Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

I don't know if anything other than money and embarrassment factored into the Pac-12's decision, but one thing that changed the calculus morally for me was the reports that playing "meaningful" games in the spring would ensure that the 2021 season would be significantly impacted because the turnaround time was insufficient. Now I would be 0% surprised if that was a bad-faith argument made by the likes of Dabo Swinney et al but I wonder if folks figured it was better to have one season that was 50% screwed up and be back to "normal" in fall 2021 than to have (a chance) to have a 2021 spring season and 2021 fall season that were both 25% screwed up, which would have been quite likely to be a 2021 spring season that was 50+% screwed up and guarantee that your fall season would still be 25% screwed up no matter how quickly the vaccine changes matters.

 

I posted a couple of weeks ago that the Pac-12 was all-in when they got the rapid test stuff. Then came the news of possible heart damage from getting Covid. They played a video for all of the admins and coaches at the schools, and they all backed off. They waited until November, instead of September. Now, the Florida basketball player is stricken. Don't know what his diagnosis actually is, but it could be connected.

 

I think it was RickStain who was in on this but Nate Silver has been rather strident in his belief that age should be a much more determining factor of vaccine priority than preexisting conditions. I honestly don't care, as I figure I won't get one of those until Memorial Day at the earliest, but I suspect that people with preexisting conditions and their families have been ripping him a new one.

 

If you simply want to save as many people as possible as quickly as possible, going straight down by age until you hit about 60 is the best way and it’s not close mathematically. Mix in people who are specifically immunocompromised, not just any pre-existing condition.

This is where our “dance around the truth for a good cause” attitude comes back to haunt us. Scientists and liberal leaders were very reluctant to talk about how disproportionately covid hurts the elderly, because they were scared people might use that fact to behave badly. But now more people are going to die because of an inefficient immunization schedule.

 

As a society we don't value the elderly and I don't think the darkest days of a pandemic are going to change that.

 

The term "pre-existing conditions" is the source of a lot of trouble. I have hypertension. But that's a long way from being immune compromised. As an old, I'm pretty close to the head of the line anyway. Medical personnel, other first responders and IMO supermarket and pharmacy employees should be ahead of me. After that, it should be age related. I should note I'm a relatively young old. It'll take a while to vaccinate the people older than 70 year old me.

 

Lovely.

Britain tightens lockdowns over virus mutation with ‘significantly faster’ transmission rates

 

Then that should have been explicitly noted in an editor's note. Texas Monthly generally has high journalistic standards. It didn't here.

 

I agree with Alma here -- this is about journalism and ethics, not choosing a side between, say, health care workers and get-back-to-work screamers. (Count me on the health care worker side for that argument.)
If the photographers refuse to be named, the very least the publication should do is let the readers know how the editors fact checked and confirmed all the anecdotes.

 

I could not possibly adore Sean, Janice's husband, any more than I already do. He's been a friend for 20+ years.
And I have great sympathy for what he has gone through. He lost a slew of friends on 9/11 (he's still active FDNY), and then lost both his parents to COVID.
I also wish Janice had just once publicly called out Trump for how he treated NYC as it was in the throes of losing massive amount of people, including the elderly.
Just. Once.

 

Nice to know he’s done with COVID, which means thousands of people will soon be done with their lives.

The inside story of how Trump’s denial, mismanagement and magical thinking led to the pandemic’s dark winter