Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Mike]

I'm going to take a bike ride......unmasked. Fuck the pandemic.

How dare you put us all at risk, Jeff.

[lineygoblue]

It will never be over for the left. A new scare will always be on the horizon that will require new shutdowns, a new mask mandate, and a new vaccine. The Left has absolutely no intention of letting you ever get back to normal and it has been that way since “15 days to flatten the curve”

I don't want to believe this, but I'm starting to. How many letters are there in the Greek alphabet? I'd guess as many as are needed to sound the alarm about another 'variant'.

[AlabamAlum]

We will have issues with variants until we have enough citizens with immunity. We need 60-70% of the population.

[THE_WIZARD_]

STFU you Texas/OU lover...

[CGVT]

We will have issues with variants until we have enough citizens with immunity. We need 60-70% of the population.

Yup

[iam416]

CDC two months ago: "“If you are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, you can resume activities without wearing a mask or staying 6 feet apart.”

The Delta variant that has emerged since then is more contagious, but not more virulent or more likely to kill you. If you’re vaccinated, your risk of a serious reaction to infection is the same as it was two months ago. If you’re unvaccinated, your risk of a serious reaction to infection is the same as it was two months ago.

Yet, the CDC clownshow is telling us that things have dramatically changed.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I don't want to believe this, but I'm starting to. How many letters are there in the Greek alphabet? I'd guess as many as are needed to sound the alarm about another 'variant'.

I listened to a commercial for Pneumococcal vaccines on the radio today on my way to the spin studio where I spin. Pneumoccocal vaccines have product names in two different flavors for adults - Prevnar 13 and 23. If you're over 65, you should receive one of these in various combinations to boost your immune defenses against Pneumococcal Pneumonia - it can be a killer if you get this, ignore symptoms and then end up hospitalized in ICU on a vent. Remember Jim Henson, the Muppet creator? He succumbed to it at age 54 in 1990, following what he thought was a bad cold and was "too busy" to go see a doc. By the time he went to the ER, it was too late.

My point? ....... Pneumococcal Pneumonia is a bacterial infection, not a viral infection but like all pathogens they mutate. The mutations are called "different strains" and that is how it was described that Prevnar 13/23 works against all of them to prevent the elderly from dying from this thing in the commercial I heard on the radio. They aren't called variants although that is exactly what they are. Maybe an insignificant point but it made me think about the fear that health officials engender when they talk about the "Delta Variant" how transmissible it is along with all the other fear monkey crap that then gets augmented by the media scaring the shit out of everybody in the process and forcing everyone to hide in their basements. How did that work a year ago? Pneumococal Pneumonia was a deadly scourge 40 or 50 years ago, so was polio but both were rendered much less than that. The same will happen to SARS2 but you'd never k now it.

There are a couple of points here: One is that there really isn't such a thing as "super bugs" that are unaffected by vaccines or antibiotics that are going to wipe out the human race. Not yet anyway. Theoretically that's possible and they get labeled as such ...... until we beat them! Medical History is replete with scourges involving bugs that kill or sicken a lot of people but they, at some point, become minor nuisances either by immunity garnered by infection, vaccines (for viruses) or antibiotics (for bacteria), now biologics or that they simply extinguish themselves because they run out of room to change their genomic structures to aid survival - vary, mutate, etc.

The reason for the natural phenomena where a bug extinguishes itself isn't fully understood yet but we're closing in on that. The success of vaccines and antibiotics is a result of scientific research that is constantly being done to keep these fuckers from doing us in. I cannot overstate the importance of the development of mRNA (biologics) vaccines v. SARS2 in the overall fight against viruses. Despite the fear monkey crap involving these biologics, they are wonder drugs with the capacity to bring SARS2 to heel, in combination with other factors, like every other deadly bug has been controlled and made manageable.

One of the huge failures of our public health officials, in particular the CDC and HHS in this pandemic has been and continues to be their inability to articulate why in the hell we are supposed to hide inside, wear masks or take a vaccine. Sure, flatten the curve, stop the spread of the virus as measured by new case numbers. Obviously those goals were established without understanding SARS2 or, in fact, bug behavior throughout history at all. It continues. By continuously shifting where the goal posts are, continuing to issue meaningless recommendations that haven't yet achieved some meaningful milestone, the CDC has rendered itself irrelevant.

I would set meaningful milestones to an end point, like reducing deaths and hospitalizations, being able to identify, track and trace then isolate locations and the people in them involved in outbreaks. There are others. Use your imagination. Instead we have ONE metric, wildly useless, that our PH officials keep hanging their hats on - new cases caused by the dreaded variants. Mask-up again. For what purpose I ask? This shit is going to happen and has happened before but in all cases, the shit storm came to an end and that end was foreseeable.

What's the endpoint for SARS 2 and how do we get there? Humans are more likely to follow directions of public health officials if they understand there is light at the end of the tunnel - a well defined goal with intermediate milestones to be reached and I listed two of them above. The goal should be defined as rendering SARS2 nothing more than a manageable nuisance. I can think of dozens of meaningful milestones we could add to the short list above to achieve that end point and we've actually achieved some of them already. Anyone seen such a thing? PH officials giving us a pat on the back for achieving them (e.g. lowered death rates, improved patient management, functional vaccines, a robust testing and tracking scheme - yes the US actually has one). Fuck no.

We're not going to eliminate SARS2 like measles - although even that is theoretically possible - it's just not a practical possibility just like it's not practically possible to eliminate pneumococcal pneumonia, influenza or any number of pathogens that have appeared in the history of the human race you wish to list. But we can carry out most all of the typical activities of the human race without the need to constantly hunker down and reevaluate objectives in a circumstance of shifting goal posts. IOW, live with and manage SARS2 just like we live with and manage Pneumococcal Pneumonia and all of it's different strains. Yes, SARS2 is a bit more troublesome in that the CFR and MR is a bit worse than the others but let there be no mistake, it is not that much worse and while it was a scary 3% overall - all ages - at the outset of the pandemic, it's now believed to be well below 2% with some estimates below 1% overall depending on how you stratify CFR and MR by age groups. Pneumonia has as high as a 5% CFR for infants and around 2% for the elderly ..... again depending on how you look at this by age cohorts.

[Hannibal]

We will have issues with variants until we have enough citizens with immunity. We need 60-70% of the population.

A. Between vaccinations and natural infections, we are likely already there.

B. When did “zero infections” become the goal? We are already close to zero deaths and very low hospitalizations. The deaths are overwhelmingly from the unvaccinated, or so I’m told. We’re talking a seasonal flu variant at this point.

C. Foreign countries will never be 100% vaccinated. The virus will always be out there and it will never be extinct. Viruses will always exist and they will always mutate. It has been only six months since the vaccine rollouts began and all it took was one variant to infect five fully vaccinated Democrats on one airplane ride.

D. If the government can force you to get a baccine in the name of “public health” then imagine what else they are going to force you to do in the future. These are the same people declaring “racism” to be a public health crisis.

[Hannibal]

Bear in mind that the same people who want to hold everyone down and jab them with the vaccine are the same ones who predicted that bodies would be piling up in the streets when states like Florida and Texas removed their mask mandates and other Covid restrictions.

[Dr. Strangelove]

We probably won't see a similar spike in DEATHS because we can treat covid much better than we could a year ago, but every person who has to spend time in the hospital is hurting the economy. I would emphasize the economic aspect to younger people who are vaccine resistant.

If you catch covid you will end up quarantining at home with or without pay. You may be forced to use your sick time or PTO. In the very, very small chance you get sick enough to go to a hospital, spending the night in the hospital ain't cheap and could end up costing yourself thousands even with good insurance.

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[Dr. Strangelove]

A very clear signal that the infrastructure bill is going to clear the Senate, at least

[Dr. Strangelove]

A post a little while ago from Bob Odenkirk's son says "he's going to be ok"

But meanwhile, we lost 1/3 of ZZ Top today

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/28/entertainment/dusty-hill-zz-top-obit/index.html

[Dr. Strangelove]

In a 67-32 vote, the Infrastructure Bill advances to debate. More Republican votes than many expected. Again, a pretty good sign this will eventually pass.

[iam416]

I wonder why those graphs only show May to June? It’s useful to include the whole pandemic to see exactly where we are. And it’s be super interesting to see those states compared to, you know, NYC.

Borderline Fear Monkey shit.

[lineygoblue]

Bear in mind that the same people who want to hold everyone down and jab them with the vaccine are the same ones who predicted that bodies would be piling up in the streets when states like Florida and Texas removed their mask mandates and other Covid restrictions.

And the same people who want to require the vaccine are the same people who believe its racist, bigoted and "Jim Crow on steroids" to require voter ID.