Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

One dose of Pfizer being good enough is great news.

This is neither here nor there, but is National Review a virtually unusable website for anyone else? Doesn't matter if I'm using my phone or one of like 3 computers or the browser, the site always runs slow as shit for me. Half the time it locks up completely and I just give up reading the articles. I don't know if it's the ads or some horrendous script or what. Been this way for years now.

[iam416]

It's fine for me, but I'm a subscriber!

[Tom W]

So in other words, this Plague will end up NOT destroying American society.

What's next?

[Hannibal]

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[Da Geezer]

It's fine for me, but I'm a subscriber!

Works fine for me, too, and I am not a subscriber,

If we are moving to some kind of "internal passport" verifying that the owner has been vaccinated, then let's kill two birds with one stone and make it act as a voter identification document. Photo, citizenship, and other relevant information could be on it. If we can solve the voter identification problem along with the "vaccinated" issue, it would be worth it.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Great idea, Geezer. You and I both know won't happen over the howls of those who protect illegal immigrants, asylum seekers who cross legally then disappear and everyone who is too lazy to register to vote, get a social security number or any of the responsible, law abiding things American citizens need to do to establish their rights to actually act as one. I'm right up there with Hannibal being sick of government that looks the other way, tacitly allows law breaking, caters to the idiocy of open boarders from liberals and contributes to the breakdown of American civil society and all that entails.

[Ghengis Jon]

An "internal passport" should have large letters on the cover CCCP.

[lineygoblue]

I could give a Sunday School lesson on mandatory identification, but I'll resist that urge for now ....

[Mike]

That’s two people on the list!

[crashcourse]

if i was bob i dont think id be doing any chemo or radiation

not sure what his quality of life is but i doubt its any good

shoot me up with some fentanyl and let me have a nice day

[Mike]

At 97, sign me up.

[Hannibal]

Shut up, peasants, and listen to your overlords.

[Jeff Buchanan]

An "internal passport" should have large letters on the cover CCCP.

Mandatory vaccination and IDs proving you've been vaccinated are one thing. Linking that to some type of voter registration or citizenship ID device is another. I won't try to defend the later, even though I believe it has it's benefits and most people are fine with passports, still, I could advocate for them, but the former, absolutely.

Failing to obtain a C-19 vaccine not only harms the public good but governments enforcing a vaccination requirement in a public health emergency does not violate 14A and is entirely legal. Jacobson v Massachusetts, 197 - US11 (1905).

https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/197us11

Even in a in a libertarian framework, Jon, individuals may be forced to accept certain vaccines not because they have an enforceable duty to serve the common good, and not because cost–benefit analysis recommends it, but because anti-vaxxers are wrongfully imposing undue harm upon others.

https://jme.bmj.com/content/44/1/37 Read the response to the linked article. Interesting take.

Like I said, I would support a US government position similar to that of the Israeli government's take ....... if you choose not to obtain the C-19 vaccine, "you'll be left behind." If such a mandatory vaccination policy were to be adopted on a national or even local level in the US and travel and leisure activities along with most activities citizens are required to undertake to function in a civilized society, I'd give no quarter to those that were bared from such activities. The outcome of large scale non-compliance with freely offered C-19 vaccines is so onerous and so damaging that it seems to me to be the height of irresponsibility to not get it.

[lineygoblue]

Whitmer declares another state of emergency, this time involving truck drivers that deliver propane to distribution centers and homes.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2021/02/20/whitmer-declares-energy-emergency-ensure-propane-delivery/4522622001/

While I understand the reasoning, and I even agree that drivers could use the extra time to get propane delivered, its a bit ironic to me that she's willing to allow trucks filled with thousands of gallons of highly flammable propane to be driven by drivers who may be over their allotted duty time for the week. Anyone want a truck behind them, loaded with about 20,000 gallons of propane, being driven by a driver who is falling asleep due to overwork?

She really needs to follow thru with this to make sure propane companies aren't slapping mandatory overtime on their drivers, when the driver should be home in bed. I see the potential for a lot of abuse here. There's a lot of dispatchers I used to work for who wanted every minute of my 70 hour work week, and then some.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Just to be clear, the declining COVID metrics - new cases, deaths, hospitalizations, ICU bed utilization, ED visits for ILI and CLI - are stunning. There can be no doubt that the steep decline in hospitalizations and now, starting in the last few days, deaths that there is a vaccine effect. Certainly there are other factors at play - natural trends (surge, peaks, predictable declines), improved human behavior both intentional (more masking and distancing) and circumstantial (less close contact as Holiday travel wanes) principally but among others.

Note that there was no super-spreading associated with the Super Bowl and Super Bowl partying at home and in sports bars as thought. None. What we're seeing is, despite what was probably a lot of close, unmasked contact, the overwhelming and off-setting impact of inoculating LTC residents and staff, the over 75s and now over 65s. Those are the target groupings where the most disease burden has been observed and in turn, the major reason for the decline in the standard metrics.

As predicted, the vaccines are doing exactly what trials demonstrated they would - cut down on serious illness, hospitalizations attendant to that and deaths in at risk populations. Recent football party goers may have become infected but they either remined asymptomatic or had mild, cold like symptoms as part of the large cohort that simply is not at risk and possibly didn't even go to get tested.

The best emerging COVID news is that, not as scientifically predicted based on trial data but speculated on, the vaccines are reducing transmission. There are a couple of web sites tracking R0 values. There are less than a 1/2-dozen states where R(0) is greater than one. A quick scan of state data put most of them at around .85. What that means is that new cases are halving on average every three weeks. Some states are lower still with new case rates halving every 7-10d. While there are many factors involved in what appears to be emerging control, nation wide, of circulating virus, one can't but help to recognize the contribution of vaccines to this amazing retreat of the virus.