JohnLocke

I gotta go with intentionally obtuse. Nobody is actually this obtuse. The first part of my story is literally a cautionary tale about getting vaccinated, comparing the outcome of my son who was vaccinated vs. his friend who was not. Yes, get the vaccine. It may save your life. I have. We can two things at once though. We may yet have a strain where vaccines are useless, or worse, counter productive. There is a thing called antibody dependent enhancement. We should be preparing for that, and yeah, maybe even helping some of those who "deserve" what they get because they are unvaccinated. We have not been aggressive in pursuing at home treatments to keep you out of the hospital. Let me give you one example. This is from the NIH website: https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/immunomodulators/corticosteroids/ Recommendation There is insufficient evidence for the Panel to recommend either for or against the use of inhaled budesonide for the treatment of COVID-19. This is based on 2 studies which show encouraging results: https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/tables/table-4b/ Cliff notes: Evidence that budensonide may help keep you out of the hospital and/or from dying but study limitations preclude a firm conclusion. Now, here's my complaint. The CDC and NIH have literally tens of thousands of employees. Do they actually have something more important to do then figure out whether a low cost readily available drug can help keep covid patients out of the hospital? We are 18 months into this, and they can't/won't figure this out. Why? WTF? Is it really not a priority?

Quit being intentionally obtuse. Son's friend got great treatment once he went to the hospital. IV industrial strength blood thinners, etc. What he didn't get was anything beforehand to keep him out of the hospital.

Well, we are are 18 months into this, and your home treatment options are horse paste or nothing. Doesn't seem to be much of a focus.

Just as sanctimonious as ever I see. I'm not anti-vax. I was vaccinated early. The story I told illustrates quite clearly a case where the vaccines worked well. But I don't believe the mutations are driven by the unvaccinated. The choices are not horse paste or nothing. We are capable of pursuing two paths at once. It would be prudent to pursue treatment options. The lamda variant already exists, and is allegedly quite resistant to the vaccines. It would be best to prepare. And we should quit killing people today with blood clots unnecessarily. Friend is a pediatric doctor and says they are seeing lots of them--in teenagers. Be aware. Or bury your head in the sand. Your choice.

This is all incredibly frustrating. I don't know what to believe. There doesn't seem to much science in the booster shots. It's just spitballing at this point. We are basically 6 months in and the virus is mutating around the vaccines, and the answer is more of the same. I'm skeptical we can vaccinate our way out of this in the long term. Vaccines are working for now, but what we really need are treatments that work. You can see that the day may come where the vaccines don't work at all. Hell, we need to use the treatments that we have that work. My son (late 20's, vaccinated) got covid from an unvaccinated friend about the same age. My son barely knew he had it, very mild symptoms, and he was vaccinated in December. His friend is sick as a dog, runs 101 to 103 fever for 12 days, coughing, chills, the works. I'm thinking he needs to be in the hospital, but no breathing problems, so they tell him to stay at home. I'm asking about steroids and bloodthinners cuz I know when you are that sick with this shit, you are at high risk for a cytokin storm, and your blood turns to molasses. Nope, just ibuprofin. Not even aspirin. Sure enough, 2 days later he is in the hospital with a pulmonary embolism and a blood clot in his leg. WTF? I knew it was coming, why the hell doesn't the AMA? (Kid is recovering nicely, thank goodness, but damn!) I don't understand why there is so little focus on effective home treatments to keep you out of the hospital.

Well, that's one way to get a smoking hot body again....

Bullet, just my opinion. I have lots of Auburn friends. It is a huge rivalry, but it's been getting old playing such a brutal schedule. Adding Texas and OU ain't gonna make it easier. The hate for Georgia is a 9 out of 10. The hate for Bama is at least an 11 out of 10.

Despite contrary opinions, I think the Auburn fans are willing to sacrifice the Auburn-Georgia game, especially since it will be played every other year. They are sick of playing a top 3 hardest schedule every year. They would not give up the Iron bowl. The other option I've seen swaps Tennesse/Vanderbilt for Ole Miss/Miss State as a more traditional game for Bama and Auburn. Ags will do anything to stay out of a division with Texas -OU, and nobody wants to see LSU get an easy pod anyway so putting A&M with LSU makes sense, and gives the Ags a bone.

This is the alignment that makes the most sense to me. It's the most competitively balanced.

Nothing to see here, move along. Jen Psaki says Hunter Biden has 'the right' to pursue new art career despite fears anonymous painting buyers will have undue influence after White House carved out deal to keep $500K sales secret. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9773819/Jen-Psaki-defends-White-House-plan-help-Hunter-Bidens-art-buyers-secret.html

A wealth tax is likely unconstitutional. But how hard would it be to implement a graduated lifetime capital gains tax? Not hard at all. But it will never happen, cuz both parties are in the pocket of the wealthy. Example. 1st million 15% 2-5 million 20% 5-10 million 30% over 10 million: 50% This would also take care of those hedge fund guys that get to claim their income is capital gains. I'm all for sticking it to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

A good simple reform would be to not allow hospitals to charge more than 25% more to anyone of their average insurance rate.

There is plenty of reason to worry about the debt. Back in the old days of capitalism, when the government borrowed 2 trillion dollars, they had to go out on the open market and sell treasury bonds. This tended to make interest rates rise, and acted somewhat as a brake on excessive borrowing. Now that republicans and democrats have figured out how to skip this step by having the fed buy the bonds, I don't see any brakes on spending. This grand experiment can't end well. But it will be much harder on the poor and middle class, who won't have appreciating assets to counter balance rising prices. Wages will struggle to keep up. So far the rich are doing great in this environment. They will likely continue to do well as they can borrow at low rates and watch their assets increase in value. If you set up an economic plan specifically to benefit the rich, you would be hard pressed to come up with anything better. And yeah, Trump and the Republicans were horrible on the deficit. Now the democrats are in "Hold my beer" mode. Next up 2 trillion for infrastructure, then 2 trillion for the green new deal.

I'm not sure what covid relief has to do with rewarding blue states that were fiscally irresponsible pre-covid. Not a good precedent. It looks like the democrats have figured out how to get red states to pay for blue state public employee pensions. I don't get why any Texan is for this.

Lying dog-faced pony soldier...