tdhoosier

Was listing to my favorite songs of the 2010's playlist (I'm a nerd) and came across this one. Best jam by a Swedish group you've probably never have heard of. Great Booker T-ish organ and ends with a killer guitar solo.

It really is a shame. How many times did we hear that the fall is going to be bad? A couple thousand times? And how many times did a huge portion of this country dismiss that prediction (by scientists and experts, no less) as fear mongering, a political ploy, bad information, etc. Unfortunately the predictions came true and we are left in the position of having to take drastic measures once again. All the while we as a county really haven't done any relevant steps toward mitigation other than hoping for a vaccine and hoping the people who didn't believe the scientists would wear a mask/practice social distancing. What happened to contact tracing? There's no contact tracing plan and evidence has been shown by countries who have a handle on this virus that it's crucial. Letting this thing run its course was never really an option and we are seeing why right now. Schools are closing, not only because of sick kids, but because they can't get enough staff. Hospitals are filling up again, which forces them to cancel elective surgeries and lose a ton of money. Hospitals are also having staffing issues. And this is all without a lockdown. The government isn't locking us down, we are locking ourselves down. And as a result we are killing our own economy. What's first? The chicken or the egg? I believe chicken is the virus and the egg is the economy. It's not the other way around. As I said in an earlier post: we need to learn to save ourselves from ourselves before we save ourselves from this virus. Are we really surprised at the situation we find ourselves in.....again?

whoa. I can deal with the prices on the beer....it's the shipping that's always the problem. Yeah, I can buy a can of Trillium for $5, but it will be $13 to ship it.

Are you able to get Trillium in NY? Always have wanted to try one of theirs.

I don't know for sure, but just guessing. If indeed the vaccine is 90% effective you'd have a 1 in 10 chance of getting infected and spreading it.....at least initially. As more people that get the vaccine, the chances of being contagious (with vaccine) would decrease even more because with 9 out of 10 people having antibodies (more if you count the already infected) the virus would have a harder time finding a host. Thus, slowly disappear - aka herd immunity. This is why the 90% mark is such good news (if it comes to fruition). 90% effective is measles vaccine territory. By comparison, the annual flu shot varies between 40-60%, which is why many people still get the flu even with a vaccine. As for Ayden and other compromised individuals it sounds like more info is needed still. I guess we'll have to wait until it's peer reviewed and see what the FDA does. Just keeping my fingers crossed in the meantime.

Good points. And to the skepticism about timing; they didn't even get those results until late last week. I also heard on some interview that the results are coming in a lot sooner than expected because the they have to wait on the placebo group to get to a certain amount of cases. With the spike in cases this last month, more people in that group were getting infected at a quicker rate. The irony: spiking cases are helping by leading to quicker vaccination results.

Look at you fancy pants. Zoomin’ with Fauci.

thought this was pretty cool: https://pitchfork.com/tv/under-the-influences/tame-impalas-kevin-parker-breaks-down-his-favorite-drum-sounds/

Pfizer announces that their vaccine is 90% effective. That’s really great news...I’ve heard 70% would have been an outstanding mark.

Always hated this song with passion...

Here is more info: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/australia-coronavirus-cases-melbourne-lockdown/2020/11/05/96c198b2-1cb7-11eb-ad53-4c1fda49907d_story.html It's a strategy. And one that worked. Yes Melbourne did shut down, but NYC also shut down for a similar period of time and we have nothing to show for it as a country. Sacrifices were made and the economy suffered, but again so has ours. The difference is that we have 100k cases a day and they have none. (or close to none). They are going to restaurants, rugby matches and are being encouraged to go back to work. We are in a holding pattern and children across the state are going back to virtual learning. Am I recommend we do this exact thing? Not necessarily, but we should learn from it. As I've said numerous times in this thread we need to learn from the strategies of countries who have this, for the most part, under control. Our strategy has been a mix denying it's severity, playing whack-a-mole with cases rather than consistently practicing prevention, poor communication, lack of a cohesive plan (every state is doing their own thing), blaming testing, conspiracy theories, skepticism, not contact tracing, etc. There are blueprints for success...we need to use them. Because, this (or whatever we're doing), is not success.

Fun facts about asteroids. - Jupiter blocks most asteroids that would hit Earth. The gravitational pull projects them out toward the sun. - If a an asteroid of any significance was heading towards Earth we'd be able to detect it years in advance. Many scientists believe that with today's technology we could change an asteroid's path. You don't blow it up like in Armageddon, because the debris would cause just as much damage. Rather, we'd nudge the asteroid with rockets or some type of explosion. The further out the asteroid (or the earlier we catch it, the less we'd have to nudge it to alter its course. I hate to break it to you @mrflynn03, but you'll have to think of another apocalyptic scenario. 😀

I’ll have some of what Australia is having....mostly because when you get a handle on it, you don’t have to worry about shutting down the economy. https://thehill.com/policy/international/523942-australia-reports-no-new-covid-19-cases-for-first-time-in-five-months?fbclid=IwAR0lpWzCj7ptEMe6-iMqPvbdWtIR7ND2U5Ow2z9dSioeWvHrnNCROAW6Okc

We had preliminary talks about canceling Thanksgiving as well. We will see. I’m not a huge fan of Turkey, so if we do cancel, I’m all about having a Mexican feast.

swimming

just had to shut down my team for 2 weeks. A kid came to practice with a pending test and 2 days later got a positive result. Who brings their kid to any function with a pending test? This is not March, we know how this all works by now. I'm not sure what to call that. Ignorance? Selfishness? Naivety? Probably all of the above and I can think of a lot more colorful adjectives. Sometimes I think we need to learn how to save ourselves from ourselves before we begin to save ourselves from this virus.

Per that article I linked above, the Western World is not effectively mitigating the spread. We're playing whack-a-mole. With this strategy we will continue to have waves and spikes until we have a vaccine, and will hurt our economies in the process. Even before I read the article, I've kept wondering why we aren't borrowing strategies from the countries who are doing the best in fighting this virus: Japan, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan, New Zealand, Hong Kong, etc. We're not doing any good comparing ourselves to Europe and they aren't doing any good comparing themselves to us. We're the blind leading the blind. At some point the Western World has to get our heads out of our collective arses.

Super informative, long and interesting article that I highly recommend. This covers so much of the stuff we’ve been talking about. I think our brains want to be able to understand a simple cause and effect, but this virus is so much more complicated, thus we need to change how we fight it. https://amp-theatlantic-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/616548/ a good summary per the article: Oshitani contrasts the Japanese strategy, nailing almost every important feature of the pandemic early on, with the Western response, trying to eliminate the disease “one by one” when that’s not necessarily the main way it spreads. Indeed, Japan got its cases down, but kept up its vigilance: When the government started noticing an uptick in community cases, it initiated a state of emergency in April and tried hard to incentivize the kinds of businesses that could lead to super-spreading events, such as theaters, music venues, and sports stadiums, to close down temporarily. Now schools are back in session in person, and even stadiums are open—but without chanting. It’s not always the restrictiveness of the rules, but whether they target the right dangers. As Morris put it, “Japan’s commitment to ‘cluster-busting’ allowed it to achieve impressive mitigation with judiciously chosen restrictions. Countries that have ignored super-spreading have risked getting the worst of both worlds: burdensome restrictions that fail to achieve substantial mitigation. The U.K.’s recent decision to limit outdoor gatherings to six people while allowing pubs and bars to remain open is just one of many such examples.” Could we get back to a much more normal life by focusing on limiting the conditions for super-spreading events, aggressively engaging in cluster-busting, and deploying cheap, rapid mass tests—that is, once we get our case numbers down to low enough numbers to carry out such a strategy? (Many places with low community transmission could start immediately.) Once we look for and see the forest, it becomes easier to find our way out.

I have no distinct evidence to support this, but my thinking is that there's only one way to mitigate spread until a vaccine comes along and that's human behavior. And nothing changes your behavior like a good scare.

I’m sure this gets around the political rule. I remarkably understood this version better than the original

https://health.usnews.com/wellness/articles/2016-08-02/flossing-doesnt-actually-work-investigation-concludes JK. Although I wish this to be true, i'm going to go with many of the other studies that say the contrary. It's not only COVID that gets the conflicting studies. haha.

The night before a dentist appointment so I can get complimented on what a great flossing job I do.

There's this article from June, but I'm sure data has changed. It actually shows there has been an increase in deaths outside of COVID. As we've spoke about numerous times in the past, COVID doesn't account for all the excessive deaths (above normal this year); per this article it's only 68%. And I'm sure it has changed since then, just don't have time to go find it. It's extremely frustrating. A wonder why nobody can get onto the same page. It's hard. All that I can do is black ball any news source, internet group, etc. that manufactures or shares blatantly false information and doctors graphs....and hope others do the same. This is not a situation where information is shared out of context; it's flat out lying. Why trust these outlets again? As far as I'm concerned, true colors have already been shown. Their goal is not informing; it's creating chaos and confusion....it's wanting to BE right, not GET IT right.

This fake graph was posted months ago. Somebody cleaned it up a little to make it look like a 12 year old didn't create the graphic, but still fake. Nowhere is this data posted in the link supplied or on the CDC website. Where did you get this?

That didn't make sense to me. haha You also have positivity rates that are used in tandem with the amount of tests, which are not looking good right now. I'm just saying that it looks like we are in the beginning stages of a spike again. This will be verified in coming weeks (already has to a certain degree) when hospitalizations increase and then deaths increase.