Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Jeff Buchanan]

Great day for the good guys in Texas. Hostage taker is dead, most likely by a snipper's hand.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/15/texas-synagogue-colleyville-police-hostage

[THE_WIZARD_]

Before I STFU ..

Did you see the IW in the Raiders/Cincy game?

The only thing that surprises me is how many people don't know the enforcement of the rule.

Well it doesn't happen too often liney...you'd have to be a complete moron to blow an IW...

hello

Hopefully whoever did it has to buy the beer on the trip home...what a dumbass. In my 32 years on the field...ZERO IW's...

hello

Enforcement of an IW is easy unless it's on a play with a change of possession...can get a little screwy. Hopefully someone bean bags the location of the ball at the time the moron blows the IW. Have you ever had an IW liney? I can't remember.

hello

[Jeff Buchanan]

My COVID post today is not going to be of interest to everyone but it is nonetheless informative to those who want to know about the differences in infectiousness and course of an Omicron COVID infection. Here are the takeaways from the article linked to below (it can be paywalled but if you don't frequent this site, you have free access to it for some unknown number of articles per month)

• If you've been vaxed/boosted and catch COVID from Omicron (a breakthrough infection), you'll have symptoms sooner.
• That's because your immune system has been beefed up by vaccination (or previous infection) and is battling the virus; when that starts you start feeling like shit.
• You may not be infectious until later in the course of the disease compared to Delta/earlier variants; you may feel like shit. Your beefed up ABs are holding viral loads down.
• CDC guidance that is still being pushed is that you are most infectious (symptomatic or asymptomatic) in the early days (first 2-3d) after exposure.
• That's no longer true with an Omicron infection.
• Infectiousness peaks with an Omicron caused COVID infection between day 3.5 and 5.5, not likely on days 1-3, the previous CDC guidance that is still being wrongly pushed.
• Even though your symptoms resolve on day 5 (immune response wins and saves your ass), your infectiousness tapers off through day 9 (i.e., you may still be infectious days 5-9).

I'm soft on the CDC's recommendations to wear a mask after leaving isolation on day 5 and through day 10 but I can see why they are saying that. My take is that, yeah, you may still be infectious but your viral load is going to be low. Just don't go coughing in close proximity to your friends, doing karaoke in a crowded bar and singing loudly. TBH, I rate mask wearing as marginally useful overall, in that the virus is going to spread no matter what we do with masks. Trying to mitigate it with masks or with anything for that matter, doesn't make a lot of sense anymore. Masks are not very useful at all in this day 6-10 post infection scenario. YMMV. If you're so inclined, mask up but that's up to you, IMO.

Some real life experience: I'm vaxed and boosted (Pfizer). A week ago Friday, I was exposed to an unvaxed, previously uninfected person who the next day tested positive for COVID and had symptoms that kind of sucked and is still sick - not seriously. On Sunday, day 2 post exposure, I felt fatigued more than usual (my ride sucked). Decided to isolate. On Monday, I had "cold" symptoms (day 3). That afternoon I did a self administered AG test and was negative for COVID (not enough viral load yet or I didn't actually have COVID???). My symptoms worsened on days 3.5 - 5. If I'd had another home test, I would have tested late that day. Waking on day 6 my symptoms were completely gone. Either I actually had COVID or I just had a cold. My wife never got sick at all although we were both exposed and we stayed mostly apart. I think I had a breakthrough COVID infection with short lived and very mild cold like symptoms because I was fully vaxed, and followed pretty much the course I outlined above. Too bad I didn't have one more test kit and tried to get one but, nope. None available. No appointments to be had either - a problem.

So, I am at high risk for COVID by age, fully vaxed and boosted and have had COVID probably 2X - once in late November 2020 and once last week. The infection in November for whihc I did test positivet was rough for about a week. Up up until about a few months ago, I had fatigue, slow to resolve and some weird neuro symptoms. All of those are gone as measured by my pre-COVID cycling performance being fully restored. I make no claim that I had or now have "Long COVID."

Sample size of one, even though I'm 73, supposedly high risk for serious COVID, I'm fit, have no significant comorbid diseases, exercise vigorously by cycling and have survived the pandemic like a rock star. Conclusion: I was never at serious risk of being hospitalized let alone being dying from COVID. My risk of being injured in a car wreck was way higher. I took few precautions other than getting vaxed/boosted. I hung around cycle studios without a mask (where I caught my first case of COVID and survived that). I went to football games as soon as the idots restricting fans allowed us back in to stadiums last fall. I cruised for days at a time on crowded cruise ships that we are told not to go on by the worthless CDC. I may not be typical but I'm pretty close and my 27 month experience with the pandemic demonstrates (sample size of one) for most of us SARS-2 is no longer the risk that it has been made out to be. It might have been from February 2020 and for about a year after that when vaccines became available at scale. Especially for the over 80s and fat diabetics with additional comorbid conditions of just about any age. Sadly SARS2 continues to be made out to be very dangerous to us. It's not. Caveat, I am one healthy and tough mofo so don't extrapolate my experience across the global population ..... or maybe you should. Up to you.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/co...wsviewer_click

[THE_WIZARD_]

"...shot to the arm...and you're in pain...Fauci you give medicine a bad name..."

[Jeff Buchanan]

The synagogue hostage taker has been ID'ed:

A 44 yo British national, Malik Faisal Akram, was shot and killed after the last of the hostages got out at around 9 p.m. Saturday at Congregation Beth Israel near Fort Worth. In a statement, the FBI said there was no indication that anyone else was involved, but it didn’t provide a possible motive.

Right, no motive. Fuck that. Look at his name. Oh, wait, that's racist, xenophobic and racial profiling. Wake the fuck up you morons on the left that are screeching about this. There are places in the world that were, in the past and/or have become now, breeding and training grounds for this sort of shit. Afghanistan is one of them and is likely to be a hot bed of terrorist activities that will be targeted against us and our friends in Europe and the ME. The Chairman's action needs to be connected to what's coming and be held accountable for it.

[lineygoblue]

Parents of Michigan schoolchildren -- You have NO say in what is taught in Michigan public schools, according to the Michigan Democratic Party.

I know this is a Fox link, which automatically makes it BS, but for some reason the comments in question were deleted from the official Facebook page of the Michigan Democratic Party

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/michigan-democrats-criticized-dismissing-parents-role-public-education

One follow up comment suggested that disgruntled parents send their kids to private school.

The MDP has since tried to backtrack their comments.

[Obi-Jon]

This is for the aviation geeks/pilots here.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/c...lan/index.html



Tomorrow is an official Texas state holiday, Traitors Day. From Texas Government Code Title 6, subtitle B, chapter 662, subchapter A [662.003.(b).(1)]

"the 19th day of January, "Confederate Heroes Day," in honor of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and other Confederate heroes"



And finally...sign up for texted speeding tickets!!

https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/community/local-police-department-will-soon-be-able-to-text-you-a-traffic-ticket-instead/273-aefc3137-1ccc-4fe9-9bf9-016926a130fe?fbclid=IwAR2HOoG07m4j1r1OF5mOrNFFEeesBaFd8nW1VksX-0DTJuNV_wuVV71dyAk

[lineygoblue]

God bless Texas.

And any other state that still believes in personal freedom and liberty.

[THE_WIZARD_]

shaddup

[Jeff Buchanan]

The NYTs "Morning," a convenient news feed that summarizes world and national news and then provides links if you want more depth, ran an upbeat piece titled "Omicron in Retreat. What's Next" I've posted before about the NYTs writing pieces that are counter to the predominant doom and gloom/caveated global narrative. This one was interesting.

Aside from the clear opposing narrative to what we've been hearing from the press on COVID for the last 24 months, this one will resonate for you like it does for me as it takes a forward instead of backward, data driven look at the pandemic. I've come to the realization that COVID data in the US and, aside from a few exceptions in places that do better data gathering and analysis of it than the majority, is terribly unreliable in developing PH policy. Unconventional thinking and ideas, sort-of black-market approaches to COVID and the pandemic, is what is needed. This NYTs read did just that. The takeaways:

A typical 65-year-old American woman — to take one example — is five foot three inches tall and weighs 166 pounds. If she had been vaccinated and did not have a major Covid risk factor, like an organ transplant, her chance of dying after contracting Covid would be 1 in 872, according to the calculator. For a typical 65-year-old man, the risk would be 1 in 434.

Among 75-year-olds, the risk would be 1 in 264 for a typical woman and 1 in 133 for a typical man.

Those are meaningful risks. But they are not larger than many other risks older people face. In the 2019-20 flu season, about 1 out of every 138 Americans 65 and older who had flu symptoms died from them, according to the C.D.C.

• "Experts" routinely report that new COVID case counts, hospitalizations and deaths are probably vastly under reported and undercounted underscoring the seriousness of the disease. This article argues the opposite is also true: COVID cases that produce little more than cold symptoms (SARS2 is nothing more than a variant of the common cold producing coronavirus), rapid recovery from COVID, quick hospital discharges and heavily age and co-morbid condition weighted deaths are tallied but not reported and we don't hear about them. There's no reporting balance and, infract, a strong bias for reporting the bad news which is strongly affecting people's COVID fear factor - something that has to be reduced to bring the pandemic to an end.
• You're not paying attention to the news or you are so immersed in dread over COVID that you aren't hearing that new COVID case counts are "plummeting" in places where it struck first. I find the use of the word "plummeting" ascribed to COVID refreshing as the hated term, "surge", when new cases rise, is much more frequently used and reported. More commonly, because the steep drop in new COVID cases isn't considered newsworthy, there is a shift to the narrative that hospital admissions of children is "surging," or "soaring." GTFO.
• The article goes on to ask that given the low risk of COVID to upwards of 95% of the US population (not a new assertion), PH policy makers ought to be thinking about and asking how do we get back to normalcy, back to the office, back into restaurants, back to traveling, back to shows on Broadway ..... the list of those kinds of questions is long and the article challenges people to start asking them, finding answers and acting on solutions.

I've written about the phenomena of COVID "experts" instilling COVID fear in the public consciousness extensively here so forgive me for pretty much repeating myself. What is worth talking about, repeating if you will, is that up until just recently, not many major news sources have been advocating for this kind of forward thinking. PH policy has been by-in-large reactive, not pro-active. That needs to change.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Fear monkeys gunna fear monkey...

[Hannibal]

Meanwhile, Lord of the Rings is getting a woke reboot via amazon...

FJex3wSXIAE7KXX?format=jpg&name=small.jpg

[THE_WIZARD_]

JFC

[THE_WIZARD_]

What is more full of shit...

a) Jim HARBAUGH!!! Presser

b) Dak Prescott Presser

c) Urban Meyer Statement

d) Joe Biden Presser

[WingsFan]

I'll go with C