Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[CGVT]

Steve Bannon Is Behind Bogus Study That China Created COVID

https://www.yahoo.com/news/steve-ban...191602344.html

[Dr. Strangelove]

Nothing is guaranteed but after recent polling Cook Political has moved Arizona from "Toss Up" to "Leans Democrat". They generally don't make those changes lightly.

They did a poll there recently and found Trump down by 6 points in Maricopa County, where over half the population of the entire state lives.

Good chart below with their ratings.

https://cookpolitical.com/sites/default/files/2020-09/EC%20Ratings.091720.3.pdf

[CGVT]

On another note.

The storm cleared through here pretty much by noon. It was still blustery and rainy until about 5 pm. We got our power back at about 3. There are still a shitload of people without power. We're lucky. We don't have internet and I have a pool full of shit and a lot of cleanup to do. One 30' Leyland Cypress got blown over and a lot of our landscaping took a beating, but overall, the impact on us was minimal. I think this severity of this storm caught a lot of us off guard. It jumped to a Cat II just before landfall. I didn't expect it to be much and didn't very little preparation. As I said above. We were lucky. Others in this area were not

Yesterday about 10 in the morning I put on the rain gear and took the dog for a walk because I could let him out because parts my fence got blown down and I couldn't let him out by himself. The worst of it was past us. fence.jpg This was my "report" to my family on Facebook

Just walked the dog (I know, but what are going to do?) Blowing about a gale with occasional gusts pushing 60-70kts. I was thinking that I have driven 41’ foot boats in worse. Then I realized that I didn’t have to worry about a tree falling on my head when I was on the ocean. There are a lot of fences, trees and limbs down in the neighborhood but in my short walk I didn’t see any damage to houses. We lost a couple sections of fence and will lose some landscape trees for sure.

[AlabamAlum]

Glad you’re okay. That fence is still in sections and together. Easy fix there.

[Jeff Buchanan]

It's easy to see what's happening in the national discussion over the question of how bad is the pandemic and what should be done to contain it? While there are regions where outbreaks are occurring (which implies community spread), state and city R(t) values and new case numbers, positivity rates are unmistakably down trending from 3 months ago. IOW, in the big picture, the virus shows signs that it is being contained. Since new case numbers are dwindling, a previous data source that the media could tout as demonstrative of how shitty things are, we see the media shifting to total deaths to do that. I can go on about the uselessness of that data point or CFR, for that matter, as measures of shittyness - you know where I stand.

I think that the debate going on within states and counties about schools opening for in-person learning is demonstrative of a key COVID issue, i.e, what constitutes an acceptable level of containment of the virus for students, staff and teachers to be "safe." It's a hot issue right now and it's nation wide. I'll use schools for this discussion but you could extend this question to restaurants, sports, gatherings, etc. Right away "safe" is an ill-defined measure. What does safe mean? Teachers are demanding schools be "safe" before they want to enter class rooms, have students enter class rooms, risk inflaming community spread. Many parents are demanding the same from county school officials. Essentially, these two groups are demanding zero risk - an unobtainable level of "safe."

Enter death stats. Opponents of opening schools (or any venue) for in-person learning (or any social activity) will argue it's not safe when people are dying from COVID ..... the media then stokes the flames of this illogical argument.Driving a car is not completely safe. Walking across the street is not completely safe. Never mind that zero risk of death for just about everything is unobtainable. Never mind that the likelihood of death from COVID for 90% of the US population is just slightly above zero or that the likelihood of serious illness from COVID in that same group is < 2%. Never mind that the CDC has already provided guidelines to the states that more-or-less define safe in terms of the absence or presence of community spread. That's defined by the CDC as < 5% positivity for new cases, that guideline's utility enhanced by using other disease burden metrics to be used at the discretion of local officials to inform policy. But, opponents of opening say people are dying and offer total deaths, and CFR's as support for their faulty argument. Never mind that this argument ignores high error rates in those two data points. Never mind that there is a large impact on deaths and CFR when the data is age stratified .......Still, officials cower in the face of this stupid argument, schools stay closed, sports are cancelled, restaurants and bars stay closed, people can't go back to their offices and that's just four venues among dozens being impacted by this faulty argument along with all activities and business endeavors that support them.

Ridgefield said yesterday that the US could contain the virus in 6-12 weeks if everyone masked and socially distanced. He implies that doing those two things alone can make it safe to return to things like sports, school, eating at restaurants, socializing at a bar, going back to the office, those decisions to be made at the date and city level. This is nothing new. He's said it before, Fauci has said it. Brix has said it. He also said that a vaccine is not going to eliminate the need to continue to mask and distance. Of course Trump tweeted shortly thereafter that Ridgefield was "confused" and further tweeted, some people think masks are "bad." That sort of shit just leads to confusion and stress and then the media jumps in and instead of talking about declining new case numbers, positivity rates and daily deaths, all the positive things that are happening, how behaviors are changing in the US and that is helping, they go back and talk about total deaths and how appalling that is. Fuck them. Fuck Trump. Fuck 2020!

Today's rant over.

[CGVT]

Glad you’re okay. That fence is still in sections and together. Easy fix there.

Yes me son and I fixed it yesterday afternoon. One section just blew off of the posts. That was an easy fix. The post broke on the other. So that is a bit tougher. We got it in place but I’ll eventually have to dig up and replace the post to fix it right.
After further review, all 6 of my Leyland Cypress are going to have to come down. They are all leaning over the pool. I’ll probably wait a month or so until things settle down to have the taken out

[AlabamAlum]

Oh no on the cypress.

[Whitley]

Unemployment numbers are out. I thought this was a good quick comments on the fact (not being played) that permanent job losses are going up.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Whitely, do you know why the US economy is in the shitter and why historic numbers of Americans are unemployed? Covid? Congress not handing out enough free money?

Nope, it's the general response to the pandemic greatly and inappropriately influenced by your "tribe" beating the drum of deaths due to COVID and various groups within that tribe demanding that before anyone can go back to school, work, play sports, yada, yada, officials have to guarantee no one will get infected and no one will die from COVID. Zero risks with no consideration for the meager benefits draconian measures like lock-downs produce and the immense economic and social cost imposed by implementing them.

The media augments and inflames that drum beat ..... what do you expect? People are fearful. If they are under 75 or have comorbid disease, they need to be cautious but not fearful. Healthy and under 45? Take sensible precautions but resume normal daily routines - or at least the one's officials have been smart enough to allow. Of course people aren't going to do these things, they aren't going to go out and eat and they're not going to increase aggregate demand sufficiently to the extent that would allow the restaurant sector to operate sustainably. Workers who are still working are not in their offices because officials have deemed office spaces to be unsafe. What is "safe?" Restaurants in business districts that used to be packed with office workers at lunch and dinner are seeing 90% fewer patrons year-on-year as pre-COVID.

When shows like this start talking about how behavior changes among Americans that include masking and distancing are behind decreasing case numbers, decreasing deaths, decreasing positivity rates, the impact of risk stratification of disease burden - all factual data easily obtainable - maybe people would feel better about going out and doing it with a mask on and keeping your distance. Officials would feel less pressure to shut shit down and rather might actually urge return to work, school, whatever stressing the simplest and least costly of mitigation measures - mask and distance. This is not rocket science.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Covid accelerated something that was going to happen eventually. Businesses are realizing that for a lot of people letting them work from home more often won't hurt productivity and the business can save on commercial space. Businesses are realizing that a huge amount of business travel is unnecessary and a waste of money.

Yes, this will be bad for people in commercial real estate. Yes, this'll be bad for restaurants in downtown districts that rely almost completely on commuters. Yes, this will be bad for airlines that overcharge the fuck out of business travelers. It'll be good for a lot of other people.

Things change.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Watching Browns-Bengals and I’ve seen a bunch of Biden’s ads. Not sure I’ve seen a Trump one

[Cody_Russell]

It seems like Ds ads (YouTube, Internet, TV) outnumber Rs 9-1. AND I don't live in a presidential battleground state.

No idea what Trump and the RNC are spending their marketing $$$ on. If they are smart, it would be all chips on Pennsylvania and Florida.

[CGVT]

A lot more Trump ads in Lower Alabama than Biden ads. I don't know why they are wasting their money. Trump will get about 75 percent of the vote here regardless of how many ads they show.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Winston Groom, Alabama’s greatest author and the creator of Talent’s favorite cinematic character, Forrest Gump, has died at 77.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Over 80,000 people have already voted in North Carolina (by mail). Only 15% were registered Republicans.

If there truly ends up being massive partisan differences in the method people choose to vote (Republicans mostly in-person and half or more of the Dems & Independents voting absentee) then there's going to be wild swings in the reporting of results on Election Night. In states where they're allowed to count some mail ballots ahead of time, those numbers could get released as soon as the polls close and make it look like the Dems have jumped out to big leads, only to see it wither away as the in-person vote gets counted. And then recently arrived mail ballots will generally get counted last.