RWG

^ We all misdiagnose ourselves. Not just during the pandemic. I too was obsessed with whether I was able to smell certain things for a bit. My boss's husband has no sense of smell or taste as a symptom from a head injury. It takes a lot of joy out of life.

Another reason why comparisons to the common flu aren't apt: this is a NOVEL virus and we still don't know much about it, including what the long-term effects of getting it could be.

What so is radical about wanting to move part some funding in one line item in a city budget (e.g., policing) to other ones? It is a pretty standard exercise, when the item at issue is anything other than policing. It's almost like Biden is running against an impeached president during a period of civil unrest at the mouth of an economic depression.

I am really running out of time for Novak Djokovic.

Who could have predicted that Manfred would be even worse than Selig. An entire generation is not going to care about baseball.

They've gotten pretty boring, the rallies. I won't lie, in the past I would have given him credit for at least being a good performer, in a BIll Hicks sort of way. But it's gotten really stale. Apparently the ramp bit went on for 15 minutes.

The bits about the ramp and TVs on Air Force One were especially germane to the average American's problems. You are right though. Win or lose, he will wave around the Bible and scream law and order and get about 50% of the vote.

What is happening imo/what many predicted would happen: 1. People say "we are going to have this many cases and deaths if we don't shut down massive segments of the economy and public life now" 2. We shut down massive segments of the economy and public life. 3. Due to #2, the number of cases and deaths is substantially lower than the worst-case-scenario projections. 4. People complain that they've been sold a bill of goods and decide the virus is not that threatening, go back to normal. Florida looks to be completely out of control now. They're now at over 3,000 new cases a day and were around 1,000 a day a week ago. And it's probably more than that, given their reporting guidelines. I don't think it's fair to say the U.S. has given up, but its leadership obviously has.

BDB seems unique in his ability to be hated across all regions of the political spectrum.

To throat clear: I'm not a WHO truther who it's an arm of the Chinese Communist Party or something. It plays a role something in the world has to play. And sure it's reluctant to criticize its members who fund it (like China) like all multinational organizations are (and therein lies an issue with them). But how can they be making mistakes like the "very rare" statement about asymptomatic spread? Don't they have some kind of process to ensure that the statements its spokespeople are making are vetted by experts? We've all read story after story about examples of the virus spreading asymptomatically, and 15-40% doesn't meet any normal person's definition of "very rare." It's just ridiculous on its face. The stakes are too high for these kind of easily preventable mistakes.

It's going to be interesting to see how Mitt Romney ends up being regarded historically, compared to someone like Susan Collins, and to the rest of the GOP during the Trump years in general.

I'm in solidarity with the protesters and I understand the importance of protesting now, but I do also worry about the effects of doing it during a pandemic. The argument against "they're aware of the risks" remains the same as before; getting it yourself puts others at greater risk. I've become skeptical of outdoor spread though. I guess the protests will offer something of an experiment as to how much the virus spreads through large crowds outdoors.

There is probably a small portion of protesters who actually want to live in an anarchist state. To most, defunding the police means examining the root causes of crime and incrementally reallocating parts of police budgets into addressing those issues. It doesn't mean no police tomorrow; it means there are ways of reducing crimes and the need to police them. On a completely cynical level, it's amazing that there isn't even an M.O. to stop proving the protesters right for PR reasons. They know they are being filmed, and they don't care.

In my experience, the people most likely to buy into the "no racism in Canada" meme are liberals and people who live in regions where there are only white people. Shows of racism are very common in the major cities.

^ lol at the Twitter screen name -- This is terrorism if anyone other than the police does it.

Yes lol. I feel both ways about it. It's annoying seeing sights like that while our numbers were trending in a worrying direction. I get the outrage at people who are making personal exceptions for themselves expecting others to do social distancing for them. At the same time, if you go to the lakefront downtown, the Martin Goodman trail is way more crowded than that, every day/evening, and I don't see anyone shaming those people. We don't even know for a fact if it spreads that much outdoors. I have to think at least some of the outrage at the Trinity-Bellwoods Park people had to do with the fact the people photographed are what people imagine hipsters to look like.

The golfing thing always hits a nerve I've noticed. I could make a long list of things I don't like about Obama. I'm not a Democrat, nor would I be if I were an American, they don't represent my views, and I've probably spent more time in the last year bemoaning the Dem establishment than I have Trump, so I can't really bothered with this. I'm guessing I probably didn't comment on it then because it didn't seem like a constant/obsessive thing with Obama. I'm sure that would clock if you check the logs.

His new thing is a conspiracy theory claiming that a dead political staffer who was married was having an affair, and a cable news host murdered her. He's just horrid. The amount of time he spends watching cable news instead of doing any work would really bother me. All the golfing, too.

Yes, as I've probably said before, it's mostly academic as to whether most businesses are forced to be closed. It's very hard to create a market for things like restaurants during a pandemic. Especially in regions where people take health seriously. Businesses generally can't operate with 50% of their regular revenue. There's also this: I still buy into the theory that the strain of the virus that came to New York through Europe is more contagious or causes more severe illnesses than the one that spread through Asia and then to the West Coast in North America. I don't know anything about how viruses mutate, but it seems to clock with the data.

If you want to demonstrate that countries can handle the virus more or less successfully without shutting down their economies, at least use Japan. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-22/did-japan-just-beat-the-virus-without-lockdowns-or-mass-testing

They sort of backpedaled on this statement because they still want people to take the precautions, but some epidemiologists who do media have been expressing this general sentiment for months: distancing yourself from others in public does much more to protect you from the virus than disinfecting your groceries and washing your hands constantly does. You're more likely to get it from someone else's mouth indoors than you are from touching a surface and then touching your face.

Sweden's deaths are actually skyrocketting relative to its neighbors in Europe. Norway - 235 Denmark - 561 Finland - 306 Sweden - 3,925 I love seeing the right wing hold up Sweden as a bastion of freedom and rugged individualism. But I guess if you want a prime example of a place that, when faced with a decision of economy vs protecting the vulnerable, straight up chose the economy, it's Sweden. Canada's death rate is very high because such a high share of its cases have been in senior/long-term care homes. It basically gets in through a visitor or staff member, infects all the seniors in the building, and kills several of them. Community spread is relatively low. (Ironically, it's believed a lot of the infections in these homes were caused by snowbirds coming back from Florida who returned home and immediately rushed to visit their friends/relatives in these homes.) We still need more data, but I think a reason many of these southern states haven't been completely ravished like many thought they would is because warm weather plays at least something of a factor in slowing spread. Also, people assume a place (eg Florida) is going to explode with cases when they see photos of hoards of people on the beach. We still don't know for sure, but it looks like your odds of contracting it outside are actually quite low. From that I think we can deduce that things like closing down parks probably isn't necessary.

This plan is probably going to barely be approved by the NHLPA 31-player committee, and this will be the the bracket. (The NHLPA got 18/31 votes; apparently some teams, including the Penguins, are furious.) Technically, it's not a 24-team playoff. The top four teams in each conference are in the playoffs; the other 16 teams play in a play-in round for the last eight spots. Overall thoughts: - They had to do 24 or 20 teams for the math to work, and I guess they chose 24 because more teams = more fans watching = more money. - This means Montreal and Chicago are in the play-in, which is ridiculous. Neither of those teams have any business being involved in this (or the Rangers, frankly). Mathematically, they had no grounds to argue they'd been unfairly excluded, if they'd been excluded. Hell, if it were me, you go by points %, games played is evened out, anyone not in the playoffs is out. Sorry, you had 7/8ths of a season to get into the playoffs. - Montreal had a 0.5% chance at making the playoffs when the season was paused. Now, they have a near 50% shot and winning a 5-game play-in that will probably look like exhibition games. - This is an advantage to the "top eight" who now have a chance at playing an even weaker (should be non-playoff) team in the first round. - It's hugely unfair to teams like Pittsburgh, Toronto, and Edmonton, who were basically guaranteed to make the playoffs. Now they're at about a 50% chance because Montreal and Chicago needed to be allowed to have chance. - At the end of the day, it's a fake cup so who really cares. The Canucks are probably playing Minnesota in the first round. They were a very good team since they fired Boudreau, but they're still sort of mediocre and one of the oldest teams in the league. It would probably be a toss-up like most of these play-in series. That's good that they're not terribly lethal for humans. I read a Globe article about them that made them sound very scary. There might be UFOs now too. It is very hot in Toronto and now I suddenly miss the crappy weather. I badly need AC.

We haven't had snow in a week. It was 16 degrees today! Hopefully we have seen the last of winter but you never know in this region. There is no spring, it just goes from winter to summer. It would be something to watch, I guess, but it wouldn't be a real Stanley Cup for whatever team wins this tournament/playoff thing. Apparently now, the NHL is willing to scrap the rest of the regular season and do a 24-team playoff, but a lot of GMs are mad that teams like Chicago and Montreal, who are bad teams, will get to play in play-in series against significantly better teams. Outside of 2011, my happiest playoff moment was when the Canucks beat the Blues in Game 7 in 2003. The most depressing was when they lost the 2nd round series that year to the Wild after leading the series 3-1 and had a 2-0 lead in the 2nd period in Game 7. The Canucks all-time team wasn't that impressive. It was probably tied with Winnipeg's for 2nd-worst in Canada after Ottawa. Montreal obviously had the best, Edmonton was 2nd. Calgary and Toronto would probably be tied for 3rd. I didn't read too much into the Murder Hornets. I read the first paragraph of an article and was like, No, not now.

It varies by state and pharmacy board, but generally, yes. They can more vaccinations than they can here. Generally, the United States is better at letting pharmacists use their degrees instead of just having them count pills. Finding a vaccine, producing enough for everyone, and getting everyone to want to get one are three different things. My guess is that it won't be free in the United States. And from what I understand, we don't even know if we can develop vaccines for coronaviruses, or if we'd need to develop one every year as the virus mutates. People talk like we'll certainly have one in a year and then we can wrap er up.