Spent quite a bit of it outside which was good for me, it was a mild Saturday and the temps got warmer as the day went on. I've mowed lawns, pulled out
weeds and other unwanted plants from a garden at the front of the house.

Watched a news conference at 2pm where our Prime Minister gave an update on
the terrorist stuff that happened the other day. Short version is they knew
of the offender, he had been in prison but was released when they exhausted
all available avenues under current legislation, they had the gut under
active surveillance at the time he committed the acts of violence. Within 1 minute of him doing this they had confronted the guy and when he went to
attack the police he was shot and killed. There's 7 injured with stab wounds,
5 are in hospital and 3 are in critical care.

This all happened in the North Island (I'm in the South Island) in a city called Auckland (which is our largest one in the country). Auckland is sadly the scene of our current Covid-19 delta outbreak so has been in a high level
of lock down for 2 weeks with a further 2 weeks to roll, so they have been doing it tough.

On the upside the total number of new daily cases in our country continues to drop as we all take steps to keep up our lockdown and work towards
eliminating the virus. We've done it before and ended up enjoying almost a
year of normal life with no infections just lots of normal day to day stuff, concerts etc. A current push is to get everyone vaccinated and everyone 12+
is able to get the Phisor?? vaccine.. thats the one on offer here. I've had both vaccinations now and glad to have had them.

We drove over to our eldest sons house tonight and dropped food at his front door, (contact-less) they are renovating their kitchen so have no major
cooking facilities at present. Each workday he comes to our place and my wife cooks a meal that he can take back to his family. On the weekends we do the short drive to their house to deliver the food. It will be like this for a
few more weeks while he rebuilds their kitchen.

Tonight some BBSing, some pondering about how to best upgrade a Linux system
I have the radio station gear running on, my teenage daughter wants iPad
help, I have eaten too much (again) but did take the dog and myself for a
walk earlier... so that's something :)

Might be time for a cuppa I think :)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

Spent quite a bit of it outside which was good for me, it was a mild Saturday and the temps got warmer as the day went on. I've mowed
lawns, pulled out weeds and other unwanted plants from a garden
at the front of the house.

Snap.. The unit has no-one that does gardening, or cleaning the assorted tree debris that collect out in the car park. From time to time I get out there with the leaf blower and have a cleansing, it cuts down how much makes it inside. So there was that, and there's a raft of semi-wild geranium/pelargonium if you prefer that grows out of a nominal garden bed over the drive, I got out with a spade and chopped it back to the gutter/edging.

On the upside the total number of new daily cases in our country continues to drop as we all take steps to keep up our lockdown and work towards

Ours are still chaotic.. NSW is now out to ~1900/day and showing no signs of slowing soon. Vic on the other hand is a lot earlier in the curve, reported 190, the depressing part of which some 80-90 are untraced/unknown in origin, so they've been out spreading it around. Or as the Cadogan man said on his YouTuba channel, how ever many you detect, you have to expect there are more out there that aren't being found for whatever reason. Don't see it improving here any time in the short term.

On the plus side they cut the re-jab time for Astra Zeneca from 12 weeks back to 6, so I got the second one at about 10 weeks. Went better than expected, sore arm again, and they stuck it in the right instead of the left this time. A bit out of sorts in the head for a bit also, but it all seems to have worn off now.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: We know where you live, we're coming round to get you (21:3/101)

Hey Avon;

Avon wrote to All <=-

Spent quite a bit of it outside which was good for me, it was a mild Saturday and the temps got warmer as the day went on. I've mowed lawns, pulled out weeds and other unwanted plants from a garden at the front
of the house.

I'll be doing that later this afternoon here as the morning dew was really heavy from the ground being so saturated! 6.5" of rain earlier in the week didn't help the dew factor but the lawn ate it up! We've had a very unusual year for hurricanes here. Three of them right in a row with the last one packing an unusual punch considering the path it took. Fortunately this year
we did NOT lose power!.. even though we do have a generator ready to roll.

Watched a news conference at 2pm where our Prime Minister gave an
update on the terrorist stuff that happened the other day. Short
version is they knew of the offender, he had been in prison but was released when they exhausted all available avenues under current legislation, they had the gut under active surveillance at the time he committed the acts of violence. Within 1 minute of him doing this they
had confronted the guy and when he went to attack the police he was
shot and killed. There's 7 injured with stab wounds, 5 are in hospital
and 3 are in critical care.

Glad to hear *someone* is fighting back!.. and not releasing them into the world like some countries recently did (embarassment emoji here!) I hope
those who are hospitalized there make a full recovery!

This all happened in the North Island (I'm in the South Island) in a
city called Auckland (which is our largest one in the country).
Auckland is sadly the scene of our current Covid-19 delta outbreak so
has been in a high level of lock down for 2 weeks with a further 2
weeks to roll, so they have been doing it tough.

In California, they recently discovered the MU variant. What amazes me is
how they've already claimed that there will be variants to fill up the greek alphabet. How do they know that so well in advance if they're not aiding
to it's mutation cause?? Sounds too fishy to me, but that's just my opinion.

Tonight some BBSing, some pondering about how to best upgrade a Linux system I have the radio station gear running on

What distro? Before you attempt this, I suggest a passport or large USB drive and a copy of clonezilla! It makes a nice stripe image of your current drive
so you can restore a bootable backup if things don't work out first shot.
You can find it on sourceforge.



... Old steel makers never die, they just lose their temper.
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
* Origin: Carnage - risen from the dead now on SBBS (21:4/107)

work towards eliminating the virus.

Good luck with that.

Regards,
Mindsurfer / Stephan


--- MagickaBBS v0.15alpha (Linux/armv7l)
* Origin: FuNToPia telnet://funtopia.ddnss.eu:2023 (21:3/119)

Re: RE: The day
By: Mindsurfer to Avon on Mon Sep 06 2021 12:38 am

work towards eliminating the virus.

Good luck with that.

Regards,
Mindsurfer / Stephan

I have recenlty posted it on Dovenet, but I think eliminating the virus is not a reasonable goal as
of now and that the virus crisis will be over once the virus becomes endemic.

Endemic, in this context, means an overwhelming majority of the population develops natural
resistance so people's immune systems become capable of eating the virus with potatoes, thus
turning COVID-19 into another flu.

Some relevant article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/08/how-we-live-coronavirus-forever/619783/

"When I spoke with vaccine experts as the trials were under way last summer, they universally told
me to temper expectations. Vaccines against respiratory viruses rarely protect against full
infection because they are better at inducing immunity in the lungs than in the nose, where
respiratory viruses gain their first foothold. (Consider: The flu shot is 10 to 60 percent
effective depending on the year.)"

"Then came the less pleasant surprise: new variants, like Beta, Gamma, and now Delta, that erode
some protection from vaccines. [---] The vaccines still protect against serious illness very well,
as expected, but herd immunity again seems out of reach."

So basically, vaccines are mitigators but they are not making the virus disappear. Since vaccines
are allegedly our best weapon and it is not sufficient, we must conclude the virus is here to stay.

From another article from the same site:

"Still, several lines of evidence, including formal outbreak descriptions and more anecdotal
reports, suggest that vaccinated people can transmit Delta onward, even if to a lesser degree than
unvaccinated people."

Please, notice The Athlantic is clearly pro-vaccine yet they acknowledge we are not crushing the
virus with vaccines. Their suggestion is to take the vaccine and brace for impact anyway because
chances is the probability of somebody NOT getting the virus in a 5 year period is close to ZERO.


####

Then again:

PEOPLE DOES NOT BECOME IMMORTAL BECAUSE THEY JUST HAD THE VACCINE

Don't be like the old people in my village, who act as if there is no pandemic anymore because they
got the two shots, end up getting infected, and have a trip to the hospital at the expense of the
tax-payers.

Gosh, those people are as bad as the people who wears the mask under their noses.


--
gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
--- SBBSecho 3.14-Linux
* Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)

Endemic, in this context, means an overwhelming majority of the population develops natural resistance so people's immune systems become capable
of eating the virus with potatoes, thus turning COVID-19 into
another flu.

Ponder mebbe... supposedly some of the best resistance going round now is those that have been vaccinated and still having been hit by a covid variant. So at some point you may well reach a herd immunity level. The flip side is of course the Israeli experience where it looks like vaccinations will need to be ongoing.

I suspect, countries in a better off position economically will be able to keep it down reasonably well in the long run, with a combination of vaccination, lockdowns (although they have a bad rep) and sheer numbers of persons ultimately being infected over time.

Its your poorer communities that appear to feed the mutation cycle more and keep it in the hunt.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: We know where you live, we're coming round to get you (21:3/101)

Its your poorer communities that appear to feed the mutation cycle
more and keep it in the hunt.

could you please back up that statement with a peer reviewed study? i
hear
that the first time, that it is the "poorer communites that".."feed the mutation cycle more"..

Regards,
Mindsurfer / Stephan

--- MagickaBBS v0.15alpha (Linux/armv7l)
* Origin: FuNToPia telnet://funtopia.ddnss.eu:2023 (21:3/119)

could you please back up that statement with a peer reviewed study? i
hear that the first time, that it is the "poorer communites
that".."feed the mutation cycle more"..

No I can't, its paraphrased from news reports here...but anywhere it gets to run rampant its got more opportunity to mutate.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: We know where you live, we're coming round to get you (21:3/101)