tangleweeds wrote:My concern is that we have never successfully made a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine. For example, they were pushing a feline coronavirus vaccine in the '90s to prevent FIP, which is fatal and nasty. But that vaccine is no longer available, because while it protected 90% of the cats from FIP, the other 10% suffered an exacerbated cytokine storm and died.However, I wouldn't be such a pessimist concerning the vaccine. The one developed in Oxford and now tested in Brazil looks promissing, the Lancet is the most reliable journal there is.
You're absolutely right, there are many risks. But the world has never been more motivated to spend efforts and money on this. We've finally realised that we are not untouchable. Not just the poor people in the developing world, but also us, in the rich countries with our hygiene standards for food, plumbing at homes, and access to healthcare. Before this moment, nobody gave a real damn. We had been warned this would happen. The epidemiologists fifteen years ago were warning us in the prestigious journals, the activists were trying to alarm others, and so on. Nobody gave a s..t until we, the lords of the world, have started dying too. We all know motivation is the key. Just like a learner studies differently for fun and differently to avoid starving in a new country, the same is true about the science support by the society and governments.
And Rosetta has drastically dropped their prices, to where, while still overpriced for the relative ineffectiveness of what you get, they're now *less* expensive that a number of other programs I'm running across in my explorations of currently available Japanese resources.Btw as we were discussing that Duo has replaced RS in the public discourse: RS seems to be relancing. They are probably motivated by the quaranteen learners. I am bombarded by their ads on FB, web, and so on. The RS comes from various channels, and is impossible to just block (as it is always advertised through a different medium, blog, newspaper,...). And when I block the ad and FB asks why, I sorely miss a button "the product is trash"
Full disclosure: A friend bought me the lifetime full access RS membership at the discounted price, and I enjoy playing with it more than I do Duolingo. I'm unsure how much I'm actually learning, but I do feel it helps re-enforce things I've learned elsewhere. It's pleasant to play with when I'm tired or it's much too hot to think--I enjoy clicking on the pretty pictures. I do believe they've improved both the diversity and cultural relevance of their photos, and I am impressed with how the photos are dynamic, compelling, and clearly relevant to whatever they're trying to reenforce.
But I don't think it's useful as a primary teaching resource, or necessarily worth what they charge unless you're getting the full access membership and using it to re-enforce a *lot* of different languages--which might be true for some people here. I think it might be useful for someone who didn't want a back-burner language to fade out entirely, but didn't have a lot of mental energy to put into it (and had $200 in pocket change to divest themselves of).
Yes, the RS has found their only chance to regain a part of the public. Everything about it is still true, but if you enjoy it as a fancy flashcard program (which is how some llorgers have been using it for languages like Tagalog), great.
Given their new price strategy and my new salary, I could actually afford it. But no, it is still not worth it to me. But perhaps I'll change my mind, when I need a ton of flashcards with audio for a less popular language. I'd say the fall of Duolingo has made me a little bit more open minded about the RS And perhaps the prices of some other resources too. When I was exploring the available resources for Hebrew, I was shocked by the prices. Or when I saw a totally generic language coursebook worth 25 euro, but meant for the american universities at the price of 150 dollars. Wow. I cannot understand that at all.