Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[iam416]

Nick Price said that about corona or food somewhere in the 15th fairway of the 1993 Masters. True story.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Sure, but rates matter a great deal. And growth rates matter a great deal. I understand that a 0.5% CFR will be way worse in the US than in Belgium, but I’m waaaaay more concerned with the CFR than absolute deaths.

They do. They show how much containment and control you have. I'll just contend that no matter our response, no matter how little or much we did, the general shape of the curve would look like Jeff's charts. I imagine if you put Lombardy, Wuhan, London, Stockholm, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, or any other big city on the same scale, the curve will pretty much look the same. What matters is where is the daily growth rate when we settle into that long plateau? The long tail at the end of the chart, which has smallest growth, is where most of the deaths will actually occur.

[iam416]

Concur

[Dr. Strangelove]

Roy of "Siegfried & Roy" dies from covid. He's the one who was mauled by their tiger, which basically ended their act. Cripes, that was almost 20 years ago.

[AlabamAlum]

...

[Dr. Strangelove]

Ew...you might say it looks like she's lost her...

...

...lust for life?

[AlabamAlum]

dear lord...

[Jeff Buchanan]

On DSL's link to the AP report ....... I'd like to see the guidance that the CDC was going to put out before I conclude it got quashed by idiots in the WH that are close to Trump. That's what it looks like this is being made out to be what happened. That makes little sense at face value.

I read somewhere that the president thought these evolving CDC guidelines were too strict. That characterization doesn't make a lot of sense. Given Trump's tendency to want to appear to be in control, why would he bury guidance documents from the esteemed CDC for re-openings by specific businesses?

I can see deferring to the states on this and maybe that's what's going on. It does produce this patchwork sort of re-opening we are seeing but, on balance, every state, every locale has a unique set of COVID circumstances to deal with.

I think some level of guidance from the federal level is appropriate Maybe Trump thinks that the Re-opening America Plan that is already out there is sufficient and that details can be fleshed out by the states, counties and cities.

I've read the FL plan that was released on 4/29 by the Governor's Office. It is very detailed. I can see why releasing a detailed federal plan authored by HHS/CDC doesn't serve any useful purpose and could simply add to the confusion that is already present between state, county and even city guidelines - one more set of guidelines isn't needed.

So, rather than characterizing this as another dumb thing the Trump administration has done as I feel confident that the media is going to do with this news (watch for dire headlines on Monday), see it as a reasonable approach by the WH to not add one more set of guidelines that, at least in FL's case, are already in place.

[Jeff Buchanan]

The back and forth regarding absolute numbers v. trends was decent and this made me laugh .......

As AlabamAlum once said, their are lies, Saban's lies and statistics.

It certainly applies. As I was posting on this yesterday I thought I should include a discussion, as DSL points out, of what a 100th or a 10th change in a rate figure means in turns of new cases or new deaths but, nahhhh, it didn't fit my narrative. Guilty.

This is tricky business - trying to determine if the earlier mitigation and containment measures any state or locale imposed and are now gradually lifting are creating a surge in cases and yes, raw numbers are instructive but, and I love this term that I'm pretty sure talent was the first to use here, are not dispositive.

That's my rub with the media's dire narrative. They'll be sure to point out the scary numbers but fail, every GD time, to provide the much less damning trend data. For policy makers at the state and local level where this is really important, there's plenty of data out there, when used collectively, to make good re-opening choices. Politics is inappropriately playing a huge role in this that I'm not seeing outside the US. There are examples in local S. FL politics affecting re-opening approaches that are just awful, piss people off and yet officials have thrown down the executive powers in a public health crisis card trumps legitimate concerns by business owners that are going broke and are not likely to survive.

I am a close observer of a complaint filed by a business owner friend of mine within the city of Miami over the mayor's re-opening approach that continues, he is arguing, unfairly to shutter his business. The complaint has been reviewed and it is "in the system" he is told, for it to be heard by a federal judge. The complaint was filed 2 weeks ago, asked for an emergency hearing, ostensibly granted ...... nothing yet. He fears he will lose his business sometime after May 15th. His circumstance is not unique within the S. FL, tri-county area that is not enjoying the Governor Desantis defined re-opening approach being followed by the rest of the state.

So, I'm seeing the huge cost of this kind of crap on the ground, affecting real people. In that light, I get the militancy this crap engenders fueled by the continuous unbalanced reporting of scary data. The mayor of Miami could chose to implement the Desantis phase one plan that allows restricted re-openings of certain businesses within the city he governs. It would be completely justifiable if he looked at the rate data for Miami-Dade County that shows stable or declining measures of the CFR, reports of ILI within city EDs and percentage of positives in COVID testing. But, nope, he's chosen what amounts to a wreckless continuation of business and recreational facility shutterings because, of what I believe, is the political pressure of the crowd of residents and his advisors that call up the political risks to him of being accused of having BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS.

I'll stop now.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I thought this was kind-of neat ..... assuming you're geeky like I am.

It's a study, done by geeks of course, that looks at the best materials for home-made masks.

Bottom line, don't worry if you can't find those 3M, N95 masks. Making one out of hi-thread count cotton - like those expensive sheets your wife keeps buying - yeah cut em' up, with a backing of silk cloth are just as good as the elusive N 95s as long as the fit of that home-made mask is good.

What I liked about the study was it's elegance.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.0c03252

[Ghengis Jon]

fl2.jpg

[iam416]

FTR, I was, in fact, the first person ever to use the term "dispositive." I was also the first poster ever to use the term "fucktard" but that's less glorious.

And just for my thousands of fans....After reading The Wizard's posts, the case against him as a fucktard is dispositive.

[AlabamAlum]

I will give you ‘dispositive’ but ‘fucktard’ was mine. It came from a 4chan thread and later World of Warcraft, which my son played 15-20 years ago.

Dismissed.

[iam416]

I've been using fucktard since at least 1997. The CNNSI boards are dispositive.

[AlabamAlum]

You vainglorious fucktard, I was using it in 1996.