Surely a better path would have been to slap imported silicon with tarriffs at least equal to their gov't subsidies?

(Unpopular opinion: The people that spent the last 30 years giving away US & EU manufacturing to the Far East - no doubt with plenty of "10% for the big guy" type deals behind the scenes - should all be shot.)

I wouldn't wish real autism on my worst enemy.

It's a lazy, imprecise term that is only ever used in political spats, never to address actual intergroup violence. Personally I suspect the demand for hate groups to exist - thereby justifying the many orgs and careers built on countering it - far exceeds the genuine supply.

And lab leaks happen All The Time. SARS-1 escaped labs on six separate occasions.

(It was my 9th or 10th attempt to quit too, but my first and only with Easy Way)

Despite not considering myself alcoholic, my wife nagged me into going to local Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings. I came to realise that I had somehow slipped into alcoholism without being the classic street-drunk, shop-doorway kind. I had the mental obsession with alcohol in spades... every day I'd count the hours until, after work, I could start drinking.

Once I'd accepted I was alcoholic it was relatively easy. The simple fact is I don't want to be an alcoholic, or any kind of -holic, so I was suddenly highly motivated to stop.

The AA way gets you thinking deeply about why you started drinking heavily in the first place: What are the exact feelings you want to drown in alcohol, and why do you have them?

I'm sure it's great for normies but my kids are mentally disabled and being their dad is grief and heartache without end. I have no close family to share any of it with - the little family I grew up with are all dead and I am looking forward to my own death.

I hope that one day genetic research will advance to a point where 23andme et al can help future young couples avoid these kind of outcomes.

Major changes such as, er, occasionally opening a window to let some fresh air in? That's a basic, obvious precaution that's been known since the dawn of time that wasn't done at all in the UK hospital ward where my mother caught and then died from Covid late last year. I know because I was there. The cluelessness re. viral spread almost two years into the pandemic was just astounding and I'm still very, very angry about it.

:-|

The idea that this thing sprang out of the wild, in Wuhan of all places, perfectly adapted to infect human beings, is fucking laughable.

The critically important thing is to establish exactly what happened in order to prevent SARS 3, SARS 4, etc. Absolutely everything else is of secondary importance. In the absence of malicious intent - and I think everyone agrees on that - we should have no interest in appointing blame.

Or maybe given the global significance of Covid-19, and the obvious conflict of interest for WIV, and especially given that the original SARS escaped labs at least 6 times, maybe some independent auditing and investigation should be done?

Also I've yet to see any slightly convincing explanation as to why SARS-Cov-2 emerged from the wild spectacularly well-adapted to human ACE2.