Baksteen

If the blanket statement is made by doctors/scientists I'd call it ass-covering, but other than that I agree.

You can also skydive without the parachuting.

I don't know what the weather is like where you're at of course, but have a nice picnic perhaps? Knowing the size of your average American car you might even be able to picnic inside your vehicle...

Discuss openly about risks and the steps you take to manage them. I find it helps sometimes with people who do not know about skydiving and have the "you're insane / have a deahwish" knee-jerk reaction. When you counter with well-thought arguments, people eventually tend to get interested despite themselves and ask more questions. Downside is, you have to do this again with every new person, which takes a lot of time. I'm blessed with very supportive parents. Talking about risk management, precautions etc. helps them stay supportive. Well, except that my mom does not want to hear about CReW. When I told them I was going to take the FJC they just smiled, looked at each other and told me that that was exactly something they'd expect me to do. I'd get the idea, and I'd go do it. Funny thing is, approximately half the people I knew at the time agreed with my parents point of view, the other half reacted exactly opposite.

Well that's some comfort at least. I didn't know that.

Without bothering to do any actual research or fact-checking, I can imagine that the leap-frogging is cost driven, just like anything else. It should be way cheaper and easier to install a few cell towers here and there than put in thousands of kilometers of phone cabling. On the other hand, "green" energy is relatively expensive and needs specialised workers. Also, green energy is not always as green as it seems. A while back there were news reports of Dutch energy companies buying "green energy" certificates from their Norwegian counterparts, which had a surplus of them. Second example: when burning Biomass pellets in your environment-friendly Dutch CV-installation, it is good to know that the biomass pellets are actually mass produced by cutting down trees overseas, after which the pellets are transported by container ship to the country of destination. As to solar panels, there are stories about how a solar panel does not ëarn" its own carbon footprint back during its lifetime. Fortunately the technology is improving. Also, it is possible to "recycle" rare components from the old panels which are needing replacement.

In the Netherlands we're currently in semi-lockdown until at least the 19th of January. The total number of positive tests as reported in the media is currently at about 10K per day. Unacceptable for a nation of ~17-18M. As to reporting I would prefer that the RIVM (Dutch Institute for Public Health and Environment) did not simply state the "number of positive tests" per day but rather "today out of a total number of X tests, Y tests were positive (Z%)". Present it in a nice, stacked bar graph as a finishing touch. I mean, the data is reported somewhere, but it's a pain to retrieve it.

Interview with the director of the Dutch Institute for public health and environment (in Dutch, but Google translate is your friend). https://www.nu.nl/coronavirus/6097969/van-dissel-over-coronamutatie-moet-echt-nog-het-nodige-worden-onderzocht.html In a nutshell, don't panic. If it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. But we're going to do research anyway; in case it's just Billvon.

Just curious, did you by any chance sign up as healthy volunteerfor the clinical trials?

Don't even try - it's like talking to a broken record. Or a wall for that matter. Me, I'd be comfortable with any vaccine approved by the European authorities, be it live (attenuated), dead, vector-based or mRNA. I'll just patiently wait my turn.

Thanks, I missed that one.

....but patient groups were much larger, not to mention that a crapload of money has been pumped into developing these vaccines. Time <--> money.

Nah; a stopped clock is right twice a day Sorry; too easy :)

That you already were infected doesn't guarantee life long immunity. For a lot of viruses (including a lot of nasty ones) it does, for others it doesn't. Influenza is a well known example where you must get an annual revaccination. That is because the outside of the virus changes a bit over time, so that your immune system doesn't recognise the virus if you get reinfected.

I had fifty-odd jumps when I had my first reserve ride. To add insult to injury, I landed in a ditch. My ankle was swollen and some ligaments were damaged. I did not need crutches but was to walk slowly and try not to limp, since limping is a "habit" you then need to unlearn. I went back to jumping when I could walk normally again and when the ligaments had healed in the opinion of a physical therapist. The physical therapist advised my to use sports tape on my ankle, which I did and which worked fine. I was very nervous during the plane ride up, but after exit the anxiety left me as I got stable and I felt great. This is over a decade ago. The ankle is not troubling me very much any more. I also sustained a serious shoulder injury from when I had to land in turbulent conditions on rock hard dirt fiveish years ago. The PLF did not go picture perfect, but had I attempted any other kind of landing I am sure I would have needed a noisy taxi with blue lights on. I took a short spell off jumping, but not very long. Five years later, shoulder still gets stiff and sore occasionally. Then the injury to my knee, which was by far the worst for my skydiving career. I had to leave off jumping for approximately half a year. Again, no crutches, but walking normally was not an option. I had to take short, slow steps and be very aware when walking. Stairs were out of the question. I slowly built back to walking normally and now, two years later, the knee still occasionally likes to give me a reminder that it was injured. When I got back to jumping, I PLF'd the entire training season (~100 jumps) no matter how good the landing. The irony is that this was not a skydiving injury at all, but that I sustained while in our f*rst ballroom dancing competition, when my wife and I had a collision with another couple.

What Fauci is saying according to what you quoted is not that the devt. process could have been done faster, but that the current development process, which you habitually call "dragging our feet" acutally is a really fast development. Vaccine development normally takes years, if not decades. The COVID vaccine reached its final stages in a fraction of this time. This was achieved by enourmous money grants to several or even many companies and institutions around the world. This translates in state of the art equipment, enough(?) manpower in all stages of development and testing and also into very large initial clinical trial-groups. Another factor which greatly improves the timelines is that the authorities at an FDA-level are doing their review in parallel to the development of the vaccine; they look over the shoulder of the scientists, so to speak. Normally they would wait until all data of one or even all clinical trials is/are available, which is a way more cost-effective method. This last bit is poorly explained, I'm aware, but I get lost in translation once more.

Well, not approximately zero. At least over here the intensive cares were being overwhelmed early this year with severe COVID-cases, causing delays and postponements in for instance 'regular' surgeries. Those COVID-cases did arrive, however.

Well, I do not have any inclination to sift through all the political tripe in here, so I post this in the first "post-election lawsuit" thread I could find. But I found this an interesting read: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-fundraising-insigh-idUSKBN27R309 The article is mainly targeted against the lawsuit-fundraiser of the replublicans, but mentions in one sentence that the Democrats are no saints either.

(emphasis mine) Well, that's the kicker, isn't it? A fit-test takes about 30 min and costs a lot of money. No way that everyone everywhere is able to get a properly fitted facemask.

Well, there is the alternative that Russia claims to be developing. That one incidentally has the added benefit of boasting about a whopping 92% effectiveness, over Pfizer's mere 90%. It's great.

I would compare tandem with a person jumping in the water with a life vest on while the attendant keeps the person above water with a long stick. :) I do not recommend tandems since most often they are just carnival rides. the good TMs aside (who will protest this rather grim picture I'm painting), there are any folks who will not give you a good introduction in skydiving anyway, since the less time they spend with a passenger, the more chance they have of churning out one extra jump and hence earn extra cash. If you (not you personally) are just looking for the experience of skydiving with minimal preparation and commitment on your part, by all means do a tandem and call it quits. If you are inclined to think that static line/AFF is your thing, just go for it. Which program you should actually choose depends on you and what is available to you. I was drawn to the more gradual progression of static-line. In hindsight I think I would not have done very well with AFF since there are more tasks to complete on a single jump. Also, I didn't have that much cash to invest upfront - and that is not even taking into account the price of a 'redo' of one or more levels. So, only for the small group who likes to have their toe in the water before making the plunge I would say that maybe a tandem is of added value for you; carnival ride or no.

I was just thinking of that. It induced birth defects in fetuses - even at one single dose administered to a pregnant woman. I'm sure I also read somewhere that it remains (temporary) residual in the body and that males are not immune from transmitting the birth defects either. Before this was found out, thalidomide was prescribed widely to pregnant women to combat morning sickness among other things. IIRC correctly, the problem was left- and right-oriented molecules - mirror images of each other (I'm not sure of my translation). At that time these were chemically indistinguishable from each other, but the consequenses were extreme. At Westerly: Large infusions of cash help shortening the timelines in drug research. But the in vivo studies take time. Nobody wants another thalidomide out there. Sure it didn't kill you - but even though it protects the 'taker' of the drug against the targeted disease I ask: are the consequences worth it?Google "thalidomide" and "baby" for images before you answer.

I have always considered low pull contests to more of a "right down over here" kinda situation.

I never did a tandem before signing up for the static line course and never regretted it. My reasoning back then was simple: Fourteen years ago, a tandem cost €200, while a five jump static-line course cost €335,-. If I did the tandem first and wanted to keep jumping I'd 'lose' more money than when I just went for the static-line course and decided after one jump to call it quits. Nowadays both the course and the tandem are much more expensive - that much more money which could go to extra jumps after you finish your course. Also, jumping by myself would allow me to do all the fun stuff myself, instead of having someone do that for me.Lastly, though many on here will disagree with me, tandem jumps are most often treated as nothing more than a carnival ride by both the tandem master and the tandem passenger. Is a tandem jump awesome? Sure. Is it comparable to jumping all by yourself? I doubt it. Can it be a great introduction to skydiving? It very much depends on where you make the tandem jump. You at least have to let them know about your intentions. Am I old school? Definitely. And more to the point, how much money you can invest upfront.

A sport rig being left in a plane by a jumper is highly unlikely. The bailout rig being left by the pilot less so. I can't get my head around a jumper "forgetting" their rig, especially for a week - even second hand gear is worth easily $2000 in total and that's discounting the sentimental value. As for student gear, I'd expect the people in charge to take equal care of at least accounting for all the dropzone's assets.