*Knock, knock, knock*
“Now who the hell is that?“ Floyd asked himself. “Come in, god damn it,” he shouted.
“Who the hell do you think it would be, at coffee time?” Russ answered.
Russ helped himself to a cup of coffee, grabbed a doughnut and pulled up a chair by the stove. “I see you’re still buying day old doughnuts.”
“If you don’t like ’em, don’t take ’em,” was the curt answer.
“Oh, I didn’t say I didn’t like ’em, just an observation but hardly necessary, knowing you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with them, they’re still fresh. Besides, you’re the only one that ever comes anyway and why would I buy fresh ones for you, you might starting coming every day,” and both guys laughed.
“What brings you out this early, besides free doughnuts?”
“Oh, you know Chuck’s wife died a few months back. She had some property she’d inherited, about five acres, and in her will she wanted it to go to the church. So Chuck is donating it to the church but the preacher said the church could use the cash, rather than the property.”
“So, what’s that got to do with you or with me?” Floyd asked.
“Well, here’s the deal,” Russ said. “The preacher decided he’d raffle the property off quickly and to do that, he’d price the tickets cheap. I belong to that church, courtesy of my wife, so I got the call to organize the raffle, sell tickets and get the money to the church. The property is zoned residential and assessed at five grand for tax purposes. I had 1000 tickets printed and I’m selling the tickets at a buck a piece, already sold one to Gus, the mayor’s son. You want to buy some?”
Floyd quickly make some mental calculations. “Hmmm, five acres, a grand, assessed value at five grand, could be a good decision.” At that, he said, “Grab another doughnut, I’m gonna buy all the tickets, 999 of ’em, win the property and make a little money and solve the preacher’s problem.”
Russ took another doughnut, pondered a bit, “You know there’s another ticket sold, Gus has a chance to win.”
Floyd looked over the top of his glasses at Russ. “Russ, you had the Covid-19?”
“No.”
“Are you worried that you might get it and then you might die?”
Russ stopped eating his doughnut, “Floyd, I’m not worried about getting it and if I do, statisically I have a 99.9 per cent chance of survival. C’mon man, you know that. We’re tough old buzzards, been sick a little but we ain’t gonna die, the numbers are in our favor.”
“So what you’re saying, Russ, is that I’m going to win that lottery.”
“OK, Floyd, but there is that 1 in a 1000 chance that Gus could win it.”
“Russ, I’m gonna pay you in cash for the tickets, if you think the preacher would be OK with that, I’ll give you ten Benjamins and I know the preacher will get it all.”
With that, Russ grabbed another doughnut on his way out the door, happy to have sold all the tickets so easily and a holler back to Floyd, “Next week get the fresh ones with the blueberry filling, Cheapskate,” and they both laughed.
The evening of the drawing came, everyone knew what had transpired, Russ stopped by Floyd’s.
“Aren’t you going to the drawing, Ol’ Bud?”
“Nah, I’ve already won, why would I go?” Floyd said.
Russ laughed, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over. There’s that one in a thousand chance that Gus is gonna win and you’re gonna look stupid.”
At the drawing the choir director’s 8 year old daughter was chosen to reach in the basket and pull out the winning ticket. She did that and handed the ticket to the preacher, who looked at it and gasped.
“The winner is,” and he looked around and walked away, trying to catch his breath. Russ picked up the ticket, the blood drained from his face and said quietly, “Gus won” and some in the crowd cheered, some laughed and few fell silent, ’cause someone was going to have to tell Floyd that he’d blown a $1000 on what he’d considered a sure thing.
Russ reluctantly decided he was the one to tell his old friend the news but he wasn’t happy to have to do it. He saw Floyd cutting the grass as he parked in the driveway. Floyd walked over to the car, smiling all the while. “Did you bring me the deed?” he asked Russ.
Russ said, “Some bad news, Ol’ Bud, you didn’t win, Gus did.”
Floyd laughed. “C’mon in, we’ll have some coffee and a fresh blueberry filled doughnut, bought ’em just for you, kinda thought you might come by tonight and we could celebrate.”
As they were drinking the coffee there wasn’t much conversation, finally Russ had to ask, “Why are you so happy, you just lost a grand?”
Floyd said, “Well, technically it was $999 but I didn’t lose. As you know I don’t gamble, I’ll take a chance when the odds are in my favor. 999 out of a 1000 are pretty good odds, wouldn’t you say? Like the covid-19 odds we look at every day.“
Russ interrupted, “But Gus won, I saw the ticket and it was honestly pulled out in front of witnesses. Gus won.”
“Let me tell you a little story, Ol’ Bud. I ran into Gus the other day at the restaurant and we talked about different things and he was complaining about his lack of a chance to win the lottery, complaining how he was so unlucky and never won at the casino or playing poker with his friends and on and on.”
“I asked him if he’d like to win the lottery right now, of course he said yes. I told him I’d buy his breakfast and buy his ticket for $10 on the spot, he’d be making 1000% on his investment plus have his money without having to wait and watch me win the property.”
“As a gambler, Gus knew the odds were heavy in my favor and he sold me his ticket. As it turned out we both were winners, percentage wise he did better.”
“I’ve been talking to the real estate guy, he’s made me an offer on the property, plans to lot it off and re-sell the lots. Looks like everyone is gonna win. Chuck got rid of the property, the church made a quick $1000, Gus made 1000%, I’ll make a few bucks, the real estate guy will end up ahead and the town will have some folks moving on up to the east side.”
“Now Russ, after you finish that next doughnut you should see about getting a test, you’ve got a little cough, if there’s the slightest chance…”
I don’t get it.
This one is tricksy.
I think it’s because the last five lines of dialogue might all be the same person.
It’s an allegory?
*shrug*
Is that where you have a reaction that causes you to sneeze your brains out?
?
My bad, that would be an allergory.
No, it’s when you play the piano really fast.
Presto! A winner!
Don’t feel bad. 5 out of 4 people have trouble with math.
Right? Why there’s hardly any place in this story for Zachford von Bumbledorf, the 3rd son of the House of Dorfmunch.
What’s not to get?
What UCS doesn’t get is any accolades for fiction he didn’t write, so the next best thing is for him to belittle that other fiction as often as possible while pretending no one will notice.
Harsh but fair
Nice. It never ceases to amaze me to see mental gymnastics performed by an individual to justify either taking a big gamble or passing one up.
However, I have one quibble. In the story, Floyd asserts that, as a result of his actions, everybody wins. But in this case Floyd won bigger than some of the other people.
Never mind that he invested more and risked more money than anyone else (he committed to buying 999 tickets before he knew Gus would sell his one ticket); that’s immaterial. He got more than his fair share!
(Pouts and puffs up in righteous indignation.)
He invested $999 knowing the other ticket was owned by a person whose character he knew well. Even if Gus held out, he still had 999/1000 odds, and had enough funds that he had $1000 in cash on hand. Lastly, I’d wager he’d pay Gus the $5k market value if Gus had held out, and then flip it to the developer for a tidy, if slightly smaller, profit off the $6k thusfar sunk.
You’re a riot at parties, I’m guessing. 🙂
My first point was that the same person who says “COVID kills fewer than 1%, so that’s a risk worth taking” can then say “Whoah! You have 1 in 1000 chance of losing the drawing! Don’t take that risk!”
People will go through hoops to rationalize a decision they’ve already made emotionally. Even if they use an opposite argument to rationalize a different decision in another area of life.
The second point was meant to mock people who hate seeing one person do better than others, even if that person “raised the tide” to lift all boats. The equal sharing of less is their preference over merit based accumulation of wealth.
Just like Father Mulcahy never expected to win the drawing.
Life is full of uncertainties. Even with best of preparations the unexpected can go wrong. Sometimes winning is losing…
And it isn’t gambling if you rig it right.
Georgia election, winners and losers, roughly 50-50.
Jolly good show Fourscore!
I liked it. The back-and-forth between the two codgers at the beginning was especially spot-on.
I’ve been fortunate to hang out with Fourscore and his pals. That sounds exactly like them!
My two best friends and I are like that, except one had a kid a 46, so we call him grandpa dad now.
Yeah, come to think of it, if you added a bunch of F-bombs and substituted beer for coffee, it could be me and mine.
I hope to be one of those codgers some day. I already smoke a pipe occasionally, and I like almost any type of alcohol.
Great story
Nice!
Perfect. Thanks, Fourscore!
That was nice. Kinnath gets it.
I was told there would be no math.
You’re a funny guy, Not Adahn…
This is like one of those jokes old people tell, isn’t it? The ones that go on and on and on and at the end they’re the only ones laughing?
I think the moral of the story is that I should play the lottery.
Just buy someone else’s ticket from them, and you have a 100% chance of winning.
https://www.tmz.com/2021/01/05/tanya-roberts-dead-dies-65-bond-girl-70s-show-premature-announcement/
Haven’t checked on the current status of Generalissimo Franco yet.
What killed her?
She kept saying she wasn’t dead, and she was getting better, and she wanted to go for a walk, and then someone hit her on the head with a club.
+ 9 pence
Deadpool
Raising them the right way.
I used to use dead pools to explain perverse incentives when I taught a class in law school.
The payoff is to be the last one alive. This creates an incentive to be careful and live a long life. What could be wrong with that?
It also creates a perverse incentive to ensure that everyone else dies before you do, the earlier the better.
Now, show of hands – who wants to join me in a dead pool where ten of us put in $100, and I, err, that is, the last man standing, collects $1,000?
Remember, inside every incentive is a perverse incentive trying to get out.
I recall hearing that dead pools were tried as a product, similar to some weird lottery/insurance hybrid, either in Canada or England. They were banned after several cohort members remaining towards the end started dying off under mysterious circumstances.
I tried searching just now to see if true, but just get pages of Marvel Deadpool hits.
I go to a lot classmates’ funerals, the funeral home gives out the little biographical cards of the deceased. We call them the “Class of ’55” trading cards. You know, I’ll trade you a Lois for a Roger type of thing. The winner is the one that collects all but one. Incentives work.
AKA a tontine, and the plot of The Wrong Box.
I didn’t know how to spell it. I kept getting a 2 leggedy space creature that can be ridden on an ice planet.
So thanks for tontine.
That’s right up there with “Foreseeable consequences are not unintended.”
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eq_Ki1EWMAICo_I?format=jpg&name=large
That gave me a good chuckle.
Sometimes I get the feeling she’s watching over me.
https://twitter.com/michaelmalice/status/1346514284134674438
Remember all those times the left mentions how “This isn’t what Jesus would do” it is in the sense that they are saying “I hate everything about you, but maybe if i say this, you’ll do what i want”.
All the replies to the DC tweet are “Chris isn’t wrong, Look at how bad Florida is right now! They need new leadership”
I broke my rule and clicked through to Twitter.
To compound my sin, I post this:
Heh…
I liked this response:
“ It’s current year and people are still showing up in blueface…smh.”
Dishonest cuntes.
And it isn’t gambling if you rig it right.
Rube: Say, this isn’t a game of chance, is it?
W C Fields: Not the way i play it, no.
I recall hearing that dead pools were tried as a product, similar to some weird lottery/insurance hybrid, either in Canada or England. They were banned after several cohort members remaining towards the end started dying off under mysterious circumstances.
I tried searching just now to see if true, but just get pages of Marvel Deadpool hits.
Sounds like a tontine.
A tontine is basically a dead pool wrapped in an insurance product.
I thought it was canadian gravy on french fries?
No, that’s a Quebeci
Quebeci
I thought that was the guy who hosted Jepordy
*narrows gaze*
I’m catching up on this “Kamala Harris plagarizes a story” and “Fweedom”.
The most jarring thing about the quote i read was that “She fell from the Stroller (few saftey regulations existed on childrens equipment back then)”
I mean how is this not a parody of the left?
People (white suburban moms on social media) eat that shit up.
She was the original woke toddler!
Not to dismiss it out of hand, but if she fell out and landed on her head, that would explain a lot.
The winner is the one that collects all but one.
Nice.
+1 Flying Hellfish
RC Dean; I was thinking about your comment about how they were absolutely planning to cheat, and you listed a bunch of very salient points.
But I don’t think that is quite correct. The DA’s and judges and lawyers didn’t do anything that is necessarily illegal, they simply laid the groundwork for Every Democrat Cheating. See, they didn’t think that Trump would do nearly as well as he did, as they spent the last four years sniffing their own farts. But, they did weaken the ties to a fair election process, one that depends on faith. So they were counting on the fact that Dems hated him so much that it would carry them past the margin of error. But they didn’t count on Trump doing so well, and so the actual mainline cheating looks so blatant. The shutting out observers, photocopied ballots, etc. And when people started to actually bitch and moan about this, they played three monkeys with it. See no evil, hear no evil, say no evil.
And they are counting on anyone who would be on the fence just wanting the whole thing to end, along with gaslighting anyone who still makes a stink.
Nearly all the (alleged) shenanigans, including the blatant ones, depended heavily on mail-in ballots and corrupted voter rolls. With those in place, one of the fundamental protections against stuffing ballot boxes is undermined – the reconciliation of the number of actual voters showing up at actual polling places against the number of votes counted. With inflated voter rolls and millions of ballots released into the wild, the door is wide open to creating as many ballots (and votes) as you need to win. Or, alternatively, to simply creating/deleting votes on voting machines or the tabulators they report to. A fundamental control is gone – how many voters cast ballots? There’s no way to know with mass mail-in ballots.
The supposed control on mail-in voting is the ballot envelope with a signature. What a joke. The instant one of those is separated from the ballot, there is no possibility of auditing the validity of that ballot. And, of course, keeping it with the ballot means you don’t have a secret ballot any more.
Add elections to the list of institutions that are now rotten and not to be relied on. Period.
Not to mention that they never explained how they could validate millions of signatures accurately and in a timely manner. That fact is that I don’t think they can, so the solution is to let nearly every signature pass inspection.
Omelettes require eggs.
Mail-in voting can have some of the same checks. How many ballots were requested, how many were reported returned before the votes were tallied, etc.
The problem is that the rules in some states are pretty tight (and surprise, surprise those states finished counting quickly and had fewer anomalies) and the rules in other states are pretty loose and/or haphazardly enforced.
Mail-in voting can have some of the same checks. How many ballots were requested,
But mail-in balloting isn’t done on request in many places. It is a blast mail, that you have to opt out of. I had to opt out in AZ.
And the available margin for shenanigans is huge – in an election with good turnout of 60%, there are 40% of the ballots unaccounted for. Even with on-request mail-in ballots, there will be a margin between ballots requested and ballots returned that gives bad actors a lot of room to maneuver. And that’s not even counting the “requests” sent in by bad actors for dead people, fictional people, etc.
Well, yeah, the state-to-state differences make it difficult. It also makes it difficult that they don’t separate out the counting of ballots from the tallying of votes. You should have a total count of ballots before you ever tally a single race or ballot question.
In the dystopian future, today may be known as ‘The Last Day of the Republic’ by those of us who still remember history and the way it was. Not that we weren’t headed into this direction for at least 100 years. And no one will be able to learn anything about what happened before from the internet or other media, as it will all be banned and replaced by woke revisionist history. You will still have anything you stored on disk or in print, but if you’re found in possession, it will be a felony.
When the dems get their supermajority, tomorrow, they will move at light speed to pass the most radical agenda imaginable and Biden will sing anything no matter how heinous or ruinous.
Elections are a thing of the past. Most of the younger generations have been dumbed down to retard level, are helpless, and nothing more than compliant sheep. Next, they will get the guns and then it’s over.
Sounds like conspiracy theory, right? It isn’t, we’ll become a woke version of the CCP and there won’t be any more elections, this is the last one. Our ‘leaders’ will be chosen, just like in Xi’s China. The only way to change this will be civil war, and most of us will not live though it. But consider this, most of us will not be around much longer because the Great Reset means 7.5 billion dead by 2030.
A grim picture. That’s the worst case scenario of course. The best case is probably civil war, collapse, mass death and then who knows, but probably a different dictatorship. Freedom is a rare and fleeting thing in history. There’s really only been one like ours and it may be a long time before repeat, and probably never. Future is probably either a technocratic tyranny or collapse and return to the stone age. China will come out on top of this for now and we’ll just be a declining power and will just be a China puppet, thanks to Biden. I don’t think either China or Russian will appreciate our stupid wokeness, so they may just decide to team up and invade and clean things up while dividing up the resource loot, or maybe they’ll be so totally disgusted with our state of civil collapse that they’ll just nuke us. If I were them, I’d just probably nuke us, our wokeness is a much more deadly disease than any virus.
“here won’t be any more elections, this is the last one”
$10 says it won’t be.
OK. I concede they may keep up the charade for a while longer, but it won’t change the fact that they’ll never lose another election of any consequence. The fix is in.
https://twitter.com/PhilWMagness/status/1346181289557127169
This may not be quite an “Iron Rule” but it is something i’ve learned over this past year. The more dominant you are politically, ironically the easier it is and more likely you are to blame failure on any minority.
Obstructionist Republicans, libertarians who call all the shots… yep, checks out.
Wreckers! Saboteurs!
Nicely done, 4X20.
How much of a weirdo does it make me that I’ve been listening to old radio broadcasts from the 1930s while I work?
No more of a weirdo than we already thought?
I have all The Shadow episodes on my phone, as well as War of the Worlds. I enjoy them around a campfire. Got any recommendations?
Mostly I listen to the news broadcasts. It’s fascinating to me to see what people thought at the time, not knowing what was coming in 1939.
This guy’s channel has a ton of days of programming starting with 1934 going into 1941. Runs the gamut – dramas, variety, music, news, all sorts.
Perfect, thanks!!!
Not weird at all.
I listen to Polka…….
I’ve said it before, Amos & Andy is the root of most American comedy. Just about any sitcom plot of the last 100 years was done first on radio by Amos & Andy.
https://archive.org/details/amosandy1
So you’re saying most comedy is racist and needs to be stamped out as a part of American systemic racism? /SJW
I thought all comedy was already stamped out?
No. History is great and reminiscing about when we still lived in a sane society is nice.
Not to mention that they never explained how they could validate millions of signatures accurately and in a timely manner. That fact is that I don’t think they can, so the solution is to let nearly every signature pass inspection.
There is no voter fraud.
Assume a can opener.
We flattened the fuck out of that curve.
“Everyone should keep in mind that community transmission rates are so high that you run the risk of an exposure whenever you leave your home,” Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said. “Assume that this deadly invisible virus is everywhere, looking for a willing host.”
Officials said they are continuing to battle the notion that masks are not needed, despite overwhelming evidence that they are essential in stopping the spread of the virus.
Overwhelming evidence? Please produce it.
The ‘evidence” seems to run in exactly the opposite direction.
It prowls the street at night, it goes where eagles dare…
You better think about it baby
I see the good county supervisor strawmanning which doesn’t add to her credibility at all. Very few people think this is a hoax but a shit ton, myself included, think we’ve overreacted and bristle at being required to wear masks although I will wear one of my accord because I don’t think it’s a bad idea.
Did these Karens’ parents not read them Chicken Little or The Boy Who Cried Wolf? Did they not understand those lessons?
I’m sick of the lack of strength of those in the spotlight, in leadership positions. Maybe society in general never really admired the strong and brave, maybe most were secretly hating the successful risk takers all along, and now at last see their chance to revel in their weakness and cowardice like pigs in shit.
Karens of the world, unite!
You can’t stop the spread. That is why it was not the original premise. But then everyone got their power/self-importance boners going. And here we are.
Halp, edot fary!
*EDIT FAIRY BLESSES YOU*
Thanks, Edit Fairy!
and a very cute edit fairy at that
Is it a hoax? No.
Is it the extinction level threat it has been sold as? Absolutely not.
As it stands, unless you are a climate scientist doing your own shit, the regular speaker cannot separate “Climate Change” from the policy prescriptions and the Alarmism that push them forward. Thus, i think it is totally fair to say that climate change is a Hoax, because “Climage Change” just is shorthand for the policies we need to enact to prevent the false extinction threat that gets thrown around by politicians.
How can it not be a winning policy? It has to be real, because there’s never been a time since the planet formed that climate change has not been happening. Change it what climate does.
All the dire climate forecasts, however, are bullshit, as they continue to never be correct or even close. But the general public are now so dumbed down it doesn’t matter. We’re cranking out college graduates by the hoard, who don’t know a single fact about anything except:
We’re all going to die of climate change unless we all go back to barely subsisting, except the elite of course, they have to save us.
And
There are 26 genders.
“except the elite”
No animal shall sleep in a bed… with sheets.
Climate change “science” is rife with actual hoaxes, from stealth editing of the historical record, refusal to release models, etc.
Climate change as a political movement is a hoax, full stop. The people pushing it obviously don’t even believe it, since they live very “high-carbon” lifestyles, often including beachfront property. The international climate policies are an obvious grift, since they consist of extracting money from rich nations whose carbon production has either plateaued or is declining, while ignoring developing countries adding carbon production at a good clip.
Basically, the only aspect of climate change that isn’t a hoax, in my view, is the fact that the climate is always changing anyway, and by all appearances we are in a punctuated warming cycle right now.
“I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.” – Glenn Reynolds
Time for the fucking pitchforks
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/05/us/los-angeles-county-california-human-disaster-covid/index.html
Los Angeles County ambulance crews are told not to transport patients with little chance of survival
Imagine having cardiac arrest and getting picked up by an ambulance that won’t take you to a hospital.
Or having a medical emergency and languishing outside an emergency room for hours.
This is what Los Angeles County faces as the onslaught of Covid-19 devastates the community — including those without coronavirus.
“Hospitals are declaring internal disasters and having to open church gyms to serve as hospital units,” County Supervisor Hilda Solis said. “Our health care workers are physically and mentally exhausted and sick.”
Those hard lockdowns really worked! Unlike in FL, where you have to drive and walk over the dead. Cognitive dissonance is a real thing.
Also, Great Reset, WINNING!
Hospitals are declaring internal disasters
This is actually a term of art in the hospital world. It is used to activate plans for dealing with (very) high capacity demands. It triggers different nursing ratios, calls in/retasks various people, limits ambulance transport to that hospital, etc.
Believe it or not, “internal disasters” were called during bad flu seasons. Its not like this is something new.
Now: frontline update:
We have been at our limit for COVID patients for at least a couple of weeks. I have actually seen higher daily census counts in the hospital, but we are maxed out on ICU capacity. We have probably tripled our ICU bedss, and all but one unit is full to the brim with COVID patients, most of them on ventilators. We can’t do any more – while we might be able to convert another unit to ICU, we don’t have the qualified staff to run it like an ICU. We are simply maxed out, every day. Protip: if you need to go to a hospital, go during the day, ideally afternoon – that’s when we discharge patients and beds open up. By 9:00 most nights, we are turning away every transfer request and hoping our ED intake isn’t too bad. Its not unusual for someone to come into the ED (mostly with COVID) and wait there overnight until a bed opens up.
This is comparable to, probably a little worse than, what we were seeing when AZ was a global hotspot in July, as far COVID goes. The difference this time is ICU patients; there’s just more of them. We’ve limited surgeries significantly (no more joint replacements), but not the full ban on elective surgeries. At least the idiots in Phoenix learned a lesson from that public health disaster. I think we are at the peak for this outbreak, but as ever, we’ll see.
We get the stories here, too, but it’s hard to know just what the fuck is going on. Especially since they have closed three hospitals and laid off a shit ton of people.
Thanks for the update.
Especially since they have closed three hospitals and laid off a shit ton of people.
Good lord. That is a direct result of the ban on elective surgeries, and the panic keeping people from going to the ED. We’re actually projecting (and this is pretty much universal) an overall 10% decrease in patients through at least the middle of the year. Purely as a result of the panic – people not coming to the ED and not going to see their doctors. We’ve attrited some of our “fixed”/back office departments down, but we haven’t laid off a single person.
It’s crazy, isn’t it? The cancer center near me is empty. WTF sense does that make?
Coronavirus kills cancer?
I think we’re at peak…. total, not just this wave.
Lol, wut?
I really would not try to fire that thing. Even if it could fire.
I like the comment that says “Thanks! #StillDangerous”
No. I don’t think it is.
Linked further down in the thread, the new Greta Thundberg:
https://twitter.com/wef/status/1345803381558964226
Looks like Greta turning eighteen is going to kill her career and she’s going to be replaced with a girl that’s younger and more racially ambiguous.
We always need another ugly 15 year old child to run global policy and scold all of us dumb old adults. See, this is why we’re in the trouble we are now, because people refused to let one of my least intelligent 7th grade classmates, run the world.
This teenager has a plan to mobilize young people everywhere
Same as the adults, fear-monger the young and impressionable.
Oh, shit, just realized that was the WEF. Now those assholes are using children.
Why do you care if they are using children. You use orphan slave labor. What kind of libertarian are you?
Late, but Fourscore, excellent!
(Quick—she’s here! Move to the other thread before she notices…Oh, hi Mojeaux!
I see what you did there! Harrumph.
Duke and Tommy were making those in 1948 out of cheap 22s. Shoot at squirrels down by the stone quarry in South Mpls, near the VA hospital. They always cut the barrel off shorter, too.
This is actually a term of art in the hospital world. It is used to activate plans for dealing with (very) high capacity demands. It triggers different nursing ratios, calls in/retasks various people, limits ambulance transport to that hospital, etc.
Believe it or not, “internal disasters” were called during bad flu seasons. Its not like this is something new.
Unfortunately, this is being covered by newschimps who apparently have never heard of triage, or ever dealt with a prioritized job list with a deadline.
Triage, in the sense of “deciding who won’t get an ICU bed or a ventilator, because we are out” is actually triggered at yet a higher level of “emergency”.
We haven’t hit that level (yet). Never in our 80 year history, as far as anyone knows, and not now. We are turning away transfers from other hospitals, but everyone inside our walls is getting what they need. We could pull the trigger on “allocation of scarce resources” at any time, but we haven’t.
Speaking of Covid killing fewer people…..
we got the covid.
Sister in Law came over for Christmas and infected the entire family.
For the “there is no testing” crowd, I’ve written this a few times, but I still have no idea where that narrative comes from. I hit the county health department website, had a choice of locations, and off we went. The entire family in tow, we got tested at a nearby park, walked up, no waiting and got the PCR test. Results were reported electronically immediately as the tests were done.
Sister in Law had to go to the hospital for inpatient care – remdesivir, steroids, antibiotics, etc.
I updated my inhaler prescription. Hopefully I don’t die a horrible death from suffocation.
What I learned?
The covid is weird. I expected the flu. It is not at all like the flu. We have had some low grade fevers intermittently, and some pretty hard core myalgia, but overall it has not been bad, 5 days in. If I didn’t know about the ‘vid, I definitely would have gone to work and infected everyone. I have symptoms, but they are not bad enough to stop me from working. And I’m an old fart.
Then I read that the danger period is days 8-12. Dang.
I get to spend the rest of the week wondering if I’m going to descend into a death spiral of lung disease. Or simply get better.
Overall, what I’ve learned so far is that the descriptions of covid in the media are wildly inadequate. It is weird. Really, really weird. It has neurological effects… my first symptom was an intense case of carpel tunnel syndrome. My wrists were super-painful, and my hands were going numb. All of my joints were painful. I have had some odd tingly feelings and then there’s the muscle pain (myalgia).
But there’s also the smell thing. The wife is losing her sense of taste. Says it is helping with her diet…
The boy and I both are experiencing some bizarre enhancements of acid smells. Things like ketchup and pickles are unbearably acrid.
The wife has vertigo like symptoms. I have had night sweats without really having much of a fever.
It is the oddest cold I have ever experienced.
I understand you getting tested, but for those who have not yet suspected they got the damn Commie Cough … every positive test lends ammunition to the little tyrants who are using the CaseDemic as the latest excuse to violate our civil rights. There is no fucking way I would take that test.
I’m not your supervisor, of course … you want to take the test, have at it, it’s your body. Just keep in mind how that will be used against you and everyone else.
We haven’t hit that level (yet). Never in our 80 year history, as far as anyone knows, and not now. We are turning away transfers from other hospitals, but everyone inside our walls is getting what they need. We could pull the trigger on “allocation of scarce resources” at any time, but we haven’t.
I was probably using “triage” in a more colloquial sense of “sorting by priority”. Some people go to the head of the line, some people wait.
Hospitals only “triage” in the ED, and its used to put people on the right track for care – ambulatory “treat and street” for stitches and broken bones, full-on drama for heart attacks and strokes, paliative “you ain’t gonna make it no matter what” care, etc.
The Guardian agonizes over fried chicken: I’ve always loved fried chicken. But the racism surrounding it shamed me:
I was not even conscious of the racist baggage fried chicken came with in the US
I thought it came with biscuits.
I like Floyd.
Good story Fourscore.