bcl05

SOTO! He makes everything better.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/coronavirus-american-failure/614191/ This article should be required reading. Now, and for decades to come.

I don't really understand why encouraging people to stay home is bad, in the context of a pandemic that has killed 150,000 Americans, so far. A lot of the discussion I've seen has suggested that providing incentives for people to stay home is bad and undesirable. I completely get that, in normal times. Now, though, when our priority should be to suppress the spread of a deadly virus, this is actually a big benefit. If we support people well enough with UI people won't be forced back to work just to remain fed and sheltered. We can keep things closed enough to slow or stop the spread of the virus. (or at least we could if people had the slightest bit of common sense and social responsibility). I realize that this is a pipe dream that would depend on shared responsibility, good leadership, and coordinated, data-driven response. I just want to point out that incentivizing people to stay home is not necessarily bad.

WOW Amazing reflexes by Trea. Just what we needed.

Vintage Max. A joy to watch.

The only possible two explanations for the behavior of Gohmert (and the rest of the republicans) is pathetic stupidity or abject evil. Both is certainly possible (likely). But it can't be neither. Their behavior is absolutely inexplicable and unforgivable.

Come on. 2020 just keeps coming.

I hate 2020

Angel gonna Angel. One of the worst umps in all of baseball. Consistently terrible. Its awful that he got this game.

The "crowd noise" is so weird. Love Eaton. Beautiful swing.

That pitch was so filthy. I love watching Max more than I've ever enjoyed any athlete ever. My biggest hope for this weird season is that we get to hear what he says to himself on the mound. EDIT. OOOOF. Mike Stanton hits it far. Still love max.

I cannot believe Angel Hernandez is behind the plate for the opener.

Damnit. I was so excited for Cole vs. Soto tonight. There is no pitcher/batter matchup more exciting in all of MLB, if you ask me... This does seem like an awfully ominous sign, in a year with nothing but ominous signs.

My wife and I have been watching Hanna on Amazon Prime. Just finished first season. Its pretty good. Basically Jason Bourne but a teenage girl.

This might be my favorite twitter follow.

Don't forget that we are also dramatically undercounting the deaths from COVID, so the effect on CFR (Case Fatality Rate) from undercounting cases will be less. Non-COVID deaths are up dramatically this year, mostly from "pneumonia" which is likely undiagnosed COVID, or secondary bacterial infection that was enabled by COVID. Experts I've talked to think the actually CFR is in the 2-3% range.

I really, really doubt this story is true. Patients dying of COVID are rarely that lucid, and even if they are, are in too much respiratory distress to speak, especially not a full sentence. not that the sentiment is wrong, of course.

Buying Greenland. I’m all for it.

This is the biggest governmental failure of my lifetime, probably longer. I blame every idiot that voted for an obviously incompetent and unqualified anti-intellectual bigot to the most powerful position in our land. You all share the blame for the dead. Look at our case rates and death rates compared to the EU. We have fewer citizens, with lesser population density, and a more uniform governmental structure, and yet our rates are >10x theirs. Pathetic. It was obvious to all who cared to know early in 2020 that this virus was an extremely dangerous threat. We saw what it did in Wuhan and in Italy, and knew that it could cause terrible havoc here. We had an opportunity to save lives by taking dramatic, difficult steps. We did nothing of the sort. We didn’t really react until it was already widespread (though in small numbers) here. And when we did react, it was not coordinated, organized, thoughtful, or effective. We “shut down” the economy for a number of weeks, which theoretically should have bought time to set up widely accessible, organized, coordinated testing and contact tracing. Lots of testing got produced, but there was no organization or coordination, and no systemic contact tracing. If we had that, we could open where the virus is suppressed and keep the restrictions tight where it is prevalent. Unfortunately, our leaders were too stupid, incompetent, and obstinate to do the obvious hard work that was needed. After we got bored of sitting at home, Trump and his ilk just started opening things up. Not because the virus was eliminated, or because we were ready (with contact tracing, etc), but… just because. We could have done far more to support small businesses and families economically to make the shutdown easier to tolerate longer, but chose not to do the obviously needed thing. Now that we are open, we have politicized mask wearing to an extent that far, far too many idiots are not wearing masks. It wasn’t obvious in February that masks were needed, but now the evidence is overwhelming. No one should be in public without a mask, but we see it all the time. Because Trump made wearing masks a mark of liberalism (for no earthly logical reason), we now have far more spread and ultimately far more death than we needed to. It is now July, and we are closing in on the time for schools to theoretically come back. There is basically nothing more important that our society does than school. Schools are critical for children’s education, socialization, and outcome. It is also critical for the economy that parents have a safe and reliable place for their kids to spend the day. As soon as we “shut down,” we should have been putting every available resource and effort into figuring out a way to safely get kids (and teachers) back to school. This was never going to be easy, but it is the most important thing. But we have Betsy DeVos in charge of the Education department, an anti-science zealot who doesn’t believe in government or public education. Schools should have been the first thing to re-open. Instead, we opened bars and restaurants (and everything else). Bars are nice (I sure miss my favorites), but nowhere near as important as schools. We wasted our risk budget on bars, and now schools are going to be far more dangerous and difficult to open, because there is so much more community spread. Whatever budget we had for risk we had, we spent on boredom and fun, not on our kids. Stupid, shortsighted, and selfish. Our kids will be paying for this. Handling this virus “right” would never have been easy. It would take hard, difficult decisions from caring, empathetic, smart leaders. It would take cooperation, data sharing, and sacrifice. These issues were obvious in February. It was not and should not have been partisan – the virus doesn’t care. I think any president (or presidential candidate – including the fringey weirdos) of my lifetime would have done vastly better than Trump and his minions. At least they would have tried. Trump has done nothing except bloviate about himself. He has given up by never actually working the problem. We have no effective leadership and no effective plan. The failure is a catastrophe. And it’s getting worse, not better. The medical community is despondent.

I am so profoundly sick of people comparing COVID to the flu. This is vastly more contagious, and vastly more dangerous than our typical seasonal flu. We currently have about 4x more deaths from COVID than we do from a typical flu season, and that's WITH all the social distancing, economic shutdown, and masking. In my hospital, we have had hundreds of COVID patients, including many extraordinarily sick ones (including some very young, previously healthy people). While are getting better and better at keeping people alive with experience and science, survivors of this are often left with terrible effects. This virus specifically attacks the endothelial cells (the ones that line blood vessels), creating a vasculitis that causes strokes, lung scarring, severe kidney injury, and more. Survivors dealing with these things will have long term suffering and shorter, more painful lives because of this illness. This is not true of seasonal flu, where long term damage is very rare. Also, the patients who do ultimately die from this virus often do so weeks (or even months) after initially falling sick, so I'm not at all confident that the death numbers are going to stay low. Also, this pandemic has had a catastrophic effect on health care economics. We have had to curtail "elective" procedures and other services dramatically. Now, our health care economic system was a hot mess before this, but this has just made everything far worse. Many hospitals are going to go bankrupt because of this, exacerbating access problems that were pre-existing. It is stupid, irrational, irresponsible, and deadly to promote (or participate in) non-critical social gatherings and to discourage mask-wearing. Those who do have blood on their hands. This has been the most discouraging few months of my professional life. I'm so frustrated by the sheer stupidity and callousness of so many people in this country.

I don't miss Desmond the player, but I really miss Desi the man. He seems like a truly lovely human being. I don't think I ever heard a single bad thing about him.