Stannis

You're on board with the government implementing public health policy designed and intended to be racially discriminatory simply because the discriminatory policy allegedly serves the "greater good"? Accepting that as a worthwhile and laudable form of public policymaking could lead to some really, really bad outcomes. In fact, I think human history is littered with countless such examples. It's also a policy that would never be applied in the other direction. If the data showed that White Americans died at a higher rate, adjusted for age, than other racial groups, there is zero chance the City of Austin would design a policy targeted towards vaccinating White citizens before non-White citizens.

How does the City define "community disproportionately impacted by COVID 19"? I might be missing it, but I don't see a definition. My guess is that it is defined as "Non-White." I hope that I'm wrong about that, but I fear that I'm not. If that's the case, then you're God damn right I have a problem with that. The Government should not be in the business of discriminating based on race. The end. It is unacceptable for the Government to be dolling out critical, life-saving medical care to people based on the color of their skin. "Sorry, 64 year old white man, you don't get a vaccine right now because you are white." That does not "come from a good place." It comes from a facially discriminatory place that would not be acceptable if it was targeted literally to any other racial group.

I don't mean for this to sound the wrong way, but I've seen multiple posters try to give you some options to chase down on the other thread, and you have come up with an excuse each time to avoid following their leads, including one because the vaccine was in one county over from you. Like Brisket said, you've got to be your own advocate with this. Signing up for one wait list is not going to cut it. I seriously hope you get your shot soon and would recommend you take the help that some of the guys on this website are offering towards that end.

If NFL QB is not in Sam's future, he should consider cashing in his McComb's education and moving to Apple, Dell, IBM, or AMD, not NFL TE. He's going to be wildly successful in private business, not getting knocked around in the head trying to play TE in the NFL.

I understood immamac's point to be that there was something uniquely American about our population's unwillingness to adhere to strict stay-at-home orders for any significant period of time. He referred to it as "American greed." I'm not sure there is a better way to examine that assertion without comparing our country with others. That doesn't seem like whataboutism to me. We certainly come up short when compared to small, homogenous, geographically isolated places like New Zealand and South Korea. We compare more favorably to more geographically and demographically similar places like many European nations. I don't trust the numbers coming out of a number of other countries. In any event, I agree with immamac's point that the inability of our population to come together, rally around a cause that impacts our entire county, and sacrifice personally for the benefit of the society as a whole is disappointing. The "muh freedoms" crowd has an ignorant view of history. Individual sacrifice in the name of societal good was how we won WW2 - the greatest struggle for freedom in world history.

Speaking of the Beatles, at the beginning of the pandemic, I spent a lot of my nights listening to Beatles songs like Let it Be, Here Comes the Sun, Dear Prudence, In My Life, and the Long and Winding Road (and post-break up stuff from Harrison like Give me Love and My Sweet Lord). You know, the kind of soft, spiritual, almost despondent, but optimistic tunes that make you happy and sad at the same time. Now, a year later, I swear I find myself listening exclusively to Helter Skelter, Sgt. Pepper's, Run for Your Life, I Me Mine, I'm Looking Through You, Happiness Is a Warm Gun, Ticket to Ride, etc. I think I've grown numb to feel-good music and have firmly embraced my anger at whoever ate that fucking bat in Wuhan a little over a year ago.

It has been approximately 12 months since COVID came to the national attention in the United States and work began on the vaccines. In the 12 months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States and its allies (namely, the UK) lost to the Japanese the Philippines, Guam, the Aleutian Islands, Wake Island, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, most of New Guinea, and numerous other island chains in the Pacific. In the Atlantic, German U-Boats sunk more than 400 Merchant Ships totaling over 2 million tons. Shortly thereafter, the Afrika Corps routed American forces at the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in the first major engagement between American and German forces in WW2. In that same 12 months following Pearl Harbor, the United States produced only about 8,000 Sherman Tanks (out of 50,000 built during the war). It wasn’t until the second full year of our participation in the war – 1943 – that production really took off, when about 21,000 Shermans were built. It took two full years from our entry into the war for the P-51 Mustang to be designed, developed, and manufactured in numbers sufficient to allow a long-range fighter escort for the 8th Air Force on its bombing missions deep into Germany. Up until then, our strategic bombers were being shot out of the sky by German fighters at a rate sometimes as high as 20 or 25% per mission. It wasn’t until early 1944 that, with the widespread introduction of the Mustang and improved fighter tactics, complete air supremacy was achieved over Western Europe. It took the US 2 years and 7 months from a declaration of war on Germany to develop the logistics, to assemble enough men, and to construct enough ships and aircraft to land in Normandy in June 1944. In 1942, the US produced fewer than 25,000 combat aircraft. In 1943, it was more than 50,000. In 1944, it was 75,000. The backbone of the US Navy during the later half of the war – the Essex Class Carrier – was not produced in large numbers until late 1943 and early 1944, more than 2 years after Pearl Harbor. The Apollo Program – NASA’s human spaceflight program – took about 8 years from conception to putting Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon. Massive, unprecedented logistical undertakings do not happen quickly. Not in WW2. Not at NASA. Not with this. I’d say what private industry, with support from governments, has been able to accomplish – creating, testing, manufacturing, and administering tens of millions of doses of highly effective, revolutionary vaccines to combat a novel coronavirus, in about 12 months - is pretty damn outstanding and holds up well to historical comparison.

One has to do with transmission, and the other has to do with severity. People should be wearing masks and socially distancing, when possible, to reduce the spread. People should not be morbidly obese to reduce the severity when they get it.

I assume his concern is that the pace of infection will spread even more rapidly than it already has with the new strain becoming more widespread, and we aren't moving fast enough to achieve herd immunity with the vaccines to get out in front of that. I also would note that, while Dr. Gottlieb unquestionably is a brilliant doctor, his negative waves have gotten really old. His pundit persona is to push the worst possible scenario at every step of the pandemic. The vaccine roll out has not been perfect, but there was nothing that could have been done to satisfy Gottlieb. He's the Satya of the medical world. I'd like to see him take a few months off from the speaker fee circuit, get his ass on the ground helping to administer vaccines, and stop bitching constantly.

I don't know if he's our "best" player, but Kai Jones is, without question, my favorite player to watch on this team.

He's got Simple Jack coaching, a shitty oline, the worst group of receivers in the modern history of the program, and a guy playing tight end who should be watching the game at the Fiji house.

That's not uncommon at all at Plaintiffs' personal injury firms. They are great places for young lawyers to learn how to be trial lawyers - because unlike most other civil litigation these days, injury cases still go to trial (at least before the pandemic). The appeal for a young lawyer is to get trained up on how to try cases, make some good money, then open your own shop or parlay the experience into a real partnership at a different firm.

He posts on Surly as Randolph Duke.

For what it's worth, I heard mostly the same thing bolded above from a buddy who knows.

Carla was the prom queen.

Fewer.

If we can figure out a way to deliver the vaccines by injections into Big Macs, Whoppers, and Doritos Locos Tacos, we should have substantially all of the population vaccinated by Tuesday after next.

There are three things I thought should happen at the beginning of the pandemic, particularly when we began to understand the correlation between obesity and COVID mortality: 1. Constant, widespread public messaging from elected officials and bureaucrats about the importance of losing weight, eating right, getting regular exercise, and living a healthy lifestyle. 2. Drafting 25,000 young Americans to serve 18 month obligations in the Armed Forces for the specific purpose of shoring up overrun medical systems. They could be provided basic medical training - how to operate a ventilator, draw blood, give shots, administer medications, etc. - and supplement scarce personnel resources in hot spots as needed. 3. Build extra hospital capacity in the 100 largest American communities. I've seen practically nothing on No. 1, which infuriates me, as it is virtually free and is the one thing more than anything else people can individually control. I've heard no one in any position of power ever propose No. 2. As to No. 3, some communities built temporary facilities. Some, like Houston's never were used. But now that we are seeing hospital capacity dry up in multiple hot spots around the country, and the number of trained medical technicians prove to be inadequate, Nos. 2 and 3 could have been making an impact at precisely this moment.

You and I likely have a lot in common in our personal approaches to this virus and the acknowledgment that it is a serious public health emergency that should be treated as such. But this is a really ignorant post. Let me start with the most ignorant part - your passing dig at evangelicals for wanting to congregate together to worship in person. I'm a Catholic (not a very good one), not an evangelical, but let me try to explain why some Christians "are up in arms about the churches." As Catholics, we believe that Christ himself is present in the sacrament. Every time I take communion as a Catholic, I believe I am taking the body and blood of God into my body. When the bread and wine are consecrated by the Priest, physically present in the Church during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine cease to be bread and wine and become instead the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. You can laugh at that belief if you want, but it's kind of the central tenet of our faith and our belief in salvation from our earthly sins. When I am deprived of physically going to weekly Mass, I am deprived of participating in the most important part of my faith for the last 2,000 years. Because I can hear the Protestants laughing at me from the corner, let me try to explain from another perspective. Christians do not believe that God intended for the act of attending church to be for spectators to show up to sit idly and watch a performance. Receiving a minister's sermon or a priest's homily is important. But just as important is the idea that one's Church is supposed to be a place for believers to come together as a community, to participate in Church functions, and to develop connections with people who believe what you believe. A Christian life is supposed to be a communal life, not a solo act of watching an episode of Church TV on Sundays. I have three young children. It's critically important to me that they learn to be a part of a Church community at a young age, like I did, so that they build a foundation to live a Christian life. Physically worshipping in person is the only way to do that. As to places of business like restaurants, bars, and gyms, all I will say is that Americans want to work. They want to take care of themselves and their families. Whether that's a dishwasher or waiter at a restaurant, a family that has owned a small business for generations, or a guy who poured his life savings into building a small business from scratch, a plan of "stay at home and collect welfare checks in the mail for the next 18 months" just isn't going to cut it for most people.

They are branded already. Just look at their ring fingers and you'll find "Fightin Texas Aggie Class of ___".

I'm not going to defend how our country has dealt with this virus, but: Do you really trust numbers from any other place in the world outside of western Europe and some select Asian countries? Russia, China, Iran, India, etc., either do not have the political will or the resources to accurately report their true numbers. So, your premise is wrong. The United States does not, in reality, make up over 20% of the world's cases and deaths. The single most frustrating thing to me about the past 8 months is the near silence from our political leaders of all parties and our public health officials on the most important things that people can do to improve their likelihood of surviving COVID: eat a healthy diet, exercise regularly, and lose weight. Our country is disgustingly obese. It was inevitable we would get hammered by a virus that causes more severe outcomes in obese people. One of the main public health components to combating this virus should be tackling obesity. Instead, because we live in a "you can't fat shame me!" culture, there is utter silence on this vital point.

That's fine. The program is essentially over for many fans as well. Good luck funding the nice locker rooms, the scholarships, the stipends, and everything else when you burned the program to the ground and drove off once die-hard, life-long fans. I'm sure the program won't have any trouble replacing the financial support from the fans being driven off with the folks who instigated this narrative in the first place. This website is ideologically left of center, so many won't admit or acknowledge this, but legions of fans do not want political causes mixed in with their sports and are sick of being preached to 24/7. I'll be spending time with my family, on the golf course, and doing just about anything else on Saturdays going forward. In 20 years, Sam will be at the top of whatever industry he has chosen to enter. I doubt the same will be true for most of the other guys on that roster.

1. Armenian & AZ T-72s are generations behind American M1A2s in armor protection, mobility, firepower, and crew ergonomics. 2. Neither Armenia nor AZ implement "combined arms" in the way the US is capable of implementing combined arms. Our supporting infantry, artillery, armored vehicles, drones, and air support obviously dwarf anything these two combatants can employ. 3. Nonetheless, the wars in Syria, Yemen, and now Azerbaijan do show a level of tank vulnerability to crewed anti-tank weapons and man-portable anti-tank weapons that has concerned war-planners in the United States. In fact, the Marines are phasing out the entirety of their armored forces, though that largely is due to mission differences between what the Marines and the Army will be expected to do in the next 25 years: rapidly deploy to hot spots in the South China Sea (USMC) vs. slug it out in urban warfare or in patched battles (Army). 4. Most people don't know this, but Azerbaijan deployed troops in support of American troops fighting in Iraq in the mid-2000s. They provided perimeter security to several vital US bases in Anbar Province: Haditha Dam and Al Asad Air Base. That's not particularly relevant to this conflict, other than to the extent it gives the State Department pause to reflexively support Armenia.

Why are you attributing Fondren's quote to me? Accidental misquote?

"No one I know has been hospitalized, so it must not be a big deal." That is some impressive logic. What Fightin' Texas Aggie Class are you?