Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

I really should read my own blog.

In my day, never was longer.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Wait, what?

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

You cannot shame the shameless.

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Archives for 2014

Monday Morning Open Thread: Whatever It Takes

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ebola whatever it takes wilkinson

(Signe Wilkinson via GoComics.com)


Good news, from the NYTimes:

At least one chapter of the Ebola saga neared a close Sunday, as most of the dozens of people who had direct or indirect contact here with Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died of Ebola, had been told by officials that they were no longer at risk of contracting the disease…

All of those whose monitoring was coming to an end had been potentially exposed to Mr. Duncan before he was admitted and put into isolation at the hospital on Sept. 28. They have been released from monitoring in stages. At least 14 of them had been released by Saturday. Others were released Sunday afternoon and some, like Ms. Troh, were released midnight Sunday. A few others may be released after Monday, officials said.

“It’s a significant hurdle for us to get over,” Mayor Mike Rawlings said. “It brings a little bounce in our step, because we know the science is working.”…

And, per NYMag, the hospital lab worker who went on a Carnival cruise has tested negative for the virus. The BBC reports:

The Spanish nurse who became the first person to contract Ebola outside West Africa has now tested negative for the virus, the Spanish government says.

The result suggests Teresa Romero, 44, is no longer infected – although a second test is required before she can be declared free of Ebola…

Meanwhile, European foreign ministers are due to meet in Luxembourg on Monday to discuss how to strengthen their response to the threat posed by the spread of the Ebola virus.

European nations have committed hundreds of millions pounds to help the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea reinforce overstretched healthcare systems and mitigate the damage Ebola is doing to their economies.

But BBC Europe correspondent Damian Grammaticas says there is a growing realisation that there is an urgent need for more medical and military teams to be sent to the region, and for more laboratories and hospital facilities to be built.

He adds that the aim to isolate the virus – not the nations affected.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation is expected to declare Nigeria to be officially free of Ebola later on Monday, after six weeks with no reported cases… Senegal has already been declared free of the disease.

Also too, commentor & medical lab professional LAMH36 has volunteered to answer questions tonight at 8pm EDT.
***********

Apart from quietly unbunching some panties, what’s on the agenda as we start another week?

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“Just Quarantine Everyone, Mission Accomplished!”

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ebola nurses at the pointy end davies

(Matt Davies via GoComics.com)

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Nothing can be made foolproof, because the fools are so ingenious. From the NYTimes, “Life in Quarantine for Ebola Exposure: 21 Days of Fear and Loathing“:

… As the Ebola scare spreads from Texas to Ohio and beyond, the number of people who have locked themselves away — some under government orders, others voluntarily — has grown well beyond those who lived with and cared for Mr. Duncan before his death on Oct. 8. The discovery last week that two nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital here had caught the virus while treating Mr. Duncan extended concentric circles of fear to new sets of hospital workers and other contacts…

Dr. Howard Markel, who teaches the history of medicine at the University of Michigan, said the quarantines recalled the country’s distant epidemics of cholera, typhus and bubonic plague.

“Ebola is jerking us back to the 19th century,” he said. “It’s terrible. It’s isolating. It’s scary. You’re not connecting with other human beings, and you are fearful of a microbiologic time bomb ticking inside you.”

While a quarantine is designed to protect those on the outside, it also fuels the community’s fear, and sometimes its cruelty.

In Payson, Ariz., paranoia ignited after word spread that a missionary who had traveled to Liberia on a church trip was spending three weeks under a self-imposed quarantine with his wife and four children. The missionary, Allen Mann, strung yellow caution tape and a “No Trespassing” sign around his front door and left a bucket in the yard for neighbors to drop off food and treats for his children.

While most neighbors understood there was scant risk that Mr. Mann, 41, had carried the disease home, rumors nevertheless coursed around town that he had tested positive for Ebola and would soon be medically evacuated. Mr. Mann said an anonymous commentator on a local news website had suggested burning down his house.

“People had this lynch-mob mentality,” he said.

As with other aspects of the Ebola response, the criteria for recommending or requiring quarantine have often seemed ad hoc, random and evolving…

For the record, before I’m accused of wanting to kill innocent people: Quarantine can be a vital tool of public health, and used correctly has saved millions of lives. It’s the “used correctly” that’s an issue. There’s a part of our brains that never evolved beyond a bunch of primates squatting on a patch of brush, bristling in suspicion of the bunch of primates in the patch of brush over there, who are known to be filthy disease-bearing sub-primates with disgusting personal habits just slavering to befoul our precious primate bodily fluids and destroy our primate way of life. And every petty would-be leader knows that screaming imprecations at those primates-who-are-not-us will attract followers…

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Sunday Evening Open Thread: Useful!

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Seriously: Would it be wrong to say that I find upnerd to be a perfectly cromulent word?

And other than orthography, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the weekend?

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PSA: Ebola, Labwork, Microbiology Questions?

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Regular comment LAMH36 has volunteered to help us out:

So, with all this talk of Ebola and health care workers, of which I have been one for the past 10+ years, if ya’ll like, maybe you can put up a post concerning Ebola I would be willing to answer serious questions from commenters in the comments section to the best of my knowledge as an active Microbiology Medical Laboratory Scientist.

I don’t mind, and I plan to offer this to a few other blogs where I post. I figured when you have experienced knowledge about some subject, it always better to help spread factual information rather than allow misinformation to become embedded in the psyche.

Any questions, I cannot answer or that is outside my purview of knowledge, I can ask some of my other friends who are currently working in the hospital laboratory, CDC and beyond.

I’ve emailed her, and she decided that tomorrow, Monday evening, at 8pm EDT would be convenient. So I’ll put up a post then, and we can all get smarter about this topic together!

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Only 34,500?

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My honest to goodness reaction when I saw this story was “Only 34,500?”:

A newly created database of New Yorkers deemed too mentally unstable to carry firearms has grown to roughly 34,500 names, a previously undisclosed figure that has raised concerns among some mental health advocates that too many people have been categorized as dangerous.

The database, established in the aftermath of the mass shooting in 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and maintained by the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, is the result of the Safe Act. It is an expansive package of gun control measures pushed through by the administration of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. The law, better known for its ban on assault weapons, compels licensed mental health professionals in New York to report to the authorities any patient “likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others.”

But the number of entries in the database highlights the difficulty of America’s complicated balancing act between public safety and the right to bear arms when it comes to people with mental health issues. “That seems extraordinarily high to me,” said Sam Tsemberis, a former director of New York City’s involuntary hospitalization program for homeless and dangerous people, now the chief executive of Pathways to Housing, which provides housing to the mentally ill. “Assumed dangerousness is a far cry from actual dangerousness.”

Unless NYC and New York have changed a helluva lot since the last time I was there (several years), you can walk a dozen blocks and cover an area with at least 34k people who most definitely should not own firearms. Right about now, there are probably at least that many diehard Jets fans who should own a gun.

*** Update ***

Via the comments, the NYPD FAQ:

How many Police Officers are there in the NYPD?

The NYPD’s current uniformed strength is approximately 34,500.

Hrmmm.

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White Privilege Riot

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So apparently drunken idiots rioted at the Pumpkin Festival in Keene, NH (thus proving John Oliver wrong- they really do need their MRAP), and in Morgantown, WV, another riot broke out because WVU upset Baylor. I doubt there is much cell phone footage from WVU, because they had all been drinking since 7-8 am and their batteries were probably all dead or they were too drunk to use them.

Assholes.

At any rate, via Jezebel, here are otters eating sushi from chopsticks:

Otters are my favorites, even though I don’t really like the whole concept of a zoo (although if you go to a circus you are dead to me). When I was a kid I used to spend hours at the Good Zoo with my family, and the only thing that broke up my routine of being a little obnoxious bastard trying to drive my parents into an early grave was the otters. I could spend hours watching them. In fact, I did. And still am.

*** Searches for otter screensaver ***

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