English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

1:17 AM

> Monothelitism is a theological doctrine in Christianity, that holds Christ as having only one will. Historically, monothelitism was closely related to monoenergism, a theological doctrine that holds Jesus Christ as having only one energy.

Lancashire Police’s guide to youth language.

Cerberus

1:37 AM

@tchrist A fully vaccinated acquaintance has just been tested positive.

So far, his symptoms do not seem to be very serious.

I believe this does not happen often, nor is it exceptional.

I'm thinking of skipping my brother's 5-year wedding anniversary.

At least 22 adults and probably 15 young children will be spending a full weekend together in the country house.

Most adults will have received one shot, the children none.

Statistics in Holland are worse than those in England.

tchrist

1:59 AM

@Cerberus Agree.

@Cerberus Prudent. I imagine I would do the same. It's not like it's just an outdoor picnic.

@Cerberus Oh my word! It looks like you have the same shape as they have, quickly rising nearly to your previous peak with no sign of slowing. Why is that happening?

The slope is extremely steep.

@Cerberus I concur, and am surprised.

Your slope is much steeper than theirs. Both seem at about the same point vertically as a proportion in approaching their all-time high.

This is really terrible. What about hospitalizations?

Our most impacted state, Arkansas, seems to be more on the English path, but it's only getting started.

Actually, Florida appears to be our worst state. They had nearly 9,000 new cases today alone.

Still, nothing like where you and England are in terms of how close to the all-time high.

JJJ

It seems though that the UK sticks with their planned reopening while the Dutch have taken a step back.

I guess the delta variant hasn't become the dominant strain in the US yet? Looking at those graphs and from what I've heard about very little restrictions in some of those states. :O

tchrist

2:16 AM

@JJJ I've heard the French aren't happy with Macron's recent pronouncement. But France is nothing at all so bad as the UK and NL.

@JJJ Not quite yet. It's projected to become by the end of the month or so.

JJJ

@tchrist Yea from what I've heard the French are among the most reluctant when it comes to taking vaccines. I think the UK is the furthest over here while many are still in line (so to speak) for their shots.

tchrist

France are at around 40% of the populace vaccinated.

@JJJ Can you please tell me what sorts of new measures the Netherlands have taken? What do you mean by having taken a step back?

JJJ

@tchrist Well a few days / weeks ago the health minister rolled out this 'dansen with Janssen' (dancing with J&J vaccine) plan where they'd promote getting that one jab and then going partying right away. In hindsight, that wasn't a great plan. :P

As for French vaccine hesitancy, see this Atlantic article which cites some interesting background.

tchrist

Oops.

Yes, I've read about the sources of French hesitancy, maybe even that article.

The UK is hovering around 69% with one shot and 53% with both.

JJJ

Hospitalizations seem to be fine though from what I hear. It's mostly fears of long covid where you may feel some effects for months.

tchrist

2:24 AM

I have a friend with that, and young family who managed not to show it. Apparently.

Belgium and NL both are at 67% with at least one shot, and like 49% and 45% with both.

And you're still seeing that crazy increase. This augurs not well for our own near future here.

JJJ

Yea, now they're already at the youngest group (12 years old) who can make an appointment to get their vaccine. Do they vaccinate them in the US at that age? I read that the UK wasn't going to for 17 and below or so.

tchrist

For only the very best of states are nearly that vaccinated yet. The states with the greatest surge correlate with least vaccine uptake, and most registered Republicans, too.

JJJ

Yeah, I gather it's still quite politicized ;p

tchrist

@JJJ Yes, we've been at 12 for some time now. They're racing to get the data to approve younger children before autumn falls.

JJJ

Yea, I guess it's especially useful for the delta variant which may also affect younger people (where they were mostly safe with other variants?)

tchrist

2:29 AM

I haven't seen any data that one unvaccinated age group is any more likely to catch the delta variant than any other. It's just that the young children are not vaccinated.

JJJ

No but last year they talked mostly about older people (or even anyone aged over 30) can get pretty sick while most younger people would get flu symptoms at worst (with few exceptions). With delta maybe everyone (even younger people) can get pretty sick. Or maybe I've just misinterpreted that, I'm not really on top of covid news anymore

tchrist

Yes, that's right. We've had some dramatic bad outcomes in folks younger than 30, but nothing like for those older than that.

It appears that the original strain had an R0 of 2.7 absent control measures, and the delta variant has between 6 and 8.

JJJ

And of course younger people are more likely to meet more people. If they reopen schools after the summer break then schools could be superspreader places whereas it's easy for older people to work from home (at least in many professions).

tchrist

So one infected person would infect 6 or 8 others, provided there are no control measures. That's a terrible exponent, but matches the dizzyingly steep slope of the Dutch curve.

@JJJ I'm now less than certain that schools will be able to open, and stay open, for kids under age 12 without vaccination.

JJJ

Yea, that's not just the delta variant, it's also that clubs and bars were (are?) reopened for vaccinated people. They just didn't realize that if you get the vaccine in the morning it hasn't done it's job by the evening. So now you are only allowed a green pass (some QR code app) two weeks after the last shot, I think.

@tchrist Yea, I think they'll close again if they turn out to be significant spreaders. After all, they will also go home to their parents and they may be going back to work, etc. Or maybe the curve will have flattened by then and the vaccinated people may be a bit more resistant over time.

tchrist

2:37 AM

@JJJ Who in the world didn't know that? It was well publicized.

JJJ

@tchrist Everyone except our health minister it seems. ;)

tchrist

That's just plain negligent. Is he a Republican? :)

Sounds like Florida.

> At a time when the United States and many other countries are beginning to lift restrictions, a new, more dangerous variant of SARS-CoV-2 has appeared that has prompted serious rethinking around what containment strategies should look like moving forward. The Delta variant is not only far more transmissible than its predecessors, but it appears to be more lethal to people of all ages as well. And it doesn’t look like vaccines will be the barrier that stops it.

JJJ

@tchrist We don't have republicans over here (or at least not very outspoken ones). He's a Christian democrat. Many mistakes, as you would expect from someone with no health background being put in charge of a pandemic. But otherwise I think he did okay, just some mistakes.

tchrist

Oh that I had not read yet, that they're becoming increasingly certain of its enhanced lethality.

@JJJ I was actually referring to the new-style Republicans, who are simply fascist authoritarians. Not the old-style ones like Romney and Cheney and McCain.

Kind of crap that Brasil has.

But I guess they're finally getting vaccinated, no thanks to their feckless leader.

JJJ

@tchrist Republican classic. Yes, some of the new ones are more about truthiness (ironically coined in the Bush era).

tchrist

2:43 AM

@JJJ By Stephen Colbert, in character, IIRC?

> Today, the Delta variant has spread to more than 100 countries and become the dominant strain in most, including, as of last week, the United States. Not only is the risk of death from Delta twice as high, it is so transmissible that outbreaks in Australia have been traced back to moments of “scarily fleeting” contact. These characteristics don’t just demand caution, but a reevaluation of current public health policy.

JJJ

Yes

tchrist

I'm citing this Forbes article.

JJJ

@tchrist Yea, I'm paying some extra attention to the situation in Thailand. Up to a few months ago they were almost without cases. Now they're starting to get cases from the delta variant as well. But almost nobody is immune from natural infection (because there were very few cases) and very few people are vaccinated (because they lack vaccines). Intersting to see how that develops, probably not for the best.

tchrist

Haven't finished reading it yet, but it alarms me.

JJJ

Oh, and it's also reported that Sinovac might not be effective against the delta variant.

tchrist

2:48 AM

@JJJ Yeah, a lot of people in Indonesia are getting sick from it. Hundreds of doctors, "fully" vaccinated with that one. Many land in hospital and quite a few have died.

> But the Delta variant, according to data from Israel (where 80 percent of adults are fully vaccinated), has proven a more challenging immunization target. While the Pfizer vaccine protected 93 percent of immunized Israelis from hospitalization and death, nearly 40 percent were still vulnerable to infection. The British government reported that for symptomatic infection, that rate was about 12 percent.

I'm not sure how many in the UK have received one of the two mRNA vaccines, but I know that Israelis got Pfiszer's.

JJJ

Yea, we'll have to see how it develops. I guess in the US they're mostly administering mRNA vaccines too? That seems to be the most effective against the delta variant.

tchrist

I wonder which vaccine the UK health minister who just came down with it received.

@JJJ Yes, that's right. There are a few J&J, but not many. It's had...troubles here.

JJJ

@tchrist AZ

tchrist

Yeah, I don't think that one is quite so good at preventing symptoms as the other two.

JJJ

I think younger people have mostly got mRNA here and in the UK as well because it has the fewest (rare) side effects.

tchrist

2:52 AM

J&J still seems good at preventing hospitalization and death. At least, against the original strain. Dunno now.

JJJ

In many developing countries AZ is probably the best they can get. Both from their own factories and through Covax.

tchrist

Yeah, J&J is supposed to be the vaccine for the world, for any number of reasons.

Or is that AZ? I forget. A cheap one-and-done that doesn't need serious cold is what you need ther. AZ is two shots.

JJJ

Over here J&J was just advertised because it's partly (?) Dutch and because you only need the one jab. Here they call it Janssen.

tchrist

Yes, I know.

JJJ

Yea AZ needs two shots and it doesn't need to be stored that cold.

tchrist

2:55 AM

I tried to tell my folks that it was called Janssen and why, but it was impossible to get them to say Yahnsen. :)

Jancin' rhymes with Dancin' here, and it has the /æ/ vowel from trap for us.

And starts like judge. :) Sorry, you can't get them to say it any other way "than it's spelled" as though it were English. I tried, and failed.

AJ has had bad press, but we need every vaccine we can get into people's arms around the world just as fast as we can.

JJJ

Yea, Dutch sounds quite funny with an American accent, there are many Youtube videos about that ;p

tchrist

It's because they are never taught they have to do different things with their mouths than what those letter sequences mean in English. It's an Anglophone problem. Listen to the older generation of Brits visiting France or especially Spain and Italy. :)

The younger generation of Dutch and Danes speak incredibly fabulous English. The southern Europeans are getting better, but they are still far far away.

JJJ

Yea could be. Try speaking Thai where sounds can go up, down and stay the same all to mean different things.

This is their graph btw:

tchrist

I don't know that the English are getting any better at anything but English. Doesn't seem to be that way.

@JJJ Eek!

It's sad but it seems more expedient to teach ELF (English as a lingua franca) at this point than to try to get everybody to speak everything else and each other.

JJJ

It's only at 10K a day now but I don't think it can be stopped. Right now some things are still open in Bangkok. Once they go in full lockdown many workers from the provinces go home and that's an extra major spreading event (happened in April too as that was new year's).

tchrist

3:04 AM

At least in Europe and America and South Asia. I don't make any claims for East Asia.

JJJ

Yea, I don't think the Chinese will agree but it's probably the easiest.

tchrist

@JJJ "Workers from the provinces" don't live in Bangkok year-round then?

JJJ

@tchrist they do, unless they lose their jobs because everything (malls, hotels, etc.) get closed down for longer periods.

tchrist

I can't think of any pattern like that here.

Migrant workers, perhaps.

In agriculture.

But not in industry.

They have nowhere to "go back" to.

JJJ

Yea. It's kind of funny how the US had stimulus checks while the Thai had a 'travel domestic' program to encourage travelling during the pandemic.

tchrist

3:07 AM

It's not like industrial cities here import workers from the hinterlands short-term, ones who would have anywhere to go back to if the factories closed.

JJJ

Yea, I think it's more characteristic of developing countries. Families from rural areas, younger people move to the city to get work. They rent, when they lose their job (and there are no other jobs on account of lockdowns) they go back to their families.

tchrist

A lot of the general public in the US and the UK, and far too many of the politicians, have been cruising along for a few months now thinking the pandemic was essentially behind us all here now. They need a serious reality check.

JJJ

I guess there are two views. I had this same chat a few hours ago on Politics:

in Discussion on answer by JJJ: Why are Democrats fighting so hard to vaccinate the reluctant?, 7 hours ago, by JonathanReez

@JJJ some nations are now starting to understand that this can't go on. Boris Johnson is now reopening the UK in just 2 days despite soaring COVID cases. What they're getting out of it? Basically trying to satisfy the demand for lockdowns from your average voter, which is hard to put back in the bottle

tchrist

What's the antecedent of "this" there? Mitigation measures like lockdowns?

JJJ

yea

tchrist

3:13 AM

A lot more people are doing to suffer and die.

Jul 15 at 1:09, by tchrist

I think we've gotten ourselves past the 70% rate for vaccination here. But you still have only three choices: get vaccinated or get the virus. Or both.

Where here=Colorado.

JJJ

And of course now that many people are vaccinated, they're going to be less agreeable with those measures. I mean the whole idea of vaccinations is so society can reopen.

tchrist

It looks like the fully vaccinated can still be asymptomatic spreaders of the delta variant.

@JJJ Los Angeles has reimposed indoor mask orders because it was impossible to get the unvaccinated to protect themselves otherwise. The vaccinated are not happy.

JJJ

Possibly, I'm not up to date on all those specifics. A question for you though: given how you see the severity of the delta variant, how long do you think it takes before things can reopen like it was in 2019?

@tchrist I think the police chief didn't agree with that either.

tchrist

@JJJ Yeah, I read that.

Whether things are reopened and whether we can go back to acting like 2019 are rather different things.

JJJ

I don't know. I think the goal is to go back to 2019 behavior right? Maybe without handshakes and unwanted kisses.

tchrist

3:17 AM

Masks are still required in healthcare settings and congregate living facilities here.

Well right now things are mostly at the phase right now. But I don't know how long that will last if the hospitals fill up again.

I had my first houseguests in 18 months this past weekend. My first in-house visitors of any sort, really.

JJJ

Oh here it's also in public transport and in high schools. No mention of medical facilities but I assume it's mandated there too.

tchrist

Oh I think you're right about public transport.

I had forgotten that. I refuse to take it. I drove 2,000 miles last month to avoid it.

I have a variety of reasons for not taking it. I don't want to deal with airplane travel and auto rental. And it's nice to get on the open road for a few days.

So when will we not need masks in those places? Not this year.

JJJ

I went to Thailand in March and April. Planes were still pretty full, maybe as full as normal. I think many people are kind of done with pandemic mode, maybe since the start of this year?

tchrist

Healthcare settings may never go back, or it might be 2025. Not sure.

@JJJ What a rude shock then is coming.

Airline travel here is back to around 76%.

But they have no staff or planes, and so cancel lots of flights. And a week's auto rental is like $3200 now.

Another reason to drive myself.

People are renting moving trucks instead. :)

Prices doubled and trebled. And there are still no cars. Crazy.

JJJ

I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the vaccinated countries get rid of Covid altogether in a few months. Then the disease becomes more of an external threat which will play a role in less vaccinated countries.

tchrist

3:24 AM

What ever were you doing in Thailand for a couple months in spring? Family connections?

@JJJ How do we get the people who refuse to be vaccinated to do so? We aren't all Macron.

It's going to rip through the unvaccinated. And when those aren't little children, wreak ruin among them.

JJJ

@tchrist conscription thing. Got together with like a thousand other people with just mask and hand sanitizer. :/

tchrist

Ah.

JJJ

And with the travel restrictions, first the 2 week quarantine, needed to add some extra time here and there. It was great though, no tourists and no covid. :)

tchrist

The people stuck in New Zealand talk like that.

JJJ

Well, at least when I got there. In the end it started to pop up everywhere but it didn't come from me. ^^

tchrist

3:27 AM

heh

JJJ

No it came from the civil war in Myanmar. Thinking about it, that's an even more desperate situation. Over there the medical workers have to hide from government troops. Warzone meets pandemic..

tchrist

The tragic thing is that the vaccinated will end up choosing to let the unvaccinated suffer and die because "it's their own choice" rather than submit to further protective measures. There's no sense of protecting the community before yourself.

Do we know yet what got Kim so pissed in North Korea recently?

JJJ

Didn't he lose a lot of weight?

tchrist

Yes, but there was something more.

Let me find it.

June 30th.

> N
orth Korean leader Kim Jong-un has berated top officials for failures that have led to an unspecified “huge crisis” related to the coronavirus pandemic, state media have reported.

The alleged "grave incident" in the secretive country’s pandemic fight was highlighted in the report on Wednesday from the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

standard.co.uk/news/world/…

We don't know what he's talking about.

JJJ

Superspreader event?

tchrist

3:31 AM

Quite possible.

CowperKettle

Will glass coffins ever become popular? Remains to be seen!

tchrist

@CowperKettle That's what Lenin said.

In this summer of covid freedom, disease experts warn: ‘The world needs a reality check’

JJJ

Yea, same here I guess. Now that it's summer break and people may have planned to go south they'll just go. It's kind of ironic how in a year of working from home everyone still wants to travel in the same few months.

CowperKettle

It took a week before doctors visited a 57-yo Yekaterinburg man with covid. They did not provide meds, because they've run out of them. Now he's at last in the hospital. Hospitals are overloaded here.

In the Tyva region, they are commandeering public buildings for makeshift hospitals, placing patients in corridors on folding beds. And they instituted a harsh lockdown.

JJJ

@CowperKettle Sorry to hear about that. How is the Russian vaccine? Does it provide some protection? Anything known about protection against the delta variant?

CowperKettle

3:41 AM

@JJJ The Sputnik vaccine seems to be very good. But the Russian medical authorities have no skill for running proper clinical trials, therefore it remains to be seen. Like with the glass coffins.

tchrist

@CowperKettle That sounds so 2020!

JJJ

Yea I guess we'll see then. ;p Over here hospitalization rates are way down. I think maybe 300-400 ICU beds? A few months ago I think they needed 1500+.

CowperKettle

> bavarian rococo socialist realism communist cat

Made by an AI engine

> Elon Musk experiencing pain

tchrist

@CowperKettle Oh is he going into space already too?

CowperKettle

4:18 AM

> RONALD MCDONALD EMERGING FROM THE WELL ARMED WITH HIS SWIFT TO CHASTISE HUMANITY

Man_From_India

5:57 AM

I have very limited access to online corpus so I can't search exhaustively. I am trying to dinf out if the below sentence is correct.

> Bob waited till February but Jim did so until March.

Why is this important? On ELL I wrote an answer long back, but now I have some doubt on my answer. It depends on this sentence. If this sentence is right I can draw the conclusion that the answer I wrote was wrong.

I think this sentence is wrong.

Xanne

8:47 AM

Well, whether you wrote something right or wrong months ago has probably been handled by up and down votes and other questions. You current formulation leaves a question in the reader’s mind, or at least a few seconds where the reader is wondering if he’s got it right and Jim also waited until February. Text that reads well does not leave the reader wondering about meaning.

CowperKettle

Ballot Act 1872

The Ballot Act 1872 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that introduced the requirement for parliamentary and local government elections in the United Kingdom to be held by secret ballot. == Background == Employers and landowners had been able to use their sway over employees and tenants to influence the vote, either by being present themselves or by sending representatives to check on the votes as they were being cast. Small retailers were also concerned not to upset their bigger customers by voting differently from them. Radicals, such as the Chartists, had long campaigned for...

It took them quite long to figure it out

Xanne

i read a biography recently that seemed to flow along. I was always ready for the next sentence. I never had to reread to figure out what the pronouns referred to or whether they were restrictive or not; I was never puzzled about what the author was saying, whether I agreed or not.

It is not a process of following a bunch of rules, but rather writing in such a way that the issues of these technicalities does not even occur to the reader. No garden paths up or down.

CowperKettle

9:10 AM

I'm in the second day of my H. Pylori eradication treatment, and I cannot force myself to go jogging. Somewhy I feel tired.

CowperKettle

9:21 AM

> Don't trust the atoms. They make up everything

CowperKettle

9:33 AM

A young woman in Moscow noticed the police taking away a child. She started filming this on her phone, and they took her too, and beat her up inside the police van. After this, they charged her for indecent behavior.

CowperKettle

10:12 AM

> The first study recorded to have a blinded researcher was conducted in 1907 by W. H. R. Rivers and H. N. Webber to investigate the effects of caffeine.

CowperKettle

10:41 AM

Neural network art

Except the caption of course.

Man_From_India

11:08 AM

@Xanne I am confused :( is that sentence right?

M.A.R.

11:35 AM

@CowperKettle That much caffeine does affect eyesight

Xanne

11:47 AM

@Mitch I Already said so ethi g about it.

That wasn’t for Mitch, sirry.

CowperKettle

1:15 PM

An newly identified immune molecule raises hopes for a vaccine against a range of viruses related to SARS-CoV-2

CowperKettle

3:49 PM

My friend wrote me that she had covid. She lost her smell for one day, and had symptoms of a cold.

She wrote that she is 'happy' to not being obligated to get the vaccine now.

I'm surrounded by antivaxxers.

tchrist

We have five ELU questions on the Hot Network Questions list again. sigh

CowperKettle

4:09 PM

0

Q: Is it considered eosinophilia if the total eosinophil count is normal but the eosinophil percentage is high?

If the total eosinophil count is normal but the eosinophil percentage is high, is it considered eosinophilia, or is it merely grounds for a rerun of the test? In a paper by Kovalski and Weller (2016), I read that: Hence, eosinophilia is often recognized based on an elevation of eosinophils in th...

I have a quite high % but normal total count.

The doctor said to take several blood tests for a variety of worms and other invasive species.

nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01454-y

What's up with Russia?

CowperKettle

4:53 PM

I would have up-voted this question but for the fact that it appears to criticise Jesus of Nazareth by implying a deliberate or non-deliberate misrepresentation of holy writ. — Nigel J 8 hours ago

CowperKettle

5:47 PM

Mitch

6:15 PM

@Xanne I'll be OK.

Cat couplings

CowperKettle

9:41 PM

Cerberus

10:36 PM

@tchrist Cabinet deemed it fit to reopen night clubs, allow large festivals, and let cafés remain open after midnight. Access was limited to those who could show a negative test or vaccination. But there were huge loop holes and dysfunctions in that system of access.

In one nightclub in Enschede, I believe 900 people were infected.

After two weeks, the above decision was reversed.

Hospitalizations are slowly climbing again. People in intensive care are still very few.

We're nearing 70 per cent of the total population having had at least one shot. The remainder is mostly young people, who rarely need to be hospitalised.

Meanwhile, my parents' young cats are romping through the night.

We are catsitting this week.

Mitch

10:57 PM

@Cerberus that's really the only way to keep them still

Cerberus

11:11 PM

@Mitch True. It's difficult to carry out, though.

Cerberus

11:27 PM

@tchrist From what I read, the MRNA vaccines do protect against severe illness from the Indian variant very well. We just need to reach herd immunity. It's getting closer and closer. Around 89 per cent of the population here say they are willing to be vaccinated. And the previously infected also help.

As to France, I believe are already far above forty per cent first shots.

More like approaching sixty?

@tchrist I rather believe it was an oversight in the testing system. He wanted to increase willingness to be vaccinated among young people by holding the carrot of dancing before them.

He should have qualified his statement, but he didn't.

Then it turned out you got a green mark from the (highly disorganised, fractured, commercial) testing facilities immediately after receiving the Janssen vaccine.

One wonders how that could happen.

It's almost sinister.

In short, the "testing for access" system was a disaster. I believe it has now been abolished.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…