Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away

[dcar00 14036]

Just now, Dilligas said:

Was the Snuffers right there too?

Damn I loved hitting that place for a burger, loaded fries and mushrooms 

chilis was basically greenville and walnut hill.    Snuffers was near M streets on Greenville farther towards downtown.

[Dilligas 666]

3 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

chilis was basically greenville and walnut hill.    Snuffers was near M streets on Greenville farther towards downtown.

Damn you’re right, much farther south.

[dcar00 14036]

Just now, Dilligas said:

Damn you’re right, much farther south.

big SMU hangout back in the day.

[clapclapclap 9000]

2 hours ago, DDD Dad said:

Working on it.

Looks like he's pissed you put his doghouse on a pedestal back there.

Edited May 6, 2020 by clapclapclap
Korean doghouse

[RayDog 682]

17 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

  The UK was never going to have 550K dead.

It is easy to see where 550k in the UK comes from since that is what you get if you assume 70% infections and a 1% IFR. Now if you guess the IFR will be 0.4% the number is closer to 220 or 230K. The equivalent number for the US assuming 70% infected and 0.4 IFR is ~920K.

Without masks and social distancing the question becomes if a vaccine can be administered and take effect before 70% are infected. I have my doubts, particularly since ~40% of the population or more in the US appears to be willing to take a chance with the virus. 

Dr. John Campbell cited a source I didn't catch that it could take 18 months to make and distribute a vaccine to the entire world after approval, so those delays need to be factored in, especially in poorer countries.

[dcar00 14036]

from the report, comment on mitigation

Perhaps our most significant conclusion is that mitigation is unlikely to be feasible without emergency surge capacity limits of the UK and US healthcare systems being exceeded many times over. In the most effective mitigation strategy examined, which leads to a single, relatively short epidemic (case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of the elderly), the surge limits for both general ward and ICU beds would be exceeded by at least 8-fold under the more optimistic scenario for critical care requirements that we examined. In addition, even if all patients were able to be treated, we predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1-1.2 million in the US.

[texastough 1129]

2 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

If you wanted to attempt herd immunity in the United States,   

Do you mind explaining what you mean by this (no CR)? 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

7 minutes ago, texastough said:

Do you mind explaining what you mean by this (no CR)? 

He can't, so withdraw the question.

[Stunns38 3357]

Chili's has been dead to me since they stopped carrying the chicken fried steak

Fify

[Newdoc 3433]

8 hours ago, Buzzrock said:

Can any of the docs@newdoc@chitowndoc weigh in on BioRxiv?

I jumped ahead a few pages so I don’t know if chitowndoc answered before me.

IMO it’s dangerous to publish this paper to the general public. Technically everything they “speculate” in this paper could happen but that would require virus mutations atypical from what usually goes on in the wild.

It also doesn’t speak to how much the mutations can avoid previous immunity from initial strains of Covid.

I can also tell you that scientists are very human and prone to group think and logical fallacies in their work when they get excited about getting published with exciting discoveries.

One of the hallmarks of solid research is replication of data by independent researchers consistent with initial discoveries. They also should be able to maintain neutrality about their own biases. It doesn’t always happen.

[Dahobbs 17450]

57 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

from the report, comment on mitigation

Perhaps our most significant conclusion is that mitigation is unlikely to be feasible without emergency surge capacity limits of the UK and US healthcare systems being exceeded many times over. In the most effective mitigation strategy examined, which leads to a single, relatively short epidemic (case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of the elderly), the surge limits for both general ward and ICU beds would be exceeded by at least 8-fold under the more optimistic scenario for critical care requirements that we examined. In addition, even if all patients were able to be treated, we predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1-1.2 million in the US.

Yes, mitigation as distinct from suppression strategies. 

[dcar00 14036]

1 minute ago, Dahobbs said:

Yes, mitigation as distinct from suppression strategies. 

which is what I said in response to Wulaw where you decided to jump in. basic mitigation 500K dead.  I actually gave them more leeway as they said 1.1-1.2M dead in US.  the report and model is ridiculous.  

[Newdoc 3433]

6 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

https://nypost.com/2020/05/05/new-mutation-indicates-that-coronavirus-might-be-weakening-study/

Study shows that this shit might be weakening.  This would be good news.

This usually how viruses behave. Weakening in virulence but able to maintain infectious properties. Kind of micro evolution. But once again, needs independent verification.

[dcar00 14036]

2 minutes ago, Newdoc said:

This usually how viruses behave. Weakening in virulence but able to maintain infectious properties. Kind of micro evolution. But once again, needs independent verification.

who knows if this plays out but if so this is exactly why what China did was complete fucking bullshit.  Fuck them

[Wulaw Horn 18984]

16 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

who knows if this plays out but if so this is exactly why what China did was complete fucking bullshit.  Fuck them

Why is that?  I mean, I agree what they did is bullshit but how does that relate to this? Connect the dots for me if you would- I don’t understand what you are saying. 

[Gatorubet 30121]

6 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

France with a case in December.  

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/world/coronavirus-world-coverage.html?type=styln-live-updates&label=global&index=1&action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage#link-1eff63fa

Most interesting part:

 

Crap.  I was in Belgium in late December and came back with a respiratory bug and slight fever that took two course of antibiotics and two weeks to get better.  Now I will take the damn antibody test.

[atomheartbevo 89457]

4 hours ago, BevoSwag said:

Isn't it possible that the testing isn't giving correct results?

I would need to see mugshots of all of those involved to make that determination.

[atomheartbevo 89457]

3 hours ago, Iceman said:

We were laughing this weekend, if we hadn't bought the 32pk at Sams right as the initial panic hit; we'd still have 10 rolls in the house from what we already had on hand.

Hell, I figured everyone knew something about all of us shitting ourselves all day with the plague or something.

What if the demand for toilet paper is real, because a shitload of Americans had to start cooking for themselves, and they weren't doing proper food prep, cleaning, cooking, etc.?

[atomheartbevo 89457]

2 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

2 things:

1) where’s the beef?

2) how many of those workers are asymptomatic, how many sick, how many in really bad shape?  

3) If they spread covid all over the raw beef, how long can it last on said beef, and is it still viable it if I'm handling that raw beef.

[Wulaw Horn 18984]

4 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

3) If they spread covid all over the raw beef, how long can it last on said beef, and is it still viable it if I'm handling that raw beef.

Yeah- that too!

[atomheartbevo 89457]

2 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

AND he’s had lung cancer twice so you’d think he would take this a little seriously. AND he’s a big time prepper who should be happy that he has a reason to hunker down. 

If there is one thing that this pandemic has taught us, besides educating us about RayDog's personnel life and what those early morning livestock reports on those odd channels means, it's that preppers cannot survive: 

• without haircuts and dye jobs done by professionals
• without manicures done by professionals
• without going to the gym constantly
• on their spouse's cooking

Those prepper folks really need to fall back, regroup, and teach each other how to cut hair and cook simple meals.  

We had "survivalists" back in the 80s that prepared for nuclear war, some real Red Dawn shit.

Meanwhile, these 2020s preppers are fucked if SuperCuts ever goes bankrupt.

[atomheartbevo 89457]

6 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Yeah- that too!

And I should add, the packaging of said raw beef.  

"In theory" most of us are careful with handling raw meat, but if it made it onto the packaging of said raw meat, that could be potentially handled by half-a-dozen or more people from the time it leaves the plant until it's in store.

But, the experts are saying the chances of you getting it from groceries, packages in the mail, etc.is very low, and that most people are picking up due to direct contact/close proximity to an infected person.  So...

[gmr548 16519]

without going to the gym constantly

Gonna go out on a limb and say most of these protesters have never set foot in a gym.

[gmr548 16519]

And I should add, the packaging of said raw beef.  
"In theory" most of us are careful with handling raw meat, but if it made it onto the packaging of said raw meat, that could be potentially handled by half-a-dozen or more people from the time it leaves the plant until it's in store.
But, the experts are saying the chances of you getting it from groceries, packages in the mail, etc.is very low, and that most people are picking up due to direct contact/close proximity to an infected person.  So...

Wash your hands, as you should when handling raw meat regardless, and you'll be fine. Cooking will kill it. And even if you ingest it, it's going to burn in your stomach. Unless you're literally inhaling your food the risk is negligible.

[Enchubben 5509]

6 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

And I should add, the packaging of said raw beef.  

"In theory" most of us are careful with handling raw meat, but if it made it onto the packaging of said raw meat, that could be potentially handled by half-a-dozen or more people from the time it leaves the plant until it's in store.

But, the experts are saying the chances of you getting it from groceries, packages in the mail, etc.is very low, and that most people are picking up due to direct contact/close proximity to an infected person.  So...

Pretty slim chance of getting it from food based on anything you can find searching the web. On certain surfaces the virus can last longer than others, although most are less than two days, with only trace elements after 3-4 hours. I take it most people aren’t eating the meat less than 1-2 days since packaging. Plus don’t these people wear masks gloves etc while doing their job anyways? 

oh and I’ve been level 3.5 since Friday. I don’t wear a mask, but I do wash hands before and after going places before putting my hands near my face and keep my distance from others when possible. 

[FartingMonk 3606]

You know we keep hearing about surge capacity.  Am I wrong to think that is built into the US healthcare as it is?  We have tons of contract doctors and nurses that were already there doing this.  It wasn't exactly the hospital beds that were short in other countries.  It was the healthcare providers hitting a breaking point.  We have that built in where nurses and doctors could be flown in from all over the country to give relief.  The ventilator shortage was overblown and from what I'm hearing now is a lot of the deaths were due to early determination that we should out them on ventilators.  The PPE shortage was a problem but by now that should be solved right?

[TXSG8R 3360]

6 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

You know we keep hearing about surge capacity.  Am I wrong to think that is built into the US healthcare as it is?  We have tons of contract doctors and nurses that were already there doing this.  It wasn't exactly the hospital beds that were short in other countries.  It was the healthcare providers hitting a breaking point.  We have that built in where nurses and doctors could be flown in from all over the country to give relief.  The ventilator shortage was overblown and from what I'm hearing now is a lot of the deaths were due to early determination that we should out them on ventilators.  The PPE shortage was a problem but by now that should be solved right?

I believe you're quite wrong.  The surge capacity they are talking about is mainly around ICU beds and ventilators.  Personnel is also a part of it, as they are a resource that can be exhausted as well, but the initial concerns was largely around ICU capacity.  The doctors in Italy were having to choose who to put into ICU beds and on ventilators, and there were only so many resources to go around, so the ones they were denying that capability were essentially getting a death sentence.  Did you not see the stories where they were engineering ways to expand the capacity of existing ventilators to support multiple patients?  

March 18th article.  

Quote

Whatever fears these caregivers may harbor about their own health, what they seemed to find far more unbearable was watching people die because resource constraints limited the availability of ventilatory support. So aversive was this rationing that they hesitated to describe how these decisions were being made. Dr. S. offered a hypothetical scenario involving two patients with respiratory failure, one 65 and the other 85 with coexisting conditions. With only one ventilator, you intubate the 65-year-old. Dr. D. told me his hospital was also considering, in addition to the number of comorbidities, the severity of respiratory failure and probability of surviving prolonged intubation, aiming to dedicate its limited resources to those who both stand to benefit most and have the highest chance of surviving.

But though approaches vary even within a single hospital, I sensed that age was often given the most weight. I heard one story, for instance, about an 80-year-old who was “perfect physically” until he developed Covid-19–related respiratory failure. He died because mechanical ventilation could not be offered. Though Lombardy’s richly resourced health care system has expanded critical care capacity as much as possible, there simply were not enough ventilators for all patients who needed them. “There is no way to find an exception,” Dr. L. told me. “We have to decide who must die and whom we shall keep alive.”

Contributing to the resource scarcity is the prolonged intubation many of these patients require as they recover from pneumonia — often 15 to 20 days of mechanical ventilation, with several hours spent in the prone position and then, typically, a very slow weaning. In the midst of the outbreak’s peak in northern Italy, as physicians struggled to wean patients off ventilators while others developed severe respiratory decompensation, hospitals had to lower the age cutoff — from 80 to 75 at one hospital, for instance. Though the physicians I spoke with were clearly not responsible for the crisis in capacity, all seemed exquisitely uncomfortable when asked to describe how these rationing decisions were being made. My questions were met with silence — or the exhortation to focus solely on the need for prevention and social distancing. When I pressed Dr. S., for instance, about whether age-based cutoffs were being used to allocate ventilators, he eventually admitted how ashamed he was to talk about it. “This is not a nice thing to say,” he told me. “You will just scare a lot of people.”

Dr. S. was hardly alone. The agony of these decisions prompted several of the region’s physicians to seek ethical counsel. In response, the Italian College of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation, and Intensive Care (SIAARTI) issued recommendations under the direction of Marco Vergano, an anesthesiologist and chair of the SIAARTI’s Ethics Section.2 Vergano, who worked on the recommendations between caring for critically ill patients in the ICU, said that the committee urged “clinical reasonableness” as well as what he called a “soft utilitarian” approach in the face of resource scarcity. Though the guidelines did not suggest that age should be the only factor determining resource allocation, the committee acknowledged that an age limit for ICU admission may ultimately need to be set.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2005492

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23362]

9 hours ago, texastough said:

Do you mind explaining what you mean by this (no CR)? 

Sure, and this isn’t a political statement.  It doesn’t matter who is in office, it doesn’t even have to be leadership in the public sector.  To get to herd immunity among any population, in any area, you would need leadership to motivate the population to work together in a united effort while being fully aware of what it will take and the consequences involved.  This has nothing to do with politics, it’s just an objective fact. 

[Coelenterate Fuccboi 13010]

13 hours ago, stork642 said:

I think he was realizing just how shitty his model was so he made the decision that he might as well get laid.  

Do we ever truly need a reason?

[Buzzrock 14876]

I jumped ahead a few pages so I don’t know if chitowndoc answered before me.
IMO it’s dangerous to publish this paper to the general public. Technically everything they “speculate” in this paper could happen but that would require virus mutations atypical from what usually goes on in the wild.
It also doesn’t speak to how much the mutations can avoid previous immunity from initial strains of Covid.
I can also tell you that scientists are very human and prone to group think and logical fallacies in their work when they get excited about getting published with exciting discoveries.
One of the hallmarks of solid research is replication of data by independent researchers consistent with initial discoveries. They also should be able to maintain neutrality about their own biases. It doesn’t always happen.

Thanks for the response. It’s a little worrisome that that site is starting to become a reference for news stories from pretty established outlets. People are going to see the headlines and propagate them and either won’t care or will gloss over the lack of peer review.

[BabaYaga 15214]

Seattle to extend rental eviction protection another SIX months

Six more months

 

The Seattle City Council unanimously passed legislation that adds six months of eviction protection for tenants.

In Seattle and statewide, the moratorium on evictions was scheduled to end June 4. Now Seattle renters will have an additional six months of forgiveness.

According to the legislation, Council Bill 119784 protects Seattle renters from eviction in several ways.

• After the city's moratorium on residential evictions ends, the legislation provides a defense a tenant may use for six months should a landlord take their tenant to eviction court.
• The tenant can use non-payment of rent for any reason as a defense to eviction, as long as they submit a declaration of financial hardship to the court.

Seattle City Council President M. Lorena Gonzlez said. "Tenants may use this defense if needed, but this bill does not release renters of their contractual obligations to pay their monthly rent. If you are a tenant who can afford to pay your rent in full, you absolutely should."

 

I get the intent.  The problem here are the massive unintended consequences of this.  You "should" pay?  But they have no way to vet or enforce this?  So why on god's green earth would they?  And what obligation does the landlord now have to the tenant?  AC broken?  Oh, well.  Electricity?  Water?  Do they shut these services off to try and save a little money?  Do the landlords (often just people, not corporations) have an obligation to their debt-holders as well?  How far up the chain does this go?

Additionally, any new housing I was planning to build in Seattle would be cancelled.  What model allows for the sunk costs of construction and abatement of revenue for half a year on top of it?  RE market is going to suffer massively from this.  Then after 6 months, are the tenants due to money in arrears?  What stops them from just bailing?
 

 

[Liquor and Poker 3659]

1 hour ago, Buzzrock said:

 

Thanks for the response. It’s a little worrisome that that site is starting to become a reference for news stories from pretty established outlets. People are going to see the headlines and propagate them and either won’t care or will gloss over the lack of peer review.

 

Biorxiv and medrxiv are collections of all kinds of studies of varying value.  Like bioscience twitter without character limits.   You could likely find a study there on almost anything and its relation to health, and a very similar study contradicting it too.
There are 288 pages in the list of COVID-19 papers published there touting the efficacy of random Chinese herbs, a causal link with Vitamin D, and saying the BCG tuberculosis vaccine is protective.  They all may be true, but who knows?:

https://connect.biorxiv.org/relate/content/181

You would hope there’s some discretion in reporting based on studies published there because most people (self included) have a hard time telling the true information  from the wild-ass speculation and correlation = causation fallacies. But if I wanted to write either the “we’re so fucked” or the “things are gonna get better quick” article I’d find plenty of “support” in there. 

[dcar00 14036]

14 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

Seattle to extend rental eviction protection another SIX months

Six more months

 

The Seattle City Council unanimously passed legislation that adds six months of eviction protection for tenants.

In Seattle and statewide, the moratorium on evictions was scheduled to end June 4. Now Seattle renters will have an additional six months of forgiveness.

According to the legislation, Council Bill 119784 protects Seattle renters from eviction in several ways.

• After the city's moratorium on residential evictions ends, the legislation provides a defense a tenant may use for six months should a landlord take their tenant to eviction court.
• The tenant can use non-payment of rent for any reason as a defense to eviction, as long as they submit a declaration of financial hardship to the court.

Seattle City Council President M. Lorena Gonzlez said. "Tenants may use this defense if needed, but this bill does not release renters of their contractual obligations to pay their monthly rent. If you are a tenant who can afford to pay your rent in full, you absolutely should."

 

I get the intent.  The problem here are the massive unintended consequences of this.  You "should" pay?  But they have no way to vet or enforce this?  So why on god's green earth would they?  And what obligation does the landlord now have to the tenant?  AC broken?  Oh, well.  Electricity?  Water?  Do they shut these services off to try and save a little money?  Do the landlords (often just people, not corporations) have an obligation to their debt-holders as well?  How far up the chain does this go?

Additionally, any new housing I was planning to build in Seattle would be cancelled.  What model allows for the sunk costs of construction and abatement of revenue for half a year on top of it?  RE market is going to suffer massively from this.  Then after 6 months, are the tenants due to money in arrears?  What stops them from just bailing?
 

 

that may be the dumbest thing in the history of dumbest things.    yes, the intent is that if you own prorperty and collect rent you are rich as shit and should be fine for 6 months.

[Wulaw Horn 18984]

1 minute ago, dcar00 said:

that may be the dumbest thing in the history of dumbest things.    yes, the intent is that if you own prorperty and collect rent you are rich as shit and should be fine for 6 months.

Seattle is about as liberal as it comes. Their citizenry wants these policies and are committed to it (city wide $15.00 minimum wage as well- trying to build houses for homeless and much much more). 

I’m very glad that they exist and are doing stuff. It will be interesting as a case study in the coming years to see the effect their generous social policies have, on a prosperous major city, in the United States. 

I’ve got my suspicions as to how it works out, but I’m pretty comfortable in saying that for good or ill this is going to be no skin off our noses. 

[bullzak 412]

22 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

Seattle to extend rental eviction protection another SIX months

So the RE owners are exempt from property taxes too, right?

Or is everyone in Seattle a Microsoft billionaire?

[BabaYaga 15214]

Everyone up there will be simply flabbergasted when homelessness further explodes next year....

[dcar00 14036]

4 minutes ago, bullzak said:

So the RE owners are exempt from property taxes too, right?

Or is everyone in Seattle a Microsoft billionaire?

there should also be zero court costs for the owner taking the tenant to court and the city should cover legal expenses.  meanwhile everyone involved with this who works for the city gets paid.

Edited May 6, 2020 by dcar00

[BabaYaga 15214]

1 minute ago, dcar00 said:

there should also be zero court costs for the owner taking the tenant to court and the city should cover legal expenses.  meanwhile everyone involved with this who works for the city gets paid.

The after-action of essential vs. non-essential as it relates to public vs/ private sector employees will be telling, if not predictable....

[Incredulity 11561]

8 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Seattle is about as liberal as it comes. Their citizenry wants these policies and are committed to it (city wide $15.00 minimum wage as well- trying to build houses for homeless and much much more). 

I’m very glad that they exist and are doing stuff. It will be interesting as a case study in the coming years to see the effect their generous social policies have, on a prosperous major city, in the United States. 

I’ve got my suspicions as to how it works out, but I’m pretty comfortable in saying that for good or ill this is going to be no skin off our noses. 

It will just magnify the disparity in Seattle.  It won't make it a smoking ruin.

Multi-million dollar units will be built and sold funded by wealth creation from Microsoft, Amazon.... 

Lower end will not, except under gov't mandate.

 

[Pig Bellmont 8692]

 

[Dahobbs 17450]

5 minutes ago, bullzak said:

So the RE owners are exempt from property taxes too, right?

Or is everyone in Seattle a Microsoft billionaire?

King County previously extended the deadline property tax payments to June 1 (from April 30). I wouldn't be surprised to see another extension in line with the moratorium, perhaps also on a showing of financial hardship. 

[EuroHorn 3204]

This is very cool 

 

 

[dcar00 14036]

4 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

The after-action of essential vs. non-essential as it relates to public vs/ private sector employees will be telling, if not predictable....

this is absolutely coming down to public v private in certain areas/locations in the country.  you have a right to shelter, food, clothing and if you can't get it its because other people are greedy.

[BurntOrange&White 39675]

Lmao


https://www.newsweek.com/texas-governor-abbott-caught-recording-saying-reopening-will-escalate-coronavirus-spread-same-day-1502159

[BabaYaga 15214]

1 minute ago, EuroHorn said:

This is very cool 

 

 

[BabaYaga 15214]

I'd like the legal eagles to weigh in on this - I want to say there have been prior court cases around this subject:  It's effectively confiscation of property without compensation.

The sheer number of foreclosures is going to be staggering

Edited May 6, 2020 by BabaYaga

[Liquor and Poker 3659]

So we had a office-wide "virtual happy hour" on Monday to welcome a new colleague.  Probably 50 people on the call - all different ages, ethnicities, education levels, parts of town, etc.  Virtually every person on there save me and the two mothers with newborns said they had been to a restaurant over the weekend, and most were excited to go get their haircut this weekend if Abbott opened up barber shops (which he did).  One guy put on a mardi gras mask and said he was glad that soon it would be the only mask he had to wear.  The overall feeling was one of fatigue with the restrictions and  huge relief that things were opening back up.  I actually got off the call feeling a little worried over the almost reckless attitude of the participants.

Yesterday I was in my yard and the neighbor and his fence contractor came over to talk to me about whether I wanted a new matching side fence.  They had been standing right next to each other talking without masks - and the fence guy had his whole crew around him.  When their crowd approached, I backed away to stay at a distance. They both chuckled said things like "oh, that's all over - it's not an issue anymore, but you do you."

My wife's friends have all made hair appointments for the weekend and a few were planning on having neighborhood get-togethers for all the kids.  These are people in Houston, Dallas, Austin, Atlanta, and whatever the fuck that place is with all the sheep-fuckers north of Brenham.  They were all annoyed that my wife would not plan a girl's weekend for Memorial Day (that one maybe because they want access to our place at the bay).

Now contrast all that with the article below from the Atlantic today describing two or three recent polls that show the American public is overwhelmingly against any type of re-opening:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/what-if-they-reopened-country-and-no-one-came/611182/

I get that the Atlantic is the rag of record for a certain political faction - but I'm more focused on the polls.  I know you can ask a poll question in a way to get the answer you want for a majority of respondents.  And I get the idea that things in New York are different than things in Houston in so many ways.  But these are not unknown or off-brand polls, and the margins are far beyond what you usually get by tweaking a poll question (75%-80% oppose letting sit-down restaurants and nail salons reopen; 80% against opening gyms and theaters, two-thirds against hair salons, etc.) 

The appropriateness of my personal behavior isn't really the point here - I generally despise other people and try to stay distant from them in the best of times.  The point is that I can't reconcile these huge poll margins with what I'm seeing around me.

 

[Hate 20103]

I think the overwhelming anecdotal evidence suggests those polls are wrong. I drove by a state park this past weekend that was packed. Just about every restaurant I drove by had many cars in the parking lot. I think most people are beyond tired of this and are ready to resume normal every day life. This is not over by a damn sight, but people seem ready to at least test the waters. We’ll know how it’s going to go in about 3 weeks. We will see more people infected, I just hope we don’t see a huge uptick in deaths.

[Newdoc 3433]

If you have about 30 minutes to go down the rabbit hole with Alice then I would really would like some thoughts on this video. The interview is with a virologist who seems quite capable and doesn’t give off the crazy vibe. There are huge implications for our response to Covid if she approaches truth with her statements.

I ended the video with a giant “ummmmm” in my head.

[BabaYaga 15214]

Look no further than the broad-stroke questions.  Zero room for nuance or circumstantial differences.

"Return to work" - everyone?  All together?  Without precautions?  Just BAU?  Sure, that seems like a bad idea at face value.  These are binary questions.  Yes or no.  That should trigger your bullshit meter first.  

"Open" restaurants?  Completely?  100% occupancy?  NO precautions?  As before, the blunt questions easily illicit the desired response they are looking for.