That is brilliant. Derivative of what band? Or did the original band perform the song?



* Just looked it up. I was familiar with the song it mimics but never knew the name of the band until now.

Wow, can't believe this is happening in a Blue State.

If I was an Evangelical, I would believe that this was all part of God's plan to rid the earth of vermin.

Latest reporting for Democrats on the B.1.1.7 variant. Of note: the consensus remains that current vaccines should work just fine with this variant.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/health/new-covid-strain-uk.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

To what do the experts attribute California's insane level of community spread lately? I look around and everybody's wearing a mask. Schools have been closed. Restaurants are closed.

Family and/or friends gathering? People do seem to be suffering from COVID fatigue. People hear "stay at home" and it's like "oh, we're tired of that..."

Big C said:

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To what do the experts attribute this insane level of community spread? I look around and everybody's wearing a mask. Schools have been closed. Restaurants are closed.

Family and/or friends gathering? People do seem to be suffering from COVID fatigue. People hear "stay at home" and it's like "oh, we're tired of that..."

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till further notice deceived covid scoffing red hats (and the horse they rode in on) own the epidemic.

Big C said:

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To what do the experts attribute California's insane level of community spread lately? I look around and everybody's wearing a mask. Schools have been closed. Restaurants are closed.

Family and/or friends gathering? People do seem to be suffering from COVID fatigue. People hear "stay at home" and it's like "oh, we're tired of that..."

---

I don't think it is any mystery, Big C.

First of all, you have to divide California into at least 2. The situation in Northern California is much different from Southern California.

That doesn't mean rates in Northern California haven't risen significantly. They have. However, they started low. (If you start from 2 deaths a day instead of 50, it is much easier to have your rate skyrocket) That said, the Bay Area is probably in for the worst it has had in the coming weeks. Case rates went way up. Hospitalization rates went way up and continue. Deaths will follow. That said, new case rates seem to be slowing. Hopefully that continues. Unfortunately, when the case rates go up, the hospitalizations and deaths will follow, so we are going to have to pay the price for our lapse.

And speaking to that, masks are great and need to be worn. But the Bay Area has always been wearing the masks. So when we let our guards down on other preventative measures, transmission rates will climb. Yes, restaurants and schools are closed, but what else are people doing.

My personal observation. There was clear mentality of "screw it" leading up to Thanksgiving. I live on a high traffic street. The traffic was way up in the week to 10 days leading to Thanksgiving. I think it is clear that many people (including our politicians) basically did a calculation that they were going to do something on Thanksgiving, and not only did they do that, but it lead to other behavior as well. There was a clear sense that people were done. I went on a drive on the Sunday after Thanksgiving and the East Bay Regional Parks were packed like any holiday weekend. Also, if people are celebrating Thanksgiving, they have to prep for it. Stores were crowded, whether with individuals or instacart shoppers. And when people look at their Thanksgiving gathering as low risk, they are probably right. Problem is, if you have a 100K gatherings and 1% have someone with Covid show up, that is 1000 spreader events. That is what health officials were trying to prevent. And this kind of goes with everything. When people talk about some behaviors being lower risk, that is true, but they aren't riskless. So if we engage in those behaviors in a much higher rate, we increase transmission.

Cloth masks aren't going to make up for all of that. (Personally, I don't know why everyone isn't buying readily available kn95 masks that are far safer, at least for higher risk behavior). Cloth masks are one tool in a whole tool box. If you don't use all of the tools, things will get worse.

The good news in my personal observation is that after the state announced new closures, it became a ghost town around my house. I think people wised up pretty quickly. But the genie is out of the bottle. We will face the downstream effects for a while.

Support for the Trump Virus has reached new highs.

OaktownBear said:

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Big C said:

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To what do the experts attribute California's insane level of community spread lately? I look around and everybody's wearing a mask. Schools have been closed. Restaurants are closed.

Family and/or friends gathering? People do seem to be suffering from COVID fatigue. People hear "stay at home" and it's like "oh, we're tired of that..."

---

I don't think it is any mystery, Big C.

First of all, you have to divide California into at least 2. The situation in Northern California is much different from Southern California.

That doesn't mean rates in Northern California haven't risen significantly. They have. However, they started low. (If you start from 2 deaths a day instead of 50, it is much easier to have your rate skyrocket) That said, the Bay Area is probably in for the worst it has had in the coming weeks. Case rates went way up. Hospitalization rates went way up and continue. Deaths will follow. That said, new case rates seem to be slowing. Hopefully that continues. Unfortunately, when the case rates go up, the hospitalizations and deaths will follow, so we are going to have to pay the price for our lapse.

And speaking to that, masks are great and need to be worn. But the Bay Area has always been wearing the masks. So when we let our guards down on other preventative measures, transmission rates will climb. Yes, restaurants and schools are closed, but what else are people doing.

My personal observation. There was clear mentality of "screw it" leading up to Thanksgiving. I live on a high traffic street. The traffic was way up in the week to 10 days leading to Thanksgiving. I think it is clear that many people (including our politicians) basically did a calculation that they were going to do something on Thanksgiving, and not only did they do that, but it lead to other behavior as well. There was a clear sense that people were done. I went on a drive on the Sunday after Thanksgiving and the East Bay Regional Parks were packed like any holiday weekend. Also, if people are celebrating Thanksgiving, they have to prep for it. Stores were crowded, whether with individuals or instacart shoppers. And when people look at their Thanksgiving gathering as low risk, they are probably right. Problem is, if you have a 100K gatherings and 1% have someone with Covid show up, that is 1000 spreader events. That is what health officials were trying to prevent. And this kind of goes with everything. When people talk about some behaviors being lower risk, that is true, but they aren't riskless. So if we engage in those behaviors in a much higher rate, we increase transmission.

Cloth masks aren't going to make up for all of that. (Personally, I don't know why everyone isn't buying readily available kn95 masks that are far safer, at least for higher risk behavior). Cloth masks are one tool in a whole tool box. If you don't use all of the tools, things will get worse.

The good news in my personal observation is that after the state announced new closures, it became a ghost town around my house. I think people wised up pretty quickly. But the genie is out of the bottle. We will face the downstream effects for a while.

---

So, a few hundred thousand or so "mini-spreader events"? Yeah, probably something like that. My sense has been that a fair amount of people are also sticking with a "full on Christmas", too, or at least not a Completely Zoom Christmas. New Years? Reduced for sure, but there are always going to be the knuckleheads.

I think we're going to need to hunker down BIG TIME for the first few weeks of 2021. I hope our leaders can sell that. There seems to be a lot of people out there now who, when confronted with tales of hospitals being overwhelmed, well, it just slides off them like water off a duck's back, unlike nine months ago.

Thoughts and prayers.

The latest from the NYT on the much discussed mutation of the Trump virus:

Quote:

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It first surfaced in September in Britain, but already accounts for more than 60 percent of new cases in London and neighboring areas...

Scientists initially estimated that the new variant was 70 percent more transmissible, but a recent modeling study pegged that number at 56 percent. Once researchers sift through all the data, it's possible that the variant will turn out to be just 10 to 20 percent more transmissible, said Trevor Bedford, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Even so, Dr. Bedford said, it is likely to catch on rapidly and become the predominant form in the United States by March...

Some preliminary evidence from Britain suggests that people infected with the new variant tend to carry greater amounts of the virus in their noses and throats than those infected with previous versions... [T]he finding does offer one possible explanation for why the new variant spreads more easily. The more virus that infected people harbor in their noses and throats, the more they expel into the air and onto surfaces when they breathe, talk, sing, cough or sneeze.

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More thinking on one vs two doses given the factors at play right now...

B.A. Bearacus said:

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More thinking on one vs two doses given the factors at play right now...

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Let's hope we are giving people enough information when we stick them.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/240-israelis-diagnosed-after-vaccination-underscore-need-for-continued-vigilance/

Republican elected officials must die so that the CEO of the Trump virus may live.

https://ballotpedia.org/Government_official,_politician,_and_candidate_deaths,_diagnoses,_and_quarantines_due_to_the_coronavirus_(COVID-19)_pandemic,_2020

B.A. Bearacus said:

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More thinking on one vs two doses given the factors at play right now...

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I don't know the answer because it basically comes down to odds and there are more factors at play than are obvious in impacting those odds. However, I'm not sure people are understanding the percent protected calculation correctly. I fully admit I might not understand it either so this could be totally wrong, but my understanding is that with 80% coverage instead of 95% coverage, 4 times the number of vaccinated people will get sick. So the question is how many would get sick in the vaccinated population in each case and how many will get sick in the unvaccinated population that would have gotten 1 dose if we gave everyone one dose. And of course how sick will they get. If the 80% has a higher rate of getting sick, but no one got extremely sick, that is a different calculation and obviously everyone should get a dose before the second doses are administered.

You also need to factor in risk in the population who is getting 2 doses vs. who would get a dose and the benefit to society to keeping certain people from getting sick. Does it make sense to give medical personnel treating Covid only one dose when they are at very high risk of exposure and if they get Covid we lose a necessary personnel vs a 30 year old healthy person who can work from home? Honestly, at this point giving them one dose doesn't sound like it makes sense. As we go through each priority, it is a different calculation as to whether 2 doses for that priority group makes sense over 1 dose for the next.

My guess is that when the analysis is done, it makes most sense to do two doses through the high risk groups then when that is finished give one dose to everyone else and move on to the second dose once everyone has the first. So something like 2 doses for medical personnel, 2 doses by age group and comorbidities until everyone over 50 has 2 doses. Than everyone else gets one dose until we are done and then they get their second dose. Again, this is just hypothetical. I don't have the information to actually draw the lines.

That said, this may be too complicated to administer. However, I think the groups that are getting vaccinated now need 2 doses. I have hope that the administration of the vaccine will speed up once the ultimate person responsible is not spending 24/7 golfing and spinning conspiracy theories. I'm not sure we should give up on the proper administration of the vaccine when it might be more competently administered in a month.

Among other tragic events today, it was the first time during this awful pandemic that 4k Americans died from COVID today. Unfortunately we are likely to hit 5k per day within weeks and some are projecting it could surpass 6k before it begins to recede again. I think we've already had more people die of COVID in just the first 6 days of January than we lost in all of July.

Thank you, Mr. President, for helping me take my mind off the pandemic for ONE DAY!

Used widely in LA. I also believe this is what City of Berkeley uses.

At this point, we need less thinking and analyzing about the vaccines and more actual VACCINATING. Get some huge vaccination centers. Have two lines. One for anybody with any "priority" standing. The other for anybody on "stand by" who just really wants to get stuck (that's where I'll be). Let the lines converge with two people from the first line and one from the second. If the first line gets short, go one and one. Get that s*** into people's arms, ASAP!

Big C said:

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At this point, we need less thinking and analyzing about the vaccines and more actual VACCINATING. Get some huge vaccination centers. Have two lines. One for anybody with any "priority" standing. The other for anybody on "stand by" who just really wants to get stuck (that's where I'll be). Let the lines converge with two people from the first line and one from the second. If the first line gets short, go one and one. Get that s*** into people's arms, ASAP!

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Cuomo is being kind of an idiot about this.

Cuomo is so terrible.

okaydo said:

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Cuomo is so terrible.

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I also have to question why De Blasio doesn't just tell his people to start giving out the vaccine against Cuomo's orders. What's Cuomo going to do? Arrest doctors for giving the vaccine out? Is that going to be a good look for him?

Checking in on the new American exceptionalism.

B.A. Bearacus said:

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Checking in on the new American exceptionalism.

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It's gonna get worse.

B.A. Bearacus said:

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This is a start. Simpler is better. The only acceptable excuse for not steadily sticking people 12 hours a day, seven days a week is that we are temporarily out of doses. And when we are out of doses, we should go hijack some of Europe's supply. We need/deserve it more than Europeans do because of that American Exceptionalism!

Success

Big C said:

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And when we are out of doses, we should go hijack some of Europe's supply.

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hijacking is immoral, obviously, right (tic) BigC? that said this fool won't say no to a third dose after everybody else has their second.