Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Jeff Buchanan]

If you're not reading Bucahnan you are both woefully underinformed on Covid and blessed with an extra 8 hours a day you wouldn't otherwise have.

#SpeedInSpace!!!!!!

Well yes, and while were on the topic of people being woefully uninformed on Covid ................'ll bet everyone here except possibly myself, thinks (1) A cruise ship presents a huge risk for getting sick if you vacation on one. (2) SARS-COV-2 was aboard cruise ships very early on, discharged infected persons into ports of call or debarkation ports and seeded many countries with COVID. (3) Cruiselines didn't care about that only that they coninued to protect thier bottom lines. If you read news about cruising and cruise lines, you would probably think all three of these things, right?

Here are the facts. I had to explain this to my kids when they were aghast that we booked a cruise ,eaving March 21st when COVID was out there but only thought to be a nuisance except in China. Cruise ships may have been the safest places to be to avoid becoming infected with SARS-COV-2 if you wanted to continue to socialize, see great enetertainment in theater settings, drink at a bar and dine out. Instead, the curise line we booked on, facing unprecendented and undeserved criticism and scrutiny, cancled all operations, including the cruise we booked, effective March 15th. Instead of having a great time in a much safer environment I ended up in 14d self quarantine imposed by the brown shirts in the city of Fort Lauderdale.

Cruise ships must comply with some of the most stringent rules in the travel industry. You don't want me to detail them. But, you won't find a restaurant, a hotel, pool, a resort, a sporting event - anywhere that a large number of people gather and can be in close contact with others - that are as sanitary as a cruise ship stem to stern are. There is no veneue that practices the kind of infection cpontrol than cruise ships.The reputation they get as a place that is unsanitary, breed infections and if you go you'll get really sick and ruin your vacation is one is completely undeserved. It is one of the greatest exaggerations, or lie if you will, ever. Few people actually get sick on cruises and the numbers prove that:

News outlets everywhere latched on to what appeared to be large numbers of SARS-COV-2 cases coming from two unlucky ships, blaming the entire industry that operates more than 1000 vessels world wide. They got pilloried becasue it was a hot story and got clicks.

At the end of 2019, the total passenger capacity within the cruise industry was about 570,856. (These numbers do not include crew.). There were 3047 documented COVID case either on-board at the time of diagnosis or diagnosed within 14d of debarkation ..... WORLD WIDE.

If we assume all ships were regularly sailing full, less than 0.05% of cruise ship passengers were infected with COVID. (The math works out to 0.0534%. Because the CDC numbers include crew but the passenger capacity numbers do not, the percentage is even smaller and is estimated at 0.04%.)

Even more telling is that, in terms of worldwide cases (5,288,392 as of 5/23/20), those tied to cruise ships account for 0.06%. Those numbers compare with countries like Iceland and Samoa

I use this not to sell cruising but rather to highlight just another irrational government policy in response to the pandemic implemented through the Department of Homeland Security via the CDC. They have spoken and without a shred of evidence to support the steps they took, issuied a draconian no sail (from US ports) order that will expire on July 15th, unless it is stupidly extended. The cruise industry is shut down. The CDC also published a long list of things the industry had to do to begin sailing from US ports. It's oppressive, it's over-reach considering that the industry has very hihg sanitary and infection control procedures compared to, oh, lets say the airlines or most of the travel and leisure industry.

What the DHS did based on the demonstrably incompetent "experts" inside the CDC is paramount to closng all US airports to airline travel because, well, and this actually is a much bigger issue than infected cruise passengers, because airline passengers arriving from international or even national travel within the US are a much bigger risk of spreading SARS-COV-2 than cruise passengers. Poven! Oh, aiports are open, airlines are starting up again but nope, the cruise industry and those thousands of ships are at sea, floating around and costing Royal Caribbian Cruise Lines, for example, in the neighgorhood of $450M/month in cash with no reveneu coming in from any of them .... but yeah, shut those guys down and watch them drown in debt.

Do I make it clear why I stopped listening to the morons in government about anything having to do with COVID?

[Dr. Strangelove]

Jeff's last post sponsored by Carnival Cruise lines!! Only 0.06% of our passengers die, the safest fleet on the Seven Seas!!

[drok]

Can you expand on how sanitary cruise ships are?

[Dr. Strangelove]

LOL...Trump is a fucking idiot. Truly. His own Attorney General has been intricately involved in crafting this FISA deal. A majority of House Republicans, including Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes, voted for the deal back in March. And now he throws them all under the bus, at the very last minute (the vote is tomorrow), for what reason?

[Ghengis Jon]

He apparently doesn't like his hot air called out either.


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[Dr. Strangelove]

Listen, Jon, he will not allow it to happen

[THE_WIZARD_]

Rational government policies.

Heh. Now that is fucking comedy right there.

[lineygoblue]

Sorry Jeff, but the cruise I booked out of Fort Liquordale in early February is hanging by a thread.

The idea of five days in a floating tin can with thousands of people from all over the world in close quarters, is not a pleasant thought. Not the way this thing spreads.

We haven't cancelled yet. The wife wants to wait and see how things look come the fall. Me, I'm already reviewing Carnival's refund policy.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Editorial by the Washington Examiner editors, normally a Trump-friendly outlet, which slams his attacks on Joe Scarborough as "vile and unworthy of the office". This has a fairly good background of the conspiracy theory too and why it's ridiculous. And yes, it was started by Democrats, way back when.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...ith-leadership

[iam416]

Most outlets are slamming it. The NRO slammed it. No one that I read is defending it. It's mostly white noise to me in the sense that it just doesn't matter an iota. If this were the first time he tweeted something that was "unpresidential" then maybe it's of note to me. But I already know what he is.

[iam416]

Of some note, the DOJ has dropped the investigation into 3 of the Senators accused of insider trading while continuing to investigate Burr. This should come as no suprise to anyone who actually delved into the facts even a little bit. It won't hurt Feinstein or Imhoffe one bit, but it was a real blow to Loeffler. You can't just waive a magic wand and undo "rich senator uses insider knowledge to get rich of covid while telling everyone else it's all good."

[Jeff Buchanan]

Liney (CGVT), you won't find me debating your choice or trying to justify my position on sanitation and infection control on cruise ships. It is a position however, that is objectively and demonstrably better than any other venue within the travel and leisure industry. Still, decisions about venturing out and mingling, where one goes and what risks one chooses to take are personal ones. What I'm opposed to and will debate is the misinformed and misguided policy that has shut down the cruise lines.

In COVID news, last night I began to see a few articles listing states where case numbers are rising implying that such states opened too soon. Of course, photos of crammed beaches on the west and east coasts and notably the Lake of the Ozarks resort crowds accompany these stories.

Humor me ..... I think most of you here are pretty rational about the need to re-open with caution so, perhaps I'm speaking to the choir but it makes me feel better writing about this. Of course with re-opening comes increased numbers of infections and the normal trajectory of pandemics will have the number of deaths appearing to increase on a day-to-day basis because reporting of them lags. When we look back on this a year from now with a vaccine available and being administered globally, we'll see the typical rise in case numbers, a plateau and a decline in case numbers and deaths. Such is the normal and historical behavior of viruses that result in global pandemics.

The continued problem I see with media reports and official reports on COVID is that there is no recognized uniform basis upon which such reports are provided. If I look around, I can find numbers that support continued shuttering or re-shuttering. I can also find numbers that support the continuation and further expansion of reopening strategies, at least on a conceptual basis. In practice, retained mitigation and containment strategies and the speed of re-opening by which lock-down measures are relaxed varies widely across the US. I'm fine with regional differences in re-opening strategies because that's as it should be but don't cherry pick data that is the basis of news reports that imply the hackneyed line, "as predicted, DIRE CONSEQUENCES for re-opening too soon."

The papers here in S. FL are rife with opinion pieces mostly critical of the state's pandemic response in one phase of it or another. Some of the criticism is well founded, most of it is not, esp., those critical of state guidelines for re-opening. Every rate measure of virus spread in FL is either stable or continues to decline. State-wide, GR remains around 5%; it varies by county from a high of 10% in Miami Dade to a low of 1% in multiple counties throughout less affected regions of FL. R(t) is holding at 0.92. From my perspective that indicates containment even while there are new cases and deaths reported daily. TBF, there has been an increase in GR and R(t) over the last two weeks but it's hard to flesh out whether that is a result of increased detection via testing or represents increased infections secondary to more socialization. At worst, TBD.

The bottom line on a personal level is that one has to be sensitive to the wide variation in the implications of news and official reports. There's political bias affecting these reports and I actually don't think this problem is unique to the US. What one has to do is look at the data that is out there - tons of it - understand what it's telling you and make your own decisions about your behavior in the face of SARS-COV-2. It's not gone and won't be for at least 18 months from now and it may never go away. So, there's an increased risk of falling ill and it increases as one ventures out and starts traveling, mingling and socializing. Get used to dealing personally with this risk/benefit caclulation you'll be making goring forward. OTH, your absolute risk of getting infected is very low. If you want to understand this statistical term along with others related to it (relative risk, risk ratios) here's a link: https://www.statisticshowto.com/calc...relative-risk/

The bottom line for policy makers is if from your lofty levels of officialdom you're going to design policy such that its imposition of it creates significant restrictions on individual movement and economic activity, you better have the data to back that policy up, message it correctly and hope to hell you get buy-in from those affected. So far, most policy makers on every level of government have failed miserably at this ...... I do believe that is a significant shortcoming of how the US has responded to SARS-COV-2 compared to elsewhere around the globe. These shortcomings, or policy failures if you will, is a contributor to both the fear and militancy over COVID present across America today.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Most outlets are slamming it. The NRO slammed it. No one that I read is defending it. It's mostly white noise to me in the sense that it just doesn't matter an iota. If this were the first time he tweeted something that was "unpresidential" then maybe it's of note to me. But I already know what he is.

It's inconsequential to us because we've already long made up our minds about Trump. But there's presumably people out there for whom this sort of shit is the tipping point. I saw some conservative pundit, don't remember who, bemoaning the fact that instead of capitalizing on Biden's "you ain't black" moment, Trump immediately bumped it from the headlines by spending all Memorial Day Weekend harping on Joe Scarborough. And personally making sure it remains in the news for maybe 4 or 5 straight days now? He's STILL yammering about it only a hour ago.

We've long said that there's people out there not dissatisfied with Trump's America but are utterly exhausted by the endless shitshow and deranged need to make the front page every single day. A sleepy grampa who won't shake things up sounds really good to them any time Trump goes into a weeklong tantrum about something utterly stupid and inconsequential. Maybe during a quiet spell they'd tolerate it, but we've got a pair of significant problems right now. Trump's smarter allies know this and are pleading with him to drop it.

[iam416]

I can't imagine that this would be a tipping point for anything more than a inconsequential number of folks. Not 3+ years in. So, it's not great politics. As per usual. But it's a political issue more than anything else for me.

[iam416]

And, to reiterate, Biden just needs to shut his damn mouth. When either of these two candidates speak they're both far more likely to harm their chances. Silence is fucking golden. Let Mark Hanna William McKinley this shit. STFU.