Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[iam416]

It'll be extremely interesting to see where deaths are this week. Cases started to fully spike on June 23 (maybe as early as June 19), but certainly by June 23. That's two weeks ago. We should start to see corresponding spikes in deaths this week. Of course, if the new spikes are due almost entirely to the far less vulnerable population getting it then perhaps we won't.

Ultimately, cases aren't what we're juding this on -- it's deaths.

[iam416]

I don't remember seeing a single Liberal commenting negatively on the protesters and they hypocrisy of collecting 50,000 people in the streets while telling people that they can't go to church or eat inside at Subway. Perhaps there is one outlier out of the tens of millions.

White Supremacy >> Covid-19. We should all wear coverings head to toe every time that we leave the house like the Botany Bay crew when they are marooned on that planet in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That way, nobody can ever see your skin color at all.

Don't question doctors. Ever.

By and large, you're correct. I don't recall seeing anything in the press about it. You asked a specific person, though.

[Hannibal]

Deaths have been in decline for something like 10 straight weeks.

I'm all for limiting non-essential gatherings (aka night clubs) if people have demonstrated that, en masse, they aren't responsible enough to wear masks but states are going to have to make decisions on schools pretty soon. Remote learning for small kids isn't going to work. They have to be in the building and in class.

Along those same lines -- play the fucking football games. All of them. Limit attendance to friends&family but play the damn games.

[iam416]

Again, the Flag and any sort of Patriotism will, soon enough, be verbotem. Here is the Thought Leader for the Left on the issue:

Black ppl have been dehumanized, brutalized, criminalized + terrorized by America for centuries, & are expected to join your commemoration of “independence”, while you enslaved our ancestors. We reject your celebration of white supremacy & look forward to liberation for all.

When Colin Kaepernick speaks, the Progressives follow.

I'm already fairly certain it's racist to stand for the National Anthem.

[Hannibal]

Poor Colin Kapernick. Had it not been for my ancestors (not actually my ancestors since they came over to the country after slavery ended, but whatever), he could currently be living in sub-Saharan Africa, enjoying life with lower life expectancy, a non-existent literacy rate, and a per-capita GDP that is but a tiny fraction of the US. Alas, because of the crimes of our ancestors, he is forced to suffer in the United States, where his ability to run with and throw a football made him a millionaire.

I am overwhelmed with guilt today.

[iam416]

Charles Cooke on the brazen Fake News covering PDJT's Mount Rushmore speech: https://www.nationalreview.com/corne...trumps-speech/

It's really astounding.

[Hannibal]

I rewatched Hamilton on Friday night with my family. It's very problematic. It portrays our founding fathers as wise heroes. Especially George Washington. He comes across as a strong, wise leader. And the whole show oozes toxic masculinity from every pore. #CANCELHALMILTON

[iam416]

That will happen, eventually.

[Dr. Strangelove]

My guess is the deaths won't rise to the sort of levels seen in NYC because of a combination of factors. One being that it seems to be younger cohort getting sick now and two, we have a lot more experience treating it under our belts. Access to some therapeutics, a better sense of how NOT to treat it, etc. The biggest concern is that if it keeps spreading in California/Arizona/Texas/Florida as quickly as it has been, at a certain point it becomes nearly impossible to prevent seniors from getting it no matter how much you seal them off from the rest of society.

Young people still shouldn't take it lightly. There's anecdotal evidence of permanent lung damage in some cases but I don't know of any data supporting how common that may be.

But yeah, by the end of this week we should have an idea if the deaths are going to significantly spike or not.

[iam416]

I'd still rather not get it than get it. We don't really know the long-term impact and, you know, since they're long-term we're not likely to know any time soon.

However, living or dying is, IMO, the real measure that matters. Hopefully deaths will hold steady. That would actually be encouraging.

[Tom W]

Looks as if "That Woman from Michigan" handled it well...

The families of the victims of her nursing home policy would beg to differ. But, even blind squirrels find nuts from time to time. Even petulant, condescending hypocritical ones like her.

[Dr. Strangelove]

A more or less unanimous Supreme Court gives the green light to state laws punishing Faithless Electors

[Jeff Buchanan]

I rewatched Hamilton on Friday night with my family. It's very problematic. It portrays our founding fathers as wise heroes. Especially George Washington. He comes across as a strong, wise leader. And the whole show oozes toxic masculinity from every pore. #CANCELHALMILTON

I too watched it for the first time, my wife for the second. We had tried in vain to obtain tickets to the first run in NYC. She's a big fan of Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Heights and Broadway in general.

#CANCEL HAMILTON? Maybe the show but given the 2h and 30m time frame that the play's writers, musicians, choreographers and lyricists had to portray the man, Alexander Hamilton, it was pretty true to his history. It would be much harder to cancel that. There is probably more books written, most of them in agreement as far as I can tell, about the period of 1770s to 1800s IRT the evolution of the US Constitution and the Federal Government than any other period of American history.

I think we're safe from the tyranny of the current cancel everything in the history books written under the moniker of white privilege movement.

BTW, we got Disney+ just to watch Hamilton. Tickets for off-Broadway productions are still running $100s of dollars a pop. Before COVID, tickets in NYC were still pricey and hard to get. At 20 bucks and then cancel, it was worth it. Really good production in all aspects except the sound. The story and the way it's told was excellent.

[Ghengis Jon]

But yeah, by the end of this week we should have an idea if the deaths are going to significantly spike or not.

End of next week. Massive gatherings this past weekend should tell the tale of which way this is all going. 5-14 day incubation period.


Despite what President Fuckface and his knuckle dragging minions publicly spew, it looks like masks are the biggest factor. Take Japan as an example. (Hopefully Jeff will chime in, being more read on this issue than I.) The population density, both urban and rural, is much greater than the US. Japan did not go into full lockdown as the US did. In Japan, socially, it is seen as (almost) criminal to not wear a mask during this pandemic. Japan does not have a horse's ass for a leader that tries to divide his nation in time of crisis. Japan did not have clowns with guns occupy their National Diet to demand the end of "tyranny'. The result? Less than 1000 deaths.

Hmmm. Masks and attitude.

[Jeff Buchanan]

There was an article in the WSJ today about European Countries having better luck with controlling community spread of SARS-CoV-2.

I was actually good mainly because it honestly noted that none of the stuff that worked in places like Estonia - about the size of SC - would work in the US. Well, no shit. So, we can ignore news that compares Europe to the US other than for entertainment value.

Having said that, I don't think there is any question that strong action from the federal level, with appropriate deference to the states, could have kept the US out of the lead as of today for having the worst COVID shit-storm of any country actually reporting COVID data, lying about it or not, differences in demography or size. While consistent action, along with accurate and believable messaging was present in countries that had and are having success in containment of the virus, all of that has been obviously absent in the US.

I detest the politicization of mask wearing. Messaging across the board has been terrible. The cat's out of the bag now. It's going to be very hard to slow community spread even if behavior of Americans in the face of COVID changes. Masking and distancing are the only mitigation measures left short of wholesale shut-downs assuming we want to keep the restaurant industry from completely collapsing.

As I see it, the only way forward is to get back to work and school deal with it and adapt. It would be nice if estimated CFR didn't start to rise. Right now it's less than 1% but that's just an estimate but experts tend to agree that's pretty close. In 5 years we might know what it actually was. Still, when you talk about the potential of multi billions of people globally getting this thing, that's still multi-millions of deaths.

Meanwhile, fund the shit out of therapuetics and especially mABs and vaccines and hope to fuck these two things work when product hits the street sometime within the next 6 months.