan Health Minister Chen Shih-chung told reporters there was "no new progress" to report on the arrival of more vaccines but that lots more would gradually be coming. He gave no details.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-paci ... 021-05-17/
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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ORIGIN STORY — The hypothesis that Covid-19 was leaked from a Wuhan lab has leaped from its original host — Trump administration officials and people dismissed as conspiracy theorists — into the body of mainstream debate. Last week, 18 leading scientists published a letter in the academic journal Science calling for further investigation to determine the origin of the pandemic that has killed 3.4 million people worldwide. “Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable,” the scientists wrote.

The letter echoes a similar call from WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. During a Senate hearing last week on the U.S. response to the pandemic, Anthony Fauci said he was “fully in favor of any further investigation of what went on in China” after sparring with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) about the origins of the virus. And this month, the former New York Times science reporters Nicholas Wade and Donald G. McNeil Jr. have written long essays on Medium outlining why they take the lab leak hypothesis seriously.

Nightly reached out to experts, two of whom signed the letter as well as others who have taken the opposite side in the public debate, to ask how credible they find the lab leak theory. Their edited responses are below.
IT’S POSSIBLE

“Much of the currently available information suggests that a lab-based origin of Covid-19 is plausible. There remains no sign of an intermediate animal host that could have passed the virus to humans in 2019. There is no evidence that live mammals were sold at the Wuhan seafood market in 2019, and none of hundreds of animal samples collected from that market had any trace of the virus. In other words, there is zero evidence that supports a zoonotic origin of the virus that excludes the involvement of research activity.

“There are copious precedents of pathogens leaking from labs — the original 2003 SARS virus leaked up to six times from labs across three countries. Consider that the SARS research and animal infection experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, for more than 10 years, were all performed at relatively low biosafety levels. It is currently not possible to tell from the genetic evidence whether the virus ever passed through a laboratory or a lab personnel.

“The question is: How did a virus, whose lineage is found only in southern China, make its way into humans in the metropolitan city of Wuhan, more than a thousand miles away? We know that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had possibly the greatest collection of SARS viruses from numerous trips across China. We know that they were working with a batch of viruses very closely related to SARS-CoV-2. Details of these viruses and the experiments performed with them have not been shared in a timely manner.” — Alina Chan, molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

“It is worthy of a careful, rigorous, unbiased, objective examination, based on relevant, verifiable data. There are a number of plausible scenarios embedded in this label, ‘lab leak,’ and importantly, they include an unrecognized infection of a well-intentioned lab worker attempting to recover or study new coronaviruses from bats. It does not imply malice or even necessarily awareness (of the accident). Lab accidents are much more common than any of us know, or would like to admit, and they occur worldwide and even in the most safe and secure labs. U.S. biosafety labs are by no means strangers to accidents; leaks of some of the most dangerous infectious agents have occurred at CDC and other U.S. government labs.” — David A. Relman, microbiologist at Stanford University
“The following lines of circumstantial evidence are noteworthy:

“The outbreak occurred in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people that does not contain horseshoe-bat colonies, and that is tens of kilometers from, and outside the flight range of, the nearest known horseshoe-bat colonies. Furthermore, the outbreak occurred at a time of year when horseshoe bats are in hibernation.

“The outbreak occurred in Wuhan, on the doorstep of the laboratory that conducts the world’s largest research project on horseshoe bat viruses and worked with the world’s closest sequenced relative of the outbreak virus. The laboratory actively searched for new horseshoe-bat viruses in horseshoe-bat colonies in caves in remote rural areas in Yunnan province, brought those new horseshoe-bat viruses to Wuhan, and then mass-produced, manipulated, and studied those new horseshoe-bat viruses, year-round, inside Wuhan.

“Documentary evidence establishes that the bat-SARS-related-coronavirus projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology used personal protective equipment (usually just gloves; sometimes not even gloves) and biosafety standards that would pose high risk of infection of field-collection, field-survey, or laboratory staff upon contact with a virus having the transmission properties of SARS-CoV-2.” — Richard Ebright, molecular biologist at Rutgers University
IT’S VERY UNLIKELY

“Coronaviruses in nature are immensely diverse and certainly capable of causing epidemics without human manipulation, for example SARS, OC34, and MERS viruses. Lab-manipulated viruses tend to be constructed using pieces from known viruses. SARS-CoV-2 does not closely resemble any previously characterized virus. When viruses have been in the freezer for many years, scientists can see the missing years of evolution in the viral genome. When viruses escaped from labs, they looked like viruses that had been kept in labs. When H1N1 reemerged in 1977, it was missing 27 years of evolution due its time in the deep freeze. The most probable origin scenario remains a natural zoonosis from bats or an intermediate animal host.” — Joel Wertheim, evolutionary biologist at the University of California San Diego

“Lab leak scenarios are obviously inconsistent with several established facts regarding the origin of SARS-CoV-2, including the fact that the majority of early cases were linked to different markets that sold wildlife or wildlife products in Wuhan. Theories on SARS-CoV-2 must also account for the fact that two distinct lineages of SARS-CoV-2 (lineage A and lineage B) were distributed at different Wuhan wildlife markets.

“The original SARS-CoV outbreaks in 2002-2004 were linked to the wildlife trade. Several independent sources indicate that wildlife species susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, including civets and raccoon dogs, were sold at the Huanan market and other wildlife markets in Wuhan. Linkage of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 to wildlife or the wildlife trade fully accounts for the fact that the majority of early Wuhan Covid-19 cases were linked to different wildlife markets in a straightforward manner. It provides simple explanations for the fact that two different genetic lineages of SARS-CoV-2 were linked to different markets.” — Robert Garry, virologist at Tulane Medical School

“The lab leak hypotheses remain speculative and unsupported — unlike the hypothesis of natural emergence, which is supported directly by epidemiological, serological and genomic data, and indirectly supported by precedence and ecological data. There are no examples of lab escapes of novel, previously unknown, viruses having led to outbreaks, let alone pandemics. Famous examples of SARS, H1N1 and Ebola were all caused by known viruses — which have already been ‘selected’ for their ability to infect humans — the same is not true for a virus randomly sampled by a researcher from a bat. We have a myriad of examples of natural zoonotic emergence events leading to human outbreaks — that include the emergence of SARS in November 2002 in China and the first detection of HKU-1 in January 2004, also in China. Note the timing of these coronavirus emergence events — all happened over the winter months, with both SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 happening in the month of November.” — Kristian Andersen, virologist at Scripps Research Institute
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/po ... sis-492915

It's beyond conspiracy status, it's being debated in the scientific community.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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I think the latest evidence that's been made public points towards the lab leak, noting that the Wuhan lab protocols were not high enough considering what they were working with as I understand it?

The real question might become was SARS CoV-2 man-made or not (NO, not in a weapon capacity, rather man-made in a research capacity!)?

P.S. Some of the research in Wuhan was funded by the US.
Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.

In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet.

Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic

What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.

“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists. (The State Department declined to comment on this and other details of the story.)
Last edited by DJD100 on Sat May 22, 2021 12:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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Considering that the purpose of the WIV is research into viruses endemic in wild animals and their possibility for human infection and defenses, it is necessary to reproduce these viruses in the lab and then study their effects on mice and monkeys... human surrogates. In this sense, these coronaviruses is intentionally man made if only for study. Bad luck or negligence may have allowed a human transmissible coronavirus endemic to bats to escape the WIV lab and start a worldwide pandemic with devastating human consequences. The circumstantial evidence so far seems pretty damning.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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Bisbee wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 3:47 pm Considering that the purpose of the WIV is research into viruses endemic in wild animals and their possibility for human infection and defenses, it is necessary to reproduce these viruses in the lab and then study their effects on mice and monkeys... human surrogates. In this sense, these coronaviruses is intentionally man made if only for study. Bad luck or negligence may have allowed a human transmissible coronavirus endemic to bats to escape the WIV lab and start a worldwide pandemic with devastating human consequences. The circumstantial evidence so far seems pretty damning.

Back in March of this year, Robert Redfield who was director of CDC under Trump and a well known virologist in his own right, publicly stated that he felt it came from a Chinese lab. I'm keeping an open mind, but the Chinese blocking WHO officials looking for the origins of the virus and not safeguarding potential evidence at the Wuhan fish market looks highly suspicious, maybe not the full smoking gun but worth a lot more investigation.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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In farness and as a word of caution, if the US was funding some of the research (and that looks likely), it's more accurate to say "a US funded lab in China" rather than a Chinese lab. Apparently, we need to be very cautions about how we describe the origin so those from any particular country are not beaten for it by pea brained fuckheads. I'm more than a little concerned that we may have a wave of the mutation originating in India this fall and we will see a corresponding reaction from said fuckheads. Not that they believe the virus is real, mind you, but bashing people over the head for its fake existence seems way too en vogue. What a world we live in...

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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Lab created or not. Mother nature is making a run with it determined to wipe out the human existence on this planet. With the viruses ability to mutate into new variants as most corona viruses do this one seems to have a much better ability to mutate faster than others it looks like we will be having to do booster shots forever.
And unfortunately there are perhaps millions of other viruses out there.
I don't doubt the US Army had a hand in this or have been doing similar lab research.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,”

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2741
I know more than I want to know about the kinds of research once done at Ft. Detrick. The early days of biowarfare research involved a lot of work with wild pathogens. Just to get a handle on infection mechanisms, transmission vectors, incubation periods, symptoms, you name it. Mother Nature has had millennia to tweak and adapt her chosen pathogens to defeat the human immune system and hygiene practices. Wise folk learn from observation.

So could it be a completely wild-type virus, and still escape a research lab? Absolutely.

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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This is a 2004 story from the scientific journal Genome Biology about the original SARS virus, SARS Covid. "SARS escaped Beijing lab twice".
The latest outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in China, with eight confirmed or suspected cases so far and hundreds quarantined, involves two researchers who were working with the virus in a Beijing research lab, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday (April 26).

"We suspect two people, a 26-year-old female postgraduate student and a 31-year-old male postdoc, were both infected, apparently in two separate incidents," Bob Dietz, WHO spokesman in Beijing, told us.

The woman was admitted to hospital on April 4, but the man apparently became infected independently 2 weeks later, being hospitalized on April 17. Both worked at the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing, part of China's Center for Disease Control.

At a news conference in Manila this morning, Associated Press reported, WHO Western Pacific Regional Director Shigeru Omi criticized the laboratory's safeguards and said the authorities did not know yet whether any foreigners had been carrying out medical research in the facility and had since left the country. Laboratory safety "is a serious issue that has to be addressed," he said. "We have to remain very vigilant."

China has level three research guidelines and rules in place for handling the SARS virus, which are "of acceptable quality" to WHO, Dietz told us. But "it's a question of procedures and equipment. Frankly we are going to go in now a take a very close look," he said.

"We have a team of two or three international experts that's arriving in a day or two. They are going to go into the labs with Ministry of Health people and find out what happened here," Dietz said.

"We've been told we'll have full access, be able to test all the surfaces, interview people who worked there, and look at documentation to find out what was being done," Dietz said. "We're not releasing the names of the experts yet, but once you see the names you'll recognize them. They will be international experts from the relevant disciplines."

In the meantime, the lab has been closed, and the 200 staff have been put in isolation in a hotel near another lab in Cham Ping, about 20 kilometers North of Beijing. China is rushing its own investigative teams to check lab security, according to state media.

Antoine Danchin, an epidemiologist with the Hong Kong University-Pasteur Research Center, who studied the SARS epidemic in Hong Kong, told us the latest incidents were probably the result of lab accidents.

"Normally, it's not possible to contaminate people even under level two confinement, if the security rules are obeyed, with the appropriate hoods, and so on," Danchin said. SARS work requires level three. "So it suggests there has been some mishandling of something."

"The lab might have all the right rules, but the people may not comply! For example, notebooks are not supposed to be taken out, a lot of things like that. A virus doesn't jump on people!" Danchin said. However WHO Beijing is relatively sanguine about the current threat, despite the fact that the 26-year-old infected had taken a long journey on the country's rail network. The index cases are known, and contacts had been traced, Dietz said. "We see no significant public health threat at this point."
https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com ... 0040427-03
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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Beers, biryanis and even "Tinder boosts" are up for grabs as countries around the world try to encourage hesitant people to get a Covid-19 vaccine.

Scientists say at least 65%-70% of the population need to be immunised to reach "herd immunity" - when enough of a population has protection against an infection that it stops being able to spread.

But there are fears some groups - especially young people - may be more hesitant about getting a jab.

To tackle vaccine hesitancy, companies as well as local and government officials in different countries are dreaming up eye-catching schemes to attract those unsure about getting jabbed to come forward.

Officials across the US - which is trying to give 70% of adults at least one shot of the vaccine by 4 July - have various handouts to encourage people to get vaccinated.

The latest government scheme will allow dating app users who have been vaccinated to get a "vaccination badge" and special benefits on their profile.

The White House is partnering with several prominent dating platforms including Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble to give access to premium content to those who can prove they have been vaccinated, it said in a statement.

Getting the shot may also do more for lovers than keep them healthy, the White House added.

"According to research from OKCupid, people who are vaccinated or plan to get vaccinated receive 14% more Matches than people who don't plan to get vaccinated," it revealed.

Among the extra incentives being offered by Tinder, for example, is access to the "Super Like" feature to "help them stand out among potential matches", the White House said.

Asked by the BBC if the scheme could be extended other countries, a Tinder spokesperson said: "We are looking into ways we can best share information and resources around the vaccine to our members around the world."

The state of New Jersey has launched "Shot and a Beer", a scheme offering a free beer to those who get their first dose in May. To claim a drink, those who have been jabbed must take their vaccination card to one of 13 participating breweries.

Some states have been offering financial incentives to boost jab take-up.

New Yorkers who get Covid-19 shots next week will receive free lottery scratch cards with a chance to win $5m (£3.5m), State Governor Andre Cuomo announced on Thursday.

The scheme, called "Vax & Scratch", will allow those who get vaccinated to receive a $20 lottery ticket

"The chances of winning something are one in nine," Governor Cuomo said. "It's a situation where everyone wins."

Some companies are using more unconventional ways to encourage people to get vaccinated.

The Greenhouse of Walled Lake, a marijuana dispensary in Michigan, is giving out "pot for shots". Since launching in February, the firm has handed out over 35,000 free joints, according to owner Jerry Millen.

"It's been overwhelming," Mr Millen told the BBC. "I thought, what a good way to reward people who are getting the vaccination."

Officials in Dubai have adopted a healthier scheme to encourage people to get vaccinated.

Residents who have been fully vaccinated will be allowed a fortnight's gym membership, The National reports.

The "Everyone is Responsible for Everyone" scheme will give them access to a number of popular fitness centres, the newspaper says.

In the Indian city of Rajkot, Gujarat, goldsmiths have banded together to give women free gold nose pins for getting the jab, while men are offered a hand blender, the ANI news agency reported.

And a kitchen in the city of Vizianagaram, Andhra Pradesh, is handing out free biryani to those who have been jabbed, according to The Hans newspaper.

"I feel that it's my responsibility to encourage the vaccination to protect the society from Covid. So I am giving free biryani for the people who are vaccinated," the newspaper quoted Kolagatla Pratap, who runs the restaurant, as saying.

Despite the efforts to incentivise people to get jabbed, some behavioural scientists question how effective the schemes will be.

The incentives risk being "a distraction and it could be counterproductive", Susan Michie, a Professor of Health Psychology at University College London and a adviser to the UK government on Covid-19, tells the BBC.

She says the most effective way to ensure people get the vaccine in the UK has been the "intrinsic motivation" of "caring for the community".

But, she says, if you offer people the "extrinsic motivation" of rewards, "it undermines the whole thing".

"It's about what we do as a whole population. It's not about individuals," she says. "We want people to understand why they're doing it: they're not doing it for a bit of money or a bit of beer."

She fears people might be less likely to get a "booster" jab in future if the reward is no longer there.

"Those are going to be the powerful motivators that will go on over time."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-57201111
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2744
Well, let's see...

The Chinese government is not open about anything, they commonly lie about everything (Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong, South China Sea, Uighurs, SOnic Weapons vs India etc), they have no concept of intellectual property and steal/counterfeit everything they can from anyone they can, plus they can't even launch their space station parts without endangering the world with uncontrollable debris reentry, so why should we believe they are capable of running a lab full of deadly viruses safely?

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2745
Maybe because they are the only country able to produce the parts and assemble that iPhone you are thumb-typing on?
They are also now on Mars, ladies and gentlemen...
Image
But yes, I agree, their government lies.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2749
Bisbee wrote: Mon May 24, 2021 4:40 am Maybe because they are the only country able to produce the parts and assemble that iPhone you are thumb-typing on?
They are also now on Mars, ladies and gentlemen...
But yes, I agree, their government lies.
Ha, well ALL governments lie for sure, though China more than most!

True, they likely hacked NASA...

iPhone, nope, I mostly left the proprietary Apple-verse behind long ago, Moto G Power here, battery life for days and days (and relatively simple battery replacement too!).

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2750
Parts of the iPhone are made in different countries, but most are probably assembled at Foxconn in Shanghai, China. The US government has already banned purchase of Huawei, ZTE and Xiaomi mobile phones from China because of those companies links to the Chinese military. There has been pressure on Tim Cook to bring back manufacturing of "America's" mobile phone to the US.

A US intelligence report stated that three workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were ill in November 2019 with symptoms similar to COVID or a seasonal infection and the three required hospitalization. No evidence on what they had but it was serious enough to be hospitalized. The Wuhan Institute studies horseshoe bats which scientists say is the source of the virus. Dr Fauci and others are saying it deserves investigation.

China has been pushing all kinds of false information, they twisted a scientific study to say the virus started in Italy and not China, they said US citizens and US soldiers brought the virus to Wuhan from a lab at Fort Detrick, New Jersey.

China doesn't want to lose face with underdeveloped countries if they admit it came from a lab or an unregulated animal market. Instead they use every technique of misinformation which I expect to continue indefinitely.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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