Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Russia belched out a proposed "treaty" this morning. Not only are they demanding NATO promise to never expand into Ukraine, they want the withdrawal of all NATO country troops from any country that wasn't a member at the start of 1997. That means Poland, the Baltics, all of eastern Europe. AND they are demanding that NATO promise to give no military assistance to Ukraine AND that NATO end all activities in Central Asia.

The US will never agree to all this. So either Russia is starting from a ludicrously extreme position to "meet in the middle" near what it really wants, or it has abandoned serious diplomacy in favor of some sort of invasion early next year.

Russia Demands Major NATO Pullback in Security Talks With U.S. - Bloomberg

[Tom W]

Erdogan's a significant global figure and an ostensible NATO "ally" and he's driving the country into the ditch. If you'd rather talk Donald Trump instead I'm up for it.

You remember him, right?

Your obsessions are ever amusing- in a trainwreck sort of way.

But, in the words of Wiz, kindly STFU.

[Dr. Strangelove]

I will never stop posting nor will I ever bow to your terroristic threats demanding silence regarding the certain fat, contemptible slug that you gleefully voted for.

I'm the hero that this forum needs.

Now go play in traffic.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Market is taking a dump today. Lots of expiring options.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Biden would agree to about anything that lets him get to his nap sooner...

[Dr. Strangelove]

Biden would agree to about anything that lets him get to his nap sooner...

I'd agree to anything to get you to STFU

[THE_WIZARD_]

If you STFU I promise to shaddup possibly maybe. 60% of the time you can believe me everytime...like Sex Panther Cologne.

[Mike]

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals just reinstated Biden’s vaccine mandate for all businesses with over 100 employees.

[Dr. Strangelove]

[Dr. Strangelove]

Bannon's Christmas Special looks like a future holiday classic. They come from such different worlds...do they get married at the end? Watch and find out!

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[Hannibal]

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals just reinstated Biden’s vaccine mandate for all businesses with over 100 employees.

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[lineygoblue]

And now its off the USSC. If the right wing doesn't break rank (Roberts) it should be 6-3 against it.

I suspect it will be more like 5-4 with Roberts voting with Biden and the liberals. Roberts is becoming more like Souter all the time.

[Hannibal]

The Right will uphold the mandate.

[iam416]

M just keeps doing the things the right way... https://www.city-journal.org/univers...hool-goes-woke

Very impressive efforts to re-imagine medical school curricuulum, Very impressive.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Regrettably, I'm going to have to tamp down my "nothing burger" characterization of Omicron. Omicron's ability to evade the human immune response is impressive and substantial. This conclusion is based on credible studies out of the UK and SA.

The Economist presented the results of two studies whose preliminary results were released yesterday. Here are the highlights (caveat, the results and the impact of COVID on HC systems were based on modeling because not enough people have become infected and then required hospital level care yet. Data based on actual outcomes is going to take two more weeks):

• A single Omicron infected person will spread it to 3 other people {R(0)} in the circumstance where 70% of a population has either been fully vaccinated or previously infected. This is about the same rate of spread as the original SARS2 virus when there were no vaccines and mitigation measures had not yet been uniformly implemented.
• Modeling suggests that removing the protective aspects of vaccines and mitigation measures, Omicron is 5.4X more infectious than the original SARS2 that appeared in 2019/20. The implication is that more people, regardless of vaccine status or previous infection will become infected or reinfected. Even though Omicron appears to produce milder sx, that benefit is likely to be cancelled out by sheer numbers of new infections/reinfections.
• The rate of spread varies by country/level of the immune response of the population. One implication is that mRNA vaccines are better at providing protection against serious illness/death than other types. Another implication, and this should ameliorate a crises mentality among governments and PH agencies but probably won't, modeling and early actual outcome data suggests disease impact will be less than both the SARS2 original and Delta variants.
• The studies found that in Britain a two-dose course of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine was, at most, 20% effective against reinfection by Omicron. Having had COVID in the past was also of little help, conferring only 19% protection—far less than the 85% against Delta found in other studies.
• Boosters can make a difference. A third jab using Pfizer’s vaccine after an initial course of the AstraZeneca or Pfizer jab was between 55% and 80% effective in preventing reinfection by Omicron.

This sucks. Mainly because the data in the two studies stands up to scrutiny. I thought the Economist article reporting on these two studies did a good job of providing context and not suggesting the obvious is going to be required to contain the virus - vaccine and mask mandates, restricting social contacts as in closing shit down including sports events. I still hold it's not containable and the costs of mitigation measures to try to do that are too high given the likelihood that we're still going to have a shit-ton of new infections/reinfections without a solid case being made yet that the benefits outweigh them. We continue to have speculation and anecdotal evidence about HC systems already stressed and to be stressed to the failure point with Omicron.

The panicked circumstances we find ourselves in from the MSM's mostly irresponsible, long standing, negative Nancy COVID narrative presents policy makers with a tough environment to avoid re-imposing various restrictive mandates without properly assessing actual known costs v. unknown and speculative benefits.