Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[*JD*]

USPS in Columbus.

https://twitter.com/myafrazier/status/1294377318740299776?s=20

[*JD*]

He is mourning his brother on the golf course.

I played soccer the morning my dad died. I was 11 at the time but how people handle the death of a loved one runs the gamut and I won't put too much meaning behind Don doing his favorite thing.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Susan Molinari is one of the Republicans lined up to speak for Sleepy Joe tonight. Talk about "whatever happened to...?". She gave the keynote speech at the 1996 Republican Convention and was once one of Newt's top lieutenants.

[crashcourse]

that rapid test being ok'd would be a god send

its not as specific as the PCR but it doesnt have to be.

PCR's come back positive but the viral count can be so low people really arent "contagious"

the rapid saliva comes back positive only when you have higher levels of the virus and are truly contagious.

and its cheap. the ability to take a home test 3 x a week or so before going off to work or school would be a monumental step forwatrd at a cost of only a dollar or two from what i heard

MEDCRAM on you tube does an excellent job of explaining

[Dr. Strangelove]

Miles Taylor, who was at DHS for two and an half years under Trump and was Nielsen's Chief of Staff, is endorsing Biden

Among the examples he gives of Trump's vindictive, petty behavior:

In the video, Taylor accuses Trump of directing FEMA to withhold disaster funding to California following devastating wildfires in that state because voters in that state had not voted for him for President. "He told us to stop giving money to people whose houses had burned down from a wildfire because he was so rageful that people in the state of California didn't support him and that politically it wasn't a base for him," Taylor says in the video.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/17/politics/miles-taylor-trump-joe-biden-endorse/index.html

[Ghengis Jon]

An interesting story on how the 19th Amendment was passed and the power of Mom.



https://www.npr.org/2020/08/17/90234...rom-nay-to-yea

[Dr. Strangelove]

Ohio AG Dave Yost not happy about Trump's actions with the post office right before an election.

https://www.cantonrep.com/news/20200817/yost-to-trump-stop-messing-with-postal-service-right-before-election/1

[Dr. Strangelove]

One week into fall semester and UNC is already canceling all in-person classes and going entirely online. Last week they had 130 students test positive, a 13.6% positivity rate.

https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2020/08/duke-university-chapel-hill-unc-move-undergraduate-classes-online-coronavirus

[Hannibal]

"Flatten the curve"

[iam416]

lol

[Hannibal]

I don't understand how anyone could justify having classes when a whopping .4% of the students have tested positive with a disease that you only have a 99.9% chance of surviving. We are living in truly scary times.

[Jeff Buchanan]

What's missing in the UNC cancellation reports is what kinds of plans were in place to open the campus? I understand this was a blended opening with both in person and on-line learning. Fine. I suspect they had a testing protocol in place. I don't know what that was - parents, profs and students should have had access to it and the press should find out what it is and report on it.

In a reasonably confined community such as Chapel Hill, and the admission that 130 or so students tested +, it would seem to be fairly easy to isolate them and trace contacts without shutting the campus down and, I guess, sending the kids home. Public health officials are loath to let a community outbreak occur and I suspect it was urging from that sector that caused the Chancellor to take the steps he apparently took saying, "we're not going to be responsible the campus becoming a hot spot for the spread of COVID to the rest of the surrounding community." I can understand that. OTH, this says a lot about both the schools, and the community's public health system to be unprepared to manage a small number of cases and instead shutter operations.

Bizarre and I smell some kind of planning by UNC officials to quell objections to reopening, reopen and then shut down for "cause." If I'm a parent or a student activist, I'd start snooping around and make a big story out of this. After all, I'm paying 10s of thousands to go to UNC and I'll be damned if I'm going to attend college in front of desk top computer. Refund my money or open the school.

[Dr. Strangelove]

I don't understand how anyone could justify having classes when a whopping .4% of the students have tested positive with a disease that you only have a 99.9% chance of surviving. We are living in truly scary times.

Not totally defending UNC here (they claim they are already out of space in their "quarantine dorm"--only one?) . But worry about the health of the individual students isn't the only concern here. Everyone understands they are individually low-risk. But if the virus is pervasive on campus, the employees are eventually going to catch it, and the local community after that. Then you're suddenly not only talking about low-risk individuals.

What % do you think it would take before you consider shutting down in-person classes?

[Dr. Strangelove]

What's missing in the UNC cancellation reports is what kinds of plans were in place to open the campus? I understand this was a blended opening with both in person and on-line learning. Fine. I suspect they had a testing protocol in place. I don't know what that was - parents, profs and students should have had access to it and the press should find out what it is and report on it.

In a reasonably confined community such as Chapel Hill, and the admission that 130 or so students tested +, it would seem to be fairly easy to isolate them and trace contacts without shutting the campus down and, I guess, sending the kids home. Public health officials are loath to let a community outbreak occur and I suspect it was urging from that sector that caused the Chancellor to take the steps he apparently took saying, "we're not going to be responsible the campus becoming a hot spot for the spread of COVID to the rest of the surrounding community." I can understand that. OTH, this says a lot about both the schools, and the community's public health system to be unprepared to manage a small number of cases and instead shutter operations.

Bizarre and I smell some kind of planning by UNC officials to quell objections to reopening, reopen and then shut down for "cause." If I'm a parent or a student activist, I'd start snooping around and make a big story out of this. After all, I'm paying 10s of thousands to go to UNC and I'll be damned if I'm going to attend college in front of desk top computer. Refund my money or open the school.

If I read the reports right, UNC only had one dorm set up as quarantine and they say this 'surge' would have filled it beyond capacity. Set up to fail? Perhaps.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Also having 130 people testing positive when they self-report symptoms, that's one thing. Getting 130 positives on less than 1000 randomized tests is a bigger problem because that would suggest many more cases on campus than known. I don't know how the positives were gathered.