I've been having bad allergies the last week or two but that's because we've just started getting fall here. Still, had led to some nervous moments.

SI

Having done a bunch of weddings over the last few months at our winery, I can tell you with great certainty that simply having weddings is not going to result in a 'super spreader' event. The real problem is people refusing to wear masks at those events. They're all in a room, getting drunk, and refusing to wear masks. At some point, personal responsibility becomes a major contributing factor. Governments are having to act because people can't be troubled to smack a mask on their face for a few hours.

Same things are happening late nights at local watering holes, hence the reason for the 10:00 closing times on bars/restaurants.

So I am sent notifications when someone employed at the store where I shop for a living tests positive for COVID. That's happened 5-6 times since the spring. Half of those have been in the past two weeks.

This could become problematic.

Well that's just terrifying

That is the key point across the board in current times, and seems to be sadly lacking in a great many people in both our countries

I went to a wedding in late October and basically had a panic attack in the parking lot with the way everyone was crammed into such a small space. Had that same wedding happened this weekend, or the one before, I would have passed.

KY taking a series of steps to try to get Covid spread under control.

Somebody explain how this is going to be enforced.

Starting Friday at 5 pm, private gatherings in Kentucky are limited to your family and one other family until December 13th

— Matt Jones (@KySportsRadio) November 18, 2020

It won't, just like California's, or the Michigan two-household standard. Some will comply voluntarily, but it's mostly an exercise in appearing to do something.

Nothing the states say is really enforceable.

This goes back to Mizzou’s point


If people are too dumb to realise that this is for their own good and don’t follow the group size mandates, no sympathy if they get sick

Ugh, I've been informed that my 90+ year old grandmother has been diagnosed with covid :(

Sorry to hear. Hope she gets through it.

People are missing the point if they're primarily focusing on the masks, it's just a little piece of the puzzle. Masks aren't going to help you not infect others if you're not keeping enough distance, starting walking around, or wear flimsy material. The area being ventilated well is important as well. Additionally, putting the same mask on and off and on and off and on and off and on and off takes away from your own protection because you'll increase the number of times you're touching your face and increasing the odds of touching germs on the outside of that re-used mask.

My state has done somewhat more than the states who did nothing, but not much compared to other states. As far as restrictions/lock-downs. A lot of people are calling for more mask mandates, but I really wonder if they would help. Most everyone is wearing masks in the liberal-ish parts of the state (Boise, Sun Valley, Moscow), and almost nobody is wearing them everywhere else. I don't believe any anti-maskers are going to start wearing a mask because the government tells them to at this point. If anything, I think they'd become more defiant, and we'd see more gatherings.

It doesn't seem like any state is really enforcing any mandates on individuals, but some are going after businesses, which are of course easier to regulate.

Well, for a lot of people dumb or not isn't the issue; they value other things more highly than whether or not they get sick. The point I was making was about enforcement, not feeling sorry for anybody - ultimately at some point we decide to take the hit that comes from enforcement or we don't. Both approaches are problematic in different ways.

Ah, man. Sorry to hear, Nobodyhere.

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Sorry to hear, Nobody. Wish her the best.

Aren't they all cousins anyway? I kid, it's just as bad in Illinois, no one listens to the restrictions down state anyway and they're not being enforced. Our local hospital is buckling and there's no slowdown in sight. Until it's them, the locals all maintain it's a big hoax.

I hope your grandma will be okay. Scary for sure.

If nothing else, you have sth to add on when called for a noise complaint for example.

But almost none of any of the broader measures short of an actual "can't leave the house" mandate can be effectively enforced as such. But how is that different from a shit ton of other stuff at normal times ? Knowing it's not allowed is enough for plenty of people, for whome a mere recommendation isn't. There's also plenty of people who actually do make the connection that a mandate/law means that the problem is greater as opposed to it being merely combated with recommendations. That's human.
You don't need everybody to do it to get an effect.

This. We only have so many hospital beds and medical professionals to serve the communities. It is not an unlimited resource.

JFC

We need to bring back tar and feathering.

“Tyson Foods ordered employees to report for work while supervisors privately wagered money on the number of workers who would be sickened by the deadly virus.” https://t.co/xtHVpyCsro

— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) November 19, 2020

We've had a mask mandate since August. We've been warned against gatherings since March, including earlier limits on public gatherings and plenty of warnings about Memorial Day/July 4th/Labor Day/Halloween private get-togethers. The idea that now, an unenforceable restriction on private gatherings is going to do anything is laughable. In fact, I'd say that the same people who had no problem ignoring the previous advice will actually go out of their way to ignore the mandate. Within minutes of the governor's press conference, our Congressman issued a hyperbolic statement about destroying businesses, etc.

The restrictions on schools, restaurants, etc., might have an effect. The private gathering one will not - at least not for that portion of the population who has been ignoring the pandemic for 8 months.

You know what's dumb? That the CDC is NOW making statmeents telling people not to travel....instead of oh I don't know...a month ago. Why? because they were forbidden to by Trump and Pets so they could do their pet rallies. Their statements seriously mean nothing. Anyone who is smart won't travel and anyone who is stupid will. Thanksgiving is a joke of a holiday. It's a feed your face fest. Anyone can go to Kroger or costco and pick up a readybaked Turjkey with all the fixins and watch each other chew with their mouth open, drink a bottle of wine, say embarrassing things on zoom. This forced togetherness of the holidays has always been just really dumb....on the otherhand.....it does speak that if a holiday has to fortce you to see your family maybe there's a reason....one of which no one gets along the other being you are lazy and don't go home often enough. But either way doing so now is more of a punishment for all than usual.

Sorry, Crimson. I don't know who hurt you.

I love Thanksgiving. I love being with my extended family, telling stories and laughing. Watching the dog show, and then football while cracking jokes and eating great food. It is my favorite holiday, and it sucks it won't happen this year the same way.

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So apparently today we went back up over 2k for the first time and a number of other countries esp. Italy are doing worse proportionally. That's after the weekend being lower, even accounting for the usual Tuesday late-reporting bump. How long until 2k or worse becomes the new normal once again I wonder?

And then, after a full day of awesome food and football, you get to enjoy a 3 day weekend! I love that Thanksgiving gets the "holiday" part of the holiday out of the way at the beginning. 4 days and it's on day 1.

Not like Easter, which is always on a Sunday. Like seriously, what asshole schedules a holiday to always happen on a day you have off from work anyway!?

Just saw on the news 471,000 more deaths expected by March 1st.

Do you have any details on that tarcone? I'd be curious what assumptions it is based on, link to a source if there is one, etc.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/20/healt...ion/index.html

In a bizarre effort to further coddle the baby president, Geraldo Rivera suggests naming the vaccine after Trump as a "nice gesture."

I was thinking the next major advancement in hemorrhoid therapy, but(t)...

Poland didn't fare badly in the spring, but apparently it's getting very bad there now.

I'm not putting anything attached to Trump in my body unless Cohen cuts me a check for 130K

We could just call it the COVID vaccine, same as the flu vaccine or the polio vaccine or ...

no? Ok, it was just a thought.

Trump will call it the China vaccine sooner or later...

The Tremendously Great American Donald Trump Vaccine Against the CHINA Virus or TTGADTVAtCV for short. I mean why not? We already have a TDaP

One of many on this. It is the model the White house has been using.

US COVID-19 deaths could hit 400k by end of February, model finds

How long has it been since pence declared victory again?

400k total deaths by the end of February wouldn't surprise me. But what tarcone said was 471,000 more deaths, which would bring us to over 700k total.

That would be a horse of a different color.

No, it's the latest model run that shows 471K total deaths by March assuming about 40 states enact mask mandates.

Trump Jr has Covid. Rudy dyes his hair. Water is wet.

Rudy Is in isolation. Andrew tested positive.

Friday evening news dump.

Now it's at least 4 WH aides in addition to Guiliani have tested positive.

They should just call it the Trump virus at this point, because pretty soon his whole family will have had it

Call it TRRD

Trump related respiratory disease.

Trump Related Under-Masked Pneumonia or "Trump Disease" for short.

Look - I'm not good at naming things

SI

I mean Rudy's been displaying symptoms on live TV for seemingly three solid months now, this is a surprise to nobody.

Turns out he was sweating so much because he probably had a 102 degree temp.

I guess we can all stop guessing on whether or not Sweden was doing it right. They are drowning in covid and the official stance is now lock yourself down. Their numbers are off the charts compared to their neighboring countries.

Correct answer?

June 16.

There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave’ | The White House

So what is Indiana's policy on funerals nowadays?

The article basically says the impact of Covid has gotten some European countries to think about universal income and some are piloting it.

For purely selfish reasons, I would love to see it happen. I could live on $1,423 a months + savings (until SSN kicks in) if that meant not having to work again. But as a realist and just like how large number in the US has a different take on guns vs ROW, we have a different mentality ... I just don't see it happening universally in the US.

However, I am very interested in the results of the trials/pilots.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/23/econo...mic/index.html

UBI is inevitable eventually, but I think we're a few decades away yet from it actually happening. At least in the US.

I think it's probably a decade or two away from happening but if you told me you were from the future and said it was 2070 and it was just implemented, I wouldn't be shocked (ok, I'd be shocked about the "from the future" part but you get what I mean).

I think more than a time horizon, it's going to take another Depression with automation destroying any recovery. I don't think we're there yet and I don't think this one is going to do it. But I do still think there's a non-zero chance that we get to next year and find the economy goes back into a freefall when government and Fed stimulus is completely removed.

SI

I would love to see it happen too. I would strongly consider retiring.

However I am skeptical of it working right now. How will it affect inflation? How will we pay for it? We're looking at 3 trillion dollars a year for the US minimum. How will it affect the labor force?

With that said, I really hope some country (that's not mine) does give it a full scale run instead of these measly tests that have come in the past. I'd be extremely interested in the results.

I'm not sure it will require quite that much, but it might. I think a lot of it is just the current people dying and new generations replacing them - kind of like how some people go ape over self check-out lanes but younger people are mostly 'why wouldn't I want that?'. At a certain point people don't want to accept new things, but once most of the people left alive are from a generation when this was being talked about seriously at some level ... it gets a lot easier to implement at that stage.

Make billionaires pay more than $750 in taxes for starters.

This is the Costco I go to.

I'm glad they are enforcing their policy and confronting the non-compliant. Looks like the guy just wanted to be a dick and using the 4th Amendment as an excuse. I was initially concerned about the son but then read he was an adult son. I hope Costco bans him for life.

https://www.forsythnews.com/news/pub...g-mask-costco/

i truly do not understand someone choosing that hill to die on.

My wife was talking about being in Target today. They had kids up front asking people if they needed masks as they came in the store. She said people were just ugly to them, cussing them out. One lady made a big yelling ordeal about it and walked out. Classy place we live in.

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FWIW, went to dentist today. All good.

Hand sanitizers everywhere; every other chair blocked off in the front room; everyone wore disposable garb, hair nets, masks and put on a face shield while doing the procedure; gargled with something at the beginning; could see them wiping down chairs; had a bucket for unclean pens (e.g. after I signed a doc) etc.

Unfortunately, back tomorrow morning for the start of a crown (vs filling).

I had a cleaning and subsequent crown put on a couple of months ago. Everything went smoothly.

I don't want to derail the vaccine thread so I figured I use this catch all instead. Who are we calling essential workers when it comes to distribution of the vaccine? Using Florida as an example, are members of the WWE universe going to get the vaccine first as they are classified as essential workers?

Tis the season for crowns I guess, that's what I had done last. Thankfully don't have to go back until next year now. Glad it went well and that they were following Covid procedures

Another take.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-si...ed-falls-apart

I can believe maybe an incident but harder to believe multiple incidents. I may be wrong, but thinking she exaggerated for her 15 minutes of fame.

Apparently Whole Foods, where my girlfriend works, has an early-distribution plan for its workers that they're setting up now. They're at least expecting to be close to the front of the line. I wonder if household members count, or maybe I get get an early one if I finally get hitched.

I have no idea how that will all work in practicality though. I think it's up to the state governments, who probably make arrangements with hospitals and schools and grocery stores, etc, to get to distribute to them first, I guess through a hospital clinic.

See this is where the arguments from earlier this summer makes things tricky. Well tricky is a relative term given what we will and will not remember in two months. Let's take schools. The reason it was fine to open up schools is that there was a small chance of the kids passing it around to each other and an even smaller chance of them getting really sick from it and the teachers just had to suck it up. Shouldn't that the last place we should be worry about vaccinating? That does not go into the stuff whomario talked about the different standards for kids vaccinations. On the other hand, it makes sense that Whole Foods is setting up their program. We need to keep the workforce going to keep the country from shutting down. They should get the vaccine first, no?

The state legislature better get going with their protect businesses from COIVD laws because the lawsuits are a-coming.

A Publix employee died from COVID-19. Now his family is suing over his death.

F McConnell and his liability shield. We want to pretend this is all about "personal responsibility" when we're not putting any institutional responsibility behind restrictions. It's all the fault of individuals and not the people in charge of running these larger systems.

I mean just look at the Costco incident above. Costco is sortof trying but I'm sure it's like most places - they're not going to turn away a customer not wearing a mask right. They're just putting lip service to it - no one's getting fired for not enforcing the policy. And the police said "we aren't going to enforce this" so it's not like a company is going to do it. And, of course, at the federal level, we've seen little helpful.

SI

It pretty clearly falls under workers compensation laws. Not sure why additional protections are needed for businesses.

The lawyers on the board can correct me if I am wrong but it seem pretty similar to the concussion cases in football. How do we know he got the virus in Publix as opposed to say while he was getting a haircut or working out in the gym?

Lawsuits often aren't about winning but trying to get a Nuisance Fee paid out. That's the real fear for small business (like mine). I shut my office down yesterday and am making everyone *basically work remotely for this very reason. While I trust my agents wholeheartedly, if one of them gets sick and god forbid gets really really sick or dies, I'm afraid of the lawsuits that will be lobbed my way. *Cancelling the Xmas party too.

These people are SO stupid it actually hurts. Although in this case, this dude isn't stupid, but he knows the people he's speaking to are.

Have you noticed that no Democratic leader has suffered Covid-19 but Republicans leaders have had more than their fair share?

Or is it just me?

Or is Covid-19 partisan? pic.twitter.com/PrLkkb6HQQ

— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) November 25, 2020

Did you ever notice that the people playing Russian roulette are much more likely to get shot than those who don't?

Yeah, but at least they are out there living and defending their freedom rather than letting themselves be forced to do the smart thing !

I mean, i just learned from like the 5th reply that democrats work from home AND LIKE IT ! The Bastards !

The replies are just mindblowing, perfect smorgasbord of every Covid19 conspiracy theory and 'skepticism' out there. If you told them they need to follow guidance for 3 days to kill off the Pandemic, they would still waste all 3 days arguing about how it isn't actually a Problem and none of the guidances do anything.

Pfizer stays the first vaccinations in America will occur as early as December 11, or at worst the next week. Even though that initial roll-out is limited, I think our perspective on all of this is going to be so much more hopeful when millions of Americans will be vaccinated every month going forward.

Walked by maskless lady in target.
She was talking with another maskless commiserating that she was accosted in costco.
That's because you're a bitch.

Getting sick during a pandemic is a bit scary. My oldest came home from his job at the the College on Monday with a hacking cough and was just not feeling good. We kept pegging him with questions about his other symptoms, and watched him all week. By all appearances it looked like he had a shitty cold. No fever any more than a mid 99.

Then I got sick. But I always get sick this time of year. I have nearly chronic upper respiratory that frequently devolves into Bronchitis and sometimes Pneumonia. Exact same shallow hacking cough started Wednesday. Yesterday I felt like shit. Made it most of the day, no temp above 99.6 and ended up in bed early. Came around a bit later, but still not great. Sometime last night 'something' broke, because my bed was a mess because I was sweating all over. Woke up today feeling a lot better, except as expected, the cough is working its way down my lungs. Trying to keep it as clean as possible, but the fear that it's something more is always in the back of my mind. So far, it feels mostly normal, but that it could have been something else was nerve wracking. I've been waiting all this time to go back to training and now I'm supposed to go next week and spend 12 hours in a simulator. If I've got this cough, ain't no way that's happening. Nobody will want that. Totally frustrating.

Did you get tested for covid?

No, the system doesn't seem to be set up for any short notice tests. Scheduled yes, but they are almost 2 weeks out testing last time I looked and the symptoms don't seem bad enough to really warrant going to the dr.

I guess I'm lazy. There are quite a few places that take walk up appointments. We've talked about it, but still think it's all cold, not covid. No testing necessary.

They just started to offer quick antibody tests at the local supermarket pharmacies around here, and I am debating getting one, purely out of curiosity.

Shrug

I drove up and did a test through my driver's side window and had the results in a few hours. Took multiple tests while my wife and son had it and luckily all of mine were negative. Could one be wrong? Sure, but that's why in statistics you do a bunch of tests and throw out the anomalies.

I was being passive/aggressive towards a couple people today. We have a mask mandate in our county and they had their masks below their nose. So I was making comments and turning my head.

Then one old lady responded she had emphysema. As she was buying her cigarettes, I had to make a comment bout health care costs.

Yes, I was being an asshole today. It has been awhile since I have been.

As I left the station, I got a loud " SUCK MY DICK"

It was a great visit to the gas station

Wow.

My daughter's best friend in elementary school lost her grandmother to COVID today.

tarcone is just a commie loving sheep.

... who apparently visits seedy gas stations.

I love how the media is treating the vaccine like its a celebrity, or a member of the royal family.

Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Arrives at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport: Source – NBC Chicago

Pretty plane.

Or, as we say in rural Indiana, just "gas stations"...

I'm okay with Trump saying states get to make the decision and allocation is based on states' population. Arguably it would be better on a Federal level but I lean towards a state would be better to make the "hard" decisions assuming vaccines are available proportionately by population and some sort of "guidance" is given on the Federal level.

In states with high illegal population, no idea if they would be counted in the proportional allocation but interesting dilemma. If illegal status is not taken into account, every illegal getting a shot early means one less US citizen/PR getting a shot. With a limited supply early on, this question has heightened importance. My guess is ethicists would say do not consider whether a person is illegal or not.

FWIW, I did consider if this was better in the Trump thread; but decided better here as the distribution & prioritization of vaccines is really the more important focus.

Trump administration leaves states to grapple with how to distribute scarce vaccines - POLITICO

I'd prefer a federal response but with the ability of a state to petition for a change. The big problem with state level decisions is that people don't stay within state boundaries.

Probably 6-in-one. Both have positives and negatives. I would hope the guideline regardless would be hospital works, front-line workers, and then essential workers.

PPE and Ventilators got the same treatment in the spring (complete with staged photoops), i'm hardly surprised. Or remember that hospital ship ?

I prefer a response that keeps Trump away from any decision-making.

That is a good point for it to be a state's call.

So an analysis of blood donations from last December show some Americans had antibodies specific to this particular Coronavirus strain, which would imply that some people had it prior to then.

Additionally, a new study in Italy that went through samples from a specific cancer trial showed similar things in patients from September 2019.

No idea what to make if it, though.