Sat. July 17, 2021 – while the cat’s away, I’ll work I guess…

By on July 17th, 2021 in ebay, personal, WuFlu

I purely suck at weather forecasting. Yesterday was nice all day and a bit cooler than I expected. There was a little bit of spotty rain in the late afternoon, but generally nice. I’m hoping for the same today.

Spent the morning running d2 back and forth to her day camp. Did some office stuff. Helped get ready for GS camp in the afternoon. Spent the evening watching a movie, Jumper, and it was pretty good. Just a well done movie with some pretty cool locations. Would have probably felt ripped off if I’d paid $18, but for a buck, it was an entertaining hour and a half. It’s been a long time since I sat down and watched a movie for adults.

Today after a slow start, I’m hoping to get some actual cleaning up done at my secondary location. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the puppy, can’t afford a week of day care, so I’ll probably bring him with and just mostly keep him in the crate. I’m not totally convinced about that yet. I’ve got plenty to do here if the weather cooperates.

Tested the replacement Dell curved monitor. Works great. Daughter 1 may be getting a new system with a big curved monitor… now I just have to call for a pickup on the return. Oh, and she found her phone. It was dead battery, under the couch. Technically her little sister found it. She was too enamored with the tragedy of losing it to look very hard. I hope that trait doesn’t get worse.

The canister vacuum I picked up cheap works well too, a Miele, the brand is famous for quality in Germany but mostly unknown here. My kitchen oven/microwave/convection combo is a Miele and it’s like a scientific instrument. I am keeping it, because my wife agreed that our next vacuum cleaner would be a canister, but selling it would make sense too. I make money by seeing what the other guy doesn’t see…

In any case, I’ll be cleaning and organizing something, somewhere today. So I have room for more stacking…

nick

57 Comments and discussion on "Sat. July 17, 2021 – while the cat’s away, I’ll work I guess…"

  1. SteveF says:

    She was too enamored with the tragedy of losing it to look very hard. I hope that trait doesn’t get worse.

    Uuuggghhh. Good luck with that.

    re Bowser, why not bring a rope or chain and tie up Bowser in the yard while you work inside? Weather dependent, of course.

  2. SteveF says:

    Insulin should be provided for free, as should glucose monitors and other equipment. The costs of diabetes, in death and money, are enormously higher than those of SARS-CoV2, for which the economy was shut down and the federal government provided “free” tests and shots and incentive payments to hospitals.

    Careful, there, or you’ll come around to the “free health care” side of things.

    While I totally agree with your comment, the same could be said of a lot of health problems.

    I was, in fact, trolling. Or trawling, as I seem to have caught several fish.

    Heck, just getting regular checkups can be seen as a massive savings, compared to discovering serious problems the hard way.

    That was the theory behind HMOs, to reduce costs by improving overall health. I’m not convinced that this has worked as intended, though I’ll concede that between massive advances in medical technology and regulatory interference it’s hard to pick apart the contributors to skyrocketing medical costs.

  3. Ray Thompson says:

    I saw on the news where the NBA has formed a panel on racial equality. Seems ironic to me in a league where 80+% of the players are black. With many making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year and for the big stars millions in endorsements. Yet a high majority probably don’t have a third grade reading level and their speaking level is not much higher. Yeh, the world is unfair from their perspective.

  4. SteveF says:

    the NBA has formed a panel on racial equality

    Equity or equality? They’re not at all the same thing. In fact, they’re in opposition.

  5. Greg Norton says:

    I saw on the news where the NBA has formed a panel on racial equality. Seems ironic to me in a league where 80+% of the players are black. 

    Everyone in the NBA wants to be Coach Pop of the San Antonio Spurs.

    I don’t doubt that the quiet push to put an NFL team in San Marcos originates from a desire to have Popovich involved in the ownership group, but the NFL ownership isn’t a groupthink like the NBA. And the Spurs will actually have to start contending again soon.

    Some owners actually want to, you know, win. Strange but true.

    Maybe the NFL should pursue Gisele Bundchen as an owner. If the stories out of Tampa are true, she kept a lid on Antonio Brown so that his only legal troubles this off season are in civil court.

    The Yucs ownership wrote the checks and stayed out of the way last year.

  6. Ray Thompson says:

    Equity or equality?

    Now that you mention it I don’t remember from watching story. The story on the news caught my attention because a NBA player was commenting about life has not been easy for him because he was black. My first thought was, after listening to his 3rd grade English, is that he was pushed through high school and college because he can dribble a basketball, not because of any other ability. He has been coddled, groomed, given the silver spoon so to speak, and he thinks life was tough on him. Ignorant cretin.

  7. Nick+Flandrey says:

    Sunny and clear blue sky this morning. Cool in the shade with a hint of breeze.  It won’t last but it’s nice right now.

    N

  8. drwilliams says:

    @Norman Hills

    Guitar and girl with smoky alto! Two thumbs up on When Rivers meet. Thanks!

    Your link led me to this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uDTzQQxYYI

    and incidentally this:

    This is Why Farmers Sell Their Weapons and Buy Donkeys

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lFG1ps3wak

  9. drwilliams says:

    @Ray Thompson

    Playing basketball requires proportionately less mental capability than other sports, and it shows. There’s no 2″ thick playbook in basketball.

    Everyone dreams of playing in the major leagues, but most don’t last long, and pizzle away the only serious money they will ever make.

    I know guys that played for the Yankees, the Cowboys, and the Eagles. 3-5 years and out, all fortunate to have their health. Some are not so lucky.

  10. Nick Flandrey says:

    The only thing wrong with the donkey video is the title. I’ve never known a farmer to sell a weapon.

    — and have not been giving the flooding the attention it deserves

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9797569/Death-toll-Europe-flash-floods-hits-153-Rescuers-continue-hunt-survivors.html

    n

  11. Nick Flandrey says:

    https://gooddaysacramento.cbslocal.com/2021/07/16/2-men-planned-to-attack-sacramento-democrat-headquarters-doj-says/

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9794075/2-charged-plotting-blow-Democratic-headquarters.html

    –I’m betting the FBI strung these guys along.

    -they knew what the ‘militia’ said to one, to the details of the advice given so the militia is under surveillance, compromised, or ratted the guy out.

    -wtf do these guys get the money for 50 guns including 3 illegal machine guns?

    According to the DOJ, last November, Rogers allegedly used an encrypted messaging app to tell Copeland that he would use Molotov cocktails and gasoline to attack Democratic targets, including the Governor’s Mansion and the Democratic Headquarters Building in Sacramento.

    –if it’s encrypted, how do they know what it said unless it was compromised?

    –the timing is typical of FBI encouraged activity. They planned to start after the 20th (I guess they assumed T would lose) and were rolled up the 15th.

    Or hey, it could just be a big win for totally random law enforcement…

    n

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  12. Nick Flandrey says:

    This one was probably a good catch.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9796583/California-man-32-guns-racist-manifesto-truck.html

    Police also found body armor, heroin and methamphetamine in his truck.

    When he was taken into custody, Martines denied any suspicious activity, police said.

    He was arraigned on charges of possession of assault weapons, multiple silencers, drugs, and the makings of a pipe bomb.

    n

  13. Nick Flandrey says:

    As NYFC continues its slide into third world hellhole, are the kidnappings starting, or was this just some perverts?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9797297/Man-24-arrested-brazen-daylight-kidnapping-attempt-boy-5-saved-hero-mom.html

    n

  14. Lynn says:

    “Best illustration that we are down to electing Royalty”
    https://gunfreezone.net/best-illustration-that-we-are-down-to-electing-royalty/

    Still looks like a bunch Karens to me.

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  15. Lynn says:

    As NYFC continues its slide into third world hellhole, are the kidnappings starting, or was this just some perverts?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9797297/Man-24-arrested-brazen-daylight-kidnapping-attempt-boy-5-saved-hero-mom.html

    n

    The son is now saying that we are going to look just like Mexico in 20 years.

    Hope you like being a peon, not much room at the top in that situation.

  16. Lynn says:

    The son and I are down the coast in Port Lavaca this weekend visiting my parents. They got 20 inches of rain last week, their annual rainfall.

  17. Greg Norton says:

    The son is now saying that we are going to look just like Mexico in 20 years.

    Hope you like being a peon, not much room at the top in that situation.

    Marry into one of the ruling families, just like Jeb!

    I saw that George P. is going after Paxton in the primary for Texas Attorney General.

     

  18. Greg Norton says:

    “Best illustration that we are down to electing Royalty”

    Still looks like a bunch Karens to me.

    The push to put the masks back on has started in Austin.

    We saw very few masks from Corpus Christi south to the border last week, but I doubt that is the problem behind the increasing case counts regionally as much as the 12-15 person parties we saw most nights in the restaurants. FOMO!

    I got yelled at one evening while we were waiting on the patio area of one place when I grabbed an empty chair from the next table over and the couple waiting at the far end of the table flipped out. “HEY! We’re waiting on ten to show up!”

    The rest of their party never showed before the restaurant called their number. The visibly drunk husband flipped out even more and then started pointing in my direction while chewing out the hostess.

    Once again, Covid is becoming the booze and FOMO-driven Pandemic, but Plugs is going to use the opportunity to push vaccines.

  19. drwilliams says:

    green scum scam:

    https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/report-philadelphias-proterra-fleet-in-complete-shambles/

    A million-dollar bus can only do 30-50 miles per day and is out of service in 4 years? That’s roughly $25 a mile, folks, with no financing or electric or maintenance.

    Every one of those ashhole pols should sign off on having their entire pension invested in a basket of “green” stocks.

     

  20. RickH says:

    @Nick – re search result filtering (from yesterday).

    Your google search settings are here https://www.google.com/preferences . “Safe Search” is the filter setting.

    Other search engines have a similar setting. Not a setting in your browser, but on the search page.

  21. drwilliams says:

    @Lynn

    “The son is now saying that we are going to look just like Mexico in 20 years.

    Only if the peons stop sending food to the cities and drop the bridges.

  22. nick flandrey says:

    @rick, thanks for the link.  I checked and safe search is not turned on.

    I think it’s legitimately a case of them censoring results, or at the very least ‘shaping’ them in a way that amounts to the same thing.

    n

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  23. RickH says:

    @nick – you might try an ‘incognito’ browser to see if there is a difference.

  24. nick flandrey says:

    98F and part sun at the moment without a whiff of breeze.

    n

  25. Rick H says:

    Because weather doesn’t just happen at Nick’s house…
    Current Weather Opposite Mutiny Bay WA

  26. nick flandrey says:

    Nope, it’s actively out to get me!

    n

  27. nick flandrey says:

    “The three members are vaccinated. ”

    Sure they are.

    Oh they might have gotten a shot, at the .gov DNA sampling facility… but whether it does anything beyond make you sick for 3 days……

    Olympic athletes, ball players, state legislators, lots of well reported and high profile “fully vaccinated” people testing positive anyway. Are they getting sick though?

    no idea. Would also be nice to know WHICH vax they got, and which strain they popped for.

    n

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  28. JimB says:

    I have read that the PCR test, as practiced in the US, can detect one dead virus particle and yield a positive result. If that is true, then we have a false positive crisis.

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  29. Rick H says:

    As I understand it (and ‘ech’ could confirm), the vaccine does not prevent you from getting the ‘cooties’. It prevents you from having a severe reaction to the virus.

    You can still get Covid (or any other ‘vaccined’ disease). But your antibodies will attack and (mostly) neutralize the virus because you were vaccinated. The result will be mild symptoms, if any – certainly not requiring hospitalization or extreme life-saving measures, and will prevent death (except for a very statistically small number – and those people probably would have died in any case.

    You can be vaccinated and still test positive afterwards, if exposed.

    Stating (or implying) that the Covid (or any) vaccine is ineffective because vaccinated people test positive for Covid is disingenuous, IMHO.

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  30. Alan says:

    Insulin should be provided for free, as should glucose monitors and other equipment. The costs of diabetes, in death and money, are enormously higher than those of SARS-CoV2, for which the economy was shut down and the federal government provided “free” tests and shots and incentive payments to hospitals.

    Careful, there, or you’ll come around to the “free health care” side of things.

    While I totally agree with your comment, the same could be said of a lot of health problems. Heck, just getting regular checkups can be seen as a massive savings, compared to discovering serious problems the hard way.

    My ‘bigcorp’ drug plan formulary covers a glucose monitor, test strips and lancets with no co-pay, along with Metformin with no co-pay.

    Yearly checkup, along with any associated tests, also covered 100%.

    I assume some of the wellness push every year is because they are self-insured.

  31. Alan says:

    Spent the evening watching a movie, Jumper, and it was pretty good. Just a well done movie with some pretty cool locations. Would have probably felt ripped off if I’d paid $18, but for a buck, it was an entertaining hour and a half. It’s been a long time since I sat down and watched a movie for adults.

    “Just a well done movie with some pretty cool locations and Rachel Bilson.”

    FIFY

  32. nick flandrey says:

    I’m assuming that a fair number of the “fully vaccinated” that later test positive are not actually vaccinated.

    but for the sake of arguing with people on the internet…

    when was the last time we had a mild case of smallpox in someone vaccinated?  What about polio?

    What about rabies?

    How about tetanus?

    I’ll grant that we do get cases of measles among the supposed vaccinated population but that may be just because the vaccine doesn’t last forever.

    n

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  33. Ray Thompson says:

    I have this theory, most certainly non-scientific, pulled from my anal orifice. I think our food supply and general treatment towards dirt has become much too sterile. A clean food supply is good, but 100% disinfected I am not so certain.

    The human body is designed to exposed to pathogens in small quantities to develop resistance. Without the exposure, no resistance. Growing up I ate vegetables fertilized with manure, just plucked them from the plant, brushed them off, and ate. I drank raw milk, drank from the creek, all the stuff not allowed today.

    Mothers drop a pacifier and immediately boil the thing. Nope, should just brush it off and shove it back in the mouth. Kids don’t play outside in the dirt, make mud pies, roll in mud puddles. A sterile existance.

    I think it is not good.

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  34. Ray Thompson says:

    when was the last time we had a mild case of smallpox in someone vaccinated

    When was the last time anyone was tested for smallpox or polio?

  35. Rick H says:

    Regarding smallpox, last ‘wild’ case was in 1977.   There have been a very small number (<10) cases caused by ‘stored’ smallpox viruses, according to my quick research.

    So, apparently, the smallpox vaccine has worked well to effectively eradicate that disease.

  36. pecancorner says:

    Re polio: the only polio cases now are caused by the live vaccines used in third world countries. Only disabled pathogens are used in the vaccines given in the USA now, but for whatever reason (probably good), the third world still gets live active pathogens in their vaccines.   The UN/WHO say the remedy for these “Vaccine-Derived Outbreaks” is to vaccinate even more people in those locales. But since “wild” polio has been eradicated in most of these places, seems like it would be time to switch to the de-activated vaccine such as is used here.

    https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/polio-outbreak-sudan-caused-oral-vaccine-72766683

     

  37. Ray Thompson says:

    He goes to the blood center, donates it, and they throw it away

    As a regular donor, having donate over 12 gallon of blood over my lifespan, it amazes me the number of questions that get asked that will disqualify from donating blood. Traveling to some countries ever, other countries with certain time frames, medications, diseases, sexual habits. Little wonder the blood supply in this country is always in short supply. Given a choice between dying or getting blood from someone that had traveled Russia in the last 5 years, I would take the blood and my chances.

  38. SteveF says:

    I got my Red Cross gallon pin back when I was in college. Donated quite a lot more over the years (with a several-year hiatus because of “have you travelled to any of the following shithole countries” which included several of the places the Army had sent me to).

    I’ve stopped donating blood, and refuse to check the organ donor box on my driver’s license, because the sale of body parts is a very lucrative business in which everyone benefits except the donor and his family.

    And because the Red Cross and some other blood collection groups are chaaaaaaarities and they’re doing goooooood, no one much seemed to look into their processes or their accounting and the karen chorus shrieked if you raised any questions. This is not quite the case any longer, but it certainly was back then.

    The local Red Cross, based in or near Albany NY, had to throw away a lot of blood something over fifteen years ago. Thousands of units IIRC. Because their paperwork was screwed up. They immediately put out a request for donations because of the emergency shortage available to local hospitals. Oddly, they didn’t mention the reason for the shortage. And OK, mistakes happen, you screwed up, don’t let it happen again. But it happened again, I think within a year, with another thousand or more units destroyed.

    That’s when I stopped donating blood to the Red Cross but I continued to donate to a local hospital which sent a bus around to area businesses. At some point, though, I heard a podcast on the economics of the blood business and looked into it, then looked into in depth, then looked into the organ business. And refused to have anything to do with it, not until the donors are treated as anything but suckers who give away something that others can cash in on.

  39. ech says:

    I don’t doubt that the quiet push to put an NFL team in San Marcos originates from a desire to have Popovich involved in the ownership group, but the NFL ownership isn’t a groupthink like the NBA.

    Not gonna happen. The Austin-San Antonio area has a huge reservoir of Cowboys fans and a growing Texans fanbase. Jerry Jones will veto it.

  40. nick flandrey says:

    ‘When one of our players is racially abused, playing on is not an option’: Germany’s Olympic football team WALK OFF the pitch after defender Jordan Torunarigha ‘was insulted by a Honduras player’ during warm-up match for Tokyo Games

    Germany football team left the pitch after alleged racial abuse directed at player
    Team said they had abandoned match after Jordan Torunarigha was targeted
    The alleged insult is believed to have come from an opposing Honduras player
    It was 1-1 in Olympic warm-up match before it was ended five minutes early

    — suck it up buttercup. what a bunch of pussies.

    n

  41. ech says:

    You can still get Covid (or any other ‘vaccined’ disease).

    Yep. My daughter got whooping cough despite being current on her vaccination for it. Sometimes it fails.

    The Delta variant appears to be more successful at spreading because it reproduces much faster, so you become contagious before the immune system can kick in. This may explain why breakthroughs in vaccinated people are more common. But, it doesn’t appear to be more virulent so far, so cases in vaccinated people are mild.

    One of the reason why we need more people to get vaccinated is to prevent a variant that is more virulent as well as a faster reproducer. 

    Here is an explanation by a virologist on Delta.

  42. nick flandrey says:

    Rapper, 20, who fired off four shots in NYC’s Times Square during road rage incident was out on bail on a weapons charge

    Elijah Quamina, 20, allegedly shot at the biker around 12:40 a.m. near 7th Ave. and 41st St. in Midtown and was arrested on Thursday
    Quamina pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder, attempted assault and criminal possession of a weapon
    He appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court on Friday and was released on $100,000 cash bail hours after his label would get him out of jail
    The rapper recently signed a deal with RCA Records under the name Eli Fross

    –how’s that affordable bail thing working out?

    n

  43. nick flandrey says:

    So speaking of smallpox vaccine, it’s the treatment for this… F me and synchronicity.

    Potential Exposure to Person with Confirmed Human Monkeypox Infection — United States, 2021

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in collaboration with the Texas Department of State Health Services and Dallas County Health and Human Services, is investigating a single case of monkeypox virus infection in a U.S. citizen who resides in the United States and recently returned from travel to Nigeria. The patient traveled to Dallas from Lagos, Nigeria, via Atlanta on two separate flights during July 8-9, 2021. The patient presented to an emergency department in Dallas, Texas on July 13 for complaints of a rash that began on July 7, one day prior to travel. Testing at Dallas County and CDC confirmed the presence of monkeypox virus. CDC is working with the airlines to share information with state and local health officials to contact airline passengers and others who may have been in contact with the patient during two flights: Lagos, Nigeria, to Atlanta on July 8, with arrival on July 9; and Atlanta to Dallas on July 9. CDC is issuing this health advisory to ask clinicians to consider a diagnosis of monkeypox in people who present with a febrile prodrome followed by rash and who may have had direct or indirect contact with the patient.

    Dallas and Atlanta

    n

  44. Greg Norton says:

    Not gonna happen. The Austin-San Antonio area has a huge reservoir of Cowboys fans and a growing Texans fanbase. Jerry Jones will veto it. 

    San Marcos almost happened with the Raiders. That deal was the catalyist for all the new development you see at the two big freeway exits, particularly the new interchange for the Texas State stadium site parking.

    Jerry Jones has to start winning once in a while. When Jimmy Johnson went into the Hall of Fame last year, the old story of his Dallas exit surfaced which Jerry Jones had kept buried for years.

  45. Greg Norton says:

    The patient presented to an emergency department in Dallas, Texas on July 13 for complaints of a rash that began on July 7, one day prior to travel.

    FOMO!

  46. nick flandrey says:

    FOMO

    –more like “F all y’all”

    n

  47. Lynn says:

    “Kentucky Ballistics is back at it”
    https://texags.com/forums/34/topics/3209102

    The dude that was shooting .50 cal slapp rounds in his .50 cal single shot survived !

  48. drwilliams says:

    @JimB

    “I have read that the PCR test, as practiced in the US, can detect one dead virus particle and yield a positive result. If that is true, then we have a false positive crisis.”

    Dr. Anthony Fauci, July 16, 2020

    “…If you get a cycle threshold of 35 or more…the chances of it being replication-competent are miniscule…you almost never can culture virus from a 37 threshold cycle…even 36…it’s just dead nucleoids, period.”

    Two additional facts:

    1 Initial CDC guidance for tests in the US was 40 cycles

    2 The test results report does not include the number of cycles.

    3 The CDC lowered the reporting threshold to 28 in April 2021.

    A suspicious person might conclude that using 40 cycles was not a decision made by medicine in the interest of public health, but a decision made for other reasons to inflate the numbers of “positives”.

    The calendar shows that July 16, 2020 to January 20, 2021 was six months and four days.

    So for six months after the face of the nation’s Wuahn flu emergency response made the above statement, the numbers were inflated. They continued to be inflated for about another three months.

    Then, a total of nine months later, the CDC changed their guidance.

    Gee, it’s sure too bad that information travels so slowly in the government and the mainstream media.

  49. JimB says:

    Gee, it’s sure too bad that information travels so slowly in the government and the mainstream media.

    Thanks for the nice summary. I had read pieces of it, but you made sense of it.

    After months of digging for credible information, I have stepped back. Maybe a little burned out. It seems to me we should just go fully back to normal. The case rate and, more importantly, the serious reactions and deaths, have abated dramatically. We have destroyed parts of our society in reaction to something that is now under control. Let’s take back control of our lives.

    As for how to stop all the political and economic mayhem, I leave that to our politicians to do the right things. Yeah, I’m naive, but they won’t listen to reason.

  50. drwilliams says:

    Forgot to add this interesting bit:

    Can RT-PCR values from different tests be compared?

    No. For a given RT-PCR diagnostic test, the genetic material from a patient sample must be processed using a specific series of steps to produce a valid test result. However, the steps used to process the genetic material, the specific genetic target being measured, and the amount of the patient sample used varies among RT-PCR tests.  Because the nucleic acid target (the pathogen of interest), platform and format differ, Ct values from different RT-PCR tests cannot be compared.

    https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/faqs.html

    The whole FAQ is fascinating reading. Note that it entirely omits any discussion about the number of cycles, even though right at the top it says:

    Updated Mar. 10, 2021

    I don’t need any amplification whatsoever to detect bovine excrement.

  51. Lynn says:

    “I don’t doubt this for a second. We’ve been building up to this for a decade.”
    https://gunfreezone.net/i-dont-doubt-this-for-a-second-weve-been-building-up-to-this-for-a-decade/

    “Most disturbing datapoint I’ve seen in awhile: two-thirds of Southern Republicans now say the South should break away from the Union, up from 50 percent in January.”
    https://thewhyaxis.substack.com/p/two-thirds-of-southern-republicans

  52. drwilliams says:

    @JimB

    Some of us are old enough to have been introduced to computing when the concept of “single-precision” was important when calculating on a mainframe computer.

    For those not old enough, the basic concept is that in performing arithmetic, numbers produced by a digital computer have just a few significant digits, as determined by how the specific computer stores the numbers input and handles the calculations.

    Roughly, it means that if the computer uses 8-bit arithmetic, the result is only 8-bits.

    But if you asked one of those computers to calculate 1/7 and print the results to 100 places, only the first few numbers would be correct.

    Again, depending on the computer, you might get zeroes or “random” digits beyond the limit of 8-bits. In the later case, two successive computations would give you “different” results.

    Over the years I’ve determined test capability in different situations*. It does not seem to present any particular difficulties to determine the capability of the PCR test, just complexity. Indeed, it is apparent in reading the documents that such testing has already been done to a certain extent, as the documents acknowledge differences among tests.

    (*On one project we had metal alloy determinations made by two different fancy ICP analytical machines that had no relationship lot-to-lot, and actually varied wildly. They couldn’t even agree on a reference alloy prepared from pure metals in the lab. A wet-chemistry quantitative analysis was slower, but gave repeatable results. )

    The bottom line is simple: If a test result is going to be used to determine an action, then the test should be consistent and reliable.

    As noted in the link in the previous post:

    “As of October 23, 2020, all diagnostic RT-PCR tests that had received a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for SARS-CoV-2 testing were qualitative tests.

    1 In a qualitative RT-PCR test, known amounts of virus are used during the development of the test to determine what Ct values are associated with positive and negative specimens. A Ct value is generated when testing a patient specimen. The Ct value is interpreted as positive or negative but cannot be used to determine how much virus is present in an individual patient specimen.
    2 In a quantitative RT-PCR test, a range of known numbers of genome copies, called reference samples, are tested alongside each RT-PCR reaction. By comparing the Ct value of a patient specimen to the Ct values from the reference samples, the test can calculate the copy number of target nucleic acid. The correlation between Ct value and viral load can be used in evaluating data from groups of people in categories such as symptomatic or asymptomatic and can be applied to infer the difference in the relative amount of viral load between the two. Although a quantitative RT-PCR test can estimate the level of viral load in a population, a quantitative RT-PCR test cannot determine how much virus is present in an individual patient specimen.

    Seems that what we need is a quantitative test.

    Don’t you think it’s interesting that there just doesn’t seem to be any movement to get there?

  53. Greg Norton says:

    –more like “F all y’all”

    Some stories indicate the patient was a US resident.

    My wife still has patients who won’t fess up to the possibility that they have Covid out of fear of being put into a forced detention situation. Last year, it was fear that Trump would haul everyone to camps. This year it is Plugs borrowing from the Chinese playbook and nailing people into their homes.

  54. JimB says:

    Seems that what we need is a quantitative test.

    Don’t you think it’s interesting that there just doesn’t seem to be any movement to get there?

    Yes, it is. Makes me wonder what might be going on behind the scenes.

    I have been more interested in treatment and prevention. These also have been given short shrift in the mainstream.

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