Simple is not the same as easy.

A vaccine is given before an infection (whether viral or bacterial), to stop it happening in the first place.

There are some rare exceptions, like rabies in some cases, where you would use a post-exposure vaccine, but for the vast majority it's a preventive measure not a curative one.

Actually most of them seem to be just old and afraid to leave everything they've ever known.

Well, other countries wouldn't find devaluing the Lebanese currency very useful ;-)

Well, yeah, but then again we've never before been a decade away from an actual, real Q10+ fusion reactor, even if it's not intended to be a commercial one, and now we are.

I didn't say neutrons were a specific problem : you did.

There are plenty of other engineering problems, including long duration high-temperature divertors, tungsten chemistries for wall endurance, new magnet chemistries of higher power and smaller size, computing designs to continue optimising plasma flow control especially at edges, and overall reactor design for ease of construction, maintenance, etc.

>Right now no amount of engineering alone is going to overcome the problem of neutrons rapidly destroying equipment when they start pouring out of the fusion reaction.

Really? You should tell that to the engineers who invented the FLiBe blanket, specifically designed to capture the neutrons "flooding out" and turn them into useful tritium to feed back into the fusion cycle, while also protecting the rest of the fusion reactor vessel.

Fusion is not a "near future" option.

Research is going extremely well, and it's basically down to engineering rather than physics problems now as no-one in the industry really doubts that it will be a viable form of energy generation. But it's still 10-15 years away from even having a viable fusion reactor design, and then a huge amount more from being a dominant source of energy.

So we need to need to be concentrating on the solutions we have now (renewables, existing reactor designs, SMRs, etc.) to solve the problems for the next 20-30 years.

We would like to thank the UK for offering themselves as a control group for what happens to bee species when one isolated country fails to ban neonicotinoids.

That's actually a major part of grid design, and unless you design and implement it properly it can be a monumental pain to actually restart the grid properly.

It's called a "Black Start" and is very hard to do, especially on an already dodgy and possibly damaged grid.

They unilaterally cut gas delivery, breaking their contracts.

Gas was not sanctioned.

>As Moscow has cut off electricity exports to Finland — also in May — and the Finnish state-controlled oil company Neste has replaced imports of Russian crude oil with other sources, Finland’s energy ties with Russia are now all but gone.

Looks like that train has already left the station, never to return.

The maintenance history on those aircraft is already fucked... it's coming up on a year of no spare parts or authorised maintenance procedures, together with the aircraft sitting idle outdoors in a country with absolutely shit weather conditions. I'm 100% certain that they've been properly covered, serviced and periodically spun up, and that no-one stole the fuel and forged maintenance records at all...

Due to the above, even if the aircraft came back into the ownership of the original companies, you could never really trust them again. If you leased them out and any accident were to occur, the leasing company would be absolutely fucked.

My guess is Russia will go for a massive missile strike again on either Christmas Eve, or Christmas Day.

Purely to be as cuntish as possible.

Reverse Aragorn... start with an army of live soldiers and finish up with dead ones.

They are delusional, but they're also stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Their vaccination levels are simply not high enough, and the vaccines they're using are not effective enough. As a result, if they let this burn without restrictions then their medical system is going to get overwhelmed and massive numbers of people are going to die.

During previous lockdowns they could truthfully point out that everyone else was locking down. They don't have that excuse any more.

Ireland has a breeding population of 100 or so on Lambay island off Dublin.

Fully deny? No.

But they can insist on daylight transit, with one ship at a time, can deny warships completely unless they're returning to base, and can impose an inspection regime. And as Russia has proven over the last month, rigorous inspection regimes of large ships can result in a 195-ship tailback.

Transit of the Straits, ever again.

It would have to venture out of its port first ;-)

>I don't see how the economical situation in Ukraine is sustainable. Right now they depend on the support of its allies both to sustain the working of the government as well as the supply of weapons.

Er... yes, and that is fully sustainable. Both the EU and the US have guaranteed stable revenue supports of around $3bn per month for all of next year.

>I honestly don't think that Ukrainians are able to reconstruct as fast as you think, mainly due to the austerity brought up by the conflict itself.

The power outages are in general lasting hours or a couple of days at maximum. Roads and rail are literally being repaired the next day.

Major infrastructure like buildings, etc. take a lot longer, obviously, but they're still in the process of being repaired already.

>Your assumption is that the Russian army can't keep up with this effort

That is not my assumption, it's the analysis of the military experts who have good estimates of how many missiles Russia had before the war, and how many they've been seen to fire off. They are running incredibly low on missiles.

>and that Ukraine air defenses have been brought up to a level where they now can handle it.

We've seen the Ukrainian success rate climb steadily in the last few weeks, and there is currently only a single active Iris-T system in the country. That will be joined by 3 more Iris-T and 4 more NASAMS in the next few weeks.

>I do think casualties in the Ukrainian army are huge.

You have repeatedly mentioned this, but have given no supporting evidence.

>Training tens of thousands won't be enough to go on the offensive to reclaim all the lost territory.

They are already on the offensive with the force levels they have now, and successfully reclaiming territory, while training up additional forces and integrating additional modern weaponry. Which is back to my first point : what do you think is going to change to make this stop happening? You didn't have an answer for that.

>Specially now that the mobilized Russian conscripts start joining the ranks of the occupation.

The Russian conscripts are a joke. Seriously. They're untrained, they're barely armed, they have no winter clothes and they're going to die by the tens of thousands. They actively interfere with the military efficiency of units to which they're attached.

>At the start of the war, the Ukraine army was even better equipped then now I believe.

Horseshit. At the start of the war Ukraine was very poorly armed. They were running on older Soviet kit and had much fewer forces. Since then they have steadily shifted to modern NATO weapons as they burn down the last of their Soviet-era ammunition, and they have increased the number of troops in active use. They have limited the speed of recruitment only to the number that they can train and arm, but that's an ongoing process. They had little antitank and antiair capability, and only the same inaccurate artillery and rockets as Russia does.

>Even with all of that the Russian army was able to occupy a big chunk of the country.

They took that territory with a massive attack from four directions, assisted by traitors within Ukraine. Since that time they have steadily been losing territory, and the pace at which they're losing territory is increasing. They have not successfully taken any territory in 3-4 months now, so what they did in February is not relevant.

>So yes, I don't know how in the mid or long term Ukraine can go on an offensive to reclaim the lost territories.

You don't know how Ukraine can do exactly what they're currently doing?

It fits with you being wrong on almost every single point of fact above, however, so I'm not surprised.

>One, the country's economy has shrank by half. Right now the government relay on international interventions to sustain itself.

That's not actually a major issue, in the medium to long term which is how we look at these things. A vast amount of Ukraine's economic output is currently going to supporting the war effort, and a lot more has been disrupted. Once this has been resolved, however, the expectation is that the people and companies which constituted the economy of Ukraine before the war will remain, that Ukraine will regain control of the critical Donbass region (industry and energy) and that Ukraine will gain accelerated access to EU trade corridors and support. Economically, Ukraine doesn't have a great deal to worry about.

>Then, we had this round of tactical attacks from Russia that destroyed something like 30% of the electrical infrastructure in a matter of a week. This I think shows how Russia has a lot lieu way to up the ante.

Most of the infrastructure is being repaired as fast as it's being damaged. Also, Russia is rapidly running out of room with this tactic. The shootdown rate on the missiles it fired today was 88%, and it simply doesn't have too many more of those salvoes to fire. As Ukraine gains access to more and more anti-air defence, Russia's ability to inflict this sort of damage will drop steadily. That's not to say that it's not a major problem, but it's solvable and it's short term.

>Sure, the Ukraine army has made important gains lately, but for how long they can sustain this?

They can sustain it until something specific occurs to change the fact that Ukraine can make gains. What, in your opinion, is this specific thing?

>I do think the Russian army has wiped out a big chunk of the original army, which was very well trained one by the way.

Why do you think this? The Ukrainian army has been steadily increasing in size as they integrate more and more trained units. They've had tens of thousands of troops trained abroad, and these numbers are only increasing. The quality of weapons which which Ukrainian forces are armed are likewise improving steadily. No-one knows what they Ukrainian casualty numbers are, but Ukraine are demonstrably putting more and more troops in play so their casualties are lower than their recruitment and training rate.

>Then again, I don't know much about warfare

Finally we agree on something.

They have all of the videos from the Hong Kong protests, and tear gas is a solvable problem if you're disciplined and prepared.

"This week, on Season 12 of The Walking Dead..."

> I personally think that if not for seismic shift in Russian politics, retaking the the majority of the Donbass will be impossible.

I'm not sure why you think this? If you look at the last few months, the trajectory has been clear : Ukrainian forces are advancing steadily and have retaken over 7,000km^2 of territory. They have attacked and beaten basically every form of Russian units that exist, and continued forward. Ukraine are dictating the operational tempo, Ukraine are choosing where to attack, and Ukraine are winning the battles that they choose to fight. Conversely, Russians are not winning any fights. The only battle that they've chosen to engage in is around Bakhmut, which they've been attempting to capture for three months now and are having to retreat from this week.

Simultaneously, Ukrainian force levels, training and equipment are improving on a day to day basis, while Russian equivalents are disimproving : they're losing T70/80/90 tanks and backfilling them with T64s, they're losing soldiers and replacing them with untrained conscripts without proper training weapons or armour, and they're retreating from prepared defensive positions and having to escape back to less suitable secondary lines.

Given this situation, unless something fundamentally changes, Ukraine will simply keep retaking territory until they have cleared Russian forces entirely. What is it that you think is going to change in the Russian position which will materially affect the situation?