Rogerborg

It's not going away even with complete vaccination. If it were, it wouldn't exist in Israel or Gibraltar. And given the HSA report today that protection from the mRNA boosters wanes after just 10 weeks, I'm becoming less convinced that "vaccine" is the correct term. Temporary prophylactic might be closer. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not saying that the current mRNA jabs aren't working. I'm saying that they work as well as they work, and no better. They're not a panacea, and it seems clear that they need to be updated to target more recent variants. Given that omicron is turning out to be milder (as we'd expect), it's not unreasonable to ask: how many more doses, administered how frequently, and for how long? In the context that we're never going to have zero SARS-COV-2. It's never going away. They do provide some protection against infection and transmission, but much less than we'd hoped. And they've never claimed otherwise: all the trials only looked at protection from serious illness or death for the subject, not transmission (and I can't think how they could have done so). On masks and preventing transmission, the only large scale community study done is the Bangladesh one. The headline: Masks work. The details: unlimited amount of free, disposable, surgical-grade masks, in conjunction with a campaign to wear them and instructions on how to use them properly, reduced community infection by an amount just barely on the cusp of statistical significance (96 fewer cases out of a sample size of 106,201, p = 0.043). Cloth masks, even with the same campaign and instructions, did not (11 fewer cases out of 54,122). https://www.poverty-action.org/sites/default/files/publications/Mask_RCT____Symptomatic_Seropositivity_083121.pdf Cato Institute also says no on cloth masks. https://www.cato.org/working-paper/evidence-community-cloth-face-masking-limit-spread-sars-cov-2-critical-review Am I against masks? Not as such. It seems common-sensical that they would serve a "nudge" purpose to remind us that there is still a hazardous virus going around - although the Bangladesh evidence doesn't even support that. What I'm against is people getting nudged to the point of fury at the absence of them, given the thinnest of evidence that even the best types actually have any benefit in the community.

Fraud requires gain for yourself or loss for another, which would be a hard argument to make unless you consider a potential fine as a loss. You might stretch it to conspiracy to commit an S36 offence, which would be rather bizarre as if you just walked in and said "Sell me a RIF" without providing any reason why, there could be no mens rea. This just further illustrates how bonkers the whole legislation is, although I wouldn't expect any changes to be in our favour. Every time some skip-licker goes postal with a RIF, I wonder if this will be the time when Fleet and Downing Streets decide to call time on our hijinks. OP's fine rather than fined though, I'm really just jealous of that go-faster pistol.

Huh. Well, that's one way of doing it. With no disrespect to you - you're not the one committing any offence - it's an absolute cad's trick by the retailer, and ill advised of the MVT to allow unvetted membership if it's being abused like this. The retailer knows fine well that they're selling this for airsoft use, not reenactment. There's no reasonable way they could claim that defence, for that pistol. It's a cynical box-ticking exercise, and if they're going to accept a bogus defence that won't actually protect them if legal push comes to shove, then I'd note that JustCos is only £20. Sorry, that rant isn't aimed at you, but at the whole farcical system. You've just illustrated how utterly pointless it is.

I meant, having fun by waving at them when they were falling short. In those situations, most of the time the person shooting at you will be convinced that they're hitting you (their gnu shoots 200m like a laser, legit), so they've already flagged you as a cheater. So: stand there and shoot back; head for cover in case they figure it out and raise their aim; or wind them up more with a wave? It's very wrong to do the last one, and I certainly would recommend it. Why, if you did it to me, I'd be livid. Nobody pays attention to the objective.

Is it fair to collectivise the views of all mask-sceptical and vaccine-hesitant people as being reflected by a loony-tunes lizard-people Q site?

Is your ex-fiancé ready to move on yet? I'm going to have to ask: MVT? Wow, that is pretty tacticool. I like the ghost ring iron sight, I might put some white or luminous paint on that for dark CQB if it doesn't already have some.

RIP, buddy, fliing hi wit de angles now. I guess we didn't get a Christmas miracle from either seller? I got a small one of my own though. The solid stock that rattled around inside Chyna, apparently got returned to sender there (twice!), then sat in UK Customs since November 26th got put through my letterbox yesterday. No sign that Customs had opened or inspected it, it seems it just sat on their desk for weeks for no apparent reason while they stared at it and regretted their life choices.

And a sight protector and a tracer unit and single, two and three point slings and a forward grip and a different pistol grip and a CQB stock and... Cancel your wedding plans now, you won't be able to afford it. Ahoy and welcome though. We're so-so on those Bulldogs, but they seem to be pretty standard V2 gearboxed M4s so anything that does go wrong should be fixable without too much drama. It'll doubtless migrate to become a loaner / backup / tinkering gun if you stick with the hobby.

Huh, seems like a lot of effort to go to to scam you, but looks like it. Sadly, I suspect this will be the eBay decision.

Poor lass, by the time she got the party favours out, everybody had already lost interest. Reject degeneracy, return to reloading.

It matters how you contextualise them, because you only find the cases that you test for. It's apples to apples, but it depends how deeply you rummage around in the sack to count them. We have ramped testing through the roof - and I do mean through, as the ONS daily figures show us doing more tests than we have capacity, which is... rather remarkable. Our case rate has risen even more sharply, indicating a higher positive test rate. That's bad. But the rise in admissions seems to have plateaued, and is lower than in September and November. That's good. Because of shorter stays, the rise in admissions isn't leading to a rise in those taking up beds. That's better. And mechanical ventilation (see above) and deaths are falling. That's great. I don't see much in these figures to justify violent dehumanising rhetoric. Describing our fellow citizens as diseased rodents is part of a trend too, and I don't much like where that line ends up. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

It would be clearer scaled by population, and by tests performed. The reason that I mention Gibraltar and - excuse me, it was Cyprus I was thinking of, rather than Malta - is that they've done even more testing per capita than the UK and have - can you guess? - found more cases per capita. Israel has done less, and found less. But wait, what's the positive test rate? Or viewed the other way, how many tests has each nation done in order to find a case? In Cyprus it's 64 (1.56% positive rate), Gibraltar is 55 (1.8%), Cyprus is 64, UK is 33 (3%), Israel is... 27 (3.7% positive test rate). So I agree that right now, Israel are doing better. Their cases are still trending up though, and overall, despite moving faster and harder, it appears that they've done worse for suppression, and had higher prevalence. If this sounds like an argument against vaccines and mitigation, it's not. Israel has done much (much) better in terms of deaths per capita, and that's what actually matters. But rather than celebrating the win, they're doing even more of "this shit". There's no light at the end of their tunnel, no Old Normal, just more green passes. My point is that there is no magic bullet against an endemic, mutating coronavirus, and that even vaxpässen will not macht frei. So we can rage about it and play chase-the-cases, or we can put it in perspective as an also-ran in the mortality and hospitalisation stakes rather than losing our collective minds every time we have another cycle of cases leading to tests leading to cases, while ICU and deaths actually continue to fall. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

"Suddenly"? Got to be one of the most wish-listed ever. I'm surprised nobody has come up with a bodykit. Imagine the ignominy of being bayonetted by Kraut Space Magic.

I'm again going to have to ask: who is to blame for Israel's high case rate, given their rapid, early, and near total compliance with sweeping interventions up to and beyond three vaccinations? This is going to go on for years, globally, regardless of what we do. Is it? July to September 2021, yes. It had already fallen to 35% by October. And yet you'll still see 90% repeated as "the latest figures" into December. There are plenty of headlines today about one ICU doctor repeating that 90% claim again, along with saying that it's patients in their 20s and 30s requiring care. Just about every media source is running with the same story, using the same wording, which is a good indication that it's being "nudged" via the revolving door between Fleet and Downing streets. Now, it may very well be true in in London. However, we don't know, since once of the doctor's complaints is that daily figures for care-vs-vaccination-status aren't available. And here's the thing you wouldn't guess from the headlines: the number of people requiring ventilation is falling, not rising. See the NHS figures here, Daily Admissions and Beds. The peak for mechanical ventilation was in early November, and it's actually trending down this week. If that's due to Londoners finally getting vaccinated, good, about time too. Or it could be due to better treatment options. Again, that's good news. Just please, let's look beyond the headlines, and keep things in perspective. Do I think that anyone still stubborn enough to be unvaccinated at this point is engaging in self- and societal harm? Yup. Do I think that calling them "plague rats" and engaging in a Two Minute Hate is likely to be constructive or persuasive? Nope. I'd rather that we celebrate the wins rather than turning on each other, no matter how cathartic it feels.

I meant, is it actually enforced? Not a huge deal, it's just that I have much the same concern about chrono, that it only takes a few rogues to spoil it for everyone.

Ahoy and welcome. Plenty of folk are just into the collecting and tinkering, they're fascinating bits of machinery - the fascination being that they work at all. Still, playing is a blast, if you get the right site and the right players. It sounds like you might enjoy milsims once you've got some experience. One thing, airsoft accuracy in the field isn't anything like airgun target accuracy, so try to enjoy the process as much as the results. I go to sites to get hit, not necessarily to make them.

Go away? But... SARS-COV-2 is never going to go away. It's endemic. We're never going to have zero covid, ever, no matter what we do. No amount of vaccination stops us catching or spreading it, it just mitigates it. Israel, Gibraltar and Malta, as above. Near complete compliance, triple doses and onto the fourth, masks, lockdowns, vaccine passports. Cases are still through the roof. Triple vaccinated and masked people are catching it from and spreading it to other triple vaccinated and masked people. Who's to blame for that, and what more can they do? Virus trajectory tends to be towards more transmissibility, but milder severity. It's certainly possible that a variant could come along that's both more transmissible than omicron and more harmful, but it's not likely. It's more likely that pi, rho and sigma will get milder and milder until they're no more harmful than any of the other endemic coronaviruses which we all catch multiple times in our lives. Even the threat of antibody dependent enhancement from vaccines isn't that big a spectre. If any of this sounds like I'm downplaying the severity of covid, particularly pre-omicron variants, or that I'm anti-vax, nope. We can and we should mitigate the ongoing harm, but please, let's be realistic about our expectations. There is no vaccine that prevents transmission, so even if we somehow managed to dose everybody in the world all at the same time, it still wouldn't end the situation. We've got years more of this to go, but it's going to get better from here.

Not all of us, with respect. This opinion is also available. The people issuing the laws, diktats, rules and guidelines, clearly, demonstrably, don't believe that they're necessary. Their actions give the lie to their words, and I mean all of them, all politicians of all parties, all meedja talking heads of all channels, all podiumed scienticians: everybody that we see lecturing us on our Telescreens every day puts on a performance, whips the mask off the moment they think the cameras have stopped rolling, then gets their mistress round to nosh them off at a cheesy wine party. We are to do as they say, not as they do. Long term, we should be clear that SARS-COV-2 being endemic means we're all going to get the coofs, multiple times, no matter how much we mask, wash, clap and jab. Blaming each other for something that is inevitable won't really achieve much except for keeping us perpetually angry, suspicious and weaponised against (REQUIRED_JABS - 1) refuseniks. On jabs, vaccination now is likely as good as it's ever going to get in combination of coverage and efficacy. Coronaviruses mutate faster than we can keep up, and vaccines are always going to be multiple variants behind. Israel, Gibraltar, Malta, all past their third doses and onto their fourth, all with transmission still through the roof, and with waning efficacy against omicron. The ONS are reporting, quietly, without a headline summary, that the more jabs you've had, the more likely any covid diagnosis will be for omicron than for a previous variant (table 1b). Please note that I'm being careful with the wording there, I'm not saying anything that I'm not saying. In terms of how bad it is, raw "cases" are numberwang, and driven by testing rather than rising positive rates. If I were to tell you that there are 2 billion bacteria on your toilet seat, it's because I looked for them. There were 2 billion yesterday, and the only thing that's changed today is that you know, and might be worried about it. Looking at the daily hospital numbers for England, the number of beds occupied by people who have tested positive for SARS-COV-2 is rising. However, deaths are not rising, either with or from, and significantly, mechanical ventilation number have barely budged since October. Yes, bad cases of delta are very very bad, and it's genuinely harrowing for the ICU staff dealing with it. If we could eliminate SAR-COV-2 tomorrow, I'd be delighted. The bad news is that we cant, but the good news is that the numbers that matter, deaths and suffering, aren't anywhere near as bad as the "cases" headlines. If we accept the argument that we have to mask, jab, isolate, jab, distance, jab and jab in order primarily to Save Our NHS from winter pressure, then I cannot see any reason why this won't apply every winter. Our NHS is three weeks from collapse, always has been, and always will be. So I'd suggest that whatever happens this year isn't just for this Christmas, it's for every Christmas to come, forever. I'll respect differing opinions, but I'll respect them a lot more if they're your own independent thoughts, and come with some up-to-date source citations.

Plenty of fine pairs on display on the 32 - 38 range.

Quite right, you wouldn't whip your Glock out at the local Club Chlamydia. Good point about the dick-rule covering this issue, and it all being down to proactive, constructive marshalling. One thing I'd pick up on is the belief that it's OK to flip the wankergun-switch to punish an OMG CHEETAR. It doesn't solve the underlying problem. I'm not saying that it's not funny and satisfying to do so, just be honest about why you're doing it. You're only making the situation worse by escalating it. On the ultimate sanction, I'd like to see a lot more players getting hoofed right out of the hobby, whether it's for persistent cheating, cheat calling, or wanker-gunning. I'd be willing to bet that regularly inviting the most toxic player of the day to not come back would pay off in terms of the potential players that get silently lost because of them. Hard to quantify though.

I can generally find the fill valve, but where's the winding wheel? Behind the knee?

Still, props for the fairly detailed description, and for only mugging people off face-to-face rather than remotely.

My problem with airsoft remains the number of people who are not there primarily to play airsoft. If they were, they wouldn't have to be nagged, cajoled and herded out of the safe zone game after game after game. Whether it's socialising, geardo-peacocking, clowning for an audience, or whatever other reason, I generally have a better day hanging out with enthusiastic rentals or new players keen to know what they ought to be doing, rather than regulars who have firmly fixed ideas which can often vary wildly from the briefing that they've just talked over.

More-what-you-call-guidelines-than-actual-rules?

What happens to the "suppressing fiiiiiiire" types who run dry in the first hour? Game by game / scenario by scenario, yes, I've seen that work well at a filmsim. But the reality is that it requires buy-in and trust from all the players. You can't in practice stop people from trousering a high-cap or six if they want to. The same applies to muzzle energy, mind.