A reference to reviving travel and tourism to boost the economy and hospitality industry, I would think, but we’ll see if @Murgatroyd replies to you…
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@anon3072533 is on the mark here. Your reference to “Uncle Joe” got me thinking about Uncle Joe Carson from Petticoat Junction; he was always trying to think of ways to bring in customers. Biden’s comment that the pandemic is over sounded just like something Uncle Joe would have said to convince people to stop at the Shady Rest.
My apologies for the derail of the conversation.
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Got it, thank you for the explanation.
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I don’t even have the money to do it, but damn, I’m never gonna see the art museums in St. Petersburg in person. 
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I saw some of Hermitage I think I went in to most of the rooms… Went to Repin the 175th anniversary exhibition that was cool too.
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I’m skeptical about throwing more money at this problem unless there is strong oversight - because it tends to go missing or wind up misallocated. So far, we’ve seen unbelievably slow response time, lack of coordination, and failure to execute the plans that were created before:
Worse, there are already right-wing talking points about not letting the WHO lead during a health emergency. People in multiple US states have already seen GOP members dismantle the process for declaring an emergency. Their approach to a crisis is to ignore it and pretend that all is well (since their primary concern is that the money must flow 
). To most people, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. However, there’s profit in creating cures - and too many in power who have no problem with prioritizing profit over people. So all the planning and funding in the world won’t help without the political will and authority to take action and follow through.
Here’s an article that describes plans and updates made since 1999 for an influenza pandemic (PIP) as mentioned in the Guardian article above.
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Neat! I used to drive an icream biek when I was ~14. Dickie Dee and the other one I forget the name of. Made some decent coin and got to be outside every day.
First contact with cannabis, too. Turned out the 2nd summer at unknow company, the manager was using the bike drivers to sell hash oil. I was drug-naive, couldn’t figure out why everyone had these small pipes. They got busted and I was out of a job. 
ETA: picture of what I was told is a “fish bike”:
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The Australian Medical Association opposes the change, saying those who pushed for it are not “scientifically literate” and are putting lives at risk.
In other news the slight swelling from my jab has gone down after two days. No sign of other side effects listed in the leaflet – yet.
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Thanks for the reminder! Got both a flu shot and the new Covid-19 booster on Tuesday. My left arm is beginning to feel less sore today. Yay! 
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In the past, flu pandemics “ended” after the virus swept through so much of the population that it could no longer cause huge waves. But the pandemic virus did not disappear; it became the new seasonal-flu virus. The 1968 H3N2 pandemic, for example, seeded the H3N2 flu that still sickens people today. “I suspect it’s probably caused even more morbidity and mortality in all those years since 1968,” Morse says. The pandemic ended, but the virus continued killing people.
Ironically, H3N2 did go away during the coronavirus pandemic. Measures such as social distancing and masking managed to almost entirely eliminate the flu. (It has not disappeared entirely, though, and may be back in full force this winter.) Cases of other respiratory viruses, such as RSV, also plummeted. Experts hoped that this would show Americans a new normal, where we don’t simply tolerate the flu and other respiratory illnesses every winter. Instead, the country is moving toward a new normal where COVID is also something we tolerate every year.
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So Harvard decided to mandate the new bivalent booster shot for all students, but not for faculty and staff.
Personally I’m with Dr. Paul Offit on this one, and don’t think it’s appropriate to mandate it for anyone at this time, for a variety of reasons. But if you are going to mandate it, why wouldn’t you want to include faculty and staff as well? Currently the virus is much more dangerous to older folks than to the student-age population, so faculty are more likely to benefit from it.
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