vivweb01blog

Please note that this article was compiled way back in June 2022 towards the end of the main pandemic - for a more recent update you might want to look at the following: https://vivweb01.blogspot.com/2023/08/new-covid-variant-ba286-how-bad-could.html https://vivweb01.blogspot.com/2022/11/china-and-covid-2-sequel.html https://vivweb01.blogspot.com/2023/04/covid-update-new-variant-arcturus-first.html I also plan to compile an update in the near future, and will include a discussion on the likelihood of a new pandemic and the virus strains most likely to cause it.... A s predicted, the Covid case rate has continued to rise again in the UK, and shows little sign of abating. The latest UK-wide estimate is that 1 in 18 of the population is infected, up from 1 in 25 last week. Scotland seems to be the worst of the home nations affected with even higher rates. We should remember that both figures are much higher than the peaks seen in the first 2 Covid 'waves' in 2020. Given the high i

  S o now we know….the long- awaited secret of what her majesty keeps in the Royal Handbag has been revealed. Or has it….. The fascinating glimpse we were treated to last weekend into a familiar, but hitherto completely opaque, receptacle actually poses more questions than it answers… Firstly there is the question of containment of the royal ‘emergency’ sandwich. My own experience of marmalade sandwiches is that they have minds of their own....  On the occasions when one is careless enough to drop a full-slice marmelade sandwich, not only do the wretched things always manage to split apart into their constituent slices on the way down, but both slices invariably end up preserve-side down on the deck.  I’ve never managed to divine how or why this happens, but I’m reliably informed it’s something to do with the Coriolis force….if so, it would be interesting to see whether the slices fall marmalade-side up in the Southern hemisphere. However, I digress….back to the topic in hand...

This is by way of a follow-up to my first blog on Google Indexing. First a quick recap of the background…. I set up one of the new Google Sites offerings last June with the intention of using it as an online repository, primarily to share information and small amounts data with friends and acquaintances.  As the site developed, I added new pages. These were intended to provide some space for more general guides I had been asked for, and to share information on various topics with the wider community. I have to admit I'm not a great social media 'fan' for a number of reasons,  so I prefer to use a website and blog for this purpose.  At this point, I wanted to establish whether the site had already appeared on search engine indexes, and if not, what I could do to expedite the process. To cut a long story short, I found within the first 3 months that almost every major search engine had indexed elements of my site except Google . Needless to say I was quite surprised by

  A debate on this subject between scientists in the SETI field has been simmering in the background ever since the first attempt was made to send a ‘letter to the cosmos’ via the Arrecibo message in 1974. The debate recently resurfaced in response to NASA’s proposal to rejuvenate the project by setting up a ' Beacon in the Galaxy '. At first sight, there might appear to be good reasons to be wary of advertising our presence and credentials as intelligent life forms – however friendly we might think a visiting alien species might be. The key factors which tend to undermine the argument against the proposal, however, are – space and time.  A detailed look at the implications of the sheer vastness of   both of these dimensions has certainly convinced me that the likelihood of our own species ever encountering or even receiving communications from an alien species is very low. You can see why in my recent blog entitled ‘ Are we Alone in the Universe ’. Even if any of them

 W e in the UK are currently experiencing an attack on our personal financial resources, the like of which we have not seen since the financial meltdown of 2008-9.  The 'UK cost of living crisis' as it has been called has been a long time in the making. What has caused it ? The answer is complex, but amounts to a 'perfect storm' of coincident events. The combined effects of 10 years of artificially-induced low interest rates and excessive quantitative easing by central banks conspired to prevent 'normal' levels of inflation throughout the 2010s. This unprecedented (and in retrospect somewhat foolhardy) interference with the financial system effectively stored up inflationary pressure, and this was exacerbated by the economic effects of the Covid pandemic.  The worldwide economic 'recovery' resulting from the lifting of Covid restrictions  a nd the recent Ukraine conflict have  triggered a rapid increase in demand resulting in a surge in the world price o

  C hina seems to have got itself into a ‘spot of bother’ with Covid  recently, to put it mildly… Unlike the USA and most of Europe, where deaths and hospitalisations in most countries are now on the wane, China is currently in the thick of it, and has experienced a major resurgence of SARS-CoV-2 which has spread from an initial ‘hot spot' in Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland. The epidemic appears to be spreading rapidly across China, despite herculean efforts by the authorities there; early control measures included full lockdowns of large areas and even big industrial hubs such as Shenzen. Shanghai itself has been under full lockdown for the last 2 months, and is only now beginning to see a significant fall in case numbers - this is the major industrial hub of south China and its loss of productivity is likely already to have had serious consequences for China's economy. Why has this happened ? We need to look in detail at the history of SARS-CoV-2 to provide an explanati

S ince we are now well past the 2nd anniversary of the first UK Covid lockdown (March 23rd), I thought it might be useful to review what we've learnt from the pandemic over the last two years, and make some suggestions as to how to apply some of this to help us all prevent respiratory infections in future.   M ost of us generally suffer from 2-3 bouts of common cold symptoms each year. If we assume that each bout involves symptomatic discomfort for 8-10 days before the infection subsides, this equates to between 16 and 40 days of (albeit mild) illness per year. A ‘cure’ for the common cold would thus be a major prize for humanity – as indeed it would be for the Pharmaceutical Industry.  Unfortunately, despite much scientific effort, no one has yet come up with one, and for very good reason. The origin of most of these infections is viral, and as we have seen with SARS-CoV-2, viruses are resourceful adversaries and are positively legion in their type and properties.  To give you a