23 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

1. Well-intentioned, medium to low information, neighbor:
   Everyone needs to get infected – most people will survive. That plus the vaccine (s) will give herd immunity and everything goes back to normal.

   Me:
   Hmm. That doesn’t work for all virus. Doesn’t work for HIV. Ebola. Marburg just to name the big bad scariest ones. Hell – it doesn’t work for HPV, chlamydia, syphilis, herpes, the flu, dengue, malaria and a thousand others.

   The ‘common cold’ doesn’t confer immunity.

    

   But whether they are doing it intentionally or not – the Thanksgiving travel is going to stir the soup. Cases are spiking hard everywhere. Illness follows cases. Death follows illness. How many dead by Christmas when we’ll do it again? New Year Eve? 400,000? 500,000?

   Then MLK day, which we all know is the biggest travel holiday of the year.
   The Inauguration (how will Zoom photograph the crowd size?) . Spring Break 21.

   We’re going to kill hundreds of thousands unnecesarily. We’re dumb and deserve virus death.

   Log in to Reply

   1. Neighbor needs to do some math. 

      Colorado’s experience thus far, after nearly 9 months of reported deaths: 202,289 confirmed positive tests.  2,810 deaths.   1.4% (raw) case fatality rate — and that without going beyond the capacity of the medical system, especially ICU and ventilator/ECMO capacities.  The last 10 days have an average of 30 deaths a day.

      Best guesses I’ve seen for inoculation availability for all Americans — end of June, 2021 IF all goes right. So, a simple-minded projection through the end of March, which will be just over a year of Colorado’s experience with COVID.  That would be about 125 days, 30 per day … 3,750 more.  That would be 6,560 deaths in a year. Or a bit more than ten times the number of auto accident deaths in Colorado in 2019 (632). And that would be with no increase.

      IMHE’s current projection for Colorado: 8,450 COVID-19 deaths based on Current projection scenario by March 1, 2021

      Log in to Reply

      1. This is correct, but most people don't have a good sense for numbers. Keep the numbers and statistics out of it.

         The thing is, the neighbor is suggesting something that seems correct (chicken box, for example), but has dire consequences for Covid.

         I would respect or validate the neighbor's opinion to start: 

         "You're theory is sort of right, this may work for chicken pox. Covid is a much more serious virus, and we need herd immunity via vaccine, not full-on Covid."

         "Letting herd immunity for Covid run rampant means over-crammed hospitals, and triggering pre-existing conditions. Here in Colorado we are seeing 25-50% death rates of the elderly who catch it. I know people who have gotten Covid, and they now have serious asthma issues or weird inflammations in their organs."

         Log in to Reply

         1. @ParkHill: if you haven't already done so, do a browser inquiry for COVID "long haulers." Many people who technically have recovered have residual symptoms, from the ones you describe to others such as "mind fog."

            Log in to Reply

         2. I do need to try being more tactful with the Q believers still in my life, PH. I’ll try the “partial validate, then pivot to facts with a side of empathy” move with them. 

            Log in to Reply

            1. Also, remember the "truth hamburger":

               Mention the truth.
               Point out their fallacy.
               Finish with the truth.

               I have a particular Qonspiracy acquaintance who is not worth arguing with. She sees herself as a Conservative activist and agitator in the Bannon/Brietbart mold. She has zero qualms about repeating lies, and changing to the opposite lie the next time.

               And, to CHB. 

               Yes, I do have friends who show on-going symptoms. By organs, we can include unexpected ones like the gut, not just the lungs.

               Log in to Reply

         3. I just shouted Bullshit! suddenly, loudly and walked faster to create more distance.

            Maybe your way could be helpful

            Log in to Reply

   2. Immunity to the Coronavirus May Last Years, New Data Hint

      (refers to Immunological memory to SARS-CoV-2 assessed for greater than six months after infection)

      That's good news for achieving herd immunity but reliant on vaccines rather than community spread.

      The article seems to indicate that vaccination is more reliable for immunity than community spread: "A small number of infected people in the new study did not have long-lasting immunity after recovery, perhaps because of differences in the amounts of coronavirus they were exposed to. But vaccines can overcome that individual variability"

      Log in to Reply

2. The GSA is finally releasing transition resources, so no "how to protest" posts from me today. But stay prepared!

   Log in to Reply

3. As a 1974 Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memo put it:

   “Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself.”

   Trump thinks he can grant himself clemency. It doesn’t work that way.

   Why a Self-Pardon Is Not Constitutional

   Log in to Reply

4. Today is National Sardines Day

   Log in to Reply

   1. How do you know when sardines go bad, do they start to smell good?

      Log in to Reply

      1. When they start hanging around at night in the parking lot of the corner convenience store.

         Log in to Reply

5. Still having login issues

   Log in to Reply

   1. I couldn't get in for a while. Now it just logs me off every time. 

       

      Log in to Reply

      1. I have to log in, too, but my password is there, under the dots.

         Log in to Reply

6. The honor of being the First Turd in the Punch Bowl goes to……..Little Marco Rubio

   Rubio calls Biden's national security team 'polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline' (msn.com)

   Claire McCaskill was just commenting on Biden's national security team and how it amounts to daring Moscow Mitch to try to block any of them.

    

   Log in to Reply

   1. We all have suffered through " America's decline " these past four years.  I believe Trump amnesia is about to spread faster than Covid at a maga rally, and it appears Rubio is patient zero.

      Log in to Reply

7. Delusional to the end, Trump touts the market setting new records today not realizing it is their collective sigh of relief at news of the finality of his defeat, and a collective shout of “Good riddance to bad rubbage!”

   Log in to Reply

   1. "not realizing it is their collective sigh of relief at news of the finality of his defeat, and a collective shout of “Good riddance to bad rubbage!”

      Exactly….

      Log in to Reply

   2. I have a hunch that someday soon the holiday of TtumPurim, based on the stories found in the book of Two Covidians, will be widely celebrated . . .

      . . . and that the mere mention of his name will be cause for much shouting?

      Log in to Reply

      1. I think George Costanza's father had Trump in mind when he invented Festivus.

         Think about it:  the airing of grievances, the feats of strength, tacky aluminum pole and the holiday meatloaf.

         Log in to Reply

8. WOTD from Stacey Abrams interviewed at the NYT: "Why Stacey Abrams Is Confident Georgia Will Stay Blue"

   There are divisions among Democrats, especially moderate and progressive on some of the down ballot results. You have respect in both those camps. Do you think messages like “defund the police” hurt the party in House and Senate races?

   I think you run the campaign for the place where you live. And I’ve always held to the reality that we exist on a spectrum of progress. There are those who have made it further along that spectrum. There are other communities that are struggling to find our way. And the responsibility of every election in every campaign is to identify where you are, but also where you can go.

   But it’s up to those local communities to calibrate how broad and how far the vision can reach.

   I think it is not helpful to try to force every single person into the same mold. I talk about the work I do here as translating “progressive” into “Southern,” because I know that there are conversations that are absolutely necessary, but you can’t get to that if you haven’t built the language to describe it. And we’ve got to do the work of building the language before we can get to the slogans.

   But is it zero sum? The word we hear from some of the moderate members of the House is that too much space is given to some of these progressive members and those slogans and that hurts them.

   For the Democratic Party, it is our burden and our benefit that we are faced with diversity. Republicans rarely have to engage because of the homogeneous nature of their belief system. When you are against most things, it is not necessary to articulate what you are for.

   And this is a broad generalization and I know it, but Democrats have always had to recognize that the big tent that we built in, we’re going to have robust conversations inside it. And those conversations always spill out into the atmosphere. Republicans are going to weaponize those conversations. And it can be whispers or it can be shouts, but they’re going to find a way to leverage them.

   Our responsibility is to make certain we built a base understanding of who we are.

   Log in to Reply