mike carey

I spent a couple of hours in The Strand last time I was in NYC, and I can understand why it has the status of 'venerable'. I don't remember if I bought a book, but I did buy a tote bag with, 'And yet she persisted', on it for my sister.

I have to say, when I read 'Great Tits' I thought it was about the birds in question not some reference to female anatomy. If it had just said 'tits' I would not have been so sure.

As it's been explained here by a medical researcher from Monash University in Melbourne on TV this morning, the effectiveness of the vaccine is being tested by examining people in the trial who contract the virus, and the number of infections required is about 150 from the 42K volunteers in six countries, they are at 93 or 94 at the moment so they have about two thirds of the required sample, so a reasonable indication. The vast majority of the infections are among people who received the placebo, and from that they have inferred that the vaccine is 90% effective. If the vaccine was not effective you would assume that half the cases would have been among those who had received the vaccine. That's not definitive, and when the other third of the positive cases are identified, the level of confidence in the results will be higher.

It's an interesing sign of our times that this is happening. Here, in addition to the usual election whisperer on the ABC, there's been a young journo who's been his offsider in presenting the statistics and trends. He's also become a bit of a twitter star (and he does play it up a bit in that playpen). A couple of hours ago he commented that the ABC's election night coverage was winding up after 99 hours. The first of hiw tweets after that was *blink* *blink*. His public profile has been steadily growing, as he played the same role in two state and territory elections in the second half of October, and before then and in the gaps between them he's been the stats and graphs guy on the pandemic.

Mike's been very active on twitter promoting his Only Fans and JFF, so it looks like he's made that switch to help deal with the current situation.

Nobody knows. Whatever happens, the vaccine will only be part of the answer, part will still be the social distancing precautions we have been taking (including masks, sanitisers etc). The safety of intimate contact will depend on the effectiveness of the measures everyone takes in society. I hired a guy last night, he comes from an essentially Covid-free city and where I am is too. He told me he won't see anyone from Sydney which has had maybe three or four cases a day for a few months now. I think his caution may be excessive, but who am I to argue.

I agree to an extent. Reducing the spread is the key. All the mitigation measures help, and that includes social distancing, masks, hand sanitising, cough etiquette. They mean even if someone has it they pass it on to fewer others. That can result in local elimination, but you can't stop the preventative measures then because you never know when it might come back. We will need to keep doing those things until there is a vaccine, and even after that as the vaccine is likely to be, say 50% effective, so we won't be able to see the spread. Even with that, we need to maintain the testing, tracing and isolation for the disease so we can lock down any cases that appear, and that needs to be mandatory. It is here, and as @samhexum noted in another thread isn't and likely can't be in the US. Diseases die out when they can't spread. Everything we can do to stop them spreading helps. Covid-19 measures all-but snuffed out seasonal flu in Australia this year. This disease is likely to be endemic in the community so we need to reduce its ability to spread and ensure we have the public health measures to detect it and stop it if it does.

Well, for some of us, forum Palm Springs weekends won't be happening for a while. I suspect (to trivialise the question for a moment) masks as fashion statements might become a thing when we resume.

This is interesting. I had a vague idea that cities and counties (or parishes) were overlapping entities in the US. The explanation for Philly helps me make sense of it, as does @augustus' explanation of the overlapping jurisdictional issues. Here we have one layer of local government jurisdictional areas, whether they are called cities, municipalities or shires. There are no cities or towns that have any sort of local government overlaid on them. Also, they don't have their own courts or police, they are all run by the state government.

Damn, I missed the chance to meet you in 2019, and almost certainly won't be able to be there in 2021.

Be careful about this. Two grey check marks means they have opened the app after your message arrived, but they may not have seen your message or even seen that it was there if they have a lot of new messages in their inbox. The check marks turn blue once they have opened your messages (and hopefully actually read them).

Indeed, but it's 5 Nov here earlier than in Nevada (although I posted this late in the evening of the day). I did add, 'A penny for the Guy', when I tweeted it. I usually remember to post this every year.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November, The Gunpowder Treason and Plot, I know of no reason Why the Gunpowder Treason Should ever be forgot.

I never did that intentionally but one escort I met sat on me. TBH I don't have a particular memory of it.

I liked that post and then rechecked the thread rules and found that 'liking' meant I had done that. I'm another who has never done that. Or a cigar or a pipe. Or a joint.

Click on the number 1 next to the thumbs up icon and a dialogue box with the poster's name will open up.

Wasn't it Mark Twain who said that he would have written a shorter letter if he'd had more time?

All spaces matter.

At the risk of being Captain Obvious, the Admin comment you posted was in a repost of the photo, presumably it replaced a political comment that had been made on the photo. Like you, politics is not what comes immediately to my mind in response to it.

True indeed. Even if you do that it doesn't guarantee that you won't be pinged here for being verbose.

This is his RM profile - https://rent.men/Russ_NYC

Has the pizza @MikeBiDude ordered been delivered yet?

Being held and cuddled is truly an amazing thing.

Yes, it is exactly that! /s