Huzzah!
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If you live in a heavily red area, get your shots.
If you have family and friends who live in a red area, try to encourage them to get their shots.
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Math, the Necronomiconā¦ It is the same for some peopleā¦
Thatās probably what happened here. Iāve been reading a lot of stories that contradict the headlines lately. Sometimes I get the impression that this is done on purpose, as people tend not to read the articles and start spreading these headlines on social media.
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āMathā as a theoretical field, yes.
1+1, not so much. 2/100? Ok, most can understand this.
But now try to explain the goat problem to your siblings, or even better their spouseās parents.
I would very grudgingly say: yes. It is āobscureā, as in ānot easily understoodā. Even among scientists.
I can say that from personal experience, and after doing Bayesesian stats courses. Even among those who attended the courses, Bayes Theorem stays an obscure branch which they have trouble explaining to people who have not attended special courses.
Iām usually thankful for articles explaining Bayesian stats, also as a reminder for myself. And the Guardian piece is not bad a piece of pop-sci journalism. However, I wished the positive sides of testing would have as much weight in this piece as the negative ones. This is worse than the headline, I would say.
Thereās far worse ājournalismā out there right now. But I wonāt pass this piece on to people who are already doubtful about testing, in general, or lateral flow tests rollout specifically.
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Most conservative county in NY is still pretty behind when it comes to the vaccination rate compared to the rest of the state
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I still have a fear of flying.
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Me, too.
Itās weird because it used to be such a regular part of my life, especially work life.
Now, despite everything Iāve read about the air filtration systems, when I think about the whole process: going through security, sitting in the airport, getting on the plane and touching all those common touchpointsā¦ewww.
I am going to try to stick to overland travel as much as possible. For many reasons.
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We flew on Southwest from Phoenix to Oakland (and back) last November. Southwest was holding middle seats open except for families like us (two adults and a four-year-old). Keeping a mask on a four-year-old for looking periods was definitely more difficult than it would have been for a four-and-a-half-year-old, but airports were not crowded. Probably the dodgiest part was the shuttle to the car rental.
Things were very different then, though, before the Thanksgiving/Christmas-driven 9/11-every-day massacre. Any improvement in numbers since January seems destined to be fleeting, with everyone opening up everything without even the pretense of a rationale, unless itās to get in as much death as humanly possible before vaccines can make a dent in transmission. Even in two weeks, when Iām presumably safe, I wonāt be looking to spend time in general public areas until I see a significant drop in caseload. Even if Iām 95% unlikely to have symptoms and 90% unlikely to get it at all, I still donāt want to transmit it to anyone, and I donāt want to gamble with my unvaccinated son. For all the published numbers, of the three children I know to have gotten Covid, two were really sick and only one was asymptomatic.
Weāll try to expand the number of friends we hang out with, based on vaccination status, and weāre looking at trips where we can drive. Kindergarten will be the next big step, which may come sooner rather than later. Apparently they are offering a kindergarten summer-school here in Tucson. Iāll be surprised if numbers look good enough by then for me to be comfortable with it, but there are two terms.
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Itās just the endless hatred for humanity, it wears me down. I always thought that line in the LotR movies, āWhat can men do against such reckless hate?ā was kind of silly, but then the last year happened, and I hear it in my head over and over and over.
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Good luck! I empathize strongly with everyone living through this shitty timeline, but caregivers, HCWs and parents of school aged children get a bonus helping of empathy. One of my favorite young people (just turned 14) has been really suffering. Her parents are great and have gotten her counseling, but this is a lot to take in for anyone.
When I was 14 all I had to deal with was bullying and the ozone hole. Seems easy-breezy by comparison. 
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The accident was a major stumbling block for Johnson & Johnsonās vaccine productionābut not a consumer safety issue. All of the doses of Johnson & Johnsonās vaccine that has been used in the US so far have been produced in the Netherlands. The Emergent facility in Baltimore had not yet been authorized by the FDA for vaccine production when the doses were ruined, and none of the spoiled doses completed the production process.
It sounds like a good thing that this plant had been taken over.
In a White House press briefing Monday, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said that the agency had received additional reports of blood-clotting cases possibly linked to the vaccine.
There have been āa handful of cases, not an overwhelming number of cases,ā Walensky said in the briefing. āWe are working through and adjudicating them and verifying whether they do in fact reflect a true case." The CDC and the FDA will then present their findings to ACIP on Friday, she said.
Hereās the thing: Iād understand if a vaccine rushed through approval due to a horrifying pandemic that has claimed well over half a million lives in the United States turned out to have signficant issues and needed to be paused. But this isnāt it. If I were a congressperson Iād write and start pushing a bill that every drug with the same danger profile as the J&J vaccine also have prescription (and sale, since a huge number of them would be OTC) also paused. Let the pharmaceutical industry pay for public influence campaign to get the J&J back in peopleās arms so that they can sell aspirin again.
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Another variant, texas grown. Only one case so far but in the article GHRC Chief Virologist Ben Neuman says āthis variant combines genetic markers separately associated with rapid spread, severe disease and high resistance to neutralizing antibodies.ā
The trifecta of fuck-you-humans.
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Variant GregAbbot-1.
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Yet more reason to hate Greg Abbot. Letting this thing mutate to it heartās content (if it had a heart) was the dumbest of all dumb moves.
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To his heartās content, then.
Depends on what his objective is.
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