We Glibs often speak of what ought to be, how things should be managed, or how we try to manage ourselves despite our general disinterest in controlling others’ behavior. Along that line, there are best ways that government might execute certain programs even though we might agree that they have no business whatsoever prosecuting a given program in the first case. CoVid-19 inoculation is one such program because, for me, healthcare is a personal expense, not a cause for bureaucracy and centralization.
But, supposing we decided to give up on the sweet, sweet efficiency of the private sector, of enlightened self-interest and invisible hands guiding all over the place (note 1), and agreed to trust Top Men to figure out how to distribute the vaccine, how then would we hope the government planned the exercise? What would General Eisenhower do? What of constraint theory? How will this affect global warning? Does this matter to those who don’t itemize? Well, who knows and here goes.
our Father who art in Atlanta
First, let me confess that I know almost nothing of the current plans, structures, or logistics. Here’s what I found at the old CDC site. (note 2)
The recommendations were made with these goals in mind:
-
- Decrease death and serious disease as much as possible.
- Preserve functioning of society.
- Reduce the extra burden COVID-19 is having on people already facing disparities.
Well, isn’t that special. Many of us have a dog in this fight, and oxen are getting gored all over the place, but what are we to make of this? Wellllllll……..
contemplating her privilege
3) Let’s start at the end by shooting the fish in this barrel first. “People already facing disparities” is code for affirmative action, largely racial, and there’s a lot of support in that space across the country. I’m not rising to that bait because I think that treating people due to race is simply wrong; individuals should be handled according to their conduct, so I’m just disinterested in promoting, say, the children of zillionaire Kobe Bryant ahead of, say, some poor random white children somewhere because he’s melanin-magnified and they’re not. Such a program is not direct or particularly useful, so I would stick to my delusion that folks are folks and that the only way to be post-racial is to be post-racial. I care about everyone, so I don’t care about goal 3.
2) There’s no useful way to characterize people to make this one work, but it’s a great way to employ someone’s brother-in-law as a database administrator. Some goals can’t be achieved in any meaningful way and are, therefore, better left unsaid and un-pursued. Such is the case with goal 2: you can’t really decide who is worth what or assign social ranks to classes.
1) Decreasing death and disease is much about prioritizing the most vulnerable, which seems noble at first. Notably, older folks who are most likely to die are getting the shots first . . . so: fewer deaths? Okay, nothing morally awful here, but first: a sidebar!
I’ll draw here on some warranty calculations I created many years ago on a portfolio of corporate liabilities. I don’t recall the figures exactly, but I was responsible for component liabilities on some 300,000 trucks a year with warranties ranging from one to three years. So I had 300,000 trucks with one year’s warranty risk, maybe a further 150,000 with a second year’s risk, and maybe 100,000 with even a third year’s risk. . . . so I was juggling and paying on half a million trucks all the time due to mistakes or problems or poor durability on products that often had been shipped and built before I hired in and when some previous man was POTUS.
For example, an A/C compressor replacement is basically a cool thousand bucks, so if those blew up on one percent of first year trucks, that’s 3,000 trucks, so $3 millions. . . or, if you prefer, $10 per first year truck. Prioritizing the fixes is no small matter, and no one had ever really made an objective study of the money. . . there was only an unending load of financial pain and limited resources to alleviate it when I took over. Don’t get me wrong: future warranty outlay is costed into the product before it’s ever quoted, but that doesn’t mean you’re later happy to wire big chunks of would-be profit sharing to other companies if you can somehow slow the bleeding. I had some thinking to do.
Trucks don’t change as quickly as cars, especially under the skin, so fixing a known problem from the field could reduce annual outlays on predictable failures for, in some cases, out ten years . . . on trucks that might not even be built for yet another seven years and would not become warranty claims for another two years or so after that. . . so, if the initial engineering and tooling costs are low, a very small charge per vehicle can still be attacked because the many future failures still pay for the trouble (to say nothing of saving your reputation and improving client satisfaction). Conversely, there were 1-year warranty models that were going out of production that, despite their having a high volume or very expensive (per claim) problems, would only contribute one more year’s expenses before the bleeding stopped (all bleeding, like all smoking, stops sooner or later). So you take your hurdle rates and populations and failure data and the sales forecast and you create some sweet Weibull distributions (note 3) that ballpark your failure totals per model per year; against that you figure tooling costs, engineering program length, and you calculate the net present value (note 4) of all the cash flows associated with each problem. Then as we learned in B-school, you collect all projects and attack the ones with the highest NPV first and the next project next and so on until you run out of money.
Sheesh . . . that was a helluva sidebar, and people aren’t trucks, and this vaccine is already tooled up and will be distributed in a year or so more or less, so this warranty diatribe is useless speculation and calculation and the whole thing is nearly saucered and blowed, so let’s get back to the morality of inoculated arms. (note 5) Welp, vaccinating old folks actually violates a very practical principle: lives and potential are not equal (some trucks are older than others). Reductio ad absurdum: the 100-year-old with two blown hips and stage four ass cancer should be inoculated before the 30-year-old father head of household, primary earning, faithful husband, and father of three. . . that obviously can’t be right. I won’t get into cash flow; I won’t speculate on the value of any given individual to society; I’ll just say that to me a year to be lived means more than a head to be counted. My priority scores the 100-year-old as a zero, back of the line, while it scores working dad as a full 100% x 50 years (he’ll live another 50-odd years if he’s already made it to 30), so front of the line. 50 points is more than zero points: that young Dad gets his shot . . . now.
I might have upwards of twenty years left. My son will be 27 this week; even though I’m not terrified by this virus, this is an easy one: he’s in line ahead of me even though he has almost no death risk. He has 60 years to live, and there’s no reason for him to risk it or take on any extra limps extra early. In simple terms, he can have my shot, and I’ll run the gauntlets and keep my head down until worn-out codgers should get ours.
We can put together some big matrix that has risk by age if you want to, and that might cloud up things and move some folks up or back a few percent in line; I’m not an expert on kids and exposures and school and all, so I leave that to others. But, off the cuff, I’d prefer we had prioritized each month to a cohort such as January: 30- to 39-year-olds, February 40-49 . . . that sort of thing, because Young Lives Matter. Meanwhile, my parents need to stay home and order stuff online and pick up curbside and maybe the circle will be unbroken this time next year, and I’m glad to wait my turn as well. I’m valuable; I know a lot of stuff and can build and manage a ton of things; and yet I don’t think I need to be ahead of arguably less useful folk who are in the prime of life and have decades more than I do to live and learn.
remember me, son !
Sources on selected topics can be found at the following links.
1 https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/invisiblehand.asp
2 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/recommendations.html
3 https://quality-one.com/weibull/
4 http://www.frickcpa.com/tvom/tvom_cashflowdiagram.asp
5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPPGMNOLaMw&t=86s
My methods of Firsting are anything but unsound. They are the best. They are First.
The fact that you use them proves you to be unsound.
My brain is so sound that I’ve been offered real money to have it studied. I’m the most sound. The First.
You misheard. They were planning to use ultrasound.
Wait, are you listening to the sounds in your brain? They’re not coming from the dog next door, are they?
They tried telling me I was schizophrenic once. ONCE.
“And they was right”
Get your vaccine first; then I’ll be impressed with your firsting.
Otherwise, you’re just claiming to be the tallest midget.
As the essential man, the First man, I already received mine.
As someone who has proposed a Final Solution for the elderly on more than a few occasions, I approve of this message.
You and Governor Cuomo would get along like a nursing home on fire.
JJenny Agutter’s legs notwithstanding, Carousel is a lie!
I couldn’t get past your obvious Racism / Slate
By my understanding it might just reverse your list, because the risk to oldsters is so much dramatically higher than to youngsters. But yeah I’m not a scientician so don’t take my word on that.
‘Zactly! The risk to a thirty year old is almost zero. That would be a wasted vaccine, assuming they are valuable at all. Nobody under 65, unless they have a special condition causing elevated risk should be anywhere near these vaccines. Save them for the 1/2 percent who might die if they get it.
By my understanding you are correct. If you want to save lives give it to the oldsters, (it is also my understanding that in every nation the average vid death is above the life expectancy) the youngsters essentially have no risk and aint going to die from this thing. The question to be asked is why so many people not at any real threat to die from this are being pushed to take the shot? Who is making money off this? The answer is always follow the money.
Maybe Don can do us a graph on how much money a dealership made replacing a poorly designed AC compressor in a fleet of trucks with poorly designed AC compressors.
I’ve done about 5 evaporators on late model ford trucks. Poorly made evaps. Takes a few days, at least where I work. You have to take the entire dash out, all the way to bare sheet metal.
You couldn’t pay me enough to work on new cars for a living. New car engineers have never turned a wrench or thought about accessibility for parts that will fail.
As proof of that… how to replace a battery in a Mini Cooper. This isn’t some piece that is never expected to be replaced.
Exactly
Bah. That’s just a cover to keep everything clean and easily removed.
These are in a whole nother category of hell
https://youtu.be/luqpT1d08Ew
(Not entirely terrible but taking a knife to your newer M class carpet… good lord!)
https://youtu.be/iCutcihYpGU
Once, I cut a hole in the floor of a LT1 firebird to replace the fuel pump. Then, I welded it back in after the new pump was installed. Saved a few hours of hassle and was hidden under the carpet anyway.
I did the hole trick once. Last time I did one, I swung the axle down like GM stupidly intended, can’t butcher them now that they’re classics.
Come on Chrysler, you can make it more difficult. Can you make it so I have to remove the engine to replace the battery?
C’mon rat, you’re supposed to replace the car, not the battery.
/cell phone business model
If I could get the salary and bennie package for working on twenty years or older Harleys, I would happily do that. Or, even, 50 year old Chevys and Fords.
My question is why so many of them have been turned into quivering pools of Jell-o.
Obligatory
LOL. From the golden age of jiggle-vision.
Most Americans have never endured the hardships that prior generations did, at least not on a large scale (sure, some individuals are dealt a bad hand, but that’s on an individual basis).
I do believe that for the most part, we’ve gone soft.
Even Americans under the poverty line are way better off than Americans under the poverty line 100 years ago.
Americans under the poverty line are better off than middle class Americans from 100 years ago.
Good point.
Longer life expectancies all around too.
I was going to go with cradle-to-grave propaganda but your answer is another part of it.
And in this case, the constant barrage of DEATH-PANIC-DOOM-OMG from the likes of CNN has the majority of Americans quivering in their boots. It’s sickening.
The counter argument i would make is that your son would also bears an outsized risk of future unknown consequences of the vaccine, since he has more years of life left in him for them to manifest, and has lived less of his life. Couple that with the extreme rarity that COVID poses a threat, there is a reasonable calcualation that the Vaccine could pose more unknown risk than the known risk of COVID does to him at this point.
I was going to say this.
Ghaa! I use too much math at work as it is!
I don’t use anything more complicated than “+”. OK, sometimes “*”.
We use a lot of math, especially in hotrodding and custom stuff. It’s fairly easy, though, because we only have to know the part we need. Like determining the swept volume of a cylinder or calculating ratios and running clearances, etc. If it helps you go faster and run longer, it’s well worth it.
Mind you, I spend all day pushing data around and/or staring at thousands of lines of complicated programming code. But the actual math in my field is dead simple.
I was told there would be no math!
(Much appreciated actually over the jetpack login block)
Ass Wednesday is silently judging you.
https://archive.li/ntcEn
#6 photoshopped herself nearly in half.
How about 15?
se7en
The propaganda machine is gonna burn up from churning out so many puff pieces on the vaccines.
Your analysis is interesting, Don, but it’s difficult to assess risk when the whole thing is a giant game of Calvinball.
it’s difficult to assess risk when the whole thing is a giant game of Calvinball.
Yes. And risk is also an individual thing. Central planners won’t get it right because they can’t. Value is subjective.
As a geezer, I would have to agree, Don. In fact the Missus and I agree so much (on this only) we’re going to forgo the vaccine and allow someone else to stand in line instead of us. We are not being altruistic however. Having looked at the odds we are relatively healthy for our age, we are isolated for the most part and have lived through worse things than this. The math just isn’t frightening enough for us.
We are both past the “Best Used by Date” and the future for us is not the same as it is for some younger folks. Many (most?) of our peers are already lined up however. What for? To spend an extra 2 months in a nursing home?
Have you been talking to my Dad?
An old person lives on average five months in a nursing home.
Not if Cuomo has anything to say about it.
Need to free up supply to meet demand.
Memory care facilities are the tragic exception. Those patients can languish for years, and we don’t even know what kind of quality of life they’re experiencing inside their locked-in brains.
Hobbit and KK, doesn’t solve the problem of actually getting in the mail, but the post office has Informed Delivery that shows you scans of all incoming mail and packages
https://informeddelivery.usps.com/box/pages/intro/start.action
What you probably really want is some type of secretarial/shared office type service that will accept your mail and resend it to your current location.
I think the UPS store has this service.
Will look into that, thanks. Trshmaster also pointed out some free-market alternatives.
I have the informed delivery and we forwarded our mail from Ohio to Florida for our “snowbird” months (Jan – Mar). The first piece of forwarded mail took about 2 weeks to arrive. A more recent piece of mail appears to have taken about a week.
The quality of the informed delivery service has dropped with Covid. It was spot-on accurate before that.
Yes…there’s a company called Escapees.
You’re instinct is right, but I think where you fall on the priorities misses. Looking at the actual death data (both COVID linked and all cause mortality), what appears to be the case is that all cause mortality is up substantially for the 60-75 group, while up very little for the 85 and up group.
Now, on a case by case basis, COVID is far more dangerous to the 85 and up group than to everybody else, but of course everything is more dangerous to the 85 and up group. They’re dying a lot in 2020, but then they die a lot every year. We’ve gotten so good at keeping people alive, that’s not really the case in that 60-75 group. A 62 year old, more often than not, probably still has 20 years left. What you see is that the older you get, the higher your expected age of death becomes. IE, if you make it to 65, your chances of making it to 85 are significantly greater than that of a 20 year old. So while the 20 year old has many more years left, he’s more likely to die at a younger age than the 62 year old.
So given the data, and the nature of the state of affairs, I really do think that 60-75 age range is the butter zone: COVID is still quite dangerous to these people, while at the same time, absent sudden disease they have significant years left, and, at the lower end of that range, might have some productive years left in the workforce still. I’m pretty sure that’s where the most “bang for your buck” is when it comes to the vaccine.
That’s my suspicion too. Most bang for the buck and all.
at the lower end of that range, might have some productive years left in the workforce still
Even at the higher end. My boss turns 76 this summer and my dad is still working (in his second or third career) at 74.
(Conversely, my wife retired at 56)
The insurance actuarial tables give me 5-6 more years, assuming my assessments of my life style are correct. What they don’t tell me is how much of that time is going to be sitting, bodily functions not working properly, no visitors. lonely, family gone/dispersed, isolated. Maybe better with the Big A.
I was able to hunt deer again this past year, dress them out, drag them out of the woods alone. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t fun (the work part). When those sorts of things become impossible to do life is over. Things like deer hunting are fun, for the camaraderie, the bragging rights, the memories of past hunts. Hunting alone gives none of those things.
Cloris Leachman Passed away at age 94.
Pours out brandy.
Of course, Dr. Fronkensteen notes this.
Obligatory
Clorox Bleachman.
RIP.
Basic risk management
Covid-19 is highly likely to produce catastrophic outcomes (e.g. death) in the very elderly.
Covid-19 is extremely unlikely to to produce symptoms much worse that a really bad cold in the young.
So the goal is to protect the elderly. It would seem straightforward that you want to immunize the elderly. But that might not actually be the case.
There was a study that showed the flu vaccine was perhaps 40% effective in old people but 90% effective in children. Since the primary vector for old people getting the flu is catching it from their grandkids, immunizing kids might actually save more lives than immunizing old people. {trigger warning — herd immunity}
The logic behind the current prioritization Covid-19 immunization escapes me. It think it is about “saving the heroes”. But who fucking knows. I imagine it’s about kickbacks and unions.
The logic behind the current prioritization Covid-19 immunization escapes me.
The prioritization seems to be more logical in some states than in others. I live in Texas, and of the people I know personally those who are eligible for the vaccine right now are my sole surviving grandfather (90s) because he’s old and lives in an assisted living place, my mom (60s) because she regularly visits my grandfather, and a friend (30s) because he had cancer this year and so qualifies for medical reasons. Everyone who I know who is young(er)/healthy/does not interact regularly with old/sick people is still on the waiting list.
Does psoriasis mainly affect cute girls? It would appear so based on the commercials.
If so, i promise I have a special cream for them, available with just a little rubbing.
Not locally. As a friend told me, the trouble with women our age is that they are our age.
And strangely enough, people in the market for exercise equipment always happen to have perfect bodies. ?♂️
And all those that are advertising the weight reducing diet stuff manage to lose weight. I guess they couldn’t very well get an endorsement from a quitter
And everything was more difficult before the invention of color.
But everyone is fat in the cartoon Grubhub ad.
It runs in families but not by gender. My maternal uncle had it very badly, all over his arms. My mother just has the psoriatic arthritis.
I had it on elbows, knees, and knuckles, but that’s pretty much gone now, and I have the psoriatic arthritis.
The disease is genetic, but expression and outbreaks are affected by hormones.
I think the ads show women because women care more about the appearance of their skin. And they show cute girls because they’re cute.
I didn’t know this was going to drop tonight and just happened to notice.
No one knows if the vaccine works, but there’s nothing to argue about unless we assume it does.
I’ll say it again since some of the comments end run this point: deaths don’t interest me as much as person-years.
I’m also not saying I have the numbers; it’s just an interesting question for those who do.
Worth weighing: in terms of herd immunity, oldsters can’t catch it at all at the point after which all the youngsters are vaccinated. You get there either way, but life gets back to normal my way; everyone without jobs can stay at home in the meanwhile, same as today. It’s true that symptoms hardly matter to the young; it’s also true that they dominate transmission: grandma ain’t the one running all over town every day.
It wasn’t manifesto; it’s just applying some thinking from another world. If you you think about people like cars, it hardly makes sense designing fixes for those who already have 300k on their odometers. To count all cars as equal is silly if you want to save warranty dollars: it’s miles to failure and vehicles in population that matter.
I’ll say it again since some of the comments end run this point: deaths don’t interest me as much as person-years
Personally, I don’t think it’s all that much better measure than deaths, and it cuts to the point of why the entire exercise is a bit ghoulish.
“Sorry, the stats say your time is up” is little solace when the 100-year old who was going to live another 15 years croaks in order to get the vaccine to the 30 year old who gets hit by a bus the next day.
The law of large numbers works well when taking aggregate action. It falls apart when used to make individual decisions.
Agree with you on person years as a good starting point for the analysis rather than just deaths.
As others have pointed out we also need to know the vaccine effectiveness in oldies vs. Younguns.
I also prefer what you’ve stated here,regarding working people vs. Nonworking. Though in this environment maybe employable vs unemployable would be better if we want to get people back into jobs. For example, I can work from home, but the waiters can’t. Maybe they should get the jab first, even though I’m objectively more valuable to society. 😉
I’ve never liked the “anticipated earnings” measure of the value of life. That’s such a simplified way of viewing a life. There are so many lives that are more worthwhile than the guy who makes a shit-ton of money. Look at your typical politician, for an example. I value my 10.00 an hour Barista more than most of them.
Further, the earning potential of a given person is not static. You could say a gas station attendant will only earn “X”, but that assumes he’s never gonna exceed his present station. People move up. He might have hit the lottery, even.
Person-years is pretty much irrelevant.
Young people have almost no risk from Covid-19. That means they get almost no benefit from the vaccine. So why vaccinate them.
One reason to vaccinate young people would be if studies showed it was more effective in young people than old people. So you’d be managing herd immunity instead of individual immunity.
Another reason to vaccinate young people would be if studies showed that young posed some threat to high risk populations because they were more likely to contract the disease and spread it to high risk populations. Again this is about managing herd immunity.
Yet another reason to vaccinate young people would be if studies showed the vaccine itself posed a threat to high risk populations {this appears to actually be happening}. So vaccinating high risk populations in some ways brings a new risk of killing the patients. So then you vaccinate young people to manage herd immunity.
Of course, none of this is discussed in current plans to vaccinate the population.
Healthcare workers and teachers first! They’re R Heroes! ?♀️ ?♂️
Heroes hide when danger is present.
– teachers
My folks are already vaccinated but even if they hadn’t been I’d insist they went first because they are actually far more likely to be at risk. It’s a more pressing need that they get vaccinated. There’s plenty of time in which to get much lower risk people vaccinated. As for the 100 year old. Think about someone who still contributes a lot. Take for instance George Schultz (yeah I know a lot of you might hate his guts or have some ascerbic barb to level at him about some issue or another). Whatever you think of his politics, his 100 years of experience and wisdom is worth listening to. So okay, it seems like I’ve picked out a very exceptional person, but I would like to try convincing whoever might be remotely open to the idea that maybe he isn’t so exceptional, if only in the particular respect that the very reason we don’t value old people is that we assume they’re lack of value, and then of course you marginalize them and shut them away in nursing homes or they lose meaningful contact with society once much of their friends and family have died or become estranged. The effect of all this is a self-fulfilling prophecy that these old people don’t have the mental and social stimulation that they need to keep them engaged and able to show their value and share their wisdom. I’m going to say that a day to live, to share stories, to watch the sun rise one more time is worth so much more than deferring that value to another, younger life with the inevitability that person too will subsequently be assumed to be worth less than those younger than him. Death is inevitable, but the value of human life should not inevitably be reduced by the increased likelihood and imminence of death. It’s too absolutely utilitarian, in the same vain as the kind of detached rationalization of a pro-abortion advocate when the argument moves away from considering the individual, the real, the human.
Utilitarianism (not necessarily evil) is not unidirectional – lock down everyone, destroy present and future, prioritize old. I’m 100% aligned with Don’s logic.
. It’s too absolutely utilitarian, in the same vain as the kind of detached rationalization of a pro-abortion advocate when the argument moves away from considering the individual, the real, the human.
This is why the warranty discussion feels a bit misplaced.
The warranty stats happen at the detached level. Work with a big enough number of trucks, and the financials converge on a number. From there, math can be done whether some change is worth it.
However, the analysis is useless when talking about Joe Blow’s truck. Whether and when his compressor fails is only loosely connected to the analysis. Junking the truck at 300k miles because it needs an oil change and “the compressor’s overdue to fail” makes no sense.
This discussion feels a lot like that same flipped analysis. Even more so since “person-years” is controversial, at best, as some measure of “greater good”.
All that said, good think piece, Don, but I’ll not be clamoring to draft you into the Top Men commission deciding whether I should get the vaccine.
In local ‘vid news, the second N-E Ohio bar is having its liquor license pulled due to “violations”. Of course, it’s such a high risk location, that the license is getting pulled effective March 24th.
Of course the next level of civil disobedience would be to continue serving alcoholic beverages without a license to do so.
This s–t is so f—–g stupid I can’t even any more.
And yes, the only way out seems to be civil disobedience. Because they smell blood and hardly anyone notices.
This is now the second bar at this same location that ran into trouble with the government. The establishment that was there previously refused to pay money to the vice squad, who came in and searched/raided them every other week near the end. On the plus side, the last New Year’s Eve there was an open bar party, including the personal bottles in the VIP room.
Good luck getting restocked without a license.
My mom and dad have their vaccinations scheduled. I’d rather they have them first. I’ve seen them once in a year. They’ll be a lot more open to having visitors after their shots.
My parents are in assisted living and their vaccinations are scheduled for 14 days from now. They’re relatively young for assisted living but have health problems. I’ve been able to see them off and on, though lately not at all. Sucks.
We never closed the doors but some potential visitors have skipped us do to the fear we may be contaminated ’cause we’re unconcerned. My best friend shut down back in March, no visitors, no visiting here. He and his wife do visit kids/grandkids for some occasions. He and I don’t even call one another, sad. My grand kids (some wore masks) came for Xmas, my daughter is coming next week for a week’s vacation. Daughter is same as us and 1 grand daughter and husband are fearless as well.
I wonder what horrors are being cooked up in CCP labs.
Where’s my shocked face at?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-proudboys-leader-exclusive/exclusive-proud-boys-leader-was-prolific-informer-for-law-enforcement-idUSKBN29W1PE
?
? ?
And then they found drugs in his ass, right?
Repeat good links. Some of us live in odd time zones.
This. Or even otherwise have different schedules and can’t make all the posts or read all the comments. If it has been posted before in the same thread that’s one thing, but some stories deserve to be posted several times on different threads for visibility.
In a a way, I hope the Top Men fail. If by some miracle they stumble onto a way to mitigate the damage from COVID, the statists will use it as an example of how big government works. In the end, that would result in even more death and destruction.
Don’t much matter. We’ll never know if the dope slamming saved us or the virus just dissipated. Of course, if it get better, the pols will take credit and if it gets worse they’ll claim they mitigated it.
Lives saved! Except for those that perished when the other guy was prez…
Some lies are a bit easier to see through. In my life I’ve seen both Vietnam and Iraq go from “let’s take them out! USA! USA!” to “Oh, fuck. What the hell were we thinking?” Who knows how much more warmongering the US would be up to were they somehow able to install reasonably stable leadership in those countries.
Omce again, the most thoughtful and intelligent discussion on an important topic occurs in Glibertopia.
It’s really nice to have a discussion that doesn’t consist of “My team good your team bad! Durp!”
Unless you support the Stillers, Yankees, or Ravens. Then your team is evil, and you should feel bad.
But you are allowed to support the Football Team now.
Last day at poison office with bitch boss. Everybody acting weird towards me. Don’t blame me for jumping ship and leaving you with her. Some people are just weak.
This guy does a good job of breaking down Cooty issues. Here’s his take on the vacines:
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/01/10/are-the-covid-vaccines-safe-and-effective/
TL/DR” They seem to be effective and mostly safe. However the trials are designed to show the vacines keep youing people from getting the sniffles, not to keep old people from dying. And, no one under 18/19 was part of the trials. Few over 70 were.
And no pregnant worment (or woment who might want to at some time become pregnant)
IOW pregnant women and children should get out of line.
It’s my understanding that the two we’re using now are brand new technologies. I’m not up on all the science, but this is the first time we’ve done it that way. The Johnson and Johnson version is old school. As in, a little bit of ‘rona in every bite. The other ones don’t have any in them.
I found the comments to this illuminating:
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/01/11/rna-vaccines-and-their-lipids
especially the concerns raised about the medium-to-long-term effects from the lipid nanoparticles used as a transport for the mRNA vaccines (i.e., could they end up accumulating in your brain? That would be Very Bad – think MS or ALS).
I think that guy used to pitch for the Red Sox and the Dodgers.
Which one is it, Chicago I think Teacher’s Unions had a demand that all the CHILDREN be vaccinated first. Yah fuck you all. Kids have no need of this, it wasn’t tested on them, and if you’re vaccinated yourself what the hell difference does it make to YOU? Infuriating.
Thx for the write up, Don. Calculating the value of life will never be the strong suit of an organization that values power over life. The amount of collateral damage done in the name of crony experts will never be included in the final tally. The amount of stolen liberty is also immeasurable and so they don’t even try to measure it.
::points to this^, points to nose::
You used collateral for a nose job? that doesn’t sound like you.
Heck, if I could, I’d put my grandmother up as collateral for a nose job. ::looks in mirror, sighs::
Very interesting, Don.
My only observation is that I’m pretty sure that risk matrix is going to move people more than a little. I’d guess it would land on 40- 60 year olds as the first group.
Into each day some cuteness should fall.
https://youtu.be/oUTShRqfmaY
Good night
This may have already been posted, but in case not this is an appropriate thread for this story: China rolls out anal swab coronavirus test, saying it’s more accurate than throat method
Hold on to your butts.
::hovers cursor over link:: Hey, how did you disguise a Bee link like that?
🙂
There is no way PoohBear isn’t fucking with the rest of the world with that.
Blue it out your sss, ChiComs.
They’re just trolling us now.
Hold on… this one goes in your mouth.
What’s the difference between oral and anal thermometers? The taste.
If an oldster isn’t vaccinated, but his 40 y.o. son is vaccinated, can the son transmit to Dad the virus he just picked up in public, or does being vaccinated cause the immune system to attack the Covid before it reproduces enough to get Dad sick?
I read that in cities like LA, the lower income folks are achieving herd immunity. This is because they do the deliveries, food processing and packing, receptionist, check out clerk… you name it.
They also happen to bd Hispanic, living in crowded multigenerational households.
How nice it would have left everyone to their own devices and achieved immunity by now.
But then Top. Men. couldn’t show how important they are.
And that is what this shit is all about.
My mother got her first vaccine dose the other day, being a county employee in a high risk area (works at the county jail) and over 65 with pre-existing medical conditions bumped her up the list quite a bit.
I’d say “good for her” if we knew the vaccine were safe and effective.
As it is….good luck to her. Hope it does the trick.
Kid ran through his first dosage of antibiotics for “not strep” and two hours later is bouncing off walls. Me thinks it isn’t the little rona and more in line with false negative on his strep test or tonsillitis.
Everyone I know with kids who got sick tested them for corona in a panic and it came up negative. My completely non-expert opinion based on what I’ve seen is simply that this shit doesn’t really hit kids.
If it hurts when he swallows, in my nonprofessional* opinion it is probably strep. He on *-cillan?
*not an MD but remember it well as a kid
ugh: -cillin
You have a temperature of 99.8. Better give you some antibiotics before that gets to a dangerous level.
CNN, but I am sure that is the reason that GameStop went to heights that are insane…lets see what is in the bag….TRUMP! It is because of Trump this happened. Talk about living rent free in heads.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/27/politics/gamestop-stock-surge-trumpism/index.html
On CNBC some hack was suggesting it was a foreign power. Man, I hate these people.
Gotta have your boogieman…at all times
The origins of the surge are in the prevalent belief among Wall Street sharps — professional investors — that GameStop’s stock, even before this recent spike, was overvalued. After all, shopping malls are in a long decline — “Malls are doomed: 25% will be gone in 5 years,” read a CNN headline in 2017 — that has only been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The “professional investors” were pure as the driven snow and only looked at the balance sheet when they shorted GameStop. Heck, they read CNN for tips. No media/client manipulation in order to drive GS down. /Sarc
This will be treated like the Capitol rioters: you entered somewhere only the priesthood is allowed. Heretics.
Yep. They will be out for blood because they were out played in a game they designed to control.
They keep it up and the people will short the elites height.
Some be lengthened.
*Some may be
So r/wallstreetbets was back up late last night.
It had been overrun with bots that downvoted every comment not from a bot and posted garbage shilling a bunch of stocks other than GME. The conspiracy theory is the attack was launched by elites trying to switch the action off of GME.
But at least it wasn’t reddit shutting it down due to pressure.
If you shorted the desire of people to be free, prepare to get GameStamped.
White ?
Straff’n’San, I just submitted the first bit for the 3rd act of A Path to Wellness.
Cool. Looking forward to it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bvXbHN5Gijw
?
https://whyy.org/articles/why-did-philly-entrust-a-vaccine-program-to-a-young-student-group-with-no-health-care-experience/
Shenanigans? In Philly? I’m shocked. (Not really)
Hello everybody!
Morning Yusef
Greetings!
Good morning, Yu, Sean & hay (pron. “Hi!”)
Hai Doctor Yusef
Greetings Yu!
https://mobile.twitter.com/stoolpresidente/status/1354611630710124545
I hope today is amusing.
Babylon Bee, oh no you di’in’t!!
https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-if-youre-not-in-favor-of-women-aborting-their-babies-then-you-aint-catholic/?utm_content=buffer2fefc&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer&fbclid=IwAR3b9PSMOFjXY3UbwQ2uurDok9pjxkfkAmZ6odY2DjgdDPyEje1vvnK18mQ
Nancy “Abortion is sacred ground” Pelosi agrees.
The last ‘graph is the kicker.
Off the cuff, I would guess a years left * death risk factor would create a parabola, with the peak being something like people in the 60s.
So the first month would be 60-69, 2nd month 50-59, 3rd month 70-79, and back and forth like that with the very young and very old being last.
So…when does that impeachment kangaroo court begin?
This is going to be the longest “inauguration” ever.
The Green Zone is an apt comparison. What is the D.C. version called? The Blue Zone? Too obvious? The Twilight Zone? Unimatrix Zero?
The Red Zone
Well, see, that’s the area immediately outside the Green Zone, is it not? That’s why I avoided it, but yes, commies being what they are…
I think they are referring to it as the Green Zone.
Optics be damned.
These governors need to stop allowing their guard troops to be used for this political security theater. It’s transparently moronic for anyone with an above double digit IQ and the smart people who are for it are either ignorant or lying.
The optics to their voter base are that there is a huge threat from “white nationalist domestic terrorists”, and that it is necessary to “defend democracy” by concentrating the NG on the sacred seat of said democracy. As everything in the progressive playbook is rammed through in a litany of executive orders, and tacked onto bills where it can be ransomed against other things that it would be political suicide to vote against, the same voter base will largely be convincing themselves that this is the “democracy” that is so worth “fighting” for.
https://www.wfmz.com/news/biden-seen-likely-to-keep-space-force-a-trump-favorite/article_0d358e08-5d86-5ef9-9f24-93c2a194d4d8.html
Well, at least there’s that…
Even President Puddin Cup likes the Space Force.
Of course, because it will be a huge money pit. Biden isn’t going to get rid of anything that would shrink the government.
https://www.eatthis.com/news-seasonal-peeps-return-after-covid-shortage/
*Lights the Mojeaux signal*
But will they be depicted wearing little marshmallow masks?
You could add them with some fluff and sugar.
Mmmmm, tartrazine.
Every Japanese lady that gets a landing strip looks like Don Draper with a soul patch.
I would like to delete that from my imagination.