Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Jeff- What do you think about Arizona? They have the highest transmissibility rate in the country.

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[lineygoblue]

"We're better than this" -- Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms

No, you're not.

If you were, you'd be searching for the people responsible for burning the restaurant.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Jeff- What do you think about Arizona? They have the highest transmissibility rate in the country.

That is true ...... I think you're asking a sincere question. I'll try not to be snarky. There are lots of ways to look at this and from what I can tell from reading web based local papers in AZ I found this:

Even with these increases in new cases and an increased R(t), AZ is still at about 1/5 the number of cases and 1/10 the number of deaths per capita as NY. AZ statewide is barely into the “low” category for ICU beds (28% open vs. 30% guideline) and have plenty of respirators available. Maricopa Co. is the one whose administrators called for it's hospitals to make preparations for more admissions but keep in mind, state wide there are plenty of ICU beds and you can see this at the additional charts at the link. Moreover, it is not at all unusual for coordination between a state's hospitals to level all bed space by transferring patients. While, sure, you can worry about one AZ county and I'm sure AZ PH officials are monitoring this. IOW you can't generalize a hot spot like Maricopa Co. to the entire state. Things seem fine in 95% of the state. It's no surprise that you'd pull out charts that show AZ having the worst numbers of your examples. No reason for panic and I'm positive you are avoiding the term that you might like to use, DIRE CONSEQUENCES for Az. But, OK, here's a chart I like better (Link takes you to the section of this web site where you can interact with the chart below and see other valuable don't panic data):

covid az.PNG

https://covid19.healthdata.org/unite...merica/arizona

Lets not forget the goal was not to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 but rather to flatten the curve with the shutdowns. They were to prevent a NYC/Northern Italy-type spike in cases that overwhelms medical capacity. There was always going to be an increase in cases once the stay at home orders were lifted. The question is will the increase remain manageable?.... or, at what point do rising hospital admissions and death rates, assuming these occur and so far they haven't, become a question of medical ethics.

States experiencing increased case numbers and R(t) values, AZ among them and unfortunately at the top of the list mainly because of Maricopa Co., have made it to mid-June and the supposed “lower risk” season in terms of transmission which buys time to develop better therapies and a vaccine before the “high” season returns. The other charts at the link demonstrate this well. I think we should be applauding that.

[Hannibal]

No, you're not.

If you were, you'd be searching for the people responsible for burning the restaurant.

She said “we’re better than this” a week ago when the looters and rioters were tearing up the College Football Hall of Fame. These airheads honestly think that they can run a major city like they run a kindergarten classroom. They are literally that dumb and naive.

[lineygoblue]

And for the life of me, I can't figure out why the Wendy's had to be burned down. They had nothing to do with the shooting. Of course none of the burnings anywhere make sense to me, but I guess I am incapable of understanding due to the lack of dark pigment in my skin.

[Hannibal]

Check your privilege, white male!

The Wendy's deserved to get burned down because they had the audacity to call the police (aka The Ku Klux Klan) on the innocent victim, who was clearly innocent and just jogging through the neighborhood.

[Tom W]

Well, Wendy has always been white, this she has privilege - so she must be a racist.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I think you can properly dismiss the weekend's panic messaging about COVID that is persisting into Monday mornings new's ...... just a rehash of the stories that made headlines on Saturday and Sunday.

It is absolutely clear that government officials have green-lighted reopening world wide, anticipating a rise in new cases as a cost of those steps. I took a superficial look at the global data and new cases are rising but deaths are falling. Death rates can be tricky but they are still a reasonable measure of COVID severity by country or US state.

SARS-CoV-2 is NOT completely contained, although there are spots where it is looks like it is, it's still out there, it still presents risks to the vulnerable and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. In my view, and in general, PH policy and government actions to deal with the pandemic based on such policy are reasonable and can be effective in limiting the spread if people comply..... and for the most part they are complying.

To keep you sane when you read or hear the latest COVID news, know that new case #s and rates must be put in context - something that the media has failed miserably at doing. In FL, for example, the same story that's been running now for three days headlines rising new case #s state wide but ignores % +s (it's around 5% and if it's budged in the last week its down trending) and the wide variance in new cases by county - more densely populated counties not necessarily having higher % + numbers. There are more measures but you know them. No need for me to repeat them.

What will be more important this week is going to be economic data which may provide some insight into the question of whether increasing SARS-CoV-2 transmissibility secondary to reopenings is a necessary cross to bear. This weekend's news harangue has already spooked investors with the DJIAF down over 500 points. Watch for a Fauci interview on vaccines or the real story on COVID data to turn that around by mid-week.

The other popular headline which is now the new panic button for the media nation wide is hospital bed availability. I'm not even going to run it down because on close analysis the implications being drawn by the media - we're about to overwhelm our HC systems due to COVID - are patently inaccurate and terribly misleading. The articles mumble about not being sure that increasing hospitalizations are due to COVID but might be due to more people now seeking care for delayed treatment of chronic or acute conditions, more surgeries and procedures being performed, I mean, WTF? If you're a casual reader of the news and just look at these headline, well, you're probably panicking.

Of course, this isn't new. The COVID DIRE CONSEQUENCES reporting died down for about 3w while the George Floyd reporting dominated the news. The two stories struggling for front page coverage on Monday are the Brooks shooting in ATL and, OMG, our HC system is being overwhelmed by COVID's 2nd wave!!!

Continuing to do my part to (1) Get you to wear your masks and distance and (2) Go the fuck out and spend money at your local retailers and restaurants...... and "let's be careful out there."

[Dr. Strangelove]

Gorsuch and Roberts side with the liberals and make clear that Title VII rights protect LGBTQ employees from discrimination. Gorsuch wrote the opinion but I'm having trouble downloading it off the SC website...probably too many trying to read it all at once

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/15/politics/supreme-court-lgbtq-employment-case/index.html

[iam416]

Unlike the left, the right justices are principled. I think it's a ludicrous statutory argument, but Gorsuch and Roberts bought into the plain statutory language argument even though it's blindingly obvious the statute was never, in anyone's imagination, intended to cover dude's who say they're chicks.

The leftist justices would never let the "other" side win by technicality,. I mean...EVER.

[AlabamAlum]

It’s hard for me to disagree with Gorsuch:

"An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids," Gorsuch wrote.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Unlike the left, the right justices are principled. I think it's a ludicrous statutory argument, but Gorsuch and Roberts bought into the plain statutory language argument even though it's blindingly obvious the statute was never, in anyone's imagination, intended to cover dude's who say they're chicks.

The leftist justices would never let the "other" side win by technicality,. I mean...EVER.

They also let a ruling on California's Sanctuary Cities law stand. Alito and Thomas apparently couldn't even get Kavanaugh to along with them on that one. The lower courts have shown the path, however, the fed govt can take to retaliate against localities that choose to not cooperate with fed immigration enforcement (deny them fed police dollars)

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-turns-aside-justice-department-won-t-hear-california-n1231060

[iam416]

"An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids," Gorsuch wrote.

The oral arguments were really interesting and foretold this decision. This is an argument we had in law school in the 90s. I never dreamt the Supreme Court would eventually buy it.

[Jeff Buchanan]

You may stumble across a headline today that states something like a study by the Scripps Institute has found the virus has mutated and become more transmissible....... whoa!!!! This is the problem with the lay press making such announcements. They don't know shit about the science of immunology.

Mind you, talent alleges he does as he schooled me about that when he told me he didn't need an explanation of basic science becasue he had taken biology. OK. He won't need to read the pre-peer-reviewed study then which I did (link below).

I have a rudimentary understanding of this stuff but I can make my way through it. The study does conclude that a mutation is being found in isolates of in-vivo virus that confers additional spike proteins (the means by which the virus attaches itself to target cells). These additional spike proteins also don't get lost as easily compared to SARS-CoV-1 as the virus reproduces in your body making it more likely that binding will occur and infection will result. Hence, increased transmissiiblity compared to SARS-CoV-1 that was retrospectively waaaaay less transmissible than SARS-CoV-2.

You may recall I made a post maybe 3 weeks ago of similar study results - in this case the mutation (the same one studied in the Scripps research) increased the transmissibility but reduced the severity of the infection implying the virus was mutating as a means of survival but was, as most pandemic viruses do, burning itself out, kind-of becoming nothing more than a regular coronavirus like cold, in the process.

This study explicitly identifies the mutation, concludes it's doing what the previous studies found the virus does as a means of extending its chances of survival, and makes no conclusions about whether the mutated virus causes more serious COVID-19 symptoms. It states that observationally, correlation with recent COVID-19 cases suggests that the mutation may be associated with less severe COVID-19 symptoms but also states more study is needed. This is code for we're pretty sure about this but I'm not sticking my neck out just yet.

You're not going to find this adequately explained in a typical media hot take.

You're welcome.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1....full.pdf+html

[lineygoblue]

So now when The Wizard puts on a dress and walks into a bar on Ladies Night, he'll be given the Ladies discount.

and he doesn't even have to shave …