George Harrison's wife, who he was having an affair with, and it's an awesome song. I'm pretty sure we played it at our wedding.

It's short for "Geez-O Pete!"

they called each other husbands-in-law

Agreed that it is a fantastic song.

I actually didn't know Clapton said those things. I can give him some leeway because back then I can easily believe he was all coked out (and people do change), but snopes does say he's had a lot of chances to recant but hasn't until very recently.

Looks like Delta is a mean SOB.

Still wanting to get some Moderna stats.

The old saying about "hell freezing over" came to mind when I saw this:

Alabama governor says ‘it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks’ as pandemic worsens

It almost seems like the GOP was caught off-guard by the surge in Covid cases and didn't have a plan for countering the data which is pretty cut-and-dried. Probably because they've been used to the guy in charge doing a lot of the heavy lifting, and he's no longer in DC. I mean, at some point, you have to start pointing fingers at your own voters as indirectly as possible.

Might well be related to choosing the shortest gap between doses (3 weeks). And not just because of it being earlier, so more time between then and now, but because there are less antibodies created after the 2nd one compared to a longer gap. By coincidence there was a new paper out today that compared "short" (2-4 weeks) and "long" (5-12) intervalls that saw on average lower antibody levels both shortly after the 2nd doese and multiple weeks later. T-Cells however stayed stable in both groups, though marginally higher for short intervall and more 'killer t cells'. Not my expertise, but it could be an explanation for the difference in data between Israel and the UK (who just released data analysis similar to Israel but with i think still high 80s for symptomatic disease for BionTech, high 60s AZ), not just the difference in time elapsed.

Most countries went for 5-6 week gaps, at least in western Europe.

In any case, 90ish percent risk reduction (better way to think abou it imo) against bad illness/hospital is amazingly good considering the nervousnes on variants.

Here's a few more possibilities for confounding factors:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/23/s...el-pfizer.html

Moderna has been a twin to Pfizer in pretty much everything so far, no ?

Excellent explainer from the FT, whose coverage overall has been pretty impressive:

Subscribe to read | Financial Times

(Edit: despite the link description you do not need a subscription. At least i didn't, so might yet be a US issue)

Struggle with this some but overall I think I'm somewhat okay with it.

On one hand, kids shouldn't be pulled into parent's business. On the other hand, this is as serious as it gets and calling out Carlson on his stance is great. It's not as if Carlson hasn't called out others (and presumably their kids see/read about it and therefore impacted by it e.g. Fauci's grand/kids).

I don't feel 100% good about this but if there's a chance that makes Carlson ashamed of his Covid stance and he moves the dial some towards moderation, I can live with it.

Montana man confronts Tucker Carlson at fishing store, calling him 'the worst human being ever' | Daily Mail Online

Yeah I might agree with some of the man's words, but to do it in front of his daughter? not cool. Just like when protestors tracked down Trump administration members outside their homes and protested. I agree with the sentiment, but don't make the protests personal.

Somehow I just don't see Tucker at a fishing supplies store.

The internet suggests even Tucker's youngest daughter is well over 18 years old, for whatever that is worth.

The guy wasn't violent, wasn't yelling, and wasn't disrupting whatever Tucker was doing. What he did was fine. Tucker has no problem siccing his viewers on people, and he can't have the luxury of it not being polite to speak back.

Doesn't really matter, she's not the one on TV.

It's not a stance, it is a business decision.

She reaps the benefits of his actions, and is plenty old enough to know what a total POS he is. If she doesn't then it is good for her to hear what the man had to say.

exactly. He doesn't believe a word of what he says, but he knows his brainless followers do and they bring the ratings and the payday that comes with it.

That's not really fundamentally different from most public figures tbh. Carlson is just an easier target to identify than some others.

I think it matters. If you're of adult age, you should expect to be in situations where adult conversation happens. It's a lot different having that kind of conversation when someone who isn't an adult is around.

Tucker told people to report children in masks to child services. Fuck that guy.

Even if that is true, he falls on the extreme end of whatever scale you would ue to measure such things.

I was subjected to snippets of him for 13 months while we stayed with my in laws when we moved back to Jersey and were looking for a house. As his followers get more extreme his rhetoric is ratcheted up accordingly.

You are not alone on this one. Not sure what I am doing in thinking that but that is what it is.

Yes but she wasn't on camera and wasn't the target. The way he made it sound, he had a 7 year old with him. At 18, she's seen far worse things said about her dad online.

I convinced a vaccine hesitant friend of mine to get vaccinated. He lives in Texas scheduled both him and his wife to get the vaccine today. He kept saying he would get it once it's fully approved and I called bullshit. I asked if he got covid that required a hospital stay if he'd turn down treatment because it also only has emergency approval and that along with asking if he's asked his doctor for advice on whether or not to get the vaccine seems to have gotten though.

He now swears if this shot kills him he'll come back to haunt me.

More than 2 billion people in the world have had at least one shot now. Are the people who think they're all going to die or become infertile preparing for a a civilization shake-up of that extent? Or do they think everything will be normal for them, just a little less crowded at the grocery store?

Edit: If we all die, than the anti-vaxxers in the rich countries will probably be colonized by the billions from poorer countries who didn't have access to the vaccine. Definitely something they need to prepare for.

It's so funny how the anti-vaxxers are so worried about the effects of the vaccine, but pay no attention to hundreds of thousands that died from the virus. How many people have died from the vaccine so far?

Best information available says a few thousand, but that has the same causality problem as the count of Covid deaths does. I.e., it's a different matter to say someone had the vaccine or contracted the virus and subsequently died, than it is to say the person wouldn't have died if they didn't have that happen.


Ehh, it's not so much that they pay no attention, it's just that some kinds of deaths are viewed as the 'cost of doing business', whereas others are put mentally in a category of being 'improper or avoidable'. It's similar to how gun violence deaths get a ton of attention in the broader culture compared to coverage of the much higher number of deaths from cancer and heart disease.

Back in the day, a lot of anti-seat belt folks would cherry pick situations where a person died in an accident due to neck compression from a seat belt. Perhaps dozens of such occurrences, yet they were oblivious to the thousands of lives that were saved by the seat belts.

They are being fed lies about the number of vaccinated deaths from various sources. I saw recently Deandre Hopkins said he isn’t taking it because 45k people have died from it. Throw in the whole “I’m young so it won’t be too bad for me” crowd and it’s not hard to see why a section of the populace is hesitant. The reality is we are a selfish society and people are looking for ways to validate that selfishness.

FL is fast becoming a hot spot. I'm thinking Disney-and-like will have to get back to mask wearing and (hopefully) proof of vaccination.

re: died from vaccine, unsure. Of those died even though they got the vaccine

With The Delta Variant Spreading Fast, Is It Time To Mask Up Again? | Wisconsin Public Radio

My dad also sent me this stat the other day, after an email telling me that Piers Morgan has tested positive despite being vaccinated. Of course, I told him that infections happen in vaccinated people (the whole 95% thing) and that Piers Morgan is also likely a lying fuckhead.

It's even simpler than that. It's Covid kills "other, unhealthy and at risk people" and because people are constantly overestimating everything; how healthy they are, what sorts of wild animals they could defeat in a no weapon brawl, their chances of surviving covid, etc, it's not a personal up front risk. Whereas if they actually take the vaccine, they see the potential side effects as a legit, self-imposed risk, and since they feel that their base risk is near zero, they have no compunction to take it.

The overall data paints a different story, but it's not personal. An individual's skewed point of view is, and if trump taught us anything about (his and the new brand of the right) modern politics it's that going with your gut is far often better than "trusting data and scientists" that you don't know.

That's the bottom line.

Definitely not a thread I expected to see a JBL podcast reference in ��

Ehh, I don't think it's quite that blind of a mindset. A lot of people simply look at the percentages. They aren't using data the way we'd like them to, but many are using the data. They see a disease that kills less than 2% of the people who contract it, and that's simply a scientific fact that seems near-zero to them, esp. compared to the fact that they have a non-zero chance of dying from other random-ish causes as well. That's just deemed an acceptable risk.

...and they ignore or just don't care about the fact that they could pass it along to someone else who could get very sick or die. You/they forgot that part of the risk analysis.

Hence my earlier comment about our country being filled with a bunch of selfish pricks. It is the same mindset they have with firearms. A few dead 5 year olds is a worthwhile price to pay for their toys is no different than a few dead grandmas so they don't have to wear a mask when they go to camping world.

I've straight-up heard a couple of people make the "Your health is not my responsibility" argument and seen it over and over on social media.

I keep saying...Trump's goal was to take us back to 1950 but the entire movement he spawned wants to go back to 1850.

We all have a line when it comes to that kind of thing though. I get that it's a lot more comfortable to demonize people who think differently than we do, but all of us regularly engage in behavior that increase the risk of others. How many of us have a carbon footprint that's the absolute minimum it could possibly be? How many products do we all purchase regularly that are produced in dangerous, sweatshop-type conditions in various parts of the world? The main distinction here is primarily psychological. Those other contributions to the risk of other human beings have been 'factored in' as part of life. Emergency situations like a pandemic impact us differently from a mental outlook standpoint, but in terms of actual effect on the species that distinction fades away.

The main difference is a more direct, one-to-one (or one-to-many) risk/impact.

The behaviors you speak of don't fall across political lines. Left and right alike own Iphones, drive SUVs, etc... Don't fool yourself for one second this is anything other than political.

I'm demonizing these people because they refuse to believe in science and are quite literally willing to die to own the libs.

The funny thing is one of the biggest rallying cries in the right at the moment is "trust the science". That's what they use to fight mask madates and argue that young, healthy people shouldn't get vaccinated.

They're not willing to die because once they get it and it is killing them they'll be begging for someone to save them.

They are willing to let others die to own the libs, hoping the libs are the ones to die.

Your point stands though. Nothing matters except owning the libs.

Its seems like the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines really take the teeth out of the Delta variant. You can still get it - but the numbers seem to indicate that the chance of hospitalization is extremely low.

I think we need to start transitioning from "number of cases" to "number of hospitalization and/or deaths". Looking at the UK, while their cases did jump a bunch last week - the number hospitalized or dead didn't.

In the beginning, the "best case" from talking with many people was to get a vaccine to make Covid as close to the seriousness of the flu as possible. It seems like we are close now (esp if a booster comes out in the fall as expected). But even if cases spike a bit in the fall, if hospitals don't feel it and deaths aren't alarmingly high - I'm not sure we need to freak out and start going back to shelter in place/restrictions.

Yeah, I'm a bit confused by the coming CDC guidance on mask-wearing. It seems like mixed messages to me. And the biggest issue continues to be that those who have done the right things all along are the ones being forced to carry the water for the selfish/lazy/crazy ones. Again.

I now have to go back to wearing a mask because the unvaccinated can make me a carrier. I feel like the kid who does all the chores because the parents don't bother punishing the one who does nothing, so it all falls on me. Incredibly frustrating. It's one year ago, all over again.

Case numbers have dropped daily here for the last 5-6 days, but 131 deaths today were the highest since March

We relaxed a lot of rules on the 19th, so the key dates will be the next couple of weeks, to see if numbers rise again, which then will likely lead to more hospitalisations and deaths, but much reduced hopefully due to the vaccine program.

However, there was also a report in The Telegraph today that around half of these hospitalised with Covid actually only tested positive after being admitted, the inference being that they caught it in the hospital after being admitted for other reasons. So that means that the hospitalisation rate and the numbers in hospital with Covid should be treated as two separate stats.

Pretty interesting visual depiction of the difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated people and their risks of hospitalization and death.

https://i.redd.it/sikuuht2bsd71.png

I can't wait to hear the whining about this.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/27/polit...ion/index.html

The GOP's attempted pivot on vaccination seems like an interesting litmus test in that they and their base have basically agreed on selfishness as their one and only priority and though it is often suggested that Trump's followers would do whatever he asks, all he has ever asked them to do is put themselves first. Can the Republicans motivate their base to do anything other than prioritize themselves?

It's pretty wild that for a while they were basically betting against the vaccine to hope they get power later. But, democrats were actively campaigning against the stock market when Trump was president.

In this new world we live in, whomever is out of power will basically be hoping for chaos and misfortune for the country. But, I do agree what the republicans have done in 2021 in regards to the vaccine is pretty reprehensible.