peterms

With previous incidents, I gather it took a while to establish what had happened and how. Your claim rests on people already knowing what happened, and choosing to cover it up. In other words, you posit a conspiracy, in order to suggest that other people believe there is a conspiracy. Apart from the logical fallacy, circular reasoning and straw man, I wonder why you feel the need to do this?

The general view is that the markets are the most likely. However, you'd be foolish to discount possible leaks from the facilities where these things are developed. Perhaps you know that SARS is reported to have escaped from labs on six occasions, four of them in China. And foot and mouth is reported to have escaped some years back from a Pirbright lab, which would help explain why they are very quick to refute any suggestions of a connection between this and their current work. Mistakes happen, even at places dealing with the deadliest things, where the need for the highest levels of security is well understood. Like the two people who caught smallpox in Birmingham Medical School, where the virus was being grown for research. What I find difficult to understand is why some people see a comment about possible mistakes and accidents, and squeal "Conspiracy theory! Tin foil!". A conspiracy is the very opposite of an accident. You do see that, don't you?

Perhaps you have misread what I wrote, and conflated it with something you have read elsewhere. As I said, the Pirbright patent was an example of people developing coronaviruses, in that case of a type different to the one in the news. The point was simply to illustrate that people are developing viruses in various places for various reasons, in support of the notion that the one in question may have been developed and have somehow escaped. To present this as being a suggestion that the Pirbright one is the same, or the cause of the current epidemic, is a distortion of what I wrote, and to then frame it as a "conspiracy theory" is frankly weird. Do you have a view on the possibility that there may be a connection between research on viruses carried by bats in an advanced virology clinic in Wuhan, and the emergence of a virus linked to bats, also in Wuhan, or do you think it's a simple coincidence?

There is a conspiracy theory doing the rounds, ie that it was developed as biowarfare. That is very different from what I said. Presumably the PIrbright thing refers to that. The Wuhan research centre does research on viruses which can cross from bats to other animals, I gather, among other things. It is the most biosecure facility in China, and therefore works on the more dangerous things, including things that can cross to humans. It's not a great leap of the imagination, nor a conspiracy theory, to think that some failure in security procedures may have allowed something to escape. In fact, ruling out such a possibility would seem very odd. Why would you discount such a thing, out of hand?

I agree. But also, when someone mistimes a tackle it doesn't mean it is a foul. It may be, it may not. If he was never likely to get the ball, or went in flailing wildly, I'd agree it would be a foul, but he had every chance of getting it, was clearly aiming at the ball, and didn't show undue aggression or use disproportionate force, in my view. It also didn't affect that particular play - Engels got the header and missed, and the contact didn't affect either of those two things. So careless play rather than dangerous or reckless play? That's a stronger argument than the red card view. I haven't seen any discussion of it other than on here. I'd be interested in hearing a couple of refs outline their thinking on cases like this. You want to minimise injuries, while allowing physical challenges and going for disputed balls. Incidents like this are useful in showing what should and shouldn't be judged a foul.

Goalies punching at crosses while opponents try to head them is dangerous play? No. It's a situation in which accidents and injuries can occur. Like tackling.

Keepers do get sent off. They get more protection because of the history of injuries down the years. Some think they now get too much protection. In the same way that a clash of heads isn't automatically a foul, a clash of any other part of the body also isn't automatically so. It looked to me like an accident and an honest attempt to go for the ball. Do you think it was intentional?

Must say I don't see the Engels incident as a penalty. They both go for it, and Engels gets hit. It doesn't seem intentional, but calling it "punched him in the face" makes it sound so. If it was a clash of heads, as it would be if it was two outfield players, you wouldn't say one player nutted the other in the face, unless you thought that was the intent. I think the keeper went for the ball, mistimed it, and hit him without meaning to. It happens.

There are suggestions that the virus was developed deliberately, perhaps as a treatment for something, and that something went wrong. For example, here is a patent taken out a year ago for presumably a different coronavirus, developed to treat bronchial disease in poultry.

That tool Levy, again. Incomprehensible that any management figure, in any occupation, would behave in this way to his/her staff. Ever. If you ever work for such a person, leave, asap.

Maradona's pretty wide these days, and probably available?

And the hair all over everything, and wanting pre-shredded mozzarella, and the way she says "posta". She speaks like she's sedated. I guess she'd be even more smug otherwise. But on the bright side, it gives me an idea for a video about cooking with someone from an Edinburgh housing estate: Cooking With Harris Pilton.

It's only Canada as far as I know. I'm interested that the reality of customer preference, at least there, doesn't fit the impression we are given that these things are much in demand. Avoiding these products and having a plant-based diet are in no sense incompatible or contradictory, but the corporations would have us think that eating plant-based means buying their (very profitable) sludge.

More on pretend burgers: Tim Hortons removes Beyond Meat offerings from remaining locations I've never tried them, and never will, but it's interesting that the customer demand which has been much talked up recently doesn't seem to be present in these locations. It would be good if people who want to avoid meat would eat plants, and stay away from extruded sludge churned out in factories, like a tribute act to the very worst (wurst?) sausages.

That vaguely rings a bell, but I'm not at all sure. Any such request should be turned down. Especially in light of the further emails reported today, which are more damning and suggest that several people were very well aware of the dangers.