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Messages - bodiddley

Pages: 1 ... 159 160 [161] 162 163 ... 436
2401
Basketball / Re: NBA
« on: September 01, 2020, 08:22:51 PM »
van Fred had a rough 4Q.
Raps offense was shaky 4Q in the face of heightened BOS D.
TOR missed a bunch of 6' paint shots early/mid 4Q.
I thought TOR got tight.

2402
Previous Administration / Re: Trump Administration
« on: September 01, 2020, 07:47:18 PM »
Good CV news out of Iceland:

Quote
Previous studies suggesting antibodies faded quickly may have been just looking at the first wave of antibodies the immune system makes in response to infection; those studies mostly looked 28 days after diagnosis. A second wave of antibodies forms after a month or two into infection, and this seems more stable and long-lasting, the researchers report.

2403
Previous Administration / Re: Trump Administration
« on: September 01, 2020, 07:42:33 PM »
A guy got stopped on his bicycle and wound up dead.
Jeez.

2404
Basketball / Re: NBA
« on: September 01, 2020, 07:40:50 PM »
10 Pt early 4Q lead.
Smart pops in a pair of 3's.
Next BOS possession, FVV cheats over far to deter a Tatum drive, leaving Smart wide open.  Tatum hits open Smart, who fakes vanFred to fly by and pops a 3rd triple.

FVV has played good D, but that was awful.  You don't leave the hot hand for no reason.

2405
Basketball / Re: NBA
« on: September 01, 2020, 06:26:46 PM »
Am I the only one who hates Doris Burke?
She over-emphasizes every point she makes a la Hubie Brown, as though it's super-important info.  Then she has an annoying habit of repeating herself and making the same point two or three times in a row. 

For example, in one playoff game, she talked about the coach going deep into his rotation bringing in his 9th player of the half.  Then repeating, that he already has played 8 players already, and Player X was the 9th of the half.

Incessant over-announcing makes it all about her and making her presence known, more than the game. 

If I knew these teams better, I would just turn off the sound and listen to the Charlie Parker Centennial birthday broadcast on WKCR.  Maybe I should anyway ...
One of the worst things about bubble play was that Doris Burke was able to announce two games in one day.

2406
Previous Administration / Re: Trump Administration
« on: September 01, 2020, 01:39:50 PM »
All along I've said that:

1) it's not that hard to limit/stop CV transmission
2) face masks are highly beneficial 
3) since there are/were many unknown variables -- asymptomatic transmission, aerosol transmission, infectious period, seasonality, how CV immunity works, etc -- it's always best to err on the side of caution

All of those are true imo.

2407
Previous Administration / Re: Trump Administration
« on: September 01, 2020, 01:20:11 PM »
WHO is somewhat toothless.
Reportedly China mostly met the minimum of their responsibilities by informing WHO of consequential virus/pandemic info within 3 days as called for, which means they slow-walked info, likely massaged it before giving it to WHO in the beginning, etc.

WHO didn't do a good job.
But what about the CDC, which used to be one of the elite international health institutes?  They've been sidelined and were hugely ineffective, wasting weeks at a crucial early juncture with their botched tests and not allowing private labs to run tests, etc. 

China was so overwhelmed with the Wuhan/Hubei outbreak that they used the quick antigen test to get results as fast as possible.  And despite it's comparatively low accuracy, China stuck with that the whole time as its primary CV test, understanding time is the essential component.  Fast results (same day results as far back as March and probably February) mean you can isolate and quarantine, and effectively contact trace. 

Trump boasts about the number of US tests -- when he isn't lamenting them -- but when results aren't available for more than 2 days and with some states averaging nearly a week delay -- the tests and results are all but useless in terms of preventing transmission.  There was excitement a few weeks ago that the US was thinking of going in for fast antigen testing (with results now being able to be processed in under 30 minutes).


Quite seriously, so many mistakes were made by the Trump Admin in dealing the CV-19 that it becomes hard to remember all the blunders and failures.  I probably should make a reference list, which would easily have a dozen items on it.

2408
Previous Administration / Re: Trump Administration
« on: September 01, 2020, 01:03:40 PM »
The US had a lot of warning.  Factor that in too.
The China outbreak became publicly known by Jan 1 and the outbreak grew majorly throughout Jan/Feb.  Jan 21-23 China locked down. 

The No. Italy and Iran outbreaks started raging circa Feb 22.
These were flashing red lights that the Trump Admin ignored or disdained.

March 15 is when the US first decided the virus was an actual problem and still they did a terrible and half-assed job of dealing with it.

A week later, circa March 21, China started coming out of a 2 month lockdown.  March 23 I was able to play basketball at one indoor gym -- the first maskless contact I had in public in China since Jan 23 (one guy wore a mask while playing).

A 2 month lockdown with everybody masking up in public and then China started carefully and gradually reopening.  In May, they resumed the school year.  Schools just reopened as normal for the Fall semester.

2409
Previous Administration / Re: Trump Administration
« on: September 01, 2020, 12:51:26 PM »
Post the relevant parts here if you can.  between the WSJ being banned in China, my not having a working VPN at the moment, and the WSJ paywall, I have zero chance of accessing that article.

2410
Previous Administration / Vitebsk
« on: September 01, 2020, 12:49:40 PM »
Calling Vitebsk a small city is relative I guess.  With nearly 400K it's the 4th largest city in Belarus.  Had a historic Jewish community, where Jews were allowed to live on the outskirts of the Russian empire.  Marc Chagall was born there.  Vitebsk was almost completely destroyed during WWII (Nazi bombing and retreating Russian fires), but it's old town was rebuilt (similar to what was done in Warsaw).

2411
Previous Administration / Re: Trump Administration
« on: September 01, 2020, 12:38:57 PM »
In Belarus news, 100K showed up in the streets of Minsk for Lukashenko's birthday. 
Word is creeping out from eyewitnesses and election officials about voting fraud, such as blank result sheets being signed and certified before voting ended.

Quote
Andrei Gnidenko, who worked at a poll in Vitebsk, a small city in northeastern Belarus, said he gave in to the pressure and signed a document with falsified results.

“For the next few days, we were all very severely depressed,” the 29-year-old said Friday. “I decided that since I betrayed the Belarusian people, since I took part in this rigging and put my signature on it, it was my duty to honestly tell it (to the public).”

Quote
An audio recording from another polling station in Vitebsk was posted on YouTube in which poll workers are heard being told by an official to falsify the results in favor of Lukashenko. The official suggests that poll workers “swap the numbers” for Lukashenko and Tsikhanouskaya.

“I’m prepared to agree that a lot of people voted for Tsikhanouskaya … but we have other goals and other problems we need to solve,” the official says. After some back and forth, poll workers swap the results.

Some of the workers later confirmed to Belarusian media the authenticity of the recording


Lukashenko has previously claimed that vodka and saunas can protect against CV-19.  He got infected but said it was no big deal.  After the protests began he made one public appearance in which he wildly waved round an AK-47 and made threats.  Reports were that it wasn't loaded and many said he didn't know how to hold a rifle.

Trump's kind of dictator!

2412
Basketball / Re: NBA
« on: September 01, 2020, 12:22:15 PM »
And Harden gets worn down by all the effort all game.
And it's not like Dantmanbee is a great playcaller.

2413
Previous Administration / Re: Trump Administration
« on: September 01, 2020, 12:20:29 PM »
How about the old folks who live in the university town?
How about the town merchants?
Once you have a lot of young asymptomatic people running around infected and possibly infectious, the genie is out of the bottle and the virus is free to roam around.

2414
Previous Administration / Re: Trump Administration
« on: September 01, 2020, 12:16:52 PM »
I guess we only have a different strain of the virus than China had when it is convenient for you to say so.

Factor that in if you think it's needed.  Even if the strain in the US is more contagious or more easily transmissible, we have known for 100 years how a respiratory virus is spread.  Cover your important breather holes. 

Somehow Trump and the GOP wasn't willing to acknowledge the benefits of mask wearing until Aug 1, and even worse made face masks a political issue.  Along with all the other blunders such as the botched test rollout, downplaying the threat, reopening too soon (under Trump's direction), and a total lack of a coordinated national strategy, etc.  Just failure after failure led to the virus still rambling along, death and hospitalization tolls climbing, when instead we could have been safely reopening schools and offices by now.  Most of Asia and Europe (same strain as US) have things fairly under control.  The US still doesn't. Awful.

2415
Previous Administration / Re: Trump Administration
« on: September 01, 2020, 11:50:00 AM »
Hong Kong providing mass testing.  Hoping to test 5M or more of the 8 HK residents in the next 2 weeks.

Quote
Hong Kong’s worst outbreak in early July was blamed in part on an exemption from quarantine requirements for airline staff, truck drivers from mainland China and sailors on cargo ships.

At its peak, Hong Kong recorded more than 100 locally transmitted cases a day, after going weeks without any in June.

The outbreak has slowed, with the city reporting just nine cases on Monday, the first time in two weeks that daily infections had fallen to single digits. However, the government and some experts say that community testing can help detect asymptomatic carriers to further stop the spread of the virus.

This is how a responsible gov't acts.
They are basically trying to find asymptomatic people to get them quarantined and break any silent transmission chains.

100 cases a day and they take strong action to stop CV-19 from going viral.
Containment strategies.  You don't wait for big outbreaks, you strong action as early as possible.

Conn Sen is right, the virus should have been ended by now.  I laid out an alternative timetable using China's timeframe as a model.  The virus just isn't here now, life is normal.  I try to keep a mask with me in case I need to take the subway or just in case/to be considerate.  But really I haven't worn a mask in almost 2 months.  Take almost no precautions the past month+ except that I avoid the subway more than usual.  That's what the US could be entering.

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