Don't hassle me - I'm riding my bike

On 7/8/2020 2:05 AM, Ralph Barone wrote:
Radey Shouman wrote:


But not much more, and less per capita, than died in the pandemics of 1957
and 1968.


But note that the pandemics of 1957 and 1968 had one important difference.
They’re over, while the US is still working through their first wave of the
current pandemic. Implying that things aren’t that bad now compared to 1957
or 1968 is akin to publishing the death toll from an airplane crash before
the plane hits the ground.

That reminds me of a comment I read about the early re-openings in
several states, like Florida and Georgia:

"The parachute has slowed our rate of fall, so it's OK to cut it loose."


--
- Frank Krygowski

On 7/8/2020 11:16 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 7/8/2020 2:05 AM, Ralph Barone wrote:
Radey Shouman wrote:


But not much more, and less per capita, than died in the
pandemics of 1957
and 1968.


But note that the pandemics of 1957 and 1968 had one
important difference.
They’re over, while the US is still working through
their first wave of the
current pandemic. Implying that things aren’t that bad
now compared to 1957
or 1968 is akin to publishing the death toll from an
airplane crash before
the plane hits the ground.

That reminds me of a comment I read about the early
re-openings in several states, like Florida and Georgia:

"The parachute has slowed our rate of fall, so it's OK to
cut it loose."



Translation, "We're lounging around home at full pay, just
like we used to slough off at the State offices, so we
really don't give a damn whether you're working, whether
your children eat, whether your mortgage is paid, or not."

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

AMuzi wrote:
On 7/8/2020 11:16 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 7/8/2020 2:05 AM, Ralph Barone wrote:
Radey Shouman wrote:


But not much more, and less per capita, than died in the
pandemics of 1957
and 1968.


But note that the pandemics of 1957 and 1968 had one
important difference.
They’re over, while the US is still working through
their first wave of the
current pandemic. Implying that things aren’t that bad
now compared to 1957
or 1968 is akin to publishing the death toll from an
airplane crash before
the plane hits the ground.

That reminds me of a comment I read about the early
re-openings in several states, like Florida and Georgia:

"The parachute has slowed our rate of fall, so it's OK to
cut it loose."



Translation, "We're lounging around home at full pay, just
like we used to slough off at the State offices, so we
really don't give a damn whether you're working, whether
your children eat, whether your mortgage is paid, or not."


The ongoing and rising polarization in the US has led to the current state
where everything which should be discussed on a continuum ends up being
reduced to a binary choice and nobody wants to discuss rational compromise
solutions for fear of being branded a “splitter� by their tribe.

Ralph Barone writes:

Radey Shouman wrote:
Ralph Barone writes:

Radey Shouman wrote:
John B. writes:

On Tue, 7 Jul 2020 13:09:37 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Friday, July 3, 2020 at 3:12:13 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 7/3/2020 3:53 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 7/3/2020 3:10 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Friday, July 3, 2020 at 8:47:36 AM UTC-7, Sepp Ruf wrote:
AMuzi wrote:
https://710wor.iheart.com/content/20...rage-incident/


Detroit needs a mayor who will campaign donating Chinese
safety flasher toys
to anyone in sight.

With any luck some jerks will take the lesson to heart.

Like, "Don't go into a Detroit traffic argument armed
with a knife!"

Exactly, the driver should have been pack'n. It should
have been some Quentin Tarantino-esqe shootout.

This definitely proves the superiority of handlebar
baskets. Just keep your Glock in there with your posies
and donettes.

Well, there's a tradeoff between a handlebar basket and a
handlebar bag. With the basket, the gun's easily visible but
it bounces around. Sometimes it slides under the donettes,
slowing your draw time.

The handlebar bag can have a special holster pocket. But
then there are tradeoffs between an inside pocket over an
outside pocket. Inside for concealed carry, but you lose a
second flipping the bag open. Outside for open carry, but
some people get touchy about that.

Being a good-old-boy American bicyclist can be complicated!
That's why most of them drive pickups.


Cyclists's pistols were a very common accessory at one time.
It's not an overly complex problem. Upscale model at 12
shillings:

https://onlinebicyclemuseum.co.uk/wp...ist-pistol.jpg

N.B. Tom in Oakland, tagline: "I fear no tramp."

more, many with folding trigger for pocket carry:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bicycle+pi...ages&ia=images

That said, urban environments present almost infinite
possibilities for trouble and for liability.
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

While someone like Frank might hurry his own death along by trying to
walk the streets of Oakland I have people offering help whenever
they believe they can be of some.

Last Wednesday I was talking to a rich man, like most rich a large
part was inherited. His Grandmother had a farm in the bay area not
long after the civil war when food was big business. And also like
most rich he spreads it around as much as possible. He is a surgeon
and works for Doctors without Borders. He works mostly in Africa and
he talked about how much healthier African Children are than
Americans because their immune systems are under constant
challenge. Perhaps this is the reason that I have such good
health. Traipsing through the salt marshes when I was a kid. I
suppose a large part of these marshes were formed as part of the
run-off from the cities which could not have been very healthy.

We discussed the idea that a cloth mask could possibly even slow down
a molecule like a virus and we both got a good laugh out of that (I
suppose that he definitely would not fall under Frank's category of
"medical expert" I have the distinct impression that what Frank
thinks of as an expert is anyone that sits on their ass and reads an
occasional study. Frank appears to be unaware that most studies are
absolute garbage but then I suppose that is what he taught in
college. Poor students. Though they probably learned the art of
engineering by practice and not by his meanderings.

Virtually everything that has been visited upon this country by the
Democrats has been a virtual curse. While walking through those salt
marshes I was accompanied by an American kid of Japanese
extraction. He grew up in Roosevelt's concentration camps. These
were formed in large part so that Roosevelt who was one of the most
racist people that ever lived could allow his friends to seize the
property of the Japanese/Americans who were rather prosperous up to
that time.

Exactly what do you suppose goes through the head of a man who has a
large guaranteed income when he would tell the working man that he
cannot work and cannot provide for his family and must do insane
things like wear a mask in public unless he is robbing a bank?
Social distancing is much like wearing a mask - an infected person
has a cloud of virus molecules surrounding his head and contrary to
the highly educated Dr. Fauci's thoughts, these thing do not fall to
the ground like a brick dropped off a building. They float pretty
much in place in a stream along which you are walking. That means
that someone could pass through that very slowly dispersing cloud
minutes after you have passed and be exposed.

The entire Democrat Party has retained some small remnants of power
though the constant threats and fear. Awful environmental impact
that is barely measurable, man-made climate change that doesn't
exist and now a virus that is virtually harmless.

No doubt you are correct and the figures prove it. The U.S. is leading
the world!

In the larger countries, with a population of 200 million or more, the
U.S. is head and shoulders above the rest with 3,085,705 cases of the
virus, some 3 times the next highest country; 133,808 deaths, double
the numbers of the next closest country;404 deaths per million - y'all
are slipping a bit here, only about 30% higher and 9,321/million
cases, again slipping back to only about 1-1/4 times the next highest
country.

Just think, 50% more deaths due to the Virus than all of the U.S.'s
military deaths in the past 70 years, from the Korean war to the
present.

But not much more, and less per capita, than died in the pandemics of 1957
and 1968.


But note that the pandemics of 1957 and 1968 had one important difference.
They’re over, while the US is still working through their first wave of the
current pandemic. Implying that things aren’t that bad now compared to 1957
or 1968 is akin to publishing the death toll from an airplane crash before
the plane hits the ground.

True, it's impossible to say now just what the toll will be. There are
still countries where deaths are increasing, but the US is not one of
them. It's possible that we will get a second or third wave, no one
knows at this point.


I’m not quite sure that I comprehend what you’re saying there. “Deaths are
not increasing in the US.� I thought that once you were dead that you
tended to stay that way? Now if you meant the rate of deaths from
COVID-19, yes the deaths chart from worldometers.com does show the death
rate being less than it was in May, but there are still nearly 500 people
per day dying from it. In addition, the number of new cases per day has
doubled in the last month, so I would expect the death rate to start
tilting upwards fairly soon.

Of course I should have said that the death rate is decreasing, but I
think you guessed that. New cases per day is a statistic driven largely
by the testing rate. If US death rates start tilting upwards fairly
soon I'll admit to being wrong, but I don't think I'll have to do that.

Ralph Barone writes:

Radey Shouman wrote:
John B. writes:

On Wed, 8 Jul 2020 06:05:11 +0000 (UTC), Ralph Barone
wrote:

Radey Shouman wrote:
John B. writes:

On Tue, 7 Jul 2020 13:09:37 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Friday, July 3, 2020 at 3:12:13 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 7/3/2020 3:53 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 7/3/2020 3:10 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Friday, July 3, 2020 at 8:47:36 AM UTC-7, Sepp Ruf wrote:
AMuzi wrote:
https://710wor.iheart.com/content/20...rage-incident/


Detroit needs a mayor who will campaign donating Chinese
safety flasher toys
to anyone in sight.

With any luck some jerks will take the lesson to heart.

Like, "Don't go into a Detroit traffic argument armed
with a knife!"

Exactly, the driver should have been pack'n. It should
have been some Quentin Tarantino-esqe shootout.

This definitely proves the superiority of handlebar
baskets. Just keep your Glock in there with your posies
and donettes.

Well, there's a tradeoff between a handlebar basket and a
handlebar bag. With the basket, the gun's easily visible but
it bounces around. Sometimes it slides under the donettes,
slowing your draw time.

The handlebar bag can have a special holster pocket. But
then there are tradeoffs between an inside pocket over an
outside pocket. Inside for concealed carry, but you lose a
second flipping the bag open. Outside for open carry, but
some people get touchy about that.

Being a good-old-boy American bicyclist can be complicated!
That's why most of them drive pickups.


Cyclists's pistols were a very common accessory at one time.
It's not an overly complex problem. Upscale model at 12
shillings:

https://onlinebicyclemuseum.co.uk/wp...ist-pistol.jpg

N.B. Tom in Oakland, tagline: "I fear no tramp."

more, many with folding trigger for pocket carry:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bicycle+pi...ages&ia=images

That said, urban environments present almost infinite
possibilities for trouble and for liability.
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

While someone like Frank might hurry his own death along by trying to
walk the streets of Oakland I have people offering help whenever
they believe they can be of some.

Last Wednesday I was talking to a rich man, like most rich a large
part was inherited. His Grandmother had a farm in the bay area not
long after the civil war when food was big business. And also like
most rich he spreads it around as much as possible. He is a surgeon
and works for Doctors without Borders. He works mostly in Africa and
he talked about how much healthier African Children are than
Americans because their immune systems are under constant
challenge. Perhaps this is the reason that I have such good
health. Traipsing through the salt marshes when I was a kid. I
suppose a large part of these marshes were formed as part of the
run-off from the cities which could not have been very healthy.

We discussed the idea that a cloth mask could possibly even slow down
a molecule like a virus and we both got a good laugh out of that (I
suppose that he definitely would not fall under Frank's category of
"medical expert" I have the distinct impression that what Frank
thinks of as an expert is anyone that sits on their ass and reads an
occasional study. Frank appears to be unaware that most studies are
absolute garbage but then I suppose that is what he taught in
college. Poor students. Though they probably learned the art of
engineering by practice and not by his meanderings.

Virtually everything that has been visited upon this country by the
Democrats has been a virtual curse. While walking through those salt
marshes I was accompanied by an American kid of Japanese
extraction. He grew up in Roosevelt's concentration camps. These
were formed in large part so that Roosevelt who was one of the most
racist people that ever lived could allow his friends to seize the
property of the Japanese/Americans who were rather prosperous up to
that time.

Exactly what do you suppose goes through the head of a man who has a
large guaranteed income when he would tell the working man that he
cannot work and cannot provide for his family and must do insane
things like wear a mask in public unless he is robbing a bank?
Social distancing is much like wearing a mask - an infected person
has a cloud of virus molecules surrounding his head and contrary to
the highly educated Dr. Fauci's thoughts, these thing do not fall to
the ground like a brick dropped off a building. They float pretty
much in place in a stream along which you are walking. That means
that someone could pass through that very slowly dispersing cloud
minutes after you have passed and be exposed.

The entire Democrat Party has retained some small remnants of power
though the constant threats and fear. Awful environmental impact
that is barely measurable, man-made climate change that doesn't
exist and now a virus that is virtually harmless.

No doubt you are correct and the figures prove it. The U.S. is leading
the world!

In the larger countries, with a population of 200 million or more, the
U.S. is head and shoulders above the rest with 3,085,705 cases of the
virus, some 3 times the next highest country; 133,808 deaths, double
the numbers of the next closest country;404 deaths per million - y'all
are slipping a bit here, only about 30% higher and 9,321/million
cases, again slipping back to only about 1-1/4 times the next highest
country.

Just think, 50% more deaths due to the Virus than all of the U.S.'s
military deaths in the past 70 years, from the Korean war to the
present.

But not much more, and less per capita, than died in the pandemics of 1957
and 1968.


But note that the pandemics of 1957 and 1968 had one important difference.
They’re over, while the US is still working through their first wave of the
current pandemic. Implying that things aren’t that bad now compared to 1957
or 1968 is akin to publishing the death toll from an airplane crash before
the plane hits the ground.

Too true, in fact from the numbers I see the daily new case rate is
higher then at any time previous. On 7 Jul it seems to have been
55,442 new cases. Nope, I was wrong, the highest number of new cases
seems to have been on 3 Jul with 58,910 new cases.

The death rate, however, continues to decrease. Popular coverage of
the pandemic in the US, like everthing else, is now driven almost
entirely by politics.


Yes, we’re getting better at treating people, but note that deaths are a
trailing indicator. The death rate now tells you what the infection rate
was doing 1-2 months ago. Since your infection rate now looks to be higher
than it ever was before, I can’t share your optimism.

I'm not sure how you can compare infection rates of several months ago
with those of today. The rate of testing has changed dramatically.
There were almost certainly covid19 cases in California in December, but
they did not appear in any statistics.

Frank Krygowski writes:

On 7/8/2020 9:45 AM, Radey Shouman wrote:
When the current pandemic is over there will be a variety of
estimates
of the death toll as well. That someone died is certain, that he would
have lived absent the pandemic not at all.

I think the best estimate of fatalities will come from comparing total
deaths for the COVID era vs. (say) the five year average of similar
months in previous years.

The UK total death rate showed a substantial increase at the start of
the pandemic, it has been down to normal levels for weeks now. I'm not
sure about US total death rates.

As always, some judgment will be needed, because people's behavioral
changes can have secondary effects. Thank goodness, that will give us
something to debate about.

There has been a lot of collateral damage, for example people missing
chemotherapy or other needed medical treatment. Some of them have died
when they would have lived with treatment. More will die, some possibly
years in the future because they missed vaccinations during the covid
pandemic.

Frank Krygowski writes:

On 7/8/2020 2:05 AM, Ralph Barone wrote:
Radey Shouman wrote:


But not much more, and less per capita, than died in the pandemics of 1957
and 1968.


But note that the pandemics of 1957 and 1968 had one important difference.
They’re over, while the US is still working through their first wave of the
current pandemic. Implying that things aren’t that bad now compared to 1957
or 1968 is akin to publishing the death toll from an airplane crash before
the plane hits the ground.

That reminds me of a comment I read about the early re-openings in
several states, like Florida and Georgia:

"The parachute has slowed our rate of fall, so it's OK to cut it loose."

I don't understand what the popular idea of the covid endgame is. There
really is no certainty that a vaccine will be developed, which means
that we have to bargain on enough people becoming at least temporarily
immune that the pandemic stops. Endemic covid may well continue for
years.

Lockdowns were sold as a means of limiting the load on hospitals. It
seems to have worked. Hospitals are not in danger of overload in
Georgia or Florida (they are pretty full in Texas, but still not in
crisis). What is the justification for endless lockdown?

Much of the death toll in most countries was due to epidemic spread in
nursing homes and other medical facilities. The particularly vulnerable
should have been, and should be now, protected better.

Ralph Barone writes:

AMuzi wrote:
On 7/8/2020 11:16 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 7/8/2020 2:05 AM, Ralph Barone wrote:
Radey Shouman wrote:


But not much more, and less per capita, than died in the
pandemics of 1957
and 1968.


But note that the pandemics of 1957 and 1968 had one
important difference.
They’re over, while the US is still working through
their first wave of the
current pandemic. Implying that things aren’t that bad
now compared to 1957
or 1968 is akin to publishing the death toll from an
airplane crash before
the plane hits the ground.

That reminds me of a comment I read about the early
re-openings in several states, like Florida and Georgia:

"The parachute has slowed our rate of fall, so it's OK to
cut it loose."



Translation, "We're lounging around home at full pay, just
like we used to slough off at the State offices, so we
really don't give a damn whether you're working, whether
your children eat, whether your mortgage is paid, or not."


The ongoing and rising polarization in the US has led to the current state
where everything which should be discussed on a continuum ends up being
reduced to a binary choice and nobody wants to discuss rational compromise
solutions for fear of being branded a “splitter� by their tribe.

It's really worse than that. No one is willing to entertain the thought
that the factual state of the world is in any way different that
whatever their in-group believes it to be.

On 7/8/2020 6:46 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Ralph Barone writes:

The ongoing and rising polarization in the US has led to the current state
where everything which should be discussed on a continuum ends up being
reduced to a binary choice and nobody wants to discuss rational compromise
solutions for fear of being branded a “splitter� by their tribe.

It's really worse than that. No one is willing to entertain the thought
that the factual state of the world is in any way different that
whatever their in-group believes it to be.

I understand your point. I'd object only to the "no one." I straddle the
line on many hot button issues, conservative on some, liberal on others.
I know others who are the same - not necessarily matching my attitudes,
but nevertheless holding a mix of views.

Granted, I don't know the percentage who are moderate vs. extreme left
vs. extreme right. I suppose Google knows - or claims to.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 7/8/2020 5:39 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:

On 7/8/2020 9:45 AM, Radey Shouman wrote:
When the current pandemic is over there will be a variety of
estimates
of the death toll as well. That someone died is certain, that he would
have lived absent the pandemic not at all.

I think the best estimate of fatalities will come from comparing total
deaths for the COVID era vs. (say) the five year average of similar
months in previous years.

The UK total death rate showed a substantial increase at the start of
the pandemic, it has been down to normal levels for weeks now. I'm not
sure about US total death rates.

As always, some judgment will be needed, because people's behavioral
changes can have secondary effects. Thank goodness, that will give us
something to debate about.

There has been a lot of collateral damage, for example people missing
chemotherapy or other needed medical treatment. Some of them have died
when they would have lived with treatment. More will die, some possibly
years in the future because they missed vaccinations during the covid
pandemic.


You're right.

On the other side, clinics, surgery centers, hospitals and
notably huge hospital systems are financially stressed for
lack of revenue. Until people start buying new knees and
bariatric procedures and such, the system won't be able to
function.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971