Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[AlabamAlum]

The last hospital addition I was a part of cost $94 million in capital and took over 5 years to complete from C.O.N. approval to real estate acquisition to plans to ground breaking and then construction. And that was just in one medical center and added some surgical suites, some cath lab suites, a new outpatient center, and 175 total in-patient beds. The costs for hiring and training staff are not included in the $94 mil.

You can do the math on a regional, state, or national scale.

Like I said, there are no easy answers.

[AlabamAlum]

And you don’t even want to know about the back room dealing and negotiating to get the competing hospitals to not blackball the C.O.N. (Certificate Of Need). It was quite the episode of Sopranos: Healthcare Edition.

[Da Geezer]

On Tucker last night he had news about a 700,000 person Israeli study of persons who had covid, and presumably natural immunity. Natural immunity is 7 times greater than vaccinated immunity. No coverage to speak of though. That might be because natural immunity is "free".

[CGVT]

You lost any credibility when you started with "On Tucker last night"

[Jeff Buchanan]

I

was wondering if there was possibly some federal or state money for part time hiring. Adding staff and salary for what should have been a temporary surge makes no fiscal sense.

It would be a lot cheaper for people to get the fucking shot.

..

Well, yes, we know where you stand CGVT. I was hesitant to join you. Held out for freedom of choice and what seemed to be the natural course of SARS2 - a dwindling likelihood of it's continued transmission and spread. Facts on the ground show a much different outcome with this thing..... the development of more transmissible variants such variants becoming less susceptible to the current vaccines and genomic mutations favoring its survival. We're at a cross-roads so to speak. Act now or continue to have the pandemic fuck with our lives in a big way.

We're approaching a reckoning here: I don't think any fact and science based analysis doesn't suggest wide spread vaccination - possibly mandatory - is going to be required to bring SAR2 to heel. The sooner the better. Forget trying to get to high vax rates on a global basis and instead work regionally reducing this thing to endemic instead of pandemic levels, most prominently in the developed world and elsewhere where the resources are there to achieve it.

The reckoning involves giving up personal freedoms to achieve an improved benefit to the human race. Aside from the small and hopelessly inconvincible idiot set of anti-vaxers, there's a pool of people who, if compelled to do so for work, to attend school, to enter a business or entertainment venue, to travel on trains, aircraft or cruise ships - plenty of ways to compel vaccination. PLENTY and completely lawful.

One compelling reason to tout of the benefits of being a hard ass and telling the fuckers who refuse the vaccine to go fuck themselves is the reality that they will catch COVID. I don't care how healthy or how young you people think you are, how much natural immunity you think you have, YOU WILL catch COVID. Let me emphasize that you WILL get it.

I don't care what FOX's Carlson says. The science predicts viral evolution to tag your ass and the longer the human race ignores that reality, the more infective surviving and mutating SARS2 will become. Deny that at your own risk. Virologists are starting to reckon with the reality that SARS2 is not going to run out of space to mutate as some thought it would. If that were the case, we'd see those surges burn out and not return. That's not happening in placesthat are not also including reasonable mitigation measures in the fight, IOW it takes both ...... nearly 2y after SARS2 appeared we're dealing with repeated upticks after downturns in infections all the time. TBC, If there are naïve hosts, they're getting tagged. Previous exposure in the circumstance of decreasing protectiveness in the face of variants, does not seem to protect. This isn't speculative. It is based on abundant global data, some of it from Israel and GB, that suggests this is occurring. So, how should the world - the part of it capable of returning to some level of normalcy - proceed?

I just completed 4 cruises covering a period of 38 days. The cruise industry, operating under a uniform set of health protocols, compels guests over 12 to be vaccinated to sail and controls/limits the number of bookings for under 12s to achieve a guest manifast where upwards of 98% are fully vaccinated. If under 12s do sail, they are required to mask indoors and outdoors and they are restricted to specific venues aboard ship. All guests, regardless of VAX status, must present a negative antigen or PCR test at the cruise terminal taken within 72h of scheduled sailing to board.

During the cruise, the line also controls guest access to ports of call based on the local government's PH protocols - vaccination and masking both indoors and outdoors is required to explore in the port on your own and most ports will only allow guests to debark on ship's organized tours in small groups of 20 or less. Some ports require any guest getting off the ship to be vaxed. Ship's crew cannot debark at all. They have been continuously aboard the ships I sailed on (two of them) since April, 2021. On arrival for work they were vaccinated and quarantined for 14 days before starting duties. The ships, sans passengers, did practice sailings with some crew getting to be guests and others the workers. Indentured prisoner's? Not even close. To a man they are thrilled and hugely grateful to be back at work.

During each of our 4 cruises over that 38 days, on board there is an active surveillance, track and trace program. Everyone aboard the ship wears a "tracelett" so as to be able to ID close contacts of an identified COVID infected person should one be found. Then protocols are in place to include quarantine and testing to exclude disease spread on the ship. I was told that crew members do not do any "reminding" of guests to mask or space or cover coughs or wash hands. If they observe risky behaviors (e.g., unvaxed, who are ID'd with a wrist band, not masked) they advise security who then politely reminds and escorts an offender to get tested - I believe this is how the COVID positives during our cruises were detected.

You don't like this? A bio- police state of Informers? Fine. By opposing such measures, keep contributing to the global pandemic. It's not going to end unless a uniform and consistent approach to it is undertaken in places where this is possible to accomplish and likely to produce PH benefits for the attendant costs in abridgement of personal choice.

FOUR!

That is the number of COVID positive cases reported during this 38d period I sailed. 3 of them were under 12 and unvaxed and all four were leakers - exposed during travel to the ship, in an incubation period on boarding, developed mild symptoms while sailing, presented to medical and tested positive by PCR (not antigen testing) for COVID. One was a fully vaxed adult (age unknown), mildly symptomatic and also believed to have been a leaker. The ship has designated isolation cabins. The infected four were immediately isolated and debarked from the ship at the first opportunity in accordance with pre-arranged protocols with shore agencies. Close contacts were ID'ed using the traceletts, immediately quarantined, expeditiously PCR tested (results in 2 hours), all found to be negative and released from quarantine. THERE WAS NO OUTBREAK. Why? Because vaccines and sensible health protocols to prevent them are available. Facts on the ground, people. WTF else do you need to see that works to end this thing! Letting people do whatever the fuck they want because freedom of choice isn't working. On the four crises the passenger + crew member load surpassed 8000 potential COVID infectees.

Two points:(1) Cruise ships since the restart in June 2020 (Europe) June 2021 (US Ports) are not vectors of SARS2. Period. Why? Because, (2) of the mandated onboard strict and uniform requirements and health protocols set forth above across the entire cruise industry. You can't sail if you are one of those insisting that you won't give up your personal freedoms for an achievable and clear PH benefit to the larger community of people who want to travel and cruise. I have no question in my mind, none, that the cruise industry's example can be extrapolated to any venue one might choose. On a county basis or by individual settings within it. The components to be implemented for success: (1)achieving high (90% +) vaccination rates by either mandates or by being compelled to work, move, etc., (2) wide spread and frequent testing, (3) isolation of those identified through those programs as COVID positive (10d with required negative antigen test to be released)

I've got a different perspective than some who are adamantly supportive of preserving freedom of choice. I'm 73. Healthy but I'm in the 4th quarter. What I had planned on doing in that quarter was traveling, enjoying life. What I'm experiencing instead is an increasing risk that I will contract COVID and die due to it from those refusing vaccine. When I do choose to travel, because of the unvaccinated I'll come in contact with, I face complicated protocols to go anywhere outside of the US, all sorts of forms to complete and submit to government authorities, sometimes complete prohibitions to enter a country or lodge there. My troubles and frustrations pale in comparison to the examples above where dying is the outcome because some vaccine refusenik who got really ill from COVID was assigned to the ICU bed that dying person, who did not have COVID, needed to survive. But it pisses me off nonetheless. Tired of it. Done with accepting vaccine refuseniks their right to choose.

I have a new grandchild born to my daughter who lives in Switzerland that I would have seen a year ago, absent SARS2. I'm OK with that. We didn't have the knowledge or the tools to effectively deal with SARS2 then. NOW WE DO and I still might not be able to see her next month if the rising number of new COVID cases shuts down mobility again. It's already happening flamed by the "do something" BS. She's now 13 months old. Sure, call me selfish but I'm done with vaccine refuseniks where vaccines are fully available - and they are in the places that we could travel to and within and could get control of this thing save for the refuseniks. A hearty fuck them.

[AlabamAlum]

Twitter is something else.

Alan Page denied a blue checkmark because they don’t believe he is notable. The criteria for blue check marks is pretty low. I have three friends with them.

”A nine-time Pro Bowler, Page is one of the best defensive tackles to have ever played the game. In 15 seasons, he played 238 games consecutively, registering 173 sacks – ranking eighth in NFL history. He also became the first defensive player to ever be named NFL MVP in 1971.

While playing for the Vikings, he earned his law degree from the University of Minnesota in 1978 and, just a few years after he retired from the NFL, he was appointed special assistant attorney general and eventually assistant attorney general.

Page continued his legal career and was soon elected associate justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, where he served until 2015.

Page’s accomplishments also include extensive charity work, authoring four children’s books, and of course, being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fox...notability.amp

[Mike]

But what has he done lately?

[Obi-Jon]

Useless trivia: 1969-70, Alan Page had a sit down burger joint in Grand Blanc, on Saginaw St just north of McCandlish. I remember my dad taking our family there on occasion. Football stuff covering the walls. GB was a well heeled but flyspeck town at the time and I could never figure out why he picked GB for his eats. Joint only lasted a couple of years.

[foxhopper]

Had covid and lived. Have friends in Israel and Ireland. They work in health care. They tell me half that people hospitalized are double vaxed but they are probably all a bunch of liars. You will never hear the truth watching our tv. You vaxed people are spreading the shit.

We are being lied too....

Im good. Not gonna kill you dumbasses.. I'm not going to get the shot(s). If we are going to have passports it should be anti body passport and t cell passports. If I flunk I will gladly stay home. Or I will stay in the leper type community you want to put me in. But not gonna promise you won't get shot in the process.

If I die. It will be on my own terms. I promise not to take a bed. I will blow my own brains out, I don't want to live this mostly bullshit lie most of you have bought into.

[Obi-Jon]

The US has advanced to the semi finals in the Women's World Hockey Championship by beating Japan 10-2. Out shot them 61-12. The ladies face Finland on Monday. In the other bracket, Canada plays Switzerland in the semis, having beat Germany.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Pour one out for Alex Berenson, spy novelist turned vaccine expert (and a favorite guest on Tucker), who was finally banned from Twitter after 18 months of spreading total bullshit

[Da Geezer]

You lost any credibility when you started with "On Tucker last night"

I just thought the first large-scale test comparing the immunity conferred by having Covid versus the immunity conferred by having the vaccination might be relevant information. Sorry.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Had covid and lived.....

If that was before vaccine availability fine and I'm happy for you. Meanwhile and assuming you became infected with SARS2 A - believed to have an R(0) of 2-3 and again assuming you took no precautions to limit the potential you were spreading the virus, you were part of the problem. Since we didn't know much about it back then, didn't have the tools to manage and control it, OK.

Completely different story in the current circumstance. We have tools. By refusing vaccination you remain in the pool of those who can become infected with Delta believed to have an R(0) of 5-6 and I've seen studies where R(0) is as high as 9. You are a part of the problem now but this time around you have a choice. Both in preventing the acquisition of it and then eliminating a host for it to freely mutate within. The choice you make to not get vaccinate promotes it's survival. By promoting the survival of the virus that increases development of resistance to all measures, including vaccines, that we introduce to try and control and manage it.

You will never hear the truth watching our tv

Correct. I've stopped listening to it for a lot of reasons. The primary one is because I find that what the SARS2 and COVID information the public is being exposed to has the potential of being woefully wrong and misleading - I'll grant you that. I am trained as a scientist, read scientific journals and medical literature and work carefully to make sure anything I post here is fully supported by either facts on the ground (convincing anecdotal stuff) or supportable hypothesis in both peer reviewed and pre-print studies with sufficient power to make them so.

NEWS FLASH. Contrary to my previous belief, the virus is NOT running out of ways to mutate within the spike protein which was, up until about a month ago, thought to limit its survival in the human host. UK virologists - world leaders in this sort of thing - have found the virus's spike protein mutating in new ways (changing how it folds). This isn't buying into a bull shit lie. The act of dismissing this research, easily understandable and accessible on line in scientific journal web sites, is foolhardy. Akin to believing the earth is flat in the face of incontrovertible evidence it isn't.

Refusenicks, dismissing the evolving science, continue to refuse administration of a safe and effectively protective vaccine. In doing so, they are ignoring reasonable hypothesis that they work and have potential to limit cellular level changes that most certainly will produce more survivable mutations that render the virus increasingly more transmissible. Refusing vaccination is simply prolonging control and management of it. From the measured scientific literature I'm reading, It is not unreasonable to believe that SARS2, already believed to be virus we will have to live with because it is adept at mutating and surviving pressures we apply to it, can also become entirely unmanageable ....... because more than 2/3 of the world can't get vaccinated and upwards of half of it can get it and refuse. I'm not going to wring my hands over the world that can't get the vaccines. But I am sure as shit going to advocate for getting it for the rest of us that can but refuse.

We are being lied too....

Really? I will grant you that separating science and facts from overt pollicization of outcomes - attempts to shape a particular reality that fits the attempters objectives - is difficult. I'm a student of the science and the facts. I'm generally oblivious to what's on TV. That is not becasue I think we are being lied to in some conspiratorial way but because the TV news, by it's nature, lacks context, too frequently distorts data to fit a particular view point and is too often purposefully misleading to fit that objective. e.g., the virus is not a threat if you've had COVID already - no need to get vaccinated - so says FOX New's Tucker Carlson who cites an Israeli study and of course without any context. With out such context, it's misleading. There's more to the study than Carlson had the time to caveat. Or did he and just not want to. Favor the later. Here it is. Read it if you will but fuck Carlson and FOX for heaping fire wood on the pyre of the refuseniks BS.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021...ection-parties

If we are going to have passports it should be anti body passport and t cell passports.

So, you'd tolerate a type of immunity passport, right? This isn't a terrible idea although the idea is highly premature. Not close to being ready for prime time. This position of some does seem to rather compromises a view that freedom of choice is paramount .....to get a passport or a vaccine or not. It aslo seems to compromise the position that is concerned over becoming a discriminated against class where you have to show one of these to gain access. You'd favor getting one of these passports but not the vaccine? Got it.

Progress.

Let me briefly explain antibody tests to you. There are multiple serology tests that can identify "antibodies." Which ones would you want to look for? Right off the top of my head there are probably 6 key ones produced by two elements of your immune system and researchers don't yet agree which ones are the best for measuring either naturally acquired or vaccination acquired protections v. SARS2. The typical COVID antibody test that is being administered today identifies two. Yep, just TWO. IgM and IgG. These are produced in one element of your immune system and don't show squat as to the complete level of protection your immune system is capable of developing after exposure or vaccine and what these mean in terms of the protection you might have from getting infected with SARS2. Poeple are utterly stupid that get a currently commercially available AB test than refuse to comply with and complain about reasonable COVID mitigation measures.

Let me be clear. Refuseniks are correct in assuming they have some degree of protection from a previous infection. How much protection is not yet known and how much protection is gained by natural immunity v. through vaccination is also not completely clear. If you've not gotten infected yet, you have NONE and will get tagged as transmissibility increases in mutating and surviving virus. Once infected, regardless of how ill you become, regardless of the preventable crowding of acute and intensive care hospital bed space that some might contribute to, you will then potentially contribute to the risks that this virus will end up being uncontrollable and unmanageable. It's simple math. 1:5, 5:25, 25:125 ....... on and on. Now let's add break through infections as the virus mutates and immunity wanes. Get the point? Crossroads.

Sometimes the science and facts don't fit the reality I'd like to have created but when they don't I'll tell you. I'm telling you know - a change in my views and based on what I'm studying and reading - GET THE FUCKING VACCINE or continue to be part of the problem that is prolonging a return to some level of normalcy. This is not hard. It requires you to discard the notion of freedom of choice just once for the benefit of the human race FGS. The longer refusnicks persist, the more likely this thing will be around, disrupting our lives and creating the potential for more suffering.

It's time.

[AlabamAlum]

It has been my experience that arguing with vaccine “flat earthers” bears little fruit.

As always, your mileage may vary.

[CGVT]

My son broke his nose playing basketball last week. It was a pretty bad break and he had surgery on Friday. My wife and I traveled to Auburn from St Simons Island to be with him and nurse him through his recovery. We have a hotel room at a Hampton Inn-have been here since Thursday night. It was empty when we got here but filled with evacuees last night. I am sitting in the lobby watching the people get the "free" breakfast. I am not sure that I have seen such extreme gluttony on my life. I think some families took enough food to last a week. I'm sure they'll be back tomorrow...