Sort of. Being specific about the 55 year wait for the FDA reviewed material, it's not a case of nothing being released for 55 years, it's about releasing it in stages over 55 years (monthly) as they have a team of 10 that are also handling another 400 or so FOI requests. It's not the only thing on their plate.

This is pretty useful from Reuters on it [Link]

There's 329,000 pages, and the FDA is proposing 500 pages be released per month, for various reasons, including avoiding trying to review and redact all 329000 pages of information in 108 days. Likely impossible for a 10 person team.

I'd be interested to see if there are any other instances where a company has reviewed, redacted and released that much complex information in a 108 day period. I'd also be interested to know how much that might cost and how many people it would need on it to do so. I'd wager a hell of a lot on each count, and surely impractical even for an organisation with a 6bn budget. How many people would you need on that? 1000? Makes no sense. Plus, I'd imagine there would be plenty of errors working at that scale and speed, and errors are not the things you want when handling sensitive personal and commercial data.

The most important takeout for me is it's not the daily mail esque headline of 'won't be released for 55 years', it's the less glamorous 'to be released monthly for the next 55 years'. Small but important difference for those more susceptible to a conspiracists magnet.

As always, balance.

Edited by SW19 CPFC (23 Mar 2022 2.07pm)

Did you know? 98.0000001% of people are morons.

Fair points. Brand is a well meaning and decent man, but his shortfall is that he hardly does a 'deep dive' into the issues. He fleshes out a headline take and runs with it. Not as though I'm a big Farage fan, but when they went head to head on Question Time years back it was a good demonstration of this. Nowadays, Brand is coming at it from a different perspective where sometimes its talking point on the right that have his ear. That's by no means saying that he doesn't make many valid points, but it's important to recognise that what he presents is a 'take', a 'perspective' and that when people talk about the truth, it's often a partial and directed truth, with omissions to it that are equally truthful and valid in drawing a conclusion.

Nothing wrong with taking his contributions alongside others though of course, as long as it's not solely done to prop up an existing view, rather than be open to various takes.

Edited by BlueJay (23 Mar 2022 3.30pm)

There seems to no middle ground these days - it's all apparently black and white, even when it clearly isn't.

Red and Blue Army!

Still testing positive. That's 10 days now, plus the 3 days with symptoms before a positive test. So still isolating, but walking alone, avoiding people and not touching anything.

No symptoms now, other than feeling very tired, very soon after doing anything at all. Which is unusual for me.

The number of people in Cornwall with Covid is now at the highest level ever, so my empirical experience is bourne out.

For the avoidance of doubt any comments in response to a previous post are directed to its ideas and not at any, or all, posters personally.

It's allowed me to use it more, as I have been stuck at home a lot and doing anything physical doesn't last too long at the moment.

Thanks for the good wishes.

For the avoidance of doubt any comments in response to a previous post are directed to its ideas and not at any, or all, posters personally.

At the risk of exposing my own ignorance I do wonder whether it is Omicron or any other strain flying about these days? I tested positive a few weeks ago, after a long spell of unrelated illness and was virtually asymptomatic.

In any case, wish yourself and Wife all the best, you too Wisbech and hopefully this is a milder strain most people are picking up recently (although again, would reference my earlier statement regarding my ignorance).

Now Zaha's got a bit of green grass ahead of him here... and finds Ambrose... not a bad effort!!!!