Slightly cooler, still hot and humid. It got a bit cooler yesterday in the late evening. Mid 80s with a nice breeze, so we took a walk as a family with the puppy. I was sweaty by the time we got back.
On the street we ran into a neighbor who I’ve seen walking in the evening with his wife. He uses a supportive rolling walker. We chatted, and he’s recovering from cancer not a stroke. They live about 6 houses down from us. Haven’t met him before. Politically conservative and well informed. Meatspace baby!
Did some more meatspace at daughter 1’s “meet the teacher, pickup your laptop” event at her school. Because of the lockdown, I’d never set foot in her school before. Spent some time catching up with one of the dads who I didn’t see this year, as we didn’t do swim team. He’s a good guy and a friend. He’s got medical issues so he’s been in pretty consistent isolation for the last year and a half. Nice to catch up.
The school doesn’t have much opportunity for volunteering but they do have a program where parent volunteers with a special interest can lead a seminar program the kids can sign up for. They are like electives merged with a club, and a short course. I’m thinking about radio or 3d printing as possible ways for me to do one. I want very much to get into the school this year. Still haven’t heard if we’re doing the “Hands On Science” program this year at D2’s school. I really hope we are, I miss the kids.
I also applied to be part of the school district advisory committee on technical education and votech… I don’t know how they choose, but I’d like to be a champion for shop class.
You have to be out there in the community and participate in the process to really know what is going on, whether it’s school, policing, politics, or any other local thing. Meatspace.
Did my pickup during the day. The most notable thing was the DSM-5 diagnostic manual brand new for $2. They sell for $50 pretty steadily, and that is easy money. I’m trying not to buy stuff for resale, but that I couldn’t pass up.
Money is an awesome prep as it is an enabler and force multiplier. I’d say that you should get as much of it as you reasonably can.
And then use some of it to buy stacks of stuff!
n
@brad: (from yesterday)
It looks to me like they’ve gone on strike. The Texas legislature should cease paying them until they return, and indicate their willingness to do their jobs, i.e. legislate. Until then, no work, no money.
Of course, they’ll shriek like gelded stallions, “This was a genuine protest!” Yeah, and if the Great Unwashed (i.e. us) tried the same thing, we’d take a hit in the wallet so fast our heads would spin.
“But We’re Important.” Yeah, and “Anyone who is capable of getting themselves elected should on no account be allowed to do the job” (Quote from the late, great Douglas Adams) RAH had a similar, on-point quote, ISTR.
G.
I’m looking forward to the DSM-6, and the criteria for Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder. And CCDS, aka Climate Change Denial Syndrome.
The CDC dashboard where all this is reported has been in operation for years to track “excess deaths”. It’s part of their public health efforts. They get death certificate data from the states and put it in databases. They then make it available for researchers and do some standard crosstabs and stats on the data each year. Those data analyses are published each year in a report on mortality and morbidity in the US. Those databases and reports are carefully analyzed by public health officials and the insurance industry. If there were major flaws, the insurers would shout to high heaven as they make major financial decisions based on that data (i.e. pricing of insurance, investment management, etc.)
The major “issue” is that we undercounted COVID-associated deaths at the start of the pandemic, since there were no tests for SARS-CoV-2 at the time.
Similarly…
Groucho Marx’s letter of resignation to the Friars’ Club: “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”
I never even implied that it’s “illegal” to be racist. And yes, people in the past had racist views. That’s irrelevant to discussion of people today. Did you read the comments to Vox’s article? It’s full of anti-semitic and racist comments. No, I won’t quote them here. I’m not giving him any more clicks. It’s a clue as to his world view, which shapes his rhetoric. And mentioning his grudges along with the racist views is no more ad hominem than your attack on the Pfizer paper: “The problem is the ‘facts’ are promulgated by known liars with agendas of their own.” That’s ad hominem. Do you have ANY proof that the Pfizer scientists that wrote the paper are liars?
Look, Fauci has totally beclowned himself. But to assume that everyone at Pfizer, BioNTech, J&J, Moderna, etc. are involved in a giant conspiracy is absurd. Yes, a cadre of people at CDC and associated NGOs have tried to stop any discussion of the origins of SARS-CoV-2. But it didn’t work.
Yes, he lied about masks. I understand his reasoning (and totally disagree), but the better solution to their quandry (we need masks for medical staff) was to invoke DPA and to buy up all the masks available and then provide them to hospitals, etc. He’s an ass-covering bureaucrat.
Too many people on both sides are ignoring the real data. For example, the data supporting the use of Ivermectin as a treatment for COVID is based on one study that I can find. However, when the dataset was analyzed by others, it was found that they made errors in the math and there was evidence that they made up patient records (i.e. there were records that were identical except for one or two data points, one had an invalid birth date of June 31, etc.) The journal that issued the preprint withdrew the paper after this open round of peer review.
The data on mask effectiveness are complex and not definitive. There are good analyses that support masking indoors in groups and others that don’t. But each side yells that the other is full of idiots. One of the biggest unknowns in all these studies is compliance – I see lots of ill-fitted masks with gaps at the side and nose, masks worn only over the mouth, etc. Personally, I wore a KF94 mask when I was out of my room and at the poker table in Las Vegas last week, given the prevalence of Delta there. The ones I have are very comfortable (moreso than the typical surgical mask), easy to breathe through, and fit quite well. Being made in Korea, they aren’t likely to be counterfeit – they have large manufacturers of them there, it’s part of their culture to wear a mask if you feel ill or on high smog days.
Fauci lied about herd immunity, which probably hurt the vaccination campaign. Idiot.
But Vox (and others) misled people about the results of the Pfizer paper. Why? Well, that’s between him and God. Some of the other sites that made the same “mistake” have an anti-vax agenda and have continuously twisted the truth. Judge for yourself.
Know-It-Alls have a really hard time saying, “I don’t know.”
@ech, I’m probably not alone in appreciating your healthy, scientific skepticism. And your analyses.
Well, when someone says something incorrect, there are only two possibilities: A liar or ignoramus.
Now, with a Fauci type, hard to tell which.
It looks to me like they’ve gone on strike. The Texas legislature should cease paying them until they return, and indicate their willingness to do their jobs, i.e. legislate. Until then, no work, no money.
Governor Abbott already vetoed the funding for the Texas Legislature in the next fiscal year. The paychecks stop after the first of September unless the Legislature reconvenes and votes to override the veto.
The big downside of the veto is that redistricting cannot happen in the Legislature until funding is restored, leaving open the possibility that the courts could get involved in redrawing districts.
That reminds me — I have to figure out which Legiscritter is ours to see if I can get some action on my unemployment insurance appeal. @Lynn – If you have to fire a salaried employee, do it now while TWC is still working at home in their jammies. Even document requests are ignored.
Look, Fauci has totally beclowned himself. But to assume that everyone at Pfizer, BioNTech, J&J, Moderna, etc. are involved in a giant conspiracy is absurd. Yes, a cadre of people at CDC and associated NGOs have tried to stop any discussion of the origins of SARS-CoV-2. But it didn’t work.
The idea of a grand conspiracy may be absurd, but it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Fauci and the drug companies have seized the opportunity to line their pockets without considering some long term consequences.
Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by greed.
Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by greed.
Alternatively,
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
@ech, the known liars I was referring to were fauchi and the surgeon general, along with all the politicians at the CDC. The major drug companies are just suspected liars as most of them have been found to make stuff up when it suits them too (someone with access to LEXUS could tabulate the lawsuits and settlements), but I can’t put my hands on a link because I’ve got kids to feed. The vaxes we’re using have been halted then restarted with a new warning in one case, had approval delayed for problems with the initial testing in another, and iirc there were similar problems with the third. The other various jabs the rest of the world is getting have either been stopped before approval, or are of questionable quality or efficacy.
wrt excess deaths, your point is almost exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about. Yes, CDC or whoever has been tracking excess deaths for a long time, and there is strong consensus that they are ‘good’ numbers. My point was that no one was talking/reporting/looking at excess deaths WITH REGARD TO COVID until people began to suspect the covid numbers were NOT ‘good’ numbers. THEN they went to a tool they thought was better and began crosschecking. The argument is not over who provides excess death numbers and for how long (your rebuttal), it’s about whether the COVID death numbers were real or manipulated and how could someone find the truth, and at what point did people start looking elsewhere.
There is a lot of that sort of thing in any discussion of COVID.
WRT Vox, I don’t think I’ve ever visited his page directly. I especially don’t care about any comments there. My point was that the messenger doesn’t matter IF the message is true. I, and everyone else, will judge the messenger for all sorts of relevant things.* But at the end of the day, the messenger doesn’t matter, only the truth or falsity of the message matters. I don’t know if Vox’s message is true or false, or some degree of each, but I know that racism, like pornography seems to be mostly in the eye of the beholder, once you get past a certain point. Racism is the hammer the left uses to silence people the way they used to use homophobia. I have personally stopped considering any accusation of racism as relevant to anything and I assume it’s an attempt to silence the target. In my opinion, crying racism is an excellent way to mark yourself as not worth paying attention to (general ‘you’, not ech.)
The root problem with public policy regarding this virus is that there are strong, REALLY STRONG financial impacts associated with it, and those distort everything about it. The EUA becomes invalid as soon as there is an acceptable treatment- so there is a financial incentive to NOT have an effective and acceptable treatment. Hospitals are not getting rich off of treating covid, but the vaccine makers are having banner years. Amazon and other online mega-retailers had a great year while bricks and mortar, and particularly small and medium sized businesses were crushed. No one honest can argue that drug companies are not driven by profit, and that they have made decisions contrary to the public interest in the past in pursuit of profit.
Likewise there are REALLY STRONG political power considerations distorting public policy. This comment is already too long to detail them but I think everyone here is capable of doing the ‘exercise left to the reader’…
In any case, like other commentors, I always appreciate hearing from you Ech.
n
*does the messenger have the intellect to support the ideas he has, does he have access to sources I don’t, does he have a track record wrt to the subject, does he have relevant experiences, etc.
@Greg Norton re: TWC appeal
My initial unemployment claim was denied, and I appealed, and my telephone hearing was yesterday.
The agents for Houston Methodist did not show up at the hearing, so I got to make my case unopposed. I cited federal law, and direct quotes from CDC and FDA saying there could be no vaccine mandate. I pointed out they denied my religious exemption and denied any accommodation for my 100% remote IT work. I pointed out that in October 2020, the FDA already had a long list of potential side-effects and that without that list being presented, there could be no informed consent.
I had other stuff ready, but I was nearing the point of over-selling, and I wanted to keep the hearing officer on my side as much as possible.
In a bit of synchronicity, Aesop has chosen today for some summary comments about the wuflu and the various vaxes.
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2021/08/just-facts-maam.html
n
My initial unemployment claim was denied, and I appealed, and my telephone hearing was yesterday.
I applealed, but the hearing was never scheduled. That was late October of last year.
Of course, I was terminated for a policy reason other than vaccination status, but, regardless, being terminated for policy violation not only makes you ineligible for UI from the previous job, but coverage does not kick in at the next job until you have worked 30 hours/week for six weeks -or- earned six times your weekly projected UI benefit.
You want to win the appeal even if the money doesn’t matter.
I worked my first job out of college without FL unemployment insurance coverage, and the management let me go one day shy of being eligible. They told the UI people that I was “too inexperienced” for the job in denying the claim.
Total BS.
I had to sweat my current job for a month before I was eligible for Texas UI coverage again.
Malice or incompetence, it provided soundbytes for partisans from an “official” source…
n
This is the sort of thing we were seeing out of Venezuela a few years ago…
Which un-elected person is really making the decisions?
–hmm what would the reaction have been for Trump doing the same?
n
Malice or incompetence, it provided soundbytes for partisans from an “official” source…
The correction didn’t come until after the Sunday morning talk show cycle. That won’t happen again. Unlike Texas, state government in Florida will fire as needed.
It is better DeSantis learns the big league game now than in a year. He was pretty quick squising the Miami TV station’s “reporting” on Florida running short on ventilators so that story seems to have disappeared.
The Senate $3.5T “Road To Communism” bill includes $100B to help *qualified* crimmigrants become citizens. How does that benefit any citizen of this country? Once again, Dumbcrats are laughing at the Redumblicans who voted to move it forward “ha ha thanks again dipshits.” Free community college, preK care, Shot Girl’s ™ Green Corps, and on and on. Nothing really benefits us dirt people directly.
I’m in the hotel room watching plugs right now reading directly off the teleprompter on how great the country is doing and how *he* is going to make it better. He’s not even switching prompters to look more real. I guess The Doctor laid into him after he wandered off into the grass at the WH.
Also, plugs is begging OPEC to pump more oil after destroying our own production capability.
LOL plugs is now talking about tRump’s *unpaid for tax cuts*. It’s our fcuking money. Get rid of goobermint largesse if you want to *pay* for tax cuts. That’s the biggest difference between Dumbo’s and Redumbo’s. Dumbo’s think your money is their money and they can take it all. Redumbo’s only want half. LOL.
Playing catch-up – from @Lynn on Monday:
…
The article notes that 422,326 third doses were given to the most vulnerable – those over 60 or that were immunocompromised. A week after, 14 had caught COVID. Hmmm… I don’t know about boosters, but the usual rule is you don’t get full effect of a vaccination for at least 2 weeks so I don’t know how this actually has anything to do with the booster. However, 14 of 422,326 is 0.00331% or roughly 3 in 100,000. Only 2 have been hospitalized. Why is this a concern? Of the most vulnerable, who were dying in large numbers before vaccination, now your chance of going to hospital is less than 6 in one-million? It is a story of success. either of the original vaccinations or the booster – you can’t tell if you can’t compare – but success none-the-less. That comparison to earlier vaccinations is complicated by the virus being a moving target – delta is far more contagious. Still, a success, and maybe a great success since delta is more contagious. I would really like to know if a booster is required, because if not we need to get those vaccine doses out to the rest of the world as fast and as soon as possible.
I would really like to know if a booster is required, because if not we need to get those vaccine doses out to the rest of the world as fast and as soon as possible.
Yup, my question also.
And, is the booster different from the previous vaccine ?
BTW, I am hearing that some people are going and getting new vaccine shots every 2 or 3 months now. Crazy.
In a bit of synchronicity, Aesop has chosen today for some summary comments about the wuflu and the various vaxes.
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2021/08/just-facts-maam.html
n
I think that Aesop is even crazier than normal. And that he will be hunting for a new job soon.
I just don’t understand why he is so anti Vax.
Try having a heart attack and see what drugs they pour into your body. Or if you get on a ventilator. A friend of mine has been on a ventilator for almost a month now. They are operating on him today because he is having a problem with the ventilator.
I think that Aesop is even crazier than normal. And that he will be hunting for a new job soon.
That link has one of my all-time favorite “Scrubs” quotes.
Not every hospital system is mandating the vaccine. Considering my own experience with unemployment over the last year, I can’t help but think the hospitals who are mandating in a hardcore way have decided to take the opportunity to clean house of “problem” employees who do the job well but don’t think highly of the people in charge. Of course, if the admins are going to cast noncompliance as a policy violation placing patients lives at risk, it behooves the HR people to actually show up at the TWC appeal hearings.
BTW, I am hearing that some people are going and getting new vaccine shots every 2 or 3 months now. Crazy.
For now, vaccine doses are plentiful so the concierge medicine crowd and other providers with a flexible morality can indulge the paranoid.
The problem is going to come when a third dose is necessary to go to work or fly on a plane. With the infrastructure to store the vaccines now in place outside of large hospitals, arbitrage will happen.
He’s fallen into the trap of looking at raw VAERS data. As I have said here repeatedly, VAERS data are unreliable in aggregate. There are reports of deaths that have NO connection to the vaccine. (Remember my example of the elderly male that had end stage kidney disease that refused dialysis and died of that a week or so after his shot?) So, his number of 7000 deaths from the vaccine is not accurate. It’s 7000 people who died after getting the vaccine. And with millions of people who got the vaccine, some are going to die just from random chance. Like the kidney patient above. He says the VAERS numbers may have been fudged. Well, since it’s done not by CDC, but by the public, who is fudging. I could just as easily say that Russian hackers are doing fake entries to discourage the public in the US from getting vaccinated.
He also calls HCQ a safe drug. Well, not exactly, the dose has to be carefully monitored with regular EKGs, because it causes cardiac problems, including fatal ones.
I think that Aesop is even crazier than normal. And that he will be hunting for a new job soon.
That link has one of my all-time favorite “Scrubs” quotes.
Not every hospital system is mandating the vaccine. Considering my own experience with unemployment over the last year, I can’t help but think the hospitals who are mandating in a hardcore way have decided to take the opportunity to clean house of “problem” employees who do the job well but don’t think highly of the people in charge. Of course, if the admins are going to cast noncompliance as a policy violation placing patients lives at risk, it behooves the HR people to actually show up at the TWC appeal hearings.
“Apparently, Jackass-In-Chief Gabbin’ Nuisance has confused himself with Caesar, in decreeing, ex deus, as if he possessed that power, that as of September 30th, all health care workers must be fully vaccinated for Kung Flu.”
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2021/08/all-hail-governor-horseass.html
All health care workers in California must be vaxxed by Sept 30. “California Will Require Vaccines For Workers In Health Care Facilities”
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/08/06/1025360746/california-vaccine-mandate-health-care-workers
I beg to disagree. There should be an inclusive third option: a liar and an ignoramus.
And that should probably make your choice an easy one. 🙂
I think that Aesop is even crazier than normal.
Granted, he’s… excitable. Most of the time.
Granted, he presents as infallible and if you disagree you’re an idiot. I find this his least endearing trait.
Granted, he’s pissed. He’s going to lose his job, which he seems to love, because someone wants to force an experimental medical treatment on him. To prevent a disease that poses little threat to him. Which does not protect his patients, since the vaccinated are spreading the disease, too.
Granted, he’s accepting VAERS data at face value. But why should deaths after vaccine be skipped, when deaths with (but not by) Covid were counted? And I find the arguments credible that there are many cases not reported to VAERS, so it might be underreporting.
Finally, while he gets into the numbers weeds, his argument really boils down to this: There is a lot we don’t know for the short term, we know nothing about the long term, and we have no trustworthy source for data here and now.
To me, the real questions are: Is it morally right to coerce (or force) people to take the vaccine risks, against their will? Is there really a provable public health upside to forced vaccination, at the expense of personal autonomy?
“The Anti-White Infrastructure Bill”
https://thelibertyloft.com/the-anti-white-infrastructure-bill/
“Charlotte, NC — The infrastructure bill the Senate passed on Tuesday discriminates against whites at every turn.
Americans are enthusiastic about spending money on infrastructure — bridges, roads, broadband and green technologies. But this racist bill locates and hands out jobs and contracts projects based on race, not merit. Minority businesses and neighborhoods hold the inside track. If you’re white, you’re low priority.
The bill includes grants to install solar or wind technologies and generate jobs in areas decimated by closing coal mines or coal-fired electric plans. Here’s the catch: when contractors bid, the bill says minority-owned businesses will get chosen first. Bad news for white contractors and displaced coal miners, who are overwhelmingly white and need jobs. (Section 40209)
The same is true for the bill’s proposals to improve traffic patterns in cities. Contractors and subcontractors get priority only if they’re owned by minorities or women. White male business owners can take a hike. (Section 11509)”
“Fort Bend Co. files emergency lawsuit challenging Texas Governor’s executive order”
https://www.fox26houston.com/news/fort-bend-co-to-file-emergency-lawsuit-challenging-texas-governors-executive-order
“FORT BEND COUNTY, Texas – Fort Bend County officials will be holding a news conference on Wednesday afternoon to announce they are filing a lawsuit challenging Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s executive order, GA-38.”
https://www.fox26houston.com/news/texas-governor-issues-order-to-prohibit-government-entities-from-mandating-masks
Well my local asshat wants me to wear a mask, outside and inside. He is a real piece of work. He is about as liberal as they come and wants to be a dictator. Hopefully he will lose and lose big in the Texas court system.
ADD: And the Harris County (Houston) asshat wants us to wear masks inside and outside also. She is also suing the gov. She never wanted to drop the masks and is wanting us to wear them until 2099.
https://www.fox26houston.com/news/harris-county-to-file-lawsuit-challenging-gov-abbotts-mask-mandate
“The Anti-White Infrastructure Bill”
Not inaccurate or unfair at all to term any senator who voted for such a racist.
Maybe more human error than incompetence. The CDC is trying to (continue to) report daily numbers while DeSantis, in an effort to downplay the effects of Covid in Florida is saying ‘nothing to see here folks’ and so weekly reporting is sufficient.
Forgot where I heard this yesterday,,,defining ‘temporary’ inflation as temporarily much higher after which prices will continue to go up at a less higher rate.
Story is still around, and ventilators were sent…
DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw said the request was routine and properly made. “Hospitals were monitoring the rise in cases and decided to request ventilators to be as prepared as possible,” she wrote to Yahoo News in a text message.
“They didn’t need to go through us for this, which is why we weren’t even aware of the request,” Pushaw added.
https://news.yahoo.com/yes-florida-hospitals-did-request-hundreds-of-ventilators-for-covid-surge-181401370.html
Hey, who told you?? We’re not supposed to know until after the bill is signed into law what’s in it.
Well my local asshat wants me to wear a mask, outside and inside. He is a real piece of work. He is about as liberal as they come and wants to be a dictator. Hopefully he will lose and lose big in the Texas court system.
ADD: And the Harris County (Houston) asshat wants us to wear masks inside and outside also. She is also suing the gov. She never wanted to drop the masks and is wanting us to wear them until 2099.
San Antonio/Bexar County and Austin ISD sued yesterday.
The local Faux News last night had a “concerned parent” speaking about the Austin ISD’s decision, and all I heard was the woman’s nasaly “Berkeley” accent. Berkeley definitely has a unique speech pattern.
The Right Reverend Judge Bill Gravell up here in Williamson county was already exposed as a blatant hypocrite. That’s your best hope with these jerks. Of course, the Right Reverend is gone in the next election, most likely replaced by a Prog.
@JimB
The original chemistry was based on a PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) precursor. Sometimes referred to as “octyl” or C8.
The newer stuff is based on PFBS (perfluorobutanesulfonic acid). There is no easy comparison of application performance between the two chemistries. The driving force for the replacement was based on health concerns, and PFOA is ten times more persistent in organisms (eg, the human body) than PFBS.
For my money, I’ll pick up the old stuff when I can.
“As Covid ‘Vaccines’ Fail, FDA Seeks to Authorize Booster Shots By the End of the Week”
https://conservativeplaybook.com/2021/08/11/as-covid-vaccines-fail-fda-seeks-to-authorize-booster-shots-by-the-end-of-the-week/
“It’s starting off as an authorization for “immunocompromised” vaccinated people, but that’s just cover for experimenting on people who help them cover up the numbers if it goes wrong.”
I went to my eye doctor for my three month glaucoma checkup today. BTW, did you know that glaucoma requires three month checkups by an eye doctor ? He says that if I remain stable after a couple of years that I can go to 6 months between checkups.
Anyway, I have been taking one drop of Latanoprost each night in each eye. My right eye pressure has dropped from 17 to 13 and the left eye pressure has dropped from 18 to 14. Good so far.
Last time I asked the auctioneer if our Harris County Commmissar had paid him, as she promised to do when called out on her blatantly illegal seizure of N95 masks early in the lockdown, she still HAD NOT. Nor did she intend to pay the hammer price for the auctioned masks (which were bought honestly by other .gov agencies) but some “fair” price that SHE would determine.
Meanwhile over a year has gone by and the consignor still has neither the use of his goods, nor the money for them… commies gonna commie and to hell with the law.
n
@rick, apropos of nothing, if there were one change I’d make to the base template it would be to STOP it deleting white space after periods. It jams all the text together when the comment is more than a few lines long. And we LIKE comments that have substance.
n
“With the delta variant spreading, Texas COVID-19 hospitalizations have increased 400% in the last month”
https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/texas-coronavirus-cases-map/
“Hospitalizations increased by 2,778 patients compared with a week ago. As of Aug. 10, 10,463 Texans are hospitalized for the coronavirus.”
Peak hospitalization in Texas for covid was 14,000 back in Jan 2021. Now I understand why many of the government officials are freaking out. And school started yesterday for several school districts in Texas.
Some real freaking numbers ! In fact, an incredible amount of numbers. Including a very disturbing graph that claims that Texas has over 14,000 new cases of covid reported in the last 24 hours.
They state that 95% of the hospitalizations are unvaccinated. “Hospitals: Hospitalizations are increasing quicker than at any other point of the pandemic. Hospital officials say upwards of 95% of COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated, and they will soon be overwhelmed by the caseload. Dozens of hospitals are out of ICU beds as they struggle with historically low staffing levels and staff burnout. Abbott has asked hospitals to delay nonessential procedures.”
That says to me that the vaccines are working for most people but, not all people.
@rick, apropos of nothing, if there were one change I’d make to the base template it would be to STOP it deleting white space after periods. It jams all the text together when the comment is more than a few lines long. And we LIKE comments that have substance.
n
I do not recognize this behavior so it must be the Visual editor ??? I always use the Text editor and have not seen this feature.
Some real freaking numbers ! In fact, an incredible amount of numbers. Including a very disturbing graph that claims that Texas has over 14,000 new cases of covid reported in the last 24 hours.
The graph is available here, updated daily. Click on “TEXAS CASE COUNTS”.
The numbers have been higher at least twice in the last week.
https://dshs.texas.gov/coronavirus/
Austin ISD sued to reinstate a mask mandate, but not Travis or City of Austin AFAIK. Football season starts soon, and people want to resume partying on 6th Street.
I had a friend who had to use that in only one eye. After about six months her blue eye started turning brown. And also made her eyelashes grow!
@Nick
You and your kids might be interested in the original French Chef with Julia Child on Amazon Prime. Her very first season is on and it’s very educational, as well as entertaining. She’s interested in teaching very basic techniques and process, not so much exact amounts of ingredients. I wish I had watched these shows 30 or 40 years ago.
I do not see this problem with the visual editor. I always type one space after periods, and they are kept on comment save. And I don’t see any space character between sentences removed on long, multi-line comments in any of the comments here. I do see double line spacing between paragraphs on some of @Nicks comments. Not all the time, which is why I suspect it’s the fault of whatever device Nick is using to enter those comments.
For a new paragraph, I hit the enter key once, and a blank line is automatically placed between the end of the last paragraph and the start of the next one. No extra enter key required for the blank space.
All of that happens because the comment editor (TinyMCE) is working in ‘block’ mode (as does most of WordPress, since they moved to the ‘block’ editing several versions ago). You can see the formatting as you type just under the comment entry area. In visual editor, you should see a ‘p’ indicating a paragraph block as you type (and press the enter key to start a new paragraph). (That area shows the current type of block being used at the cursor position as you type.)
This is in the Visual editor of the comment box. Which is what I recommend that you use. I never have any problem with the visual editor; not with typing text, adding text (during initial entry and afterward submitting with the edit button), or with a quick paste of text or URLs.
Those of you that don’t use the visual editor will just have to live and learn the idiosyncrasies involved with using the text editor. I don’t see any need for using the text editor in comments. The visual editor works just fine for me.
Anyway, I have been taking one drop of Latanoprost each night in each eye.
I had a friend who had to use that in only one eye. After about six months her blue eye started turning brown. And also made her eyelashes grow!
Wait, will Latanoprost make my brown eyes blue ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9lz_yzrGZw
@ech
I posted this link on July 29:
Ivermectin for COVID-19: real-time meta analysis of 62 studies
•Meta analysis using the most serious outcome reported shows 73% and 86% improvement for early treatment and prophylaxis (RR 0.27 [0.16-0.44] and 0.14 [0.08-0.25]), with similar results after exclusion based sensitivity analysis, restriction to peer-reviewed studies, restriction to serious outcomes, and restriction to Randomized Controlled Trials.
•61% and 96% lower mortality is observed for early treatment and prophylaxis (RR 0.39 [0.17-0.90] and 0.04 [0.00-0.59]). Statistically significant improvements are seen for mortality, hospitalization, recovery, cases, and viral clearance. 27 studies show statistically significant improvements in isolation.
https://ivmmeta.com/
Notable in the text:
Elimination of COVID-19 is a race against viral evolution. No treatment, vaccine, or intervention is 100% available and effective for all current and future variants. All practical, effective, and safe means should be used. Those denying the efficacy of treatments share responsibility for the increased risk of COVID-19 becoming endemic; and the increased mortality, morbidity, and collateral damage.
Again, my understanding is that recognition that a treatment exists invalidates the legal basis for putting vaccine approval on the fast track.
The valuation of Big Pharma is based on drug sales in the US. FDA drug approval does not require data showing efficacy greater than existing treatments. If you follow the money the first step is into a cesspool.
@RickH
Good opportunity to thank you again for all the work that goes into making this place work.
@rick, it’s in the base template. It strips out whitespace between lines and after periods. I learned to type on a manual and hit the spacebar twice after every period. The base template takes that out of my post and all the comments. It also takes out any vertical whitespace. try hitting return
five times. Or try putting more spaces in a sentance. .Like the five between those periods.
With all the long comments lately, it tends to make them look like a wall o text.
Which one of the templates will do if the comment gets long enough, no matter what kind of formatting and white space you have it runs the whole thing together as one wall o text.
Most people aren’t going to run into that though, just me.
n
All word processing software adheres to the standard of only one space after the period at the end of the sentence. MS Word will mark two spaces after a period as a styling error.
In addition, the following style guides also say that one space, not two, after a sentence-ending period is correct:
– Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications
– The Chicago Manual of Style
– The Associated Press Stylebook, which is the most accepted style guide for business writing
– The Gregg Reference Manual
One space after a period is standard. There is no reason to put extra spaces between sentences. (Maybe if you are using a manual typewriter.) There is normally an empty line between paragraphs, where a paragraph is ended by pressing the period and then the enter key. That is standard here – and in just about any electronic writing software. (I am not including code editors as writing software; I define ‘writing software’ as word processing software.)
For bulleted and numbered lists, the standard is no blank lines between bulleted and numbered items.
If you use the Visual editor, all of the above (one space between sentences; one blank line between paragraphs) is all done automatically. And stripping extra spaces is part of the WordPress ‘core’, as well as the TinyMCE editor used in the comment area.
Again, this is with the Visual editor. Which I see no reason for not using. The text editor is different, so perhaps this is your issue.
Using extra space character to line things up, or put extra spacing between words, is so pre-WordStar. It is not advisable, not recommended, and makes paragraphs or lines of text unreadable. IMHO.
You are allowed to use extra spaces if you are using a manual typewriter to enter your comments. Which I think would be hard to do here.
Note that the after-submitting editor here is not fully compliant with those standards. I’m not a big fan of it, though, but not inclined to try to re-write it. But some people here like it.
Am J Ther. 2021 May-Jun; 28(3): e299–e318.
Published online 2021 Apr 22. doi: 10.1097/MJT.0000000000001377
PMCID: PMC8088823
Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19
Pierre Kory, MD,1,* Gianfranco Umberto Meduri, MD,2 Joseph Varon, MD,3 Jose Iglesias, DO,4 and Paul E. Marik, MD5
Background:
After COVID-19 emerged on U.S shores, providers began reviewing the emerging basic science, translational, and clinical data to identify potentially effective treatment options. In addition, a multitude of both novel and repurposed therapeutic agents were used empirically and studied within clinical trials.
Conclusions:
Meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 have found large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance. Furthermore, results from numerous controlled prophylaxis trials report significantly reduced risks of contracting COVID-19 with the regular use of ivermectin. Finally, the many examples of ivermectin distribution campaigns leading to rapid population-wide decreases in morbidity and mortality indicate that an oral agent effective in all phases of COVID-19 has been identified.
Keywords: ivermectin, COVID-19, infectious disease, pulmonary infection, respiratory failure
Note that the publication date is April 22, 2021
I would conclude from this that any physician or institution treating Wuhan flu that does not prescribe ivermectin is in real danger of a tort claiming malpractice.
Further, any social media platform that continues to prevent the dissemination of data on ivermectin does so at their own peril, and the management directing such action (aka, the pale sweaty billioraires) are looking at perp walks and prison time, preferably with a large cellmate nicknamed “Butch” who lost multiple friends and family members to Wuhan flu.
I note in passing that the rotting vegetable in the White House and his incompetent HHS secretary have spent more time trying to force doctors to do abortions and sex-change operations against their conscience.
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
I was never called to vote upon a “standard” of one space between sentences, and of all the self-styled “authorities” cited for style, The Associated Press Stylebook, which is marketed as the most accepted style guide for business writing, has the most instances of woke-bent garbage of all.
Jan 6 Prosecutors admit to possession of “images of officers hugging or fist-bumping rioters, posing for photos with rioters, and moving bike racks”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/08/jan-6-prosecutors-admit-to-possession-of-images-of-officers-hugging-or-fist-bumping-rioters-posing-for-photos-with-rioters-and-moving-bike-racks/
Haven’t heard much from kamel either, despite her being ‘in charge’ of at least a dozen different things. Seems like she’d be in the news every day…
n
agh, comment eaten by 500 error.
Lots of formatting, and moaning. Dash vs emdash. Line of dashes turned into a ‘rule’. blah.
I don’t like a mystery process changing and ‘correcting’ me. But I’ll deal.
n
I meant to post this earlier with the comment that one of the requirements for an insurgency is the creation of a parallel “shadow” structure of government.
Parents create SPLINTER school board after notoriously woke Virginia board banned them from commenting on its plans to teach students Critical Race Theory
n
note that pasting into the visual tab sometimes gets formatting and linking that I don’t actually want.
Like the above.
n
I would prefer it to look like this, from the text tab with blockquote applied and the link inserted manually.
It’s more consistent with the look of the place, and doesn’t change the size to JUMP out at you. ONE reason I prefer the text tab.
n
added- sometimes in blockquote it preserves the bullet points, like when I paste from my FEMA newsletter. But not this time when I pasted from DM.
And at the end of the day, it only matters in so much as the formatting helps to convey the meaning, or if it hinders that.
n
I note in passing that the rotting vegetable in the White House and his incompetent HHS secretary have spent more time trying to force doctors to do abortions and sex-change operations against their conscience.
I don’t understand why the dumbocrats are trying to abort every baby in the USA and have millions of crimigants cross the southern boarder. This makes no sense to me.
I learned to type on a manual and hit the spacebar twice after every period.
So did I, but that was in the 1950s. I moved on when I started using text editors and word processors to compose highly formatted text documents. Just like here, our style guides were pretty strict, but they were manual. I still remember doing most of my text composition using a text editor, and it was pretty much as Rick stated, except I had to go over the writing to clean it up to meet standards. After composition, we went to formatting. Sometimes we had the services of a pubs outfit, but mostly not. We never printed anything; instead, we submitted it as a file to be aggregated and formatted. It was actually a pleasure to concentrate on the content instead of the format.
To make a long story short, I went through a series of editors and word processors, and eventually adopted Word because that became the standard in our world. Somewhere I have the greatest book on using Word I had ever found, but I am retired and don’t need it to commit my scrawl. That book was revolutionary in a world where most books were just a rehash of the help files. It stressed what I stated above: lay down the text, and then format it. Name various formats, so they can be changed by a single edit if needed. It was so much better than the usual advice to just dive in. I could never be a good editor: I tried, but it was a skill I never mastered.
In some ways, computing set office practices back at least 20 years. It enabled all of us to really mess things up, and put a lot of skillful people out of work. I strongly believe costs went up because we now had highly paid people doing their own work poorly. The one area it greatly helped was the home office or small business, where such staffing services did not exist. It put them on equal footing with the big organizations.
As for the visual editor here, I sometimes use it for short comments, especially using my phone, but for longer stuff, such as this, I compose in Word using draft mode. I have set paragraph formatting to be compatible with the visual editor, and just copy and paste when I am done. A small reason is that I would occasionally (my fault) somehow manage to delete or otherwise lose something I had almost finished. That never happens using Word.
My only problem with the visual editor is that I sometimes botch italics for quotes. Not sure what happens, but I copy a string of text from above and paste it into the visual editor after setting italics, and it refuses to italicize the text. I use a work around by first pasting into Word and then copying and pasting into the editor. I also used to use the text mode, but found that cumbersome.
Finally, all of us approach things differently, and get different results. More human nature than anything else.
To make a long story short, I went through a series of editors and word processors, and eventually adopted Word because that became the standard in our world. Somewhere I have the greatest book on using Word I had ever found, but I am retired and don’t need it to commit my scrawl. That book was revolutionary in a world where most books were just a rehash of the help files. It stressed what I stated above: lay down the text, and then format it. Name various formats, so they can be changed by a single edit if needed. It was so much better than the usual advice to just dive in. I could never be a good editor: I tried, but it was a skill I never mastered.
We could have used something like that style guide. I had my secretary convert our 600 page four inch binder of manually typed and hand drawn diagrams into two 300 page Word documents in 1996 using Word 95. I would hear her scream and know that Word had crashed again. I had no idea what we were doing and neither did she, I just told her make it to happen. But we ended up with two of our five eventual software manuals in Word with somewhat consistent formatting. Very easy to update now and convert into PDF. Almost 2,000 pages of technical documentation in five manuals now.
https://www.winsim.com/doco.html
Word versions prior to 2003 were flaky with heaps of memory issues. Running in 95 surely did not help. 98 SP2 was a much better base OS. I still use Office 2003.
Even though I have office, I use wordpad and save as rtf for most things other than here. It has just enough formatting, and I’ve been burned too many times with other “standard” formats where I can’t even open what I’ve written, despite copying the files from drive to drive as time went by.
The point made that having guys that made enough money that it was worth it to pay for a car service or even a helicopter to bring them in to work do their own typing is right on target. It is not a good use of their time.
It’s why I used sketchup and sketchbook instead of generating CAD drawings for work. It was not in the company’s interest to have me doing detailed CAD when we had people who could do that quickly and accurately. I needed only to convey the information as clearly as possible. An actual engineer and CAD specialist could then get the actual part or system designed to standard.
We had technical writers and publishing specialists on staff to do docs too, but I ended up writing far too many instructional guides anyway. However those were restricted to internal use only, and only within our group.
Additionally, if you add the time wasted on learning ‘desktop publishing’ and what NOT to do, and the negative effect of a pretty doc on skeptical or critical reading, there was an awful lot of productivity soaked up…
n
Even though I have office, I use wordpad and save as rtf for most things other than here. It has just enough formatting, and I’ve been burned too many times with other “standard” formats where I can’t even open what I’ve written, despite copying the files from drive to drive as time went by.
I got into the Libre Office habit for standard size documents in grad school. I don’t think *.odt is going away soon, but the bibliography database in the word processor is a bit of a mess. I’ve lost whole bibliographies for papers depending on that database.
I do like the PowerPoint substitute in Libre Office more than actual PowerPoint. More than ten slides for a 30 minute talk is a big number for me, and the slide templates/defaults in the open source product are very clean.
Big documents? 1000 pages? LaTeX, but I haven’t had to break that out since graduation.
Nearly all of the Blue Rhino propane tanks were empties at the local HEB tonight when I went for a swap out. The stock guy had to scrounge for a full one, and when I got the tank home the valve was broken.
Back to the store. More scrounging. The store has three of the big cabinets out front, nearly all filled with empty tanks.
Now that we have a grill again, I need to go to the local UHaul/storage place and pick up a few tanks to stash in the shed and fill/rotate.