DougH

That is what anti-vaxers use to think! They would be extra brain-dread if they suffered from this chronic symptom.

A pre-staged cache that was made up of guns stolen from US citizens to be used by the cartels to continue their reign in terror, IN MEXICO! That being said if Mexican cartels could turn out some ammo it would probably sell very well this side of the border.

I agree with your general premise, every infection is a potential for a new nasty version. Thankfully evolution, very very broadly speaking, favors more infectious but less virulent viruses. If the infected get sick too quickly, or too severely it is less advantageous to spread. Perfect example is MERS and SARS, both are way deadlier, but they have way less asymptomatic infections. If you get infected with MERS you are going to be stuck in the hospital, not living it up at some maskless party location.

I thought that some of you may find this podcast between Peter Attia, MD and Paul Offit, MD interesting. Here is the description of the Pod-cast from Peter Attia's you-tube page. Paul Offit is a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases and an expert in virology and vaccine development. He currently serves on the FDA committee evaluating COVID-19 vaccines. In this episode, Paul’s second appearance on The Drive, he provides an update on all the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines currently deployed, explains why the concerns raised around the mRNA vaccines are not legitimate, and offers his view on the prospects and timeframe of reaching herd immunity. He also takes a deep dive into immunology, explaining the short-term and long-term immune response to both natural infection and vaccination and how these two can function together to provide durable immunity. Additionally, they discuss the theories on the origins of this virus, what impact the new COVID-19 variants might have, and the recent pausing of the J&J vaccine. Finally, they discuss how we can be better prepared for an inevitable future outbreak of a novel virus. This episode was originally recorded on April 14, 2021.

A thigh is a much smaller target than center mass. These are police officers not expert marksmen, and trick shooting runs a higher risk of shooting bystanders. They aren't trained to do that. If there were multiple officers, and they were on scene for more than a few minutes it makes me wonder if one of them had better non lethal options than hot sauce and stun guns available to them. I didn't see the video, and don't want to armchair QB, but a shot gun with non lethal rounds will drop most people and they get to live and maybe course correct their life.

I disagree with that statement. No one is denied care at an emergency room, they will admit you if you have a serious problem, and basically every hospital writes-off bills of the poorest individuals. Now I don't think that it is an efficient or equitable system, and medical bills from one incident can potentially bankrupt a middle class earner that doesn't qualify for subsidized care, but I don't think it is an accurate statement to claim that the poor aren't receiving care because they can't pay.

You have people in jail over parking tickets and unpaid court fees. You would think that proponents of civil liberties and the constitution would be appalled by this huge miscarriage of justice, but the revenue for the corrections industry and the tough on "crime" punishment fetish must outweigh all those other fluff convictions. I guess if those people aren't from your neighborhood, income bracket, or they don't look like you the circumstances don't set off the small government personal rights spidey sense.

I was unaware of that fact. I see the overlap in the venn diagram now. On one side you have a pedophile FL lawyer/politician, on the other side you have FL skydivers, the intersection would be labeled people that would like to sleep with DZO's daughter.

Matt Gaetz is that you? I can't think of many reasons that someone would jump into speakers corner, and then bitch that a discussion about a specific dirty pederast legislator was a political hate campaign. PR? (Lack of) Virtue signaling? "Don't read good"? As has been mentioned even the most idealess congress critters are distancing themselves from Gaetz. They have to draw a line somewhere, inciting an insurrection isn't over the line, but apparently (underage) hookers and blow crossed it. Meanwhile you are over here trying to get us to call off the dogs, I don't get it.

Some of the most restrictive states don't even require live fire. In MA I didn't have to fire a single round. I wasn't a new gun owner, but if I was it would have been a stretch to call the course training. Instead they have focused on restricting weapons and features, for example they require specific lab certification of specific firearms before they can be sold by licensed dealers which limit consumer choice. Their AWB doesn't actual ban "assault" weapons, it just means you have to buy old pre Federal AWB firearms and magazines for insanely inflated prices because of grandfathering. I don't think any of these things have resulted in a net increase in safety, which should be the goal. How about a tit for tat. I am would be a big proponent for more thorough background checks, along with a character and psychological evaluation, and annual qualifying on proficiency if the process was fair and followed due process with a means for appeal, if that same legislation also was paired with national concealed carry reciprocity. You don't need to be a lawyer to figure out the driving laws in each state at an operational level, and you can take your privately owned vehicle across state lines without becoming an unintended felon. The same can not be said about a legally owned firearm.

Looks like a version of the BH Optic Illusion, but not exactly. So it may very well be a custom cookie job. The box looks like a Cookie box, not that it matters, you are just going to remove it.

Which cancer. It isn't a single disease. Even specific cancers vary from individual to individual.

They reported W2 wages for the employees that exercised those stock options. Deduction matched with taxable income. There are far more outrageous areas of the tax code.

That didn't age well.

On Friday I hang out with my Friends. Some of them aren't of the same ethnicity, sexual orientation, or political mindset. I have plenty of criteria for selecting friends but the amount of melanin, the language their parents spoke in their house growing up, and what they like to do in bed and to whom isn't criteria that I care about. As was already pointed out who you hang out with has more to do with where you live, and certain races/ethnicities have to face systemic barriers to where they live. But maybe you are referring to "like-minded" racists, bigots, and American Taliban type folks? Those birds do seem to flock together, big flocks of shit birds.

I wake up everyday and thank Cthulhu that Westerly primary occupation is posting nonsense on DZ.com, instead of something involving public health, medical research, or anything science based that goes beyond the level of a 5th grade baking soda volcano. The AstraZeneca news out of South Africa is definitely interesting, and concerning. It shows just how much complexity is involved. South Africa has halted their early phase rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but their decision is pretty nuanced. A trial of 2,000 individuals showed that it wasn't effective at reducing mild to moderate disease from the SA variant in younger individuals. I believe the trial participants were in their 30's. I believe that it still reduced severe disease and death, and it is hard to extrapolate to the higher risk population. Since the initial phase was going to health care workers, who are younger and lower risk, you really need to consider whether you give them a vaccine that shows poor protection of mild to moderate disease. There are limited doses, there are ethical constraints about giving someone a treatment shown to be ineffective for their primary risk, and then there the optics and social impacts of people getting a vaccine and then getting sick. If they were at the stage of vaccinating seniors they may have made a different choice.

NJ had a somewhat controversial judicial decision that municipalities were required to use their zoning regulations to promote affordable housing. At the time some municipalities had zoning regulations that actively prevented low-income affordable housing projects from being built. It was called the Mount Laurel doctrine, I was familiar with it because my mother was a Real-estate agent for a developer. Towns found a way around it. They sold and purchased qualifying affordable housing projects, just like cap and trade and carbon credits. Rather than get a mix of residents some of these towns paid other municipalities for their excess affordable housing starts, and they often paid large sums to keep their demographics static. We are absolutely segregated by economics and where we live, and most people are very comfortable with the status quo. We just bought a house this summer in a rural farming/commuter bedroom town. It is largely white and affluent. The lack of diversity was actually one of the main negatives that I considered, but the large wooded lot and cul-de-sac was a huge draw. I plan on getting my son involved in activities as he gets older that will introduce him to a more diverse peer group, because I think it is really important. I also hope we can travel to different countries. I think it is also important that understands how different his life experience is than others.

We had multiple years of lack luster growth following the Great Recession. Many economist have blamed that on the push for austerity measures in the US and Globally. I would classify ten years of shitty growth because people pushed politics instead of sound economic policy long term harm. At the time I was on board with it too. Borrowing is at an all time low for the US government, more harm is had from doing nothing. It would be like failing to apply a tourniquet because you are going to have to pay down the road to replace the item in your trauma kit.

Absolutely agreed, but even if we had completely elastic unlimited supply of high quality health care it still would still result in a unnecessary loss of life. But as you correctly pointed out we don't have unlimited health care, and it will cause instances where people are denied care because there is no room.

Even if we had unlimited health care resources it would still be exceptionally stupid to ignore precautions before we can get a good number folks vaccinated. Herd immunity through lax prevention measures and actual infections is a good way to play mutation bingo. We have been pretty lucky that the variants that have come about have only been more infectious without much additional increase virulence, though I am hearing that the UK strain may be more virulent but I haven't looked beyond the sound bite. Every new infection is a potential chance for the virus to mutate into something much more more deadly Play stupid games win stupid prizes. Would really suck to have it mutate into something that starts killing significantly more people, and it isn't out of the realm of possibilities.

It was a shit sandwich either way. States were flying by the seat of their pants, especially given the limited guidance from the Fed. We were just starting to figure all of this out. They were faced with capacity constraints at the hospitals, and I don't think at that time it was known just how stratified the risk curve was based on age and comorbidities. From a triage sense I could understand sending nursing home patients back to nursing homes if you thought that you were going to run out of hospital capacity causing more able-bodied "treatable" individuals to die because there were no icu beds available. I think it was a failure to plan, and a failure of imagination. It is probably too simple to call it gross negligence, it was probably more of a case of trying to do the least amount of overall harm to the society. I am glad I didn't have to make those calls myself.

I agree, it is about time. This was a crime against humanity, and the damage it caused will be borne by some of our most disadvantaged citizens for the rest of their life. Young children carry the scars of lead poisoning for life.

100% They forcibly entered one of the most sensitive areas of our National government. They could have been armed, some were, they could have had explosives, I believe some were also discovered in the area. This was an attack on the seat of our government, it should have been responded to no differently that if it was a group of jihadists, or foreign combatants. They should have been met with automatic weapons fire, and the firing should have continued until there ceased to be a threat, either because they were all on the ground or because they retreated from the building.

To bad they all didn't get to meet Reagan. I don't understand how they weren't fired on. Once they breached the building they should have been considered dangerous enemy combatants and they should have been given the room temperature challenge.

I am surprised he hasn't announced his run in 2024 yet. But he is still claiming he won the current election, so he will probably wait until the day after he gets dragged out of the Whitehouse on inauguration day. It would be a dumbass move to declare early, and true to form would be against the recommendations of many advisors. I read a piece recently that he has much better flexibility in fundraising if he is only exploring a run versus declaring a run. The restrictions and reporting gets much more onerous once he is an actual candidate. He would probably make it to the ticket because of our terrible primary system. I might switch my party affiliation back from Libertarian to vote against him in a primary. Too bad we couldn't get a bunch of moderate voters to switch their party affiliation as well, or just show up to vote in the primaries in general, to vote against him in large numbers.