Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Ghengis Jon]

So are we going to eliminate all world history before the American thresh hold of 1865? I must have missed the chance to vote on that.

FSK? Are Washington and Jefferson next? Why stop there? But this puts me in a dilemma. Being partially of English heritage, the Romans and Vikings and Normans all committed genocide and enslavement of the English kingdoms. But I'm also Italian, meaning my family could have been enslaved by the Etuscans. I demand reparations. And I want to tear down statues. I'm mad and I deserve payment. For what, I'm not sure, but I want my money.

[iam416]

You’re still going to have plenty to rail against when PDJT is voted out.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Welp, someone on the Trump campaign is getting fired over this fiasco. Tons of empty seats inside. They spent a ton of money on an outdoor stage and setup to handle an 'overflow crowd'. Trump/Pence were going to talk to them first. Only a few dozen people showed and the speeches got cancelled. The campaign was claiming that they sold a million tickets to this thing. There's maybe 10,000 there and that's being generous.

From a public health standpoint, still bad but could've been much worse!!

[lineygoblue]

Cheer up Strangelove. I'm sure President Stacey Abrams will draw much better crowds when she holds rallies.

[Ghengis Jon]

Sad as Abrams is, she (like 99.999% of the population) would be a light years better president than Trump. That's how far this nation has fallen.

[iam416]

No. No, she wouldn't.

[Jeff Buchanan]

You simply can't put lipstick on this pig ...... the C-19 GR nationally is accelerating just as it did as the first spreaders started spreading in the US around late January. Some states are seeing stability or decline. Some counties within states experiencing accelerating GRs are experiencing stability or decline. Clearly, more densely populated regions are seeing more cases. Clearly,as I wrote yesterday was the case in FL, the demographic of new +s is shifting into the 20-30 age group.

The hysterical are being entirely predictable - My advice: Scan such articles then search for those with balance and there are some. We are likely to see another climb in new cases, another peak not as high as the first, and another decline until such time as a vaccine is developed and distributed. This pattern, as has been the case with every epidemic and pandemic, was and is entirely predictable and the hysteria over it entirely unwarranted.

I think the level of disease burden and assessing it regionally is reasonable. I think the value of increased testing that is catching large numbers of asymptomatic C-19 cases has to be recognized as a positive. I think what local officials are calling mid-course corrections to mitigation measures have potential to slow GR. These include mandating masks in public places and increased public service cuing coupled with various levels of enforcement of city reopening policies and personal behaviors.

The political pressures to re-shutter going forward are likely to be immense. The press will augment this. I remain convinced that reimposing any kind of economic shut-down now would be catastrophic. The alternative is to recognize the disease is with us and to manage the impacts as reasonably as possible. The US is better prepared to manage C-19 than it was 6 months ago; our health care systems and the providers who work within them are better informed about C-19 and at managing those that need acute or critical care - declining CFR demonstrates that.

We are quite possibly less than 6 months away from a scalable vaccine. Even if it won't prevent the symptoms of C-19 or irradicate Sars-CoV-2, experts are confident that any symptoms that do present will be much less severe ..... and you can pretty much ignore all, small scale, non-peer reviewed studies that cast doubt on the effectiveness of a vaccine, the limited permanence of C-19 antibodies or any other hit piece designed for shock effect that makes it's way into the hands of the gleeful media that celebrates it's capacity to mislead for the purpose of readership, clicks and the revenue that shit brings through increased advertisements and subscriptions. Fuck them.

You should also take most study conclusions about the virus, the disease or the pandemic that make it into the lay press, mostly without the necessary context, less than seriously. I'll address them if you have questions. That's not because I'm smarter than those coming to such conclusions but that I can grab the actual study, read it, make sense of the qualifiers and describe them. In the massive number of hours I spend reading the medical literature on this thing, I still can't count on one hand, the number of serious studies that are properly constructed to give them power, are large enough in sample size and don't say in one form or the other about their conclusions, "we really don't know yet. More study is needed." Of course,, that won't be in the lay presses description of these studies.

Today's Sun Sentinel Opinion page led off with a snarky piece directed at Governor Diesantis and what the piece characterized as his dismissal of the risks to FL's senior citizens of record daily numbers of new cases among younger adults. Said, Desantis is set on reducing the wait time in what many consider FL to be, "God's Waiting Room." Of course this take ignores the dramatic improvements of outcomes in all new C-19 cases among those that need acute or critical care across all age groups and the declining CFR.

I'm hopeful, remain positive but wary. I'm less worried about the final outcome of the C-19 pandemic and more worried about stupid decisions and missteps in dealing with this..... by about a factor of 10.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Turnout at Trump's rally was estimated to be about 6200 people by the Tulsa Fire Dept. A bunch of teenagers on TikTok managed to prank the grifting geniuses running Trump's campaign into thinking a million people were really going to show. Parscale is trying to claim that protesters scared off the MAGA people. Yeah sure. I do think someone is getting fired. Not sure if it'll be Parscale but probably someone high up.

"You can't always get what you want..."

At any rate the TikTok teens inflated the expectations but they can't explain why so few people actually showed. And that's encouraging to me because it seems to show that however much they may bluster HOAX for tv cameras, a lot of Republicans, even the MAGA crowd, have private misgivings about attending a sweaty, indoor event packed in like sardines.

EDIT: Combined two posts

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrews.../#6e02e6e01fed

[Dr. Strangelove]

Jeff- I don't really know where the balance needs to be but I think it's probably somewhere where there is going to be more economic pain than people want to accept. Everything suggests it is a younger cohort that's spreading the disease now and that'll mean a lot less deaths, but obviously "not dying" can still include a lengthy hospital or even ICU stay, racking up big healthcare bills. We all want certain restaurants and bars to survive but there might need to be a point where simply wearing a mask isn't enough and you need to encourage people to eat out less and strongly recommend against bars altogether. That'll depend on locality but there's some places (Baton Rouge, Austin, maybe Phoenix) where they may be hitting that point.

[WingsFan]

FSK? Are Washington and Jefferson next?

CNN

Protesters tore down a George Washington statue and set a fire on its head

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/19/us/po...rnd/index.html


200619115854-george-washington-statue-portland-exlarge-169.jpg

[Cody_Russell]

They are saying these new spikes are hitting people in their 20s and 30s hard now.
Geez, wonder how that happened.... thanks idiots. Herp derp, let’s mass gather protest during a pandemic.

[iam416]

My favorite is the protestors in San Francisco that got U.S. Grant. And then tried to justify. Those are the people who are running the show right now.

[iam416]

Everything suggests it is a younger cohort that's spreading the disease now and that'll mean a lot less deaths, but obviously "not dying" can still include a lengthy hospital or even ICU stay, racking up big healthcare bills.

That's straight cost/benefit. Are extensivie hospital costs worse than "economic pain"? I mean, that's as direct an analysis as you can get.

[THE_WIZARD_]

My favorite is the protestors in San Francisco that got U.S. Grant. And then tried to justify. Those are the people who are running the show right now.

Yes of all the war heroes you would think the one that would garner protection from the lunacy was Grant. But just shows you they are not protesting social injustice. They are nothing but terroristic thugs.

[lineygoblue]

My favorite is the protestors in San Francisco that got U.S. Grant. And then tried to justify. Those are the people who are running the show right now.

Well, to be fair, you can't blame the protesters for their lack of knowledge of American history. If its not a part of GTA or World of Warcraft, they know nothing at all.

some of them probably think a text book is a phone app.