Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Ex-FBI lawyer will plead guilty in first Durham investigation charges. This is the guy who altered an email in one of the Carter Page FISA warrants, known about for a while.

https://apnews.com/597c27d6642dcedae79838fa6cf5497a

[crashcourse]

thing about covid is the immunity really needs to come from the memory cells --doesnt matter if you have the antibodies that you can measure--those seem to dwindle quickly--you want your tcells carrying that message. fat diabetics with heart disease are the ones who really need to worry. But ive seen more then a few
Read somewhere that 20 kids under 15 had dies of covid in this country. 13000 had died from other causes. get them back in school. id give parents a chance to send them to charter schools if the public schools wont do it
as much of an idiot as trump is i dont see how he loses if they let biden do any press conferences or let him debate and if people keep seeing windows busted, cops crucified and meth heads shooting up where ever they want to. if stocks stay up jobs come back inflation doesnt start up hes might just fall right back into the presidency.

[Dr. Strangelove]

…oh FFS...he's back...

Trump's chances are at least as good as Kobach resurrecting his political career

[Jeff Buchanan]

When Biden is elected, saving some miracle return of US employment and GDP to near pre-COVID numbers and I won't rule that out, we're going to see a softening of the US position on China and Iran something that, IMO, are singular successes of Trump's administration. YMMV.

In an addendum to my post above, I read an LAT article quoting a bunch of respected China watchers inside FP think tanks that pointed out Biden is going to be tempered in any softening of US approaches to China by a rising, well founded, IMO, institutional suspicion of them that isn't going to disappear if Trump loses the presidency.

The article also mentioned a revival of the TPP, although in a different form, with Biden, who has his entire political career championed multilateral approaches to confronting nations hostile to democratic governments and institutions.

While I have liked the Trump administration's overall approach to China, the execution of it with Trump's sickening bromance with Xi at it's center, is going to give way, in a Biden administration, to a much more practical and realistic approach to the fucking communists. I can deal with that.

[lineygoblue]

fat diabetics with heart disease are the ones who really need to worry.

Thank you for that.

Welcome back, crash

Maybe I'll just stop taking my meds and let the 'inevitable' happen ....

[lineygoblue]

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[Whitley]

thing about covid is the immunity really needs to come from the memory cells --doesnt matter if you have the antibodies that you can measure--those seem to dwindle quickly--you want your tcells carrying that message. fat diabetics with heart disease are the ones who really need to worry. But ive seen more then a few
Read somewhere that 20 kids under 15 had dies of covid in this country. 13000 had died from other causes. get them back in school. id give parents a chance to send them to charter schools if the public schools wont do it
as much of an idiot as trump is i dont see how he loses if they let biden do any press conferences or let him debate and if people keep seeing windows busted, cops crucified and meth heads shooting up where ever they want to. if stocks stay up jobs come back inflation doesnt start up hes might just fall right back into the presidency.

42% of the job losses because of covid 19 are permanent. Those are not coming back hoss.

[Whitley]

Still wondering what Sen Harris brings to the Biden ticket.

[lineygoblue]

Still wondering what Sen Harris brings to the Biden ticket.

I think the hope is that she'll bring along the Obama voters, especially those who are not enamored with Joe.

If the Trump campaign was smart, they'd switch gears and go straight after Harris. Push Joe aside, and even have Trump challenge Harris to a debate. She's the one that's going to serve the bulk of Joe's term anyway, so why not make her campaign as though she's at the top of the ticket? And if the Dems want Joe to debate Pence, the Repubs have nothing to lose there either. Pence would manhandle him. Joe isn't the campaigner or debater he used to be.

And in that same vein, I wouldn't put it past the Democrats to do just that at the convention. Bump Joe aside, and put Kamala at the top. It would take a lot of back room wrangling, but I wouldn't say that it can't happen.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I do a lot of reading because I have time to do that. I caught up this morning on an interesting article in the Atlantic late last week whose author offered up a simple solution to "control the virus in 3 weeks." My first thought was, "more bunk." Upon reading it, maybe not ......

About a month ago, adding to my reopening advocacy and manage outcomes approach, I added improve the US's capacity to test. Just a day or two ago, I posted that, in my view, the jury is in on how to deal with the pandemic in the US: mitigate spread with standard practice hygiene and infection control measures, open most things up and test. I knew full well that my advocacy rested in the efficacy of testing and tracking and for that, the reality grade is an F. It's not happening to the extent necessary to quickly ID and isolate infected persons such that one can obtain control of the virus. Hence, my position has become medically manage outcomes to an acceptable level defined by CFR, better yet IFR.

This position accepts that there are risks to the PH by rejecting the common thinking among US medical and epidemiological experts - to wit, establish single data point gates that have to be obtained before relaxing most mitigation measures, e.g., 5% positivity and R(t) < 1 for two weeks. My view is that in the US, without severe measures, those gates are unobtainable. Americans will wait interminably until they are met meanwhile the economic and social consequences become dire. There are a lot of reasons why those gates, IMO, are unobtainable. Not the least of which is human behavior of Americans coupled with the math of geometric progression.

This author in the Atlantic article suggests you simply by-pass all that thinking, along with the CDC's and FDA's bickering about what tests are good enough. Instead you shift to a strategy that tests everyone in multiple settings every day with saliva tests. They are out there and available, just not in the quantities required to test everyone on pretty much an on demand schedule. The author suggests the president use his war time powers to direct mass production and the logistics of distributing the tests. He admits that this approach to testing is not as sensitive as RT-PCR testing (swabs) but it is just as specific. The FDA's insistence on only using certain kinds of tests is hobbling the US's capacity to test in the mount of testing that needs to be done. If you switch your pandemic thinking about tests that must be at least 80% as good as the RT-PCR test (the gold standard) and accept the validity of a saliva test that identifies "contagion" in under 5 minutes, ding, ding, winner, winner, chicken dinner.

The saliva tests are simple, require no special training to administer and are just like a pregnancy test. Saliva is placed in the testing device, wait a few minutes and if a line appears, your contagious. Everybody gets tested if they want to enter Walmart, go on a cruise ship, attend a baseball or football game, go to the theater, whatever ..... you test negative, you get to go, positive, so sorry, now go to your room for 10d. Normal life, normal social activity, normal economic activity pretty much resumes among those who test negative on the spot; the rest go home and come back in a week and a half to start the screening process over again.

The article is long and the author provides way more detail on the failure of the present testing scheme in the US, why it failed, what testing products are in the pipe-line, why these have drawbacks and why the government needs to act now, decide on mass saliva testing and order production and distribution to meet the need. Vaccines are nice but America can't wait for those to bring the virus to heel before economic recovery becomes unobtainable and the social costs overwhelming. The author makes a compelling case.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...ry-day/615217/

[Hannibal]

Remember when the purpose of all of our mitigation measures was to “flatten the curve”?

[Jeff Buchanan]

Yep ...... and that completely neglected the testing component required to effectively do that and explains the resurgence of the virus as we reopened after ostensibly "flattening the curve."

The article linked above is worth a read just to understand the enormity of the fuck-ups by the CDC and FDA in January and February and per the author, continues to this day. While other countries are succeeding in managing their own pandemics, the US flounders. That circumstance is largely due to what was supposed to be a collection of the best and brightest infectious disease experts in the world.

I'd add I'm not sure that the Trump administration and Trump's alleged lack of seriousness about the virus is 100% to blame. Internal bickering between the CDC and the FDA, the nature of the infrastructure had as much to do with the shit-sandwich we're in today as Trump's alleged failures to act did.

[Whitley]

Yep ...... and that completely neglected the testing component required to effectively do that and explains the resurgence of the virus as we reopened after ostensibly "flattening the curve."

The article linked above is worth a read just to understand the enormity of the fuck-ups by the CDC and FDA in January and February and per the author, continues to this day. While other countries are succeeding in managing their own pandemics, the US flounders. That circumstance is largely due to what was supposed to be a collection of the best and brightest infectious disease experts in the world.

I'd add I'm not sure that the Trump administration and Trump's alleged lack of seriousness about the virus is 100% to blame. Internal bickering between the CDC and the FDA, the nature of the infrastructure had as much to do with the shit-sandwich we're in today as Trump's alleged failures to act did.

If the US and Trump had done what was necessary (and we have discussed at length JB) then the US would be in a much much better place than we are right now. There is always jurisdictional squabbling---if there had been actual good federal leadership then Trump would be cruising to reelection.

[foxhopper]

I'd take issue with the part of your post that opines that "you guys" don't understand what's happening to the "average American." I believe I do and, while I can only speak for myself, the posts that come from the regulars here indicate a keen sense of what's going on in this country to the average American.

I also believe that there is a segment of Americans looking up from the lower rungs of the ladder that want to take responsibility for themselves and climb up to a better life. There's also a segment that blames those up the ladder for their place in life and expects government to remove obstacles to their ascent often at the expense of those on higher rungs. TBC, I believe their are obstacles to that ascent in the form of institutional bias, that term carefully selected and with the widest application. But for those looking up, it's over-played at the expense of taking responsibility for themselves while expecting government to do most of the heavy lifting to get them where they think they should be.

On your point about people not voting ........ at this point in American history, there may be no more important right than to vote. I mean at every level for what might appear to be the least important offices. For example and at the grass-roots level, local law enforcement offices, mayors, prosecutors and judges, state legislature reps, school board and county commission members have significant impact on the critical issues facing America's states and cities going forward. If the folks choose not to understand the views of the candidates and vote for the ones that have views consistent with their's on policing and law enforcement, adjudication of civil and criminal matters, budgeting priorities, operations of schools and public services, I don't want to later hear them bitching about what's going on in their states, counties, cities and courtrooms.

Pass that on, foxhopper, to the people you know that are among the group you have defined as the ones who, "Most probably won't get out and vote. They live for "now:". They don't put a whole lot of serious thought in to the future." I'd suspect the regular posters here are voting in an informed fashion with an eye toward a future while taking responsibility for where they are now in life and where they want to be.

Thanks Jeff for responding and I liked your post.

Hate to sound like a whiny little bitch but was being honest in what I see.

[Whitley]

I think the hope is that she'll bring along the Obama voters, especially those who are not enamored with Joe.

If the Trump campaign was smart, they'd switch gears and go straight after Harris. Push Joe aside, and even have Trump challenge Harris to a debate. She's the one that's going to serve the bulk of Joe's term anyway, so why not make her campaign as though she's at the top of the ticket? And if the Dems want Joe to debate Pence, the Repubs have nothing to lose there either. Pence would manhandle him. Joe isn't the campaigner or debater he used to be.

And in that same vein, I wouldn't put it past the Democrats to do just that at the convention. Bump Joe aside, and put Kamala at the top. It would take a lot of back room wrangling, but I wouldn't say that it can't happen.

They are not replacing Biden at the top of the ticket. That is a right wing fantasy. They will not use the 25th amendment on Biden either. Another right wing fantasy.

Here is the problem with Harris. Her base (affluent liberals) is already voting for Biden. If you wanted a guy that could bring over some Trump voters....there were 3 of them in the primaries: Yang, Tulsi and Bernie. Yang supporters....42% of them voted for Trump in 2016. But they can't find any room for him to speak at the DNC.

Typically, a good VP selection fills in holes that the top of the ticket have. Pence reassured the Christian right that Trump was going to be okay. Likewise, Biden as VP reassured white people about Obama.