Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

There used to be more around Columbus. I think covid closed down some of them permanently.

One place I never see anymore in Ohio is Friendly's. Loved that place as a kid.

[lineygoblue]

Did someone say Big Boy?

We have one here. It was closed for several months during the Gretch shutdown, but it reopened back in September.

There's also one over in St. Johns, which is about 20 miles west of here. Good burgers and shakes.

They used to have an excellent breakfast bar, but Covid caused that to end.

[iam416]

Please take this nonsense to the SEC thread. Les Miles used to occasionally eat at Big Boy where, possibly, he hatched a scheme to re-engineer and dominate the SEC West. It's all related.

[iam416]

Detroit turns down J&J doses -- Only the best for the Motor City! Take your 72% and shove it up your ass!

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/detroit-mayor-turns-down-6200-doses-of-the-johnson-johnson-vaccine/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=first

Again, I wish I was making that up. Michigan gonna Michigan.

[Mike]

JFC! Well, that helps explain why Genesee County is receiving 11,000 J&J doses next week. Thanks Duggan! But the REAL reason minority communities are allegedly behind on receiving the vaccine, of course, is systemic racism.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I really can't believe that or, the temporary (it's been reversed in several EU countries) refusal to use AZ vaccines - something about adverse reactions in the over 65 crowd.

Meanwhile Boris is going full bore in the UK. He's gotten just over 30% of UK citizens vaccinated at least once and fucking upwards of 95% of the over 65 cohort vaccinated in every UK country.

By my count the UK, with roughly 30% of actual COVID cases believed to render some level of immunity to reinfection, the UK is approaching herd immunity. The COVID metrics, shockingly down, support that view.

Here's the BBC article on COVID progress in that country: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55274833

BTW, the way this article depicts the UK's handling of the pandemic, as optimistic as it reads, is what the CDC should be doing. Nope.

Here's the UK's metrics and projections: https://covid19.healthdata.org/unite...est=infections

[Dr. Strangelove]

Two more topics involving free speech

Florida and Texas are attempting to pass laws that are effectively the Fairness Doctrine but enforced on social media instead. The proposed laws almost certainly aren't constitutional but will force people to waste time and money in court to get the laws tossed. Good explainer below.

https://www.thecentersquare.com/florida/op-ed-florida-man-desantis-tries-to-stifle-speech/article_9dda0530-67ee-11eb-abf6-f3581c6a12e1.html

Kentucky is attempting to make it a crime to insult or taunt (verbally or otherwise) a police officer.

https://www.mic.com/p/kentucky-might-make-it-illegal-to-insult-a-police-officer-64999835

[Hannibal]

They aren't the Fairness Doctrine, because they aren't requiring social media to use limited resources to platform unprofitable voices that have a multitude of other ways to get their message out. Nor would they require social media to place those voices alongside opposition voices as a direct rebuttal in the same way that the Fairness Doctrine would have done for radio. The Fairness Doctrine was a demand that if Rush Limbaugh gets three hours a day, then somebody who disagrees with Rush Limbaugh also gets three hours a day, regardless of commercial or economic limitations. There are no economic sacrifices being demanded of social media companies. If anything, they are being dragged kicking and screaming into making more profits instead of using their monopoly power to subsidize censorship, which is extremely unprofitable for them.

This is not The Fairness Doctrine.

[Jeff Buchanan]

That's a very good article that DSL linked to in his post above. And yes, you won't find me or any others like me who are guided in their political thinking by the US Constitution. This concluding paragraph is important regarding how businesses might feel about relocating in FL with a government who advances this sort of Fairness Doctrine BS:

It says that the government is more serious about populist posturing than serious governing. That’s a recipe for disaster for any business that suddenly finds themselves out of favor with a government willing to ignore the constitutional checks against it.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what Desantis is doing. Posturing. There is zero chance this proposal passes in FL. Zero and he knows it.

It pisses me off that a governor that has done so well on so many levels in his tenure as FL's governor would latch on to this bull-shit ....... OTH, it has great potential to advance his national political interests. It's a hot button issue for conservative voters that voted for Trump - 74m of them that cannot be ignored. He's pandering to that lot

[Hannibal]

It's political posturing, but what else is there at this point? Congress is the only body that can seriously do anything about it, and they obviously won't.

[lineygoblue]

Heard on the news tonight that the Super Bowl, with over 20K in attendance, only had 57 cases of Covid traced back to the event.

[Hannibal]

Been a shitty week for my 401K 😕

[Jeff Buchanan]

A quick jab at Walenski who provided this assessment of the value of masking and keeping restaurants closed on Friday based on a recent CDC study .......

“You have decreases in cases and deaths when you wear masks, and you have increases in cases and deaths when you have in-person restaurant dining,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the C.D.C., said.....

Just up page in the article this appears:

The study does not prove cause and effect.......

A link to the CDC study is provided in the NYTs article. I read it. It is riddled with caveats, one of them above. There are so many of them that it is simply impossible to definitively state what Walenski states. This is why I have no confidence in a good deal of what the CDC puts out. Certainly, some of it is good but too much of it is appearing to serve the Biden administration's purposes. There's no question that states like Texas that are easing COVID mitigation measures are the targets of this baseless, politically motivated posturing by the CDC.

Yesterday I posed a thread in another forum dealing with travel. Right now, COVID rules on international travel are so complex, the complexity makes such travel nearly impossible. Throughout the worst periods of spread of the virus, travel was correctly regarded as one of the main vehicles by which the virus was spread. Travel came to a screeching halt causing billions of dollars in losses to that economic sector.

Regarding travel in Asia, Western Europe, most of Eastern Europe and the UK, the combination of more sensitive and supportive governments to the travel and leisure sector of their economies and the rapid declines in COVID metrics secondary to vaccine distribution, is making countries that have that combo more likely to open boarders to international travelers and remove restrictions to travel and leisure activities before the US, under the Biden administration, does. I posted links to several organizations that make COVID projections. All of them were uniform in those projections that SARS-2, on a country by country basis while not being eradicated, would demonstrably be controlled by June 2021 mostly due to vaccine roll-outs. If a system of global vaccine passports gets put in place, there is no reason all types of travel can be conducted safely with little fear of spreading SARS-2. On a state by state basis, I expect the US to lag behind in easing travel and leisure restrictions. This is especially true for the cruise industry currently not allowed to operate from any US ports.

[CGVT]

In other COVID news, I got my second Pfizer shot yesterday. No side effects and my arm is not near as sore as it was after the first shot.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Trump apparently sent cease & desist letters to the RNC, NRCC, and NRSC to forbid them from using his name without his permission. He’s mad that 1) these groups are still planning to help Republicans that voted to impeach him and 2) his name could be used in fundraising for those people

On the face it seems pretty ludicrous. Imagine the reaction from Republicans if Biden sent them all a letter threatening to sue them for using his name in ads without permission.