tdhoosier

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.

I disagree with this cluster of sentences: That's a lot of assumptions. He's also finding specific data that fits his conclusion. And most blatant is he's comparing Sweden, a non-dense country (57.5 people per square mile) with a huge amount of single person households to NYC, one of the biggest and most dense cities (27,000 people per square mile) in the world! Why doesn't he compare Sweden to a state with a more similar population per square mile that locked down, like Iowa???? Why is he comparing an apple to an elephant to make his point? Maybe I have comprehension issues, but I don't see how the data suggest that at all. Is he living in reality? The whole reason NYC spiked is because they were blindsided by the virus while people were still freely moving around.....it snuck up on them before they had ANY policies in place and before they knew how to deal with it. Think back to Early April and what NYC did not know. Did Masks work, and if they did could they even find them? How long did the virus live on surfaces? Was it more risky to be outside or inside. How was this treated? How to keep the elderly safe? What demographics were the most susceptible? With so little known about a new airborne virus, what other choice did NYC have other than to lockdown in that particular moment? The author is going to use the data from that panicked environment, in an insanely dense area, compare it to Sweden, and come up with that conclusion?! That is so skewed. Sorry, I just tire of random articles on the internet claiming to have the answer based on cherry picked data.

I guess I'm not sure what many on here are trying to insinuate. Does anybody think we need to stop wearing masks, open up all bars, and start attending conventions in order to reach herd immunity? Just get a bunch of people sick before a vaccine is available and rip off the band aid? Nobody is locked down right now. What policies do you think should be reversed? I know you aren't advocating we going out in public and start licking each other's face in order to achieve herd immunity. What's your middle ground?

I’m 100% with you on improving health. Especially on improving health to improve your immunity because it goes hand in hand. I’m as puzzled as you are to why this message is not being repeated as much as mask wearing, distancing, etc. It needs to be included in the conversation.

God, I hope not! Did you get the impression that article was implying this culturally, but not necessarily out of necessity? Before the pandemic I'd see Asian people wear masks all the time - I assumed this was a result of SARS? That said, I can imagine people wearing masks in airports and other crowded public places when/if this is all done.

seeing how we are almost halfway to .1% in deaths with less than 10% of the population being infected, I'd say that number is not accurate, even for hypothetical purposes. And you are speaking purely from deaths. For every one person who dies there are many, many more that develop permanent heart or lung damage. I think you are thinking in the moment; what will this do to our future health and what will the cost effects of it be? We don't' know if it will re-infect people. We don't' know a lot. So forgive me if I don't want to go 'pedal to the metal' into this thing. I feel like we can try and wait 6-8 months for a vaccine while practicing social responsibility before we start throwing chicken pox parties.

That’s the whole point....that’s what happens with pandemics...they come out of know where and we can’t prepare. Herd immunity should not be a viable option, until a vaccine is developed or many will die who could be saved with the wide spread use of a vaccine. In modern times herd immunity is achieved in tandem with a vaccine. That’s why they make a ‘best guess’ with flu vaccine, they want to build up antibodies before the Seasonal flu hits to minimize it’s spread/effectiveness. We don’t have that luxury with COVID, so we need to stall R as much as we can, until a vaccine is available. Furthermore, we STILL don’t know how long antibodies last. We might want to find that out before rushing towards herd immunity without a vaccine or significant pharmaceutical breakthrough.

So you need to school Fauci on T-cells? haha. That article completely takes his answer out of context and contradicts itself. Allowing 'everyone to get infected' as a means of her immunity is completely different than 'surviving infection or getting vaccinated' as a means to herd immunity. Given how the question was asked, his answer was correct. I don't think article does a good job at explaining the nuances of herd immunity. There's a huge misconception about it. I've listened to a quite a few podcast interviews with epidemiologists and infectious disease experts. First, herd immunity is usually the goal before a virus begins infecting the population. This is how the term has been typically used in the past. This is done through the use of vaccines. All of the interviews I listened to actually agree with Fauci in that trying to reach herd immunity without the assistance of a vaccine is extremely dangerous and would cause a lot of unnecessary deaths. Second of all, you can't just blast through herd immunity, because like a boulder running down a hill, the infection rate must be slowed down before it reaches that projected line of 70% or it will blow right past herd immunity....again, unnecessarily killing way more people than could be prevented if done responsibly.

Reacher, all due respect, here are some links you've posted in the last few pages. primarydoctor.org alec.org justthenews.com covexit.com upi.com alachaucchronicle.com christianpost.com brietbart.com You can't possibly know the trustworthiness of all these random links you find and now you are going to practice sourcing skepticism? At least the NY TImes is big enough to be held up to scrutiny. Not blasting you for sharing info/data, but come on.....pot meet kettle?

This is the study I keep seeing other news outlets like CBS and The HIll report on: https://wellbeingtrust.org/areas-of-focus/policy-and-advocacy/reports/projected-deaths-of-despair-during-covid-19/ This is modeling, so to be taken with a grain of salt as it ranges from 27k to 150k additional deaths of despair through 2029. Whether we did or didn't lock down, I still think the economic effects and fear would been devastating. And the longer it takes to get it under under control, the economic effects, fear and DoD's will continue. It's impossible to figure out, but the question also needs to be asked how many lives have been saved by the measures the country has taken vs. excessive deaths that are a direct result of such measures. I'm not minimizing excessive deaths, but if 10 lives are being saved for every 1 additional death of despair over the median, then we do have a pretty substantial net gain in life. Again, I just completely made up that ratio, but I think it's a reasonable question to ask. Just thinking out loud as there are no right answers. It's a shitty situation all around.

i'd lobby for the Kid N Play foot tap. ...or at the very minimum a bow and fist bump.

I was talking to an airline pilot this weekend and (separately) my parents neighbor who works for a parts supplier in the airline industry...there's some big obstacles on the horizon. Bottom line is planes need to be flown and right now many of them are parked. While parked rust settles, parts go bad, hinges lose lubrication, etc. You simply can't fly a plane that has been parked for a month; it's horribly unsafe. Thus, when travel picks up airlines are fearing that they won't be able to meet demand. The neighbor who works for a parts supplier said that his company has been contracted to increase production of the replacement parts that will inevitably be needed. However, they are refusing to do so because the airlines can't pay them up front and the suppliers simply can't afford to hold inventory for an undetermined amount of time. Basically what he thinks this means is....suppliers are going to wait on a federal bailout because it's guaranteed payment.

I got it here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/state-bailouts-federal-spending-give-receive/ there’s also: https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-taxes-federal-services-difference-by-state-2019-1?amp never heard of Wallethub.com before. edit/add: I’m relooking at that table and it looks like #1 means the most dependent. So the lower the state is, the less dependent they are on the federal government? That seems to add up a little closer to the info in the links I posted.

Actually they’ll demand the northeast’s money as they generate the most revenue. Most of the flyover states collect more in federal assistance than they put in. You can’t take money from a negative contribution. The bluer the states are below = the more they suck on the federal teet.

You need to listen to more Amy Winehouse then. She uses it excellently on "Me and Mr. Jones".

Thanks for the recommendations guys - will look into those. Just came across Nancy Bristow, who wrote a book called "American Pandemic - Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic". A keyword search in your podcast app of choice will bring up a lot of interviews w/ her. I'm listening to one now in the background from 2018. I wanted to hear something outside the influence of and relation to COVID.

This may seem like an odd request, but has anybody come across any good documentaries, articles, podcasts about the Spanish Flu or American history in the year 1918? I just keep coming across little tibbits about that time and think it'd be interesting to hear more. I never knew until recently that the Spanish Flu did not come from Spain. The US and European media outlets were discouraged from reporting on it because the governments believed it detracted from the war efforts. Spain was the only country who reported on it, thus, it became known as the Spanish Flu. Also curious about what lead us into the roaring 20s, policy-wise or otherwise. History tends to repeat itself. For some reason learning that we aren't completely in a new precedence historically brings me comfort. I don't know....I guess I'm weird. haha.

Anybody had the Tuscan Pork at Costco? It’s a bunch of pre-marinated pork tenderloin bites. You can get a couple pounds of it for under $20. We split it up into a 4-5 serving for my wife and throw it in the freezer. Such a bargain and really tasty. I’m throwing it on the smoker right now.

I love these guys. The reactions to ‘Killing In The Name Of’ was great.