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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / A Tale of Two Shittys

A Tale of Two Shittys

by @heymistermix.com|  October 14, 20206:28 pm| 91 Comments

This post is in: COVID-19

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Hey, hope this thing still works.  I wanted to rise from my dogmatic slumber and give y’all an update about the Dakotas, and add a little local color to the terrible news emanating from that benighted territory.

Let’s look at the two flavors of idiots in charge.  In South Dakota, we have Dollar Store Sarah Palin, Governor Kristi Noem, a Trump ass kisser who has been juking the stats and undertesting for months. The result of her abject failure to do anything meaningful about COVID is that their cases/day graph looks like this:

A Tale of Two Shittys

All Kristi cares about is currying favor with Trump and setting herself up to be a Fox surrogate.  She built a TV studio in the basement of the capital so she could go on Fox more often.  She’s traveling the country campaigning for Trump.  She says dumb shit like this:

“We have triple the amount of testing [ed note:  false] that we are doing in the state of South Dakota, which is why we’re seeing elevated positive cases,” Noem said. “That’s normal, that’s natural, that’s expected.”

The Republican governor did not explain how an increase in hospitalizations would be connected to an increase in testing. The state has also seen one of the nation’s highest positivity rates for testing in the last 14 days, according to Johns Hopkins researchers. The roughly 23% positivity rate is an indication there are more infections than tests are indicating.

Hospitals are filling up and she’s talking about building National Guard field hospitals, which will be great places to die without anyone to take care of you, since hospitals in the state are perennially searching for nursing staff and doctors.  Anyway, you get the picture — stupid Trumper does stupid shit and people die.

But now let’s look at North Dakota, under the stewardship of Governor Doug Burgum, former owner of Great Plains Software and pretty much a bog standard pre-Trump Republican.  In May, Doug generated a bit of buzz by almost crying at a press conference when begging North Dakotans to put on masks and not divide themselves over masking.  He’s on record calling the Republican platform’s anti-LGBTQ resolution “hurtful and divisive”.  Today he had a news conference where he was still begging North Dakotans to “find their love” and wear a goddam mask.  So, not overly stupid, and not a MAGA-hat Trumper.

The North Dakota COVID response has been a fair bit better than South Dakota.  They test twice as much.  Their positive rate of ~8% (14 day average) indicates that they may be testing somewhere near enough people, unlike South Dakota’s ridiculously high 23%.  Still, like South Dakota, North Dakota’s hospitals are almost full.  Yesterday, North Dakota had 713 new COVID cases.  New York, which has 25 times the population of ND, had 1,232.  COVID is as out of control in North Dakota as it is in South Dakota.  Why?

The first reason is that talk and tears are fucking cheap.  Doug’s ability to use his lacrimal glands, and his exhortations to “find your love,” have zero correlation with his ability to find a fucking pen and sign an executive order to mandate mask wearing and gathering restrictions in his state.  He might as well be going on Fox every day of the week for all the good that his tears and good intentions have done.

The second reason is that the majority of each state is in the thrall of Fox News, and listening to the bullshit emanating thereof.  My dad, retired physician, just turned 90 the other day, but he’s got his marbles and still gets around.  He went to the grocery store and hardware store in our small Dakota town the other day, and noticed zero mask wearing on the part of the staff.  As he is wont to do, he called the owners of each of those establishments to tell them that their employees need to mask up.  The grocery store is owned by the third generation of a family that he knows well – he treated each generation and delivered a few of their babies.  Their response was that any of their employees could choose to wear a mask if they wanted.  The response of the hardware store owner was, “you must be watching CNN.”

There’s just no way that these people are going to “find their love”.  But if there were mask orders, a good deal more of them would find a find a fucking mask and put it on.  If there were gathering restrictions, no doubt there would be non compliance, but fewer people would gather.  We have the same problem in New York — right now we’re fighting some COVID clusters in areas with large orthodox Jewish communities where gathering restrictions and mask wearing were never followed.  Now that those regions are under orders to close down again, and they’re bitching and moaning and burning masks.  When they calm  down, I assume they’ll either start doing what they need to do, or they’ll end up living in a “red zone” where no non-essential businesses are open and they can’t gather without the sheriff shutting them down.

The take away from the Dakotas is that that gentle persuasion and “choice,” and denial and Trumpism, end up in the same place when it comes to COVID — full hospitals and dead people.

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Reader Interactions

91Comments

  1. 1.

    jeffreyw

    October 14, 2020 at 6:33 pm

    Greeting, Mr Mix

  2. 2.

    debbie

    October 14, 2020 at 6:35 pm

    The jaded part of me hopes their final conscious thought is the realization that they were very, very wrong.

  3. 3.

    jl

    October 14, 2020 at 6:36 pm

    If SD has been undertesting, then the rise in confirmed cases is probably due to true increase in current prevalence, so increase in deaths should be occurring now or within a week or two.

    If SD has been overtesting for surveillance and outbreak control, then it might be a mix of increased ascertainment rate and increase in current cases, and to some extent, identification of resolved cases, that is, putting a more complete measure of prevalence from a few weeks to a couple of months ago into the mix (that last depends on usually unreported details of how the tests were done). Then what the rise in measured confirmed cases means is an effective outbreak control system. You can go to Our World in Data and look at some of the successful W European countries for examples.

    I wouldn’t put big odds on the latter.

  4. 4.

    Raven

    October 14, 2020 at 6:37 pm

    Do you really think theses motherfuckers will abide by some “order”?

  5. 5.

    West of the Rockies

    October 14, 2020 at 6:38 pm

    So members of the I?COVID party will soon be heard lamenting, “I never thought COVID would attack my lil’ brain!”

  6. 6.

    Raven

    October 14, 2020 at 6:38 pm

    11-0 Dodgers top of 1 .

  7. 7.

    download my app in the app store mistermix

    October 14, 2020 at 6:42 pm

    @Raven:

    Do you really think theses motherfuckers will abide by some “order”?

    Would the noisemakers comply?  No.

    Would the average ND or SD resident, who are generally law abiding and decent people?  Probably.

  8. 8.

    sdhays

    October 14, 2020 at 6:42 pm

    From my reading when this first was taking off in the Plains states, the real explanation for the not-really-giving-a-shit response was that the outbreaks were almost all in meatpacking plants and the people dying and families being destroyed were immigrants who weren’t really part of the rest of the community. How much of that is still true? Are so-called “expendable” people still bearing the brunt of the pandemic in the Dakotas, or is it starting to make its way into the white communities?

  9. 9.

    jeffreyw

    October 14, 2020 at 6:42 pm

    @Raven: Reminds me of those partial game scores of yore:  St Louis 7, Cleveland 6, and Boston 8

  10. 10.

    JPL

    October 14, 2020 at 6:43 pm

    @Raven: That’s not good.

  11. 11.

    Raven

    October 14, 2020 at 6:45 pm

    @jeffreyw: We were at Wrigley when the Mets hit two slams in one inning!

    MetsMets

     

    Geeze Tatis hit two in one inn ing!

  12. 12.

    Raven

    October 14, 2020 at 6:45 pm

    @download my app in the app store mistermix: Fair enough.

  13. 13.

    The Fat Kate Middleton

    October 14, 2020 at 6:47 pm

    Include Iowa in your review. Kimmy is doing her best to show how she can suck Donny’s ass a  hunnert times better than that Noem can. Words fail me on how much I loathe that woman.

  14. 14.

    Kent

    October 14, 2020 at 6:48 pm

    Nick Saban just tested positive.  Oops.

    Sooner of later one of these high profile Republican people from MAGA land is going to die.  Herman Cain won’t be the last (assuming Saban is Republican).

    And then there was this ESPN news yesterday from my previous hometown of Waco.  I guess turning Baylor into a rape factory wasn’t enough.  They had to turn it into a Covid-19 factory as well.  This was the 3rd game that Baylor had to cancel this year due to Covid.

    Baylor athletic director Mack Rhoades said there are 28 active cases of COVID-19 among its football players and 14 active cases among football staff members, which led to the decision to postpone its scheduled game against No. 7 Oklahoma State.

    The athletic department has 32 total COVID-19 cases among athletes, the school announced on Monday; four of those are outside of the football team. The school said 29 of the 32 positives are symptomatic, only three are asymptomatic.

  15. 15.

    Raven

    October 14, 2020 at 6:49 pm

    @Kent: And we play them Saturday!

  16. 16.

    NotMax

    October 14, 2020 at 6:53 pm

    Meanwhile, in the City of Brotherly Love, Coronavirus outbreaks close three Philly-area schools.

  17. 17.

    Jager

    October 14, 2020 at 6:54 pm

    @Raven: My relatives in ND have all lost their fucking minds, they spent the summer doing big lake house gatherings. They go to weddings, funerals, christenings. My cousins visit people in the “old folks” home. Now they are going to HS football games, soccer games. The morons think everything is fine. The only one who is sane about this is my cousin Jane, who is in her 3rd year of battling cancer. She hadn’t seen her mother for a month, her mom showed up and Jane wouldn’t let her in the house. Mom was crying on the steps, “all I want to do is give you a kiss and hug.” Jane who was a chef and part-owner of a good restaurant still has her kitchen mouth, told her mother, “Piss off you and my entire family are fucking idiots, go away. Call me on the phone, Mom!”

    Assholes make me crazy.

  18. 18.

    jl

    October 14, 2020 at 6:56 pm

    @sdhays: The US has been horrible at controlling worksite outbreaks. These outbreaks can echo around for weeks. There was a bad outbreak in Imperial, La Paz and Yuma counties that bounced around those three counties  for over a month. Resulted in cases sent to hospitals all over those two states, stretching resources.

    Successful countries are strict in control. Estonia has been very clear that every public place and worksite must comply with their social distancing rules (that, BTW, can be reduced to a simple half page checklist). Switzerland has had extremely strict regulation of workplace safety, and now that many outbreaks in Europe are from worksites, has decided to be even stricter.

    As I noted in a previous thread, race, ethnic and class inequities in covid disease spread is a very serious, perhaps critical, control problem, as well as an equity and moral problem.

    There is a very good popular article that makes the case, supported by links to very reliable research, that inability or unwillingness to stop superspreading events is one the most important VERY CRITICAL factors in making covid so difficult to control without dangerous shutdowns that seriously damage society and the economy. I’ll post it later.

  19. 19.

    schrodingers_cat

    October 14, 2020 at 6:57 pm

    In MA the mask compliance is close to 100%. Our governor is an R. He is never in the news. We are barely aware of his existence. He does R things like endorse Susie Furrowed Brows but on the whole he has not been bad at all about COVID-19.

  20. 20.

    debbie

    October 14, 2020 at 6:57 pm

    @JPL:

    Lots of fun if you’re there and a Dodgers fan, though.

  21. 21.

    Raven

    October 14, 2020 at 7:04 pm

    @Jager: Not promising,

  22. 22.

    Kent

    October 14, 2020 at 7:05 pm

    @Raven: Who’s we?  Georgia?

  23. 23.

    Raven

    October 14, 2020 at 7:05 pm

    @Kent: yea

  24. 24.

    Kent

    October 14, 2020 at 7:09 pm

    @Raven: One of my oldest and best friends is on the Georgia faculty and works with the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program at Georgia.  So I despise the Bulldogs less than most southern and SEC teams.   But as a UW Husky I’m not allowed to actually like them.

  25. 25.

    Parfigliano

    October 14, 2020 at 7:10 pm

    I have a feeling that the COVID breakout in SD isnt going to be good for pheasant hunting tourism.  That might get someones attention

  26. 26.

    trollhattan

    October 14, 2020 at 7:12 pm

    @Kent:

    Isn’t Nick Saban the highest paid football coach in the solar system? You’d think a guy that well paid would…

    Withdrawn

  27. 27.

    Kent

    October 14, 2020 at 7:12 pm

    @Parfigliano:I have a feeling that the COVID breakout in SD isnt going to be good for pheasant hunting tourism.  That might get someones attention

    If it didn’t stop Sturgis, how is it going to stop some pheasant hunters?  Which, if they are driving there from anywhere within a 1000 mile radius, and are older white hunters, are most likely 90% Republican.

  28. 28.

    James E Powell

    October 14, 2020 at 7:14 pm

    OT, but I just got confirmation from Ballot Trax that my ballot’s been received.

  29. 29.

    BruceFromOhio

    October 14, 2020 at 7:15 pm

    The buckeye is on the upswing in hospitalization and ICU admissions. We are down to grocery store runs and not much else. Met up with three friends in a park last week, we brought camp chairs and sat way the hell away from each other while drinking beers. First time I had seen them since BC. Each of us has someone vulnerable in our bubbles, and we all live like hermits. It was great to see them.

    I despise the covidiots that won’t mask or take precautions.

  30. 30.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    October 14, 2020 at 7:16 pm

    @Raven: They will if they’re fined for non-compliance.

  31. 31.

    The Thin Black Duke

    October 14, 2020 at 7:17 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: Fellow Massachusetts resident here. Baker is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a “moderate” Republican who might sit in the White House one day because he’s sly and intelligent, so he scares me. However, when I hear the horror stories about how other Republican governors are mishandling the pandemic, I reluctantly have to say, “Good job, Charlie.” And yeah, I hated typing that last sentence.

  32. 32.

    germy

    October 14, 2020 at 7:18 pm

    Sandra Diaz was horrified when she saw COVID-infected Donald Trump walk into the White House without a mask last week. He had just returned from the hospital, almost certainly still a risk to others, in order to stage a kind of promotional video on the White House balcony. From her home in New Jersey, Diaz watched as Trump removed his face mask and gave a salute in front of the cameras, appearing to wince and struggle with his breathing. Then he offered a thumbs-up, turned, and walked inside.

    She wasn’t thinking about the prominent Trump associates, now more than a dozen, who had tested positive for the coronavirus in the aftermath of Amy Coney Barrett’s largely maskless, semi-indoor Supreme Court nomination ceremony on September 26. Diaz, a former Trump housekeeper at his Bedminster golf resort, was terrified for others at risk in the White House: the hundred or so anonymous, unseen members of the Executive Residence staff who cook, clean, and prepare for the dinners and meet and greets where COVID-19 had likely been spreading.

    Diaz, a native Costa Rican, worked at Bedminster from 2010 to 2014, cleaning Donald and Ivanka Trump’s homes on the property. She says the president, as an employer, was obsessive about his own cleanliness and hygiene. He would run his finger along surfaces to check for dust. He was “terrified of flies.” Diaz wore shoe coverings, latex gloves, and no makeup or perfume so that her presence would not be perceivable in the house.

    https://www.thecut.com/2020/10/domestic-workers-in-the-white-house-are-at-risk.html#_ga=2.111990541.845533798.1602716416-169963475.1602716416

  33. 33.

    bbleh

    October 14, 2020 at 7:18 pm

    @Raven: @download my app in the app store mistermix:

    It worked in very-red-indeed West Virginia, as I believe the blogmaster pointed out a couple months ago.  The Gov — a Republican — reared up on his haunches and said wear masks or there will be more funerals, and there was a turnaround overnight.  Not complete, and eroding, but it made a huge difference, in behavior and in infection rates.

    They’re like prickly children.  If someone who knows better tells them they should do it for their own good, they’ll go out of their way not to.  But if one of their own gives them permission, a lot of them will just do it.

  34. 34.

    Raven

    October 14, 2020 at 7:18 pm

    @Kent: I know several people who work with that program! I retired a year ago from the Office of Faculty Development with the system but I’ve been in Athen forever! What discipline?

  35. 35.

    trollhattan

    October 14, 2020 at 7:19 pm

    Our county is reporting the fewest (37) new COVID cases since the first week in June; fingers crossed it’s not a statistical outlier. Peak so far is 404 on July 10.

  36. 36.

    A Ghost to Most

    October 14, 2020 at 7:21 pm

    Them SoDaks is way worse than them NoDaks. At least that’s what all them Nebraskans told me.

  37. 37.

    realbtl

    October 14, 2020 at 7:21 pm

    I think one of the factors in the Dakotas is that like here in Montana we skated through about June with almost no cases so a lot of folks didn’t get scared enough to take the virus seriously.

  38. 38.

    mrmoshpotato

    October 14, 2020 at 7:22 pm

    @germy:

    He was “terrified of flies.” 

    Is it a Soviet thing to be terrified of flies?

  39. 39.

    Barbara

    October 14, 2020 at 7:23 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: It might help that in his former life he was an executive of a highly regarded HMO.

  40. 40.

    RSA

    October 14, 2020 at 7:24 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    In MA the mask compliance is close to 100%. Our governor is an R. He is never in the news.

    Oh, he made the news today. :-)

    https://www.masslive.com/politics/2020/10/massachusetts-gov-charlie-baker-doesnt-plan-to-vote-for-president-donald-trump.html

  41. 41.

    Gvg

    October 14, 2020 at 7:25 pm

    @Raven: Gators just delayed the LSU game. So many players tested positive this week, we couldn’t field the required minimum 50 players. This is after our coach spoke out wanting bigger crowds in the stadium now the idiot Governor lifted restrictions. I hear he got a yelled at by a lot of fans for this plus the attendance statistics show we aren’t even selling the whole 20% the administration has allowed. Coach backtracked, but the game is off anyway.
    Reporting is some players had allergy like symptoms they hadn’t reported. This is a problem even if you are not an athlete who wants to play. Most people in Florida seem to have mild allergies all the time. I personally do year round and worse in Spring. Oh well, I’m staying in as much as possible. Scheduled a test tomorrow. Luckily the University has them as often as you want, and it’s a saliva test now not the nasal swab.

  42. 42.

    Kent

    October 14, 2020 at 7:26 pm

    @Raven:@Kent: I know several people who work with that program! I retired a year ago from the Office of Faculty Development with the system but I’ve been in Athen forever! What discipline?

    Paul Duncan.  He’s the associate director  and runs their community outreach programs.  We were in the Peace Corps together in Guatemala many years ago.

  43. 43.

    Raven

    October 14, 2020 at 7:27 pm

    @Gvg: Mullen is a crybaby jackass and Grantham is a joke.

  44. 44.

    Raven

    October 14, 2020 at 7:32 pm

    @Kent: Cool, Steve Kowalewski is in anthropology as well. We just looked at their people page and lots of the folks live in our neighborhood and we chat with them when they walk by!

  45. 45.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    October 14, 2020 at 7:33 pm

    There’s a tweet an actor, Curtis Armstrong, sent out some months ago where he expressed his anger and frustration at Trump for fucking up the pandemic response, saying that he couldn’t see his father before he died because of complications of coronavirus. It was screencapped and posted to Tumblr.

    How did the Reich-winger Trump-humpers react? “Stop blaming Trump! Blame your governor for the lockdowns! It’s their fault you couldn’t see your father!”

    I’m dead fucking serious. And they think they’re so savvy and smart

  46. 46.

    Bill Arnold

    October 14, 2020 at 7:34 pm

    Your dad is impressively well-marbled.  Well done by him.

  47. 47.

    Ohio Mom

    October 14, 2020 at 7:34 pm

    BrucefromOhio: what part of the state do you live in?

    Our numbers here in the southwest corner are going up — we are Red on DeWine’s scale.

    When I am out and about (to the grocery and drug stores mainly), everyone is masked up. But a friend reported that on her evening drive to drop off her ballot, past a college neighborhood, “the bars were hopping.” With unmasked, undistanced hoppers.

    Maybe our numbers will go back down when the semester is over.

  48. 48.

    mdblanche

    October 14, 2020 at 7:34 pm

    It was the worst of times, it was the even worse of times, it was the age of foolishness, it was the age of idiocracy, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the epoch of militant ignorance, it was the season of Darkness, it was the season of Vantablack, it was the winter of despair, it was the nuclear winter of cosmic nihilism, we had nothing before us, we had less than nothing before us, we were all going direct the other way, we were all already there.

  49. 49.

    Gvg

    October 14, 2020 at 7:37 pm

    Mullen is a better coach than we had, etc. I hadn’t had much time to follow the program in recent years, however he isn’t qualified to understand a pandemic, that’s all.
    I am concerned about the college president. We have done a pretty good job so far, but he IMO was bringIn back employees that could have stayed home, and is planning on more in person classes in Spring. However it’s been made clear the University is bleeding money and could even face layoffs if things don’t improve. State is doing nothing to help apparently and the Govenorship is on the 2 year off cycle from the US presidency so probability no relief. Maybe if the dems take everything and get some bills through.

  50. 50.

    Ohio Mom

    October 14, 2020 at 7:41 pm

    mdblanche: That certainly captures my current outlook. Especially like the reference to Vantablack.

  51. 51.

    Kent

    October 14, 2020 at 7:43 pm

    I gotta say, the last 4 years of Trump and especially the last 6 months of Covid have absolutely burned out of me all the sympathy and kindliness I ever had for all of my extended clan of rural MAGA folks.  I’m related to a ton of them on both sides of my family, scattered across MI, IN, PA, OR, and VA.   It’s a toxic stew of white rural blue collar evangelical fundamentalist 2nd Amendment folks.  They hit absolutely every MAGA checklist.  I’ll still take my kids to the family reunions and be polite.  But they have burned out every last bit of empathy I ever had towards anything to do with them and their lives.   Lately they have been cheering Barrett because the stain of abortion might finally get washed from our shores.  That they might all lose their health insurance doesn’t compute.  And a bunch are obese diabetic wrecks.

  52. 52.

    Raven

    October 14, 2020 at 7:45 pm

    @Gvg: Better than the Zooker????

  53. 53.

    Kent

    October 14, 2020 at 7:51 pm

    @Raven: Last good coach they had was Urban Meyer.  That was the last time they won an SEC championship much less a national championship.  And that was 12 years ago now.

  54. 54.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 14, 2020 at 7:51 pm

    @Raven:

    Jeez.

    15-1 now.

  55. 55.

    Bill Arnold

    October 14, 2020 at 7:52 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    In MA the mask compliance is close to 100%.

    I prefer “mask discipline”, and am a bit surprised that the English-speaking world went with the socially more negative word “compliance”.

  56. 56.

    pluky

    October 14, 2020 at 7:56 pm

    @The Thin Black Duke: deep breath now. fellow masshole here. unless the republicans reform RADICALLY, no way is Gov. Baker going to get anywhere near a slot on a national ticket, especially not the top job.

  57. 57.

    Kent

    October 14, 2020 at 7:58 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: I might have to become a Dodgers fan.  All the other west coast teams are a disappointment.  And the Mariners haven’t had a good season since Ken Griffey Jr. and Ichiro.  Especially if my daughter decides to attend Occidental which is close to the stadium.

  58. 58.

    Gvg

    October 14, 2020 at 8:01 pm

    @Raven: oh God….well Zook would have made a better President than Trump. Other than that…

  59. 59.

    Ken

    October 14, 2020 at 8:02 pm

    @Jager: Mom was crying on the steps, “all I want to do is give you a kiss and hug.”

    Sounds like a vampire movie.  That would just be the cherry on the shit sundae, a coronavirus mutant that makes the infected go out and spread it.

  60. 60.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    October 14, 2020 at 8:02 pm

    The first reason is that talk and tears are fucking cheap. (ed: North Dakota’s governor) Doug’s ability to use his lacrimal glands, and his exhortations to “find your love,” have zero correlation with his ability to find a fucking pen and sign an executive order to mandate mask wearing and gathering restrictions in his state. He might as well be going on Fox every day of the week for all the good that his tears and good intentions have done.

    Thank you for saying something that has been digging in me for a *long* time now.
    I’m glad he’s *trying*, a bit. But he’s nevertheless *letting people die* to avoid damaging his situation, or, perhaps, to protect other Republicans who are *letting people die*.

    What’s worse is, however much we *hope* infected people will be immune for a long time, we
    a) know some people have been reinfected;
    b) that at least one person was reinfected, and had a worse situation, and therefore:
    c) the best evidence we have suggests that immunity may not last all that long – maybe not even a year. We can’t even know if it lasts a year, because the virus wasn’t even in the human populace a year ago!

    The Republican Party isn’t just *letting people die*. It’s letting them die with absolutely no reason to believe there’s any upside whatsoever. It would be horrible to sacrifice 210,000 Americans even if it bought us herd immunity.

    Doing so when we’re not sure it will bring about herd immunity is insanity squared, divided by three.
    (People who hang out with me will often understand what I mean with that expression. Those who’ve just started to hang out with me, alas, might ask a self answering question, like “Okay, ‘weirdo, I get insanity squared – the insane are all ‘this is totally nucking futz, even by our standards!’. But why divided by three? Because…” (horrified realization dawns, as we finish together) “that makes absolutely *no* sense whatsoever.”)

  61. 61.

    eddie blake

    October 14, 2020 at 8:08 pm

    those chasids in borough park are a serious problem. they’re being led around by the nose by tang the conqueror’s campaign doing robo-calls to rise up against cuomo and deblasio. they’ve got a local little lonesome rhodes named heshy tishler who is trying his hardest to spin up riots.

    they’re serious disease vectors. i live one neighborhood to the east and they’re NEVER masked up. they’re getting special, kid glove treatment by the nypd, which is leading to all sorts of claims of favoritism (which it is). it’s ALSO leading to all SORTS of direct anti-semitism as people go WAY beyond actual criticism towards claims of jews running nyc, jews running albany, jews running the world…

    it’s a very slick move derp furor’s campaign has pulled off. they’ve gotten brooklynites to turn on each other instead of uniting to fight the common foe. (no, not the judean people’s front.) most of the chasids were, sad to say, deep in dolt 45’s pocket to begin with, but this is going to spiral out of control very shortly. the mood is ugly.

    (eb is a kike. a yid. a hebe. ahook-nose. he’s kosher. he’s a red sea pedestrian, and proud of it!)

  62. 62.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    October 14, 2020 at 8:14 pm

    @Bill Arnold: I think there’s probably a tossup between discipline and compliance. Both can be negative terms, but, “compliant” is the medical term to describe a person who is told “take one tablet, once a day, to help control your blood pressure” who then takes one tablet, once a day, and only stops if they and their doctor agree; and “compliance” is the term for how a therapy is followed. An unpleasant therapy might show low compliance, for example.

    Anyway: that’s why “compliance” is probably the preferred term.

  63. 63.

    Ken

    October 14, 2020 at 8:15 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: 15-1 now.

    Braves making a comeback!

  64. 64.

    ant

    October 14, 2020 at 8:16 pm

    my husband got sent home sick on Monday. (appleton WI) congestion, headache, red eyes. When I talked to him on the phone, he was all “oh it’s just allergies”. “you get fatigue with allergies?” I asked?

    Covid people love bather on about allergies. Anyways I convinced him to make an appointment to get tested. That was yesterday.

    I’m out over the road truck driving, and I’m worried. Lot of cases back home in the Fox Valley.

    At the shipper today, some redneck dumb fuck driver comes in the shipping office with no mask on, and the other 3 (only 4 drivers at a time allowed. employees not masked on other side of glass divider) of us were just starring at him. He starts his blather about not wearing a mask. Something about mask wearers are the “prey”, and we are the “predator”.

    He was greeted with silence. You could have herd a pin drop. I was done at that point, and just turned around and left. Go predator your fucking droplets somewhere away from me asshole.

     

    It’s all so fucking exhausting.

  65. 65.

    Tim Posh-looking in a mask

    October 14, 2020 at 8:18 pm

    NC has had a “mandate” for what feels like ages (jesus, I’m nostalgic for April).  Around my Cape Fear county I’m seeing about 65% compliance (not a professional statistician). The stores post the signage, but apparently cannot declare “no shoes, no shirt, no goddamn mask, no fucking service!” policy.

  66. 66.

    schrodingers_cat

    October 14, 2020 at 8:19 pm

    @RSA: I saw it after I wrote that comment!

  67. 67.

    AWOL

    October 14, 2020 at 8:23 pm

    @eddie blake: Well, maybe a few Hasid Trips to Brooklyn General will make them find Hashem.

    Seriously, these Baal Shem Tov followers have always been cultists, xenophobes, and misogynists. Not surprised they humiliate themselves and their cult by voting neo-nazi in the 90-percent range.

  68. 68.

    WaterGirl

    October 14, 2020 at 8:24 pm

    @ant: Ugh.  I’m sorry.  Hope all is well with your husband.  Crossing fingers.

  69. 69.

    jl

    October 14, 2020 at 8:25 pm

    Below is interesting article I referred to above. The bottom line is that there may be two very distinct transmission processes going on with covid-19: one relatively slow person-to-person droplet mode that may be relatively easy to control, and one dangerous aerosol mode that affects groups and results in very rapid large outbreaks.  If this research is reliable, it raises the optimistic possibility, that if we can get rid of superspreading events, then the covid-19 will be much easier to control.

    If true, the theory also explains a very puzzling aspect of the disease: it bubbles around for a very long time, with many initial seedings that don’t go anywhere, and probably gives the ‘no big deal’ crowd some reason to wonder why it is a big deal, but then can suddenly explode and bring a statewide health care system completely crashing down for months, with mass death and freezer trailer morgues parked on many streetcorners. One German epidemiologist called this mysterious aspect of the bug, the ‘dark matter’ problem of the epidemic.

    The article presents recent research showing that there were many more introductions of  covid cases to the many areas that later had explosive outbreaks than previously thought. Early research in late Jan and early Feb did predict that covid cases would be seeded around the world within a couple of weeks, not the two to three months that previous flu pandemic research suggested. So, more evidence that Trump shouldn’t brag about his travel bans. A quick look at the publicly available research, that even a mook like me read at the time, would show that travel bans were a very  short term delaying tactic that should be used to prepare for serous and effective control efforts. Maybe if the pandemic surveillance and control programs had not been disbanded, some real experts would have noted the research and advised an adequate response. But that is just IMHO.

    This Overlooked Variable Is the Key to the Pandemic
    It’s not R.

    ZEYNEP TUFEKCI
    Atlantic, SEPTEMBER 30, 2020

    https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/

  70. 70.

    Ruckus

    October 14, 2020 at 8:36 pm

    @debbie:

    They might, maybe, if forced at gun point, on their death beds, admit that they may have miscalculated that there was some risk. And that maybe is doing a lot of work. Like most of the work. They have taken their cue from shitforbrains, let your dumb flag wave, and wave proud.

    And on the flag note, we may have to come up with a new flag to get over the stench that so many trumpkins have stained the US flag with. Of course many of them have been using the confederate flag, which is the one they consider to be the true American flag. And that one has more than enough stench on it’s own.

  71. 71.

    jl

    October 14, 2020 at 8:38 pm

     

    Below is an article from Nature Medicine with nice figures that show the contrast between the ‘slow’ droplet mode of transmission and the ‘fast’ explosive superspreader events. See Figure 2. The results are consistent with databases of outbreaks I’ve seen. In fact the contrast in the size of superspreader events and other outbreaks is smaller in this article than other studies and outbreak data bases I’ve seen. Edit: maybe because Hong Kong doesn’t have much meat packing, big distribution centers, light industry, etc.  with unsafe working conditions? I don’t know enough about the Hong Kong economy to say.

    High risk places for suprespreader events? Probably most important are large non-retail workplaces and staff interactions at all workplaces, large indoor activities with a lot of respiration (no more zoomba in crowded rooms), bars, nightclubs. Outdoor activities, well spaced people visiting zoos or large museums probably low, if masks are used, and if masks strictly enforced, mass transit with limits  on talking.

    I think another implication is that proposals to force people back to work and protect employers from liability for negligent safety practices is a recipe for health and economic disaster, as well as a worker rights and equity issue. We should give Mitch a call, if maybe he’d listen.

    Clustering and superspreading potential of SARS-CoV-2 infections in Hong Kong
    Dillon C. Adam, Peng Wu, Jessica Y. Wong, Eric H. Y. Lau, Tim K. Tsang, Simon Cauchemez, Gabriel M. Leung & Benjamin J. Cowling
    Nature Medicine (2020)
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1092-

    Edit: and snot nosed punks on the beach and families in outdoor parks, relative low risk. Snot nosed punks, drinking, talking loud unmasked in beach bars and nightclubs, high risk.

  72. 72.

    BruceFromOhio

    October 14, 2020 at 8:43 pm

    @Ohio Mom: NEO, and the covidiots reflect the number of Trump signs in my white privilege HQ township. One bright spot is the local CostCo, you won’t get past the entrance without a mask. Other places, it’s less stringent policing.

    Please stay safe wherever you are!

  73. 73.

    Ohio Mom

    October 14, 2020 at 8:47 pm

    jl:
    I thought The Atlantic lifted its paywall for Covid articles — or maybe they did and now they don’t, because as interesting as that article sounds, it remains out of my reach.

    eddie blake:
    Those Chasids in Borough Park, Monsey, Mea Shearim, etc., have always been thus. Though adding “vector” to their list of characteristics is new.

    The worst is when uninformed liberal and secular Jews romanticize Chasidim under the mistaken impression that are somehow more authentic and ”real” than the rest of is. But that seems to be fading away, fortunately.

  74. 74.

    Raven

    October 14, 2020 at 8:55 pm

    @Kent: Dawg I’ve been here 36 years, there is little I don’t know about the fucking swamp lizards, Throw in that I am an Illini from birth and I know all about Zook,

  75. 75.

    jl

    October 14, 2020 at 8:56 pm

    @Ohio Mom: Oops, that is too bad. I must have subscribed some time in the past, my access isn’t blocked. if I can find something else, will give a link in a future covid-19 thread.

  76. 76.

    Gin & Tonic

    October 14, 2020 at 8:56 pm

    @eddie blake: It’s not just Brooklyn. There’s a little town called Uman in central Ukraine, which is the burial site of the founder of one Hasidic sect. A Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage there is apparently a very big deal to believers. This year, the non-compliance with Ukrainian masking policy led, fairly shortly, to Ukraine’s closing its borders to all non-citizens for a couple of weeks.

  77. 77.

    jl

    October 14, 2020 at 8:58 pm

    @Ohio Mom: Seems to be a weird prejudice in the US that the more extreme and inflexible a religious sect is, the crazier the beliefs and the more obnoxious and self-righteous its followers are, the more real and authentic it is. Certainly true for us Protestants.

  78. 78.

    eddie blake

    October 14, 2020 at 9:00 pm

    @Ohio Mom:

    yeah, i dunno. they REALLY come off as arrogant assholes. they seriously don’t think the rules apply to them. even in a fucking pandemic.

    and they WHINE. perfect gop specimens. problem is, they’ve hitched their wagon to a fascist horse.

    i wouldn’t have thought they’d have forgotten about the lampshades and soap so soon, and yet, here we are.

    https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-protest-coronavirus-brooklyn-borough-park-20201007-tbrjcmcgmnfubcqksxjqhkzdyi-story.html

  79. 79.

    eddie blake

    October 14, 2020 at 9:01 pm

    @Gin & Tonic:

    that very well may be, but i SERIOUSLY doubt the ukranian chasids are voting for orangemandias.

  80. 80.

    jl

    October 14, 2020 at 9:07 pm

    @Ohio Mom: If you are still here, below is link to a public access preprint. Some technical babble, but most of it in plain English. Need to translate the standard indirect and oblique academic speak for yourself.

    Stochasticity and heterogeneity in the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 Benjamin M. Althouse et al. 2020. Arxiv preprint.

    https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.13689.pdf

  81. 81.

    BruceFromOhio

    October 14, 2020 at 9:17 pm

    @jl: this is a great article, very informative and benefits from the many ways we’ve been trying to understand and fight this thing. Thanks for sharing!

  82. 82.

    MoCA Ace

    October 14, 2020 at 9:25 pm

    Nice try something something mistermix…  how may cities in the Dakota’s made the top 20 cities for per-capita Covid infections… exactly one.  Wisconsin has 10 cities on the list and my neck of the woods  (NE Wisconsin) has 7.

    Game, set, and match!

  83. 83.

    jl

    October 14, 2020 at 9:28 pm

    @MoCA Ace: The Dakotas have cities? Wha…?

  84. 84.

    sdhays

    October 14, 2020 at 9:28 pm

    @mrmoshpotato: This puts a whole new spin on “the fly” in the VP debate.

  85. 85.

    Miss Bianca

    October 14, 2020 at 9:37 pm

    Aaand…we just had a positive case traced to our Sheriff’s Office. None of those fuckers masking up. And the new Public Health Director being one of those wabble-jawed right-wing “can’t we all just AGREE to mask up for the community’s sake!” instead of, you know, ENFORCING a goddamn mask order?

    I could just scream, but that would likely put someone else at risk.

  86. 86.

    Miss Bianca

    October 14, 2020 at 9:39 pm

    @germy: this kind of story makes me wonder if he’s been sliding into dementia for longer than I would have imagined – some guy who’s “terrified of flies”, and obsessive about hygiene, *not* being afraid of catching this thing and taking precautions against it?

  87. 87.

    bcwbcw

    October 14, 2020 at 9:45 pm

    Not all the rabbi’s and Orthodox communities are being Trump idiots so there is a big difference in rates between different neighborhoods. There are, unfortunately, some big neighborhoods that are being jerks. It is amazing that these same groups suffered huge numbers of deaths in April, including the deaths of a lot of their elderly rabbis leaders but they still won’t learn.

  88. 88.

    Bill Arnold

    October 14, 2020 at 9:46 pm

    @jl:

    If this research is reliable, it raises the optimistic possibility, that if we can get rid of superspreading events, then the covid-19 will be much easier to control.

    i have not slogged through the hundreds of case studies, but I’d be (unpleasantly) surprised if any large COVID-19 clusters were seeded by a masked superspreader. All large indoor gatherings need to be masked, at the very least.
    (Yeah, that article by Zeynep Tufekci ( https://twitter.com/zeynep ) is good. She’s been consistently better than nearly all experts on the pandemic; clear, self-aware thinker. )

    Other problems are within-household spread, and spread in small, often private (depending on jurisdiction) unmasked indoor social gatherings. Knocking out just superspreading events might reduce R0 sufficiently with masks and the rest of the Japanese model, not sure (but Japan’s numbers look good), but these other modes are how many people get infected.

  89. 89.

    MoCA Ace

    October 14, 2020 at 9:49 pm

    @jl: yeah, there’s Sioux Falls and Fargo and……. yeah.

  90. 90.

    Bill Arnold

    October 14, 2020 at 9:56 pm

    @jl:
    Interesting Nature piece about Hong Kong.
    Must be careful about mapping it to other cultural contexts, but the overall shape of their conclusions is likely to generalize.

  91. 91.

    jl

    October 14, 2020 at 10:02 pm

    @Bill Arnold: Same pattern in every analysis of outbreaks and in outbreak data base I’ve seen… Louisiana, S Korea, Europe. Sooner or later we are going to get down the epidemiological invariants of this bug that will help reduce the costs of control.

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