tdhoosier

You’re not understanding it correctly. Comorbidity can be considered hypertension, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, immune deficiencies. Basically, it’s broad enough to cover a high percentage of the population; especially if they are over 50. I’m 40 and pretty darn healthy, I expect to live to at least 80 (fingers crossed) technically if I died of COVID I’d have a comorbidity on my death certificate because genetics have granted me the good fortune of having a pre-existing heart condition (a fib). I would not be in that 6%; very few people would be. Bottom line, our excessive deaths are up almost 200k since March; this the the total number of excessive deaths over the 5 year average in the same time frame. Unless those extra 200K died from some other mysterious virus we don't’ know about, it’s pretty safe to assume they died because of COVID. This does a pretty good job at explaining it:

If you like IPAs, New Glarus’ Scream is awesome and only available in WI.

Same. At a restaurant if I can sit at the bar to eat instead of waiting for a table, I’m sitting at a the bar every time. Drives my wife nuts. She made me promise on our last anniversary that we’d sit at a table when we to a joint that didn’t take reservations. I reluctantly agreed....it pained me though.

.......when in Wisconsin, it’s what you gotta do.

Love it. Good view. Good Brew. And that glass is hilarious....I kinda want one.

It would be interesting to see a graph of pre-existing conditions by age and overlay it with Covid deaths by age. I'd think that the curve would match up pretty well. I need to get into the UVC ray business. Although, I've heard that only the commercial grade UVC lights really only make a difference. (It may have said that in the article, but I didn't have time to read because I'm running out the door.)

Just curious because I'm seeing this all over social media now. Is this supposed to be new, breaking news? Is it supposed to imply that the other 94% would have died anyway? I'm asking because this is what the CDC has been saying all along: People with underlying conditions need to take precautions, because they are the people who are most at risk to die. Elderly people die from COIVD at a higher rate because these demographics are more likely to have (and to a greater degree) said underlying conditions. These numbers back that up.

Hate to hear this news. Hoping for the best...and a negative COVID test.

Siri is so dumb. And I don't know how or if they can work with a Pixel/Google assistant. I give way too much money to Apple but they are like a wormhole that suck you in. We were holding out to get my son who is in 6th grade a phone for as long as possible, but now he needs to communicate with us after cross-country practice so we know where and when to pick him up. My wife was not in favor of my idea: having him find a payphone, call us collect, and when the name prompt pops up just quickly say: "come pick me up behind the school!" haha. BUT Verizon has a deal going on that we can add another line for $10/month and get a free iphone SE. That is hard to pass up, but it's the principle, damn it!!!!

I'm going to be a total 'Becky', but I really like my airpods. Yes there are better sounding earbuds, but if you have an iphone they are just too convenient. Plus, they fit my ear holes perfectly and the wireless charging case is key.

I didn't argue that; I actually didn't write any text. You said ":We have too many criminals, drug users, and overall pieces crap in this country and it multiples everyday." I was just showing you that crime has steadily been decreasing since the early 90s, which is the opposite of multiplying.

There seems to be a disconnect. I’m not saying I disagree with some points you make, but you are deflecting from one issue and pointing to other issues. If you’re having trouble in school in all subjects and you want to get better in math, you don’t focus on your problems in science and spelling. It doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t want to get better in those subjects, but for the moment we are concentrating about fixing you problems in math. Studying science and spelling is not going to help you fix math. Again, you do make valid points but you are dumping all problems into one bucket and seem to be insinuating you want BLM to be an advocate for everything. I think you’re focusing to much on their name and not their cause (whether you agree with it or not); their primary fight is social justice not black family dynamics or black on black crime. It doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care about the latter. Do the breast cancer awareness organizations not care about all lives or cancers because they are just focusing on one type of cancer? Do we criticize them for not talking about pancreatic cancer? Edit/add: Also a reminder that many NBA players do a lot of charitable work for many of the causes you mention. I mean, LeBron James built a school for underprivileged children! Since he seems to be the face of the NBA boycott, let's not forget about his philanthropy: https://clutchpoints.com/lebron-james-donations-over-the-years/

There's a song called 'Change' on that album that always kills me. Hard to listen to knowing that Shannon Hoon died from a depression induced drug overdose a few years later....he knew he had to change but couldn't.

First 3 that popped into my head: November Rain- GnR Have You Ever Seen The Rain - CCR No Rain - Blind Melon (which i must say: the album that song in on is criminally underrated)

....a quick response to the question posed: how is the boycott effective? It's always going to be hard to quantify what impact these protests have. BLM, whether you agree with it or not is a movement that has grown though. Kaepernick's protests, whether you agree with it or not, to some degree have helped that movement gain publicity. The NBA and other sports boycott, whether you agree with their stand or not, have broughten publicity to BLM. Again, I'm not here to argue about how they bring attention to their movement or if you think it's right or wrong, rather that it has been effective in getting their voices heard in the sense that a light is shined almost every time an unjustified police killing of an African-American happens now, or the fact that BLM protests happened in almost every major city after George Floyd. If the movement's efforts weren't effective, we wouldn't not be talking about it right now....it's as simple as that. At the very least they are inciting conversation, the challenge is keeping that conversation meaningful and civil. That said, I'll attempt to put my money where my mouth is: Completely removing race from the equation, there are systematic problems in the police force and the justice system that need to be fixed. I think it's fair to say that there needs to be better training for police officers, but at the same time we can't overlook that the police can not possibly be trained for everything they're asked to handle. It's incredibly unfair to them. I've heard both activists and Police union reps agree on that one point. Also, there has been compromise on the belief that resources and expertise need to be reallocated, which will lead to safer and more efficient policing. Major change is hard, but it seems we have a semblance of 'middle ground' on this issue. The question is, can we build upon it?

Stay safe!

Not sure if anybody ever listens, but I always like to share when Donald McNeil is on The Daily. He speaks about some of the things we've discussed on here: - He speculates that the flu season will be very mild because of all the restrictions in effect due to COVID: washing hands, social distancing, travel restrictions, etc. Cases in the southern hemisphere (where it's flu season) are way down. Australia is reporting 95% less flu cases. So, good news....he still recommends getting a flu shot to be safe though. - He and many immunologists are not worried about the guy from Hong Kong who was re-infected with COVID. Basically, the first time his symptoms were very mild. The milderer the infection the less antibodies that are created. When he had it the second time he was asymptomatic, which most likely means he only had enough antibodies to decrease the severity of the illness, but not completely make him immune. These 2 factors: mild first case and even milder second case are a good sign and are typical of antibody behavior in other illnesses. There will be outliers who get re-infected, we should really only be worried if the symptoms of a re-infected person are more severe the second time. (at least that's how I understood it) - He said immunologists, for the most part, believe immunity will last a year or more. Again, this is an educated guess based off of how long immunities last in other viruses that closely resemble COVID. - From what immunologists can gather, COVID mutates at a third of the rate that the seasonal flu does. If this holds true, it may mean we need to vaccinate every three years, but again, (I sound like a broken record) it all depends on the vaccines that are developed, and how long immunities last. - He also speaks about vaccines in China and Russia. Both are by passing the third and most important phase which Western scientists think is crazy. He explains why bypassing or rushing a third phase is extremely dangerous. Worst case scenario, the vaccine increases the severity of the symptoms for those who get infected....it's not something you want to play around with. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/podcasts/the-daily/coronavirus-plasma-reinfection.html

Interesting question. I’m guessing there’s a variety of factors that play into this. The obvious question which you proposed: how long until you start seeing the effects of mask wearing? But masks is just one factor in many of mitigation. I also wonder to what degree are people actually wearing masks and to what degree are the citizens avoiding mass gatherings? In my NWI bubble I still see people not wearing masks in public. Outside in downtown Valpo, where there’s a considerable amount of foot traffic, I’d say less than 25% of people are wearing masks outside when I drove through yesterday afternoon. There were also 4 neighborhood parties in my neighborhood this weekend.....nobody was wearing masks at any of them (from what I could tell). I’m not judging, my district is under 3% positivity rate, which is pretty good. I’m just reporting what I see, but it’s hard to get a good idea of what’s going on based on one factor, that many are still not seriously adhering to. This weekend was odd here, it seemed like just another weekend in August. Parties, high school football games, downtown window shopping, etc. This is something I’d like to know, but like everything with this stupid virus, honing on 2 variables (mask mandate and 7 day moving average) isn’t going to get us very far in understanding the greater picture. I wish there were easy answers; this is one of the most frustrating things about this virus IMHO.

Man, I saw him twice. Once at Farm Aid and another solo show. The funny ting about Farm Aid was I was in high school and I was so disappointed. Beck came out and decided to play old country covers in his ‘2 turntables and a microphone’ days. After being let down by that, Neil Young spent half of his set rambling on about farms, but because of the acoustics you couldn’t really hear what he was saying. In between each song he’d annoyingly whale on his harmonica. The solo show was great though.

I don’t think we should lock down like China. It wouldn’t even be possible in this country. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were tracking their citizens to some degree before this pandemic even started. I was just relaying the info from the interview because it offered perspective on the topic. I do suspect that China may have not been truthful about their numbers in the beginning, but based on the reporting I’ve heard I do think they have it relatively under control now. I do not think they have a vaccine that’s made it past a trial phase. I’m not sure why or how they’d keep that secret. There’s too many non-Chinese citizens and journalists in that country to not notice a public vaccination effort going on.

I was listening to an interview of an American journalist in China and he did say they had strict restrictions and had contact tracing apps on their phones. If the software detected a cluster they’d shut down a city without hesitation....this was back in May. He was also saying how if somebody went to get tested and they were positive they weren’t allowed to go back and go to a quarantining center to get treatment. This may have to do a lot to do with the low numbers. In this case it looks like they’re lack of freedom gives them an advantage in containment.

To be honest, if I was going to be a Freshman and going away to college I'd probably take a year off, work and then go back the following year. Why pay for room and board is there's a good chance all your classes are going to be virtual? And an added bonus, you then turn 21 your sophmore year! haha.

Has anybody watched that Zac Efron travel show on Netflix? The show is surprisingly super interesting.