[Cyberyeti]

 cherdano, on 2021-March-19, 06:25, said:

I am wondering whether the UK took the "1st jabs first" strategy a bit too far. Yes, it seems to help more to give a 1st shot to a 70-year old than a second shot to an 80-year old. But is it more important to give a 1st short to a 50-year old than a second shot to a 85-year old? E.g. in Scotland, over the course of the pandemic 85-year olds were 9 times as likely to need hospitalisation than 45-64-year olds, or more than 20 times the chance of 25-44 year olds; the figures for deaths are much more extreme than that. So the additional 10% protection from a second short for some might be more important than the 70-80% protection from the first shot for someone else.

"1st jabs first" does help to bring case numbers down more quickly, so it's a tricky trade-off (and depends on how long you are willing to keep up other NPIs, etc.).

My instinctive view is that once you get the first jab into all the people with underlying health conditions under 65, then the priority should be second jabs for the most vulnerable, although the people at the extreme end of most vulnerable I think are the ones that have had their second jabs in many cases whether because of age or because they're health workers.

It seems this may be actually happening by accident with the delays in vaccine supply.

[kenberg]

I'm 82. I have had both shots (pfizer) . I have said in earlier posts that I thought there were others who should have higher priority but still, there are two important parts: When my turn came i wanted it as soon as I could, and I wanted both of them. One shot (Becky has now had her first but not yet her second) means well, you are sort of ok, maybe. I would never quote Sinatra's My Way, I think it's a stupid song, but "All or Nothing at All" matches my way of thinking pretty well..

Why did I think others should have higher priority even though we octogenarians are likely to die from it if we get it? Because of the "if". Today I am posting this, later I will go for a walk, then I will lay online bridge. There are a couple of people back in Minnesota I will probably call and chat with. Oh, and I am out of coffee so I have to go to the drive-through at Starbucks, that's the closest I get to anyone. We will keep are distance there and wear masks. Except for Becky, I don't expect to be within six feet, or even within ten feet, of anyone without a mask. Same yesterday, same the day before. Others have far more complex lives with greater responsibilities. If someone were to say to me "Say, Ken, you are going to have to wait a month or so for your shot so we can give the vaccine to this working mother with three kids" I would reply "Makes sense to me". But when my number comes up to get the vaccine, I want it, and by it I mean both shots.

Right now, here in the US, it seems that we might finally be getting our act together. The first few months seemed like those in charge were saying "Oh. We have a vaccine? Who knew that would be happening? Well, I suppose we have to give it to people. I wonder how we should go about that." It's rolling along a lot better now.

[Winstonm]

 kenberg, on 2021-March-19, 07:31, said:

I'm 82. I have had both shots (pfizer) . I have said in earlier posts that I thought there were others who should have higher priority but still, there are two important parts: When my turn came i wanted it as soon as I could, and I wanted both of them. One shot (Becky has now had her first but not yet her second) means well, you are sort of ok, maybe. I would never quote Sinatra's My Way, I think it's a stupid song, but "All or Nothing at All" matches my way of thinking pretty well..

Why did I think others should have higher priority even though we octogenarians are likely to die from it if we get it? Because of the "if". Today I am posting this, later I will go for a walk, then I will lay online bridge. There are a couple of people back in Minnesota I will probably call and chat with. Oh, and I am out of coffee so I have to go to the drive-through at Starbucks, that's the closest I get to anyone. We will keep are distance there and wear masks. Except for Becky, I don't expect to be within six feet, or even within ten feet, of anyone without a mask. Same yesterday, same the day before. Others have far more complex lives with greater responsibilities. If someone were to say to me "Say, Ken, you are going to have to wait a month or so for your shot so we can give the vaccine to this working mother with three kids" I would reply "Makes sense to me". But when my number comes up to get the vaccine, I want it, and by it I mean both shots.

Right now, here in the US, it seems that we might finally be getting our act together. The first few months seemed like those in charge were saying "Oh. We have a vaccine? Who knew that would be happening? Well, I suppose we have to give it to people. I wonder how we should go about that." It's rolling along a lot better now.

I agree that the most vulnerable should be first to receive the vaccine - and new studies are showing that the older population is more susceptible to re-infection. That is not the whole story, though. I could self-isolate. Some could not. It would have been O.K. with me to wait a while longer if it meant those at higher risk of contact received the doses. Overall, I'm just grateful for a competent administration finally getting something done about the pandemic. I'm not going to complain about timing.

[pilowsky]

There seem to be both "vaccine altruists" and "anti-vaxxer hesitants" out there in the real world.
Neither of these positions is going to help bring the pandemic under control.
Like rabbits and other disrupters of global ecosystems, viruses care nothing for borders, synthesised human emotions, or anything else.

The concept of "this group first" or "women and children first" or "we must ensure our own supply first" or any other rationalisation that slows the rollout to every corner of the globe as quickly and efficiently as possible is simply King Canutism.

Smallpox was not eradicated by vaccinating health care workers first, or Americans or Australians or Europeans.

There is now so much vaccine available that it needs to be rolled out as quickly as possible to the closest arms.
If it isn't done this way, then viral evolution will mock both the altruists and the hesitators.

On the "supply-side", the Australian government has made it difficult for regular GP's to provide the vaccine.
A website with information about how and when one can get vaccinated was set up.
Since I fall into Category 1B, I can get a shot on Monday. In Australia, vaccination is free. But when I contacted the closest clinic (not my actual GP), they demanded that I register as a patient. It turns out that some GP's are insisting (illegally) that people pay for a consult before they get the shot. Hopefully, our useless government this egregious and avaricious behaviour will soon be stamped out.

I have to say that my gorge rose a few centimetres (inches for the Americans and Brits) when I discovered that a convoy of cars carried Murdoch to a vaccination clinic that held its doors open for him.
His eager craft wheeled and sped along to prevent him from slipping the surly bonds of earth, enabling him to reach out and touch his 90th Birthday.

Still I think it is a good thing that everyone gets the jab - even those that promote anti-vaxxer sentiment in their global news network.

[kenberg]

Both altruism and hesitancy come in degrees.

For me the altruism is "Hey, if you were to ask me then I have a suggestion but if you say that it's my turn now, well, here's my arm". Hesitancy could be lack of blind faith in the medical community, a very understandable lack. If that's the source of hesitancy, conversation is worthwhile. Unfortunately, there are a number of people out there who seem to have lost their minds. I discuss things with my doctor and after that I usually but not always take his advice. And if I don't take his advice I see someone else. A little caution is natural and, based on my experience, very warranted. But those who are saying something akin to "Well, those cheating Dems stole the election but they are not ramming that needle into me or convincing me covid is real", those guys are psycho, and numerous enough to pose a serious problem.

[pilowsky]

 kenberg, on 2021-March-19, 11:14, said:

Both altruism and hesitancy come in degrees.

For me the altruism is "Hey, if you were to ask me then I have a suggestion but if you say that it's my turn now, well, here's my arm". Hesitancy could be lack of blind faith in the medical community, a very understandable lack. If that's the source of hesitancy, conversation is worthwhile. Unfortunately, there are a number of people out there who seem to have lost their minds. I discuss things with my doctor and after that I usually but not always take his advice. And if I don't take his advice I see someone else. A little caution is natural and, based on my experience, very warranted. But those who are saying something akin to "Well, those cheating Dems stole the election but they are not ramming that needle into me or convincing me covid is real", those guys are psycho, and numerous enough to pose a serious problem.

Unfortunately, those people are not 'psycho' as you artfully put it.
Those people constitute about one-third of the world's population.
I do understand that you are using the term "psycho" loosely, but one person's psycho may be quite normal to someone else.
I have a lot of trouble making any sense out of the ideas that religious people hold dear, but I understand that are quite a few of them around- more than half the population.

For me, the simplest "are you ruled by blind faith" test is the "external locus of control test".
A person is governed by an external locus of control is when their actions are guided by principles or values laid down by someone or something other than themselves.
To some extent, an external locus of control is a developmental phenomenon. We all begin life with the idea that everything is 'controlled' by factors outside and not by our own actions. It seems to me that this is certainly true. As we grow older, we acquire a sense that more and more of what we do is within our own control.
To put it another way, a mature person does not say things like. "I must (act in a particular way) because (choose one) God/the Law/my Partner/the Devil etc says that I must.
The recent Atlanta shooter who states (apparently) that he shot those people because he had a sex addiction is an extreme example.
No, the mature adult acts because they have an internal locus of control. They act because they believe that their action is the most appropriate to any given circumstance AND they are willing to take responsibility for the consequences. When an outcome is not to their liking they do not say "It's Gods will" they try to learn from it and move on.
We all have some mixture of internal and external.
Here, I agree completely with your comment about being altruistic to a degree.
When learning to play Bridge for example I always made a fourth-down lead in a no trump contract BECAUSE I had it on my card and if an angry declarer shouted: "what are your leads!"
I didn't want to be in a position of being held to account for doing the wrong thing. Now, I try to make leads based on other factors and wear any opprobrium: real or imagined.

What I am getting at this that my posit about "altruists" and "hesistants" was not intended to disparage the motivations of any individual.
Right now, I am simultaneously feeling all of those emotions.
After all, it is always possible that when someone sticks a needle in your arm bad things will happen, also, there are certainly other people that - from a hard utilitarian perspective - warrant the vaccination sooner than me.

We have waded into a quagmire of moral philosophy. Health practitioners and philosophers have worked on this problem for decades without coming to a solution.
A few decades back someone introduced the idea of QALY's (http://bit.ly/OregonQualy. quality of life years) the idea was that by attaching a monetary value to the amount of "quality life" a person might have, It would be possible to appropriately allocate scarce health resources (see the reference and quote below).
It's a system that might appeal to the computationally minded, but if you are the 51st person in line for cancer treatment and the 50 allocations have been used up you might think differently.

By the way, Rotter's second most highly cited paper (>1000 and counting) is titled "A new scale for the measurement of interpersonal trust" - something that may be of value to Bridge players (see third quote below).

Quote

When a reinforcement is perceived by the subject as following some action of his own but not being entirely contingent upon his action, then, in our culture, it is typically perceived as the result of luck, chance, fate, as under the control of powerful others, or as unpredictable because of the great complexity of the forces surrounding him. When the event is interpreted in this way by an individual, we have labelled this a belief in external control. If the person perceives that the event is contingent upon his own behavior or his own relatively permanent characteristics, we have termed this a belief in internal control. Julian Rotter (1966) Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied 80:1 cited 10,017 times (20 March 2021)

Quote

Aust Health Rev (1992);15(2):124-34.
The value of health care: what can we learn from Oregon?
A Street, J Richardson
PMID: 10119044
Abstract
The scarcity of health care resources leads to rationing amongst potential users by one means or another. When the market is rejected, rationing should be conducted on the basis of systematic and informed priority setting. It has been widely suggested that these priorities should be based on health benefits measured by quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and recently the US State of Oregon has attempted to use QALYs for setting priorities on a large scale. Values not normally associated with QALY analysis were also incorporated in the process. Their unique experience is of interest in Australia, as no attempt has been made here to prioritize medical interventions on the scale that was undertaken in Oregon.

Quote

"A new scale for the measurement of interpersonal trust" Julian B. Rotter, University of Connecticut DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1967.tb01454.x
Journal of Personality. , 1967, Vol.35(4), p.651-665
One of the most salient factors in the effectiveness of our present complex social organization is the willingness of one or more individuals m a social unit to trust others. The efficiency, adjustment, and even survival of any social group depends upon the presence or absence of such trust. Interpersonal trust is defined here as an expectancy held by an individual or a group that the word, promise, verbal or written statement of another individual or group can be relied upon.

[cherdano]

 kenberg, on 2021-March-19, 07:31, said:

Why did I think others should have higher priority even though we octogenarians are likely to die from it if we get it? Because of the "if". Today I am posting this, later I will go for a walk, then I will lay online bridge. There are a couple of people back in Minnesota I will probably call and chat with. Oh, and I am out of coffee so I have to go to the drive-through at Starbucks, that's the closest I get to anyone.

First of all, I am happy that you are vaccinated!
Second, in the figures I gave above for Scotland, I used the risk to have been hospitalised since the pandemic started. Not the risk "if" someone got sick. Obviously, that "if" also differs hugely from octogenarian to octogenarian.
Scotland started giving 2nd shots to care home residents some weeks back, earlier than the originally planned 12-weeks after the first shot. That seemed right to me. I don't know whether England did the same.

[kenberg]

 cherdano, on 2021-March-19, 19:03, said:

First of all, I am happy that you are vaccinated!
Second, in the figures I gave above for Scotland, I used the risk to have been hospitalised since the pandemic started. Not the risk "if" someone got sick. Obviously, that "if" also differs hugely from octogenarian to octogenarian.
Scotland started giving 2nd shots to care home residents some weeks back, earlier than the originally planned 12-weeks after the first shot. That seemed right to me. I don't know whether England did the same.

For those on care then yes, they need to get taken care of quickly. At least part of the reason is to protect those also care for them, but also to protect them.

We can probably agree in general terms that prioritizing isn't easy. We hear a lot about the likelihood of death for someone my age if they get covid. And the likelihood of hospitalization is relevant as well. I am not opposed to considering such factors. But I think we should also consider whether the person is in a reasonable position to sharply reduce the likelihood of infection through reasonable behavior. Of course, I look forward to more actively participating in public gatherings, as simple as going to a movie. I got my first shot maybe in the beginning of February, I don't recall exactly. But if someone said "Hey, Ken, we will get to you in mid-March or maybe early April but right now there are some people whose lives are not as simple as yours and we need to get to them first." then fine, I could understand that. Otoh, if they said "Hey Ken, you are 82, that's long enough for you, we will give it to those who have a longer life expectancy than you do" I would sort of see the logic but I would strenuously object.

But done is done. The priorities have been set and I go with them. Maybe they are right. I cooperate with the plan.And now the plan seems to be working pretty well. A very rocky start.


I recall that you focused on hospitalization and noted that in the trials J&j didn't have anyone hospitalized, same with Pfizer and Moderna. A specific case: Becky is younger than I am but her turn came up. She had a choice: J &J last week or Pfizer this week. She went with Pfizer. Her choice entirely, of course, but I agreed with her after she chose. Hospitalization is not the only thing. Probably the choice was based in part on her, like me, finding it easy to escape contact. Since I have had both doses, I do the grocery shopping and any other errands of that sort. Of course, I still wear a mask and keep my distance, but Becky could just sit back for an extra week, encounter no one, and get the vaccine with the higher efficacy rating. Sounded right to her, sounded right to me.

We do what we think is right and I see our choices as reasonable.

[barmar]

 kenberg, on 2021-March-19, 19:35, said:

But done is done. The priorities have been set and I go with them. Maybe they are right. I cooperate with the plan.And now the plan seems to be working pretty well. A very rocky start.

No one was forcing you to get the shot as soon as you became eligible. It's not like they were waiting for all the folks in group 1 to get their shots before they opened it up to group 2. But unless there's a shortage of doses and you were taking a spot from someone you thought was more deserving, what would be the point of "vaccine altruism"?

While I plan on getting mine as soon as I'm eligible (MA is opening up to 60+ next week, and I turn 60 the week after), I think I certainly could get by waiting a little longer. I live a pretty solitary lifestyle, I've been working from home for the past 9 years. Most of my group activities were bridge clubs and tournaments, and they're not going to restart for months no matter what I do. So I'll still be social distancing. I'm not going to be able to put away my masks when I get jabbed.

But I assume they're opening it up to more people because they have the supply needed for all of us. So I'll do my part and get the shot.

[barmar]

 kenberg, on 2021-March-18, 07:28, said:

I saw that Trump made some halfway supportive comment about taking the vaccine but we need more and better from leaders on the right.

Fauci went on Fox News and implored Trump to encourage his supporters to get the vaccine.

What Trump ended up doing was putting out a press release that was mostly about himself (surprise!), claiming that we wouldn't have the vaccine for 4 years if it weren't for him. It kind of recommended getting it.

But imagine if he touted the vaccine in a rally like the way he suggested storming the Capital. The man does have influence, wouldn't it be great if he would use it for good, not evil?

[johnu]

 barmar, on 2021-March-19, 23:49, said:

Fauci went on Fox News and implored Trump to encourage his supporters to get the vaccine.

The Manchurian President was secretly vaccinated before he left office. This didn't reach the press or public until early March. If he had any interest in the public welfare of America, he would have publicized his (and Melania's) shots and encouraged everybody, including his supporters, to get vaccinated as soon as they became eligible.

Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox, flew to the UK to cut in line to be one of the first people to get vaccinated there. A large number of Fox Propaganda wingnuts are actively crusading against getting vaccinated, even though their big boss was one of the 1st groups to get vaccinated. There is no incentive (ie money) in broadcasting to encourage people to get vaccinated.

[kenberg]

 barmar, on 2021-March-19, 23:49, said:

Fauci went on Fox News and implored Trump to encourage his supporters to get the vaccine.

What Trump ended up doing was putting out a press release that was mostly about himself (surprise!), claiming that we wouldn't have the vaccine for 4 years if it weren't for him. It kind of recommended getting it.

But imagine if he touted the vaccine in a rally like the way he suggested storming the Capital. The man does have influence, wouldn't it be great if he would use it for good, not evil?

One of the few areas where Trump has been consistent is in seeing everything in terms of himself.

Trump tells his supporters he will be with them as they march on the capitol, four years ago he tells his supporters that he will pay their legal fees. In between, he supports Te Proud Boys and such. Trump's own interests are involved, so we heard strong statements and a sense of urgency.

Now he endorses getting a vaccine. Sure, that's a change over saying covid will go away like a miracle. But a sense of urgency is lacking.

Quote

"I would recommend it," Trump said during an interview on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo.

Ok, better than nothing., A little better than nothing, but not much. Nothing remotely akin to his enthusiasm for marching on the capitol. Getting the vaccine involves the good of the country, something that is not on Trump's list of priorities. So don't expect urgency.

Trump is Trump. No change. Trump is important to Trump, nothing else matters to Trump. This has always been obvious, or so it seems to me. So forget Trump. Both Bush's cared about the country, as did Reagan and Ford, and for that matter so did Nixon. Not perfect people but neither was Clinton, either of them. It's one thing to be imperfect, another thing entirely to have no interest in the well-being of anyone or anything other than yourself.

We need help from those of a conservative mind in getting people to take this vaccine. That help will not be coming from Trump. No chance, absolutely no chance. But there are others out there. We need to hear from them.

[pilowsky]

The interesting thing about Trump is his use of the "passive voice" in absolutely everything. I see this in academic writing all the time.

Academics will never say 100% or speak in the present tense when the past or future pluperfect has been or would have been better, but not necessarily always.
The level of devious obscurantism in Trumpspeak (as with newspeak) is impressive.

When the totalitarian regimes - and it's getting harder and harder to differentiate these days since there are so few real democracies around anymore - feel that a citizen "doesn't know their place" they say that they are in need of "re-education".
When I Google "re-education" some excellent explanations come up.

The funniest/saddest is an astonishing mismangling of the truth in which the "theft" of the recent US election is resulting in threats by "Democrats" to - you can read it here.
One of the worst most egregious pieces of conspiracy theory drivel I've come across.

Quote

The coup attempted on November 7, 2020, of presidential imposter Joe Biden to enhance the Democratic Party and its comrades. Despite it is just a dream coming from the nightmare of the rigged election collapsed after the US government and the people discovered, therefore, Democrats remain the snap daydream as the presidential election winner. Certainly, the coup of Joe Biden focuses to rob the US government and creates mayhem in the United States of America.

The Democratic politician David Atkin who was elected as a California member of the Democratic National Committee threatens to send 75,000,000 voters of President Donald Trump to the re-education camp. The re-education camp's system of communists is the most barbarous treatment of the people on the planet. The re-education camp is like the concentration camp of Hitler in the Second World War, the Third Reich killed more than 6 million Jewish people. Therefore, the re-education of communist in the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, North Korea, and others killed tens of millions of people by cruel methods, the common treatments have applied starvation, forced laborer, the worst accommodation, illness without medicine, torture, execution and current spiritual threat. The re-education camp destroys the human minds, instead of the brainwash applies. President Barrack Obama brainwashed the US people in 8 years and nowadays, toxic communism remains in the US society including the students.
- There's a lot more.
DEMOCRATS THREATEN THE RE-EDUCATION CAMP

Posted on November 22, 2020 Hoa Truong

https://bit.ly/BigLieHT

Posted in Published Articles

We can make up all the silly names we want to describe Trump, but Trump is not the problem. Reading Woodward's first book, it quickly becomes obvious that Trump is better imagined as Chance the Gardener from Being there.
He likes to watch (https://www.thechara...ce-the-gardener).

He never listens, just regurgitates in a completely garbled form the last thing anyone said to him that makes him sound agreeable. All smoke and no fire.

Trump is the golem
Raised by evil forces as a slave
Cast aside
He now seeks to destroy.

Or as Joan Didion/ W.B. Yeats might have said,
Trump is like some rough beast, having loosed anarchy upon the USA, slouches towards Florida, hoping to be reborn.
To break things in the Spring.

While the rest of us,

Quote

...the fortunate ones, through money,
or influence, or luck, might obtain
exit visas and scurry to Lisbon, and
from Lisbon to the New World. But
the others wait in Casablanca -- and
wait — and wait — and wait.

[pilowsky]

It was a little over 20 Years ago today (http://bit.ly/20AgoYrs) that the human genome was first sequenced.
The findings were published in Nature (the publicly funded group) and Science (Venter’s outfit) on February 15 and 16, respectively, in 2001.


This breakthrough drove much of the success in human genomics research. It was the medical science “moon-landing” of its day.


Without this work and the excitement that grew around it, the Moderna vaccine would have been impossible.


When people say things like (as they often do) “Why don’t those University types in their ivory towers get out and do some stuff that is of practical benefit?” or worse “, Those scientists are wasting our money, we should decide what projects they work on.”
They should remember that the people who work for and in those companies that produce vaccines and the like had to be educated first.
It is no surprise that many companies co-locate with great universities (e.g. Research Triangle in North Carolina), which houses UNC, Duke and NCS.


Those companies go to places like Research Triangle so that they can cream off the PhD graduates without having to pay for their education.


Imagine the social dividend if employers had to repay the taxpayer for the education that state Universities provide them for nothing.

[kenberg]

 pilowsky, on 2021-March-21, 10:57, said:

The interesting thing about Trump is his use of the "passive voice" in absolutely everything. I see this in academic writing all the time.

Academics will never say 100% or speak in the present tense when the past or future pluperfect has been or would have been better, but not necessarily always.
The level of devious obscurantism in Trumpspeak (as with newspeak) is impressive.

I'll get back to covid in a moment but I don't often see a reference to the pluperfect and I just couldn't let this pass w/o a comment.

I began high school in 1952 and was placed in College Prep, a bit surprising since in my last year of elementary school I had become upset with my mother for bragging to neighbors about my grades and so I had deliberately and successfully set out to get bad grades. Anyway, I was put, no one asked me they just put me, in Spanish 1. Mrs. Kukler explained Spanish grammar and became frustrated by students not knowing English grammar so she announced that for two weeks we would not study Spanish we would study English. My eighth-grade teacher, Miss Kinne, was good so I did not need to learn how to tell an adjective from an adverb (some kids needed that) but I had never before heard of the pluperfect. Apparently, the pluperfect is very important in Spanish. For the two years that I was taking Spanish, I had some vague idea of what the pluperfect was, but I have long since forgotten.

Anyway, back to covid. This will be just a light comment.

Yesterday I had a regular dental appointment, tooth cleaning, check of the teeth, that sort of thing. The hygienist asked me how I was, I said fine, that was enough about me, she then talked about an upcoming date. She had divorced two years ago, had not started dating right after the divorce, and then covid hit. This upcoming date is her first date in two years. Excited? Like a schoolgirl. Since she spends her working days with her hands in people's mouths I trust that she got her shots long ago. Her date? I didn't ask. As I left I told her I wanted to hear all about this new guy at my next appointment.

People are seriously ready for this to be over.

For those such as myself who have only scant knowledge of modern dating practices: She met him on Facebook, he's local, they chatted on FB for a while, then she asked him why he had not yet asked her out, then he asked her out. She says she thinks he is a bit shy. So was I when I was young. Women need to help us along.

[pilowsky]

 kenberg, on 2021-March-25, 07:45, said:

I'll get back to covid in a moment but I don't often see a reference to the pluperfect and I just couldn't let this pass w/o a comment.

I began high school in 1952 and was placed in College Prep, a bit surprising since in my last year of elementary school I had become upset with my mother for bragging to neighbors about my grades and so I had deliberately and successfully set out to get bad grades. Anyway, I was put, no one asked me they just put me, in Spanish 1. Mrs. Kukler explained Spanish grammar and became frustrated by students not knowing English grammar so she announced that for two weeks we would not study Spanish we would study English. My eighth-grade teacher, Miss Kinne, was good so I did not need to learn how to tell an adjective from an adverb (some kids needed that) but I had never before heard of the pluperfect. Apparently, the pluperfect is very important in Spanish. For the two years that I was taking Spanish, I had some vague idea of what the pluperfect was, but I have long since forgotten.

Anyway, back to covid. This will be just a light comment.

Yesterday I had a regular dental appointment, tooth cleaning, check of the teeth, that sort of thing. The hygienist asked me how I was, I said fine, that was enough about me, she then talked about an upcoming date. She had divorced two years ago, had not started dating right after the divorce, and then covid hit. This upcoming date is her first date in two years. Excited? Like a schoolgirl. Since she spends her working days with her hands in people's mouths I trust that she got her shots long ago. Her date? I didn't ask. As I left I told her I wanted to hear all about this new guy at my next appointment.

People are seriously ready for this to be over.

For those such as myself who have only scant knowledge of modern dating practices: She met him on Facebook, he's local, they chatted on FB for a while, then she asked him why he had not yet asked her out, then he asked her out. She says she thinks he is a bit shy. So was I when I was young. Women need to help us along.

I can certainly empathise with that story.
As an international man of mystery myself (married at 19), dating practices are a bit of mystery to me - then and now.


Did you know that there are two types of vole in America? The prairie vole and the Meadow vole.
The Prairie vole is a monogamous animal. They mate and bond for life. The meadow vole, on the other hand, is a louche animal who enjoys multiple partners.


I often think about voles when I observe couples and their behaviour towards each other. I think there may be at least one more type in humans - the serial monogamist.
Perhaps this represents incomplete penetrance of the prairie vole gene?


Alone once in an Italian restaurant a few years back, a couple was sitting next to me. The conversation seemed a little strange. He would talk about his accomplishments for a while, and then she would do the same.
After a while, she went to the bathroom. I started chatting with the man who explained to me that they had met on a dating app.
"Yes," he commented, "I score about 1 in 5". - Meadow vole for sure.

[pilowsky]

So, now the truth is coming out.
Trump and his associates lied about everything.
Redfield (CDC head) claims that he was pressured to change the MMWR. This means that the Trump administration tried to get the CDC to lie about the number of deaths in the USA.
And much more from Birx, Giroir and Fauci. https://edition.cnn....upta/index.html


There's a word that is used when a political policy is the cause of hundreds of thousands of deaths.


Let's be clear. A pandemic is an entirely predictable event. They happen all the time. Not just once in a hundred years.
Failure to be prepared and act appropriately caused hundreds of thousands of needless deaths.


Does anyone think things will be better next time?

[pilowsky]

Just in case anyone is interested, I came across this while tidying up.
Turns out that Tony Fauci is very prolific - during the 1980's he was publishing a paper every 10.8 days.
This made him the busiest (and only) immunologist in the world. Ranking 17 in publication rate.
The guy that came first was awarded the 1992 Ignoble prize for literature.
"...for the 948 scientific papers he published between the years 1981 and 1990, averaging more than one every 3.9 days."

[pilowsky]

A link to the ourworldindata.org covid vaccination dashboard - https://ourworldinda...ISR~GBR~USA~CHN
The election of Biden has done nothing to change the rate of vaccination.
The new administration is simply continuing the linear trend that began when the vaccine became available.
Today, 30% of the US population have been given "at least" one dose.

Many factors affect the extent to which a population can be considered "safe".
One thing is for sure the current flaccid pace of immunisation - with less than 5% of the world's population receiving a single dose - does not auger well for a return to normality soon.
In Australia, a truly pathetic 0.62% of the population has had one dose.

The combination of fringe anti-vaxxers, internet trolls, vaccine unavailability and general distrust is potentially lethal.

[cherdano]

 pilowsky, on 2021-April-03, 13:56, said:

A link to the ourworldindata.org covid vaccination dashboard - https://ourworldinda...ISR~GBR~USA~CHN
The election of Biden has done nothing to change the rate of vaccination.
The new administration is simply continuing the linear trend that began when the vaccine became available.

Jan 2: 1.26% vaccinated
Jan 21: 4.50% vaccinated
19 days, 3.24% increase, i.e. 0.17% per day
April 2: 30.44% vaccinated
71 days, 25.94% increase, i.e. 0.36% per day
And on top of that, of course plenty of second shots have been given since Jan 21.

Why post stuff that's obviously wrong?