April Banter 2020

[showmethesnow]

16 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

This certainly did not help. Part of the deconstruction of the government apparatus mantra of the current administration.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/387191-trump-official-overseeing-pandemic-response-suddenly-leaves-admin

Think Fauci had a good response when asked his thoughts on this and whether it was a mistake. Sort of mirrors my thoughts.

“I wouldn’t necessarily characterize it as a mistake. I would say we worked very well with that office. It would be nice if the office was still there,” he said.

With my wife working for the government I have found that internal reorgs are the norm and not the exception. Seemed that every year through the various administrations we were seeing a reshuffling of resources throughout the various government agencies in an effort to stream line the processes. These changes are normally implemented by the heads of the different agencies as they felt best met their needs. Changes that most times fell under the radar of the various presidents. 

But back to the original issue. What we saw here wasn't a dissolution of the teams functions but more a reshuffling of the different portions of the team into more area specific areas. So the apparatus in place under the Global Health Security team still exists, it is now just dispersed with no central organization. That said, as Fausi stated above, I think we would have better served having this unit intact to handle our current situation.

[PDIII]

8 minutes ago, Baltimorewx said:

Nobody should discriminate against anybody because you don’t know how an individual lives their life. That said, way of life over there is disgusting. There’s a reason a lot of diseases begin over there. The population density combined with these disgusting meat markets is a recipe for disaster 

yeah.. this video is a powerpoint on testing methodology of corona virus.. in the beginning it goes in to detail about the wet markets:

 

[CAPE]

I suggested this a while back- that we make a separate thread for COVID-19 discussion. We are all living it, and it is natural to want to discuss it. There is simply no way to keep politics completely out of the discussion, however. Even those who are "attempting" not to, are often dancing on the edges, and showing their political leanings.

I know there is virtually nothing in the sports world to discuss, but we have beer and other less serious topics. It would be nice to have banter be just banter again. A diversion from what has become the everyday reality.

Just my thoughts. I will shut up now.

[CAPE]

44 minutes ago, Baltimorewx said:

Nobody should discriminate against anybody because you don’t know how an individual lives their life. That said, way of life over there is disgusting. There’s a reason a lot of diseases begin over there. The population density combined with these disgusting meat markets is a recipe for disaster 

Pretty ignorant. Maybe read this, or use google to learn a little more.

https://www.statesman.com/news/20200326/fact-check-is-chinese-culture-to-blame-for-coronavirus

An excerpt:

Quote

Peter Li, associate professor of East Asian Politics at the University of Houston, said this type of cuisine is not representative of Chinese culture.

“Chinese as a whole do not have wildlife eating habit,” Li said in an email. “It is the eating habit of a small number of people, just like a small number of people in the U.S. dare to eat rattlesnakes or the like. ... The eating habit is not Chinese and not traditional.”

 

[showmethesnow]

9 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

I suggested this a while back- that we make a separate thread for COVID-19 discussion. We are all living it, and it is natural to want to discuss it. There is simply no way to keep politics completely out of the discussion, however. Even those who are "attempting" not to, are often dancing on the edges, and showing their political leanings.

I know there is virtually nothing in the sports world to discuss, but we have beer and other less serious topics. It would be nice to have banter be just banter again. A diversion from what has become the everyday reality.

Just my thoughts. I will shut up now.

Basically where I am at. Really am trying hard to not cross the line and keep my comments subjective but so many of the issues are just out right polarizing. I know I have been saying I was going to try to stay out of the conversation because of this fact but to be honest I am bored as hell with being shut in so for better or for worse I have been tipping my toe in. Of course I guess I could go to some political boards and start trolling people, but that lost it's fun a long time ago. 

[CAPE]

7 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

Basically where I am at. Really am trying hard to not cross the line and keep my comments subjective but so many of the issues are just out right polarizing. I know I have been saying I was going to try to stay out of the conversation because of this fact but to be honest I am bored as hell with being shut in so for better or for worse I have been tipping my toe in. Of course I guess I could go to some political boards and start trolling people, but that lost it's fun a long time ago. 

It is a shame that engaging in a discussion involving politics always seems to 'devolve" into trolling and name calling, but it is a sign of the times we live in. No one is changing any minds on personal world views, etc. That said, it is possible to have rational and respectful discussions/debates, as long as those involved are open minded and have a reasonable level of intelligence.

[mappy]

35 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

I suggested this a while back- that we make a separate thread for COVID-19 discussion. We are all living it, and it is natural to want to discuss it. There is simply no way to keep politics completely out of the discussion, however. Even those who are "attempting" not to, are often dancing on the edges, and showing their political leanings.

I know there is virtually nothing in the sports world to discuss, but we have beer and other less serious topics. It would be nice to have banter be just banter again. A diversion from what has become the everyday reality.

Just my thoughts. I will shut up now.

done!

 

[mappy]

I will not be moving past comments about COVID from this thread to the new one, but will try and move posts as they happen moving forward. Lets all try to post in the right thread, thanks guys!

[George BM]

Just one of at least 11 EF5s during the 2020 Super Outbreak. This is near Fredericksburg, VA. 

 

I'm the blue bot facing the tornado. This tornado was moving east at 60 to 65mph at this time.

 

[showmethesnow]

30 minutes ago, George BM said:

Just one of at least 11 EF5s during the 2020 Super Outbreak. This is near Fredericksburg, VA. 

 

I'm the blue bot facing the tornado. This tornado was moving east at 60 to 65mph at this time.

 

 

Boy, that tornado is so huge and imposing that it makes the picture look almost surreal. Almost like it was a fake picture or something. 

[ErinInTheSky]

3 hours ago, showmethesnow said:

This brings up an interesting point. Do you use a test that has a known failure rate of 40+% with false negatives?

One could argue yes, as it gets known cases off the streets so they don't continue spreading the disease. Those that would argue no, would point out that we would being giving a false sense of security to the 40+%  who received the false negative. People that would more then likely continue socializing. But really it isn't quite a simple as I have stated above. As it really depends on the circumstances at any one particular point of time and what other actions may or may not be be putting in place concurrently.

Given the circumstances we were facing at that given time I would probably favor no. I think we would have been seeing many of these false negatives still out on the streets (false sense of security) even if they were under voluntary quarantine because of the uncertainty. After all we have seen how well the self quarantine has worked or hasn't worked in so many cases. Now we could have forced the quarantine on the recipients but then you are facing a whole new issue with rights and freedoms.

To further complicate the issue throw in Social Distancing or even Shelter in Place. We see that concurrently with the above test and I would probably favor releasing the kit. At that point I think the numbers favor getting known cases identified. Now some may ask 'So why we didn't we at least start social distancing at that time?' Well even that becomes somewhat complicated. But the quick answer to that is that it was far to early. If we put that in place so early in the process we are looking at flattening the curve so much that we extend this 6 months or even more. There is just no way in hell our economy nor our citizens could handle being shut down for that length of time. Now this is assuming that the virus is of the non-seasonal variety. If we are talking a seasonal type virus we run into another issue that could be even worse. What we see in that case is we have such a low level of infection rate this go round that we are nowhere near reaching what we need to see for herd immunity to start kicking in. This would portend another out break incoming next fall and winter where we once again have to shut everything down for an extended period of time unless we have a vaccine at that point. But unfortunately the projections on that being released in mass quantities is projected for a year to a year and a half at this time. Far too late to have a meaningful impact.

Like it or not we are probably in this for the long haul until we start reaching herd immunity. Now given that we more then likely have to wait for this to burn out on its own that brings up the next important question. How do we get there? Too flat of a curve and we prolong the agony so long that the economy and/or the citizens break. We don't want to exit this with riots in the streets and/or an economy that is so broken it can not recover. But then again if we steepen the curve too much we are then looking at crashing the healthcare system where the mortality rate probably doubles, triples or even more. The optimal possible solution probably rides just a little under the capacity for our healthcare system to handle. Gives us the shortest time to get us through this with a little room for our healthcare system to handle any sudden spikes. We are pretty much in a balancing act at this time, a balancing act that will determine how we exit this pandemic and head into recovery.

I mean I know 6 months sounds like a long time but we're kind of heading that direction regardless. By the way, the 40% false negative/positive thing was NOT the WHO test, it was one shitty test that China was using. See here: https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/biden-trump-wrong-about-who-coronavirus-tests/

 

“The test has been validated in three external laboratories, adapted by WHO and manufactured in line with international quality standards,” a WHO spokesperson said. “It has shown consistently good performance in laboratory and clinical use, and neither a significant number of false-positive nor false-negative results have been reported.”

The White House and the vice president’s office did not respond to our requests for comment or clarification. But Birx told the New York Times that the test she alluded to with a 47 to 50% false positive rate was not the WHO test, but rather a diagnostic used in China."

[H2O]

55 minutes ago, showmethesnow said:

Boy, that tornado is so huge and imposing that it makes the picture look almost surreal. Almost like it was a fake picture or something. 

Its a volcano tornado

[showmethesnow]

39 minutes ago, H2O said:

Its a volcano tornado

Is that sort of like a Sharknado?

[PDIII]

4 hours ago, C.A.P.E. said:

I suggested this a while back- that we make a separate thread for COVID-19 discussion. We are all living it, and it is natural to want to discuss it. There is simply no way to keep politics completely out of the discussion, however. Even those who are "attempting" not to, are often dancing on the edges, and showing their political leanings.

I know there is virtually nothing in the sports world to discuss, but we have beer and other less serious topics. It would be nice to have banter be just banter again. A diversion from what has become the everyday reality.

Just my thoughts. I will shut up now.

I think we can talk about and debate COVID 19 from a numerical, scientific and social perspective and leave politics out of it 100%!  I have wackadoodle political leanings.. so I stay away from that like its the plague (no pun intended).  

It is close enough to weather to be relevant.. also.. the weather channel used to show the flu map... maybe they still do.. 

[George BM]

On 3/31/2020 at 11:15 PM, JakkelWx said:

Well, it's almost April 1st. Tomorrow, possibly the biggest April snowstorm for the DC - Baltimore and the Delmarva region is nearly certain to occur tomorrow, with over a foot of snow in northeast Maryland projected by the CRAS and the NAVGEM models. Buckle up people. We thought winter was over 2 months ago. At least it will be 60s and 70s right after the snowstorm for highs, marking the start of actual spring. Blizzard warnings have just been posted for much of eastern West Virginia, and the temps are in the upper teens here as of right now.

I got totally and utterly PUMMELED here! The snow started in earnest here during the morning coming down moderately heavily until about midday when it got dark and wind gusts suddenly kicked up to the 50 to 60 mph range out of the north with temperatures quickly falling from near freezing to the upper teens! The snow was blinding and I could not even see the end of my normally sized and not long driveway at several instances all afternoon! The snowfall rates had to be at least 4 if not 5+ inches per hour at times. Also, yes I heard thunder several times throughout the afternoon. I ended up with 25.2" of pure crystal joy by the time the snow tapered off near sunset. This was my favorite blizzard and I have no idea how no thread was made for it . Meanwhile it's still fairly windy here today with 30-40 mph wind gusts.

How much snow did you end up with over there and did you experience the same crazy rates, winds and thunder/lightning?

[George BM]

3 hours ago, showmethesnow said:

Boy, that tornado is so huge and imposing that it makes the picture look almost surreal. Almost like it was a fake picture or something. 

This! It looked even more unreal in person. Mother Nature can truly be amazing and humble the biggest weenies! This was one of my favorite pictures from the chase.

[CAPE]

Time for a Juicy Hazy IPA.

[nj2va]

2001 final four on cbssn...don't want if you're a md fan

[JakkelWx]

6 hours ago, George BM said:

How much snow did you end up with over there and did you experience the same crazy rates, winds and thunder/lightning?

Oh boy. Its still snowing lightly here. We had about 4 inches per hour PLUS for about three hours straight early this afternoon. We had a couple instances of thundersnow, although i'm pretty sure there was tons of thunder/lightning in the MoCo/HoCo deathband. 20.5 inches of snow, with blowing and drifting in my driveway.

Then I woke up.

[WxUSAF]

With March done, 5 of the last 7 months have been 6F+ above normal at BWI. Just insane.

[Inverted_Trough]

On 4/1/2020 at 6:41 PM, showmethesnow said:

Italy and the US banned flights virtually at the same time. Italy on Jan 31 and the US on Feb 2nd. (Mis-posted with the Jan time frame when I actually meant Feb for the US ban.) But I think we might be comparing apples to oranges when comparing the two countries when it comes to the bans. First off, from what I understand we saw a large influx of Chinese nationals from the Wuhan region into Italy just prior to Wuhan being shut down on Jan 23. An influx that we never saw within the US. Now as to why, if we in fact saw this, I have my theories considering Wuhan was deep into the crap at that point. Second, how these bans were implemented probably played into things as well. The US keyed not only on flights out of China but also as well on international travelers themselves and their prior destinations on their trips. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case with Italy where there are indications that there were quite a few bypassing the restrictions by taking connecting flights from other countries. Now the above doesn't even take into account the multitude of differences with both countries in other areas. Genetic makeup, implementation of mediation internally, healthcare, populations density, age, etc..., etc..., etc... 

So I am not so sure I would look at Italy's ban and their results then maybe try to argue that the ban in the US had no impact.Think that is flawed logic. There are just far too many unknown factors to consider to make that leap at this time. Now we might find after the fact when the numbers are crunched that the ban did have little effect in the US. But I am not expecting that. When all is said and told I think we are going to find it made a significant difference to the outcome as it helped to significantly flatten the curve.

As far as the rest of your comment? I really have made a point of trying to avoid any discussion involving the US. Some of my points of view would not be popular on these boards and would more then likely be met with derision if not open hostility. I prefer not to start a flame war so... I will say though, I thought mentioning the travel ban was a safe enough topic considering there is a growing consensus among the professional field that it has made a significant impact. Guess I was wrong.

It's a hypothesis which has been posited by some in the professional field.  And it's been part of the political narrative to absolve blame or to show that we took it seriously.  But so far I haven't seen any data that supports this hypothesis.  Our infection counts are nearly an order of magnitude greater than everywhere else (and yes, I know we know we have a larger population, we've tested more, etc.)  I think there may be some evidence that it delayed the onset of the contagion, since things got worse in Europe before here.  But what good  does additional time do for you....if you don't do anything with that time?  What exactly were we doing with that additional time we bought?  We did nothing.  That's our fault.  

[yoda]

Alright... who broke the sensor?

 

[wxdude64]

4 hours ago, yoda said:

Alright... who broke the sensor?

 

Hey! Take that Mt Washington!!

[nw baltimore wx]

Hmmmm...

[Baltimorewx]

It’s beer30 at Bressi’s Tavern courtesy of Das Bierhalle! Currently In the Growler? Manor Hill “Sleeves”. An imperial stout clocking in at 10% Cheers! 

[Baltimorewx]

Cmon y’all, it’s Friday happy hour! Wtf, I know y’all don’t have anything better to do 

[CAPE]

I'm here!

[CAPE]

Drinking a Hazy IPA and watching Train to Busan.

Whats better than watching a zombie movie during our apocalyptic pandemic?

[Baltimorewx]

6 minutes ago, C.A.P.E. said:

Drinking a Hazy IPA and watching Train to Busan.

Whats better than watching a zombie movie during our apocalyptic pandemic?

Hmm. Never heard of it. Will have to check it out 

[CAPE]

18 minutes ago, Baltimorewx said:

Hmm. Never heard of it. Will have to check it out 

Pretty intense.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/train_to_busan