The Frankish Reich

Your logic is flawed. I really can't add anything to my long explanation above. Yes. It is pretty well understood by now that seasonality plays a part. We'll have to see what's medically indicated. Probably 4.5 months was a little too long between shots based on the nature of the disease today? I'm not sure how it will play out in the future. I find it disappointing that a vaccine (or a two-shot vaccine regimen) doesn't seem to last longer; maybe improvements in the vaccine or the schedule by which it is administered will improve that. Disappointing, yes. Depressing, horrific? Absolutely not. It means we've got something that works, and even seems to work really well after a third/booster shot. Imagine if we had nothing that worked to suppress infection/hospitalization/death rates. THAT would be reason for depression. I'm optimistic.

Well ... no. Looking at those Erie County stats: they are completely consistent with the idea of the waning effectiveness of a vaccine, particularly after about 6 months. Many of the most at risk (particularly the elderly) completed their vaccinations by March. So fast forward 8 months, and what do we see? The gap between the vaccinated and unvaccinated has narrowed. So the vaccinated should get boosters. That's what we've learned over the last several months. It's hardly astonishing that this is what we've learned. In a perfect world the vaccine would have been perfectly effective for a lifetime. You know the old saying "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." The vaccine is good. Really, really good. As far as the mandate issue goes: I'm not arguing about mask mandates, etc. Most of those are arbitrary because we don't have good data on how effective they are. Outdoor mask mandates strike me as particularly silly. We would do a whole lot better upgrading ventilation systems or maybe even building office buildings where you can (weather permitting; probably not Buffalo) throw open a window. Underlying all of this is a confused, ill-considered cost-benefit calculation. Vaccines are: (1) super effective, way, way, beyond any other response to COVID; (2) quite low cost, particularly to the individual. I just explained that my booster took all of 25 minutes, home-to-supermarket-back-to-home. If that's the cost to me a couple times a year, or even 3-4 times a year, it's nothing. The value to society is great. The arguments trying to chip away at this obvious hugely positive cost-benefit calculation are nonsense. They're things like the statistical illiteracy demonstrated here. So there's always the personal freedom fallback, and I will agree that this is an abstract good that we try to preserve, but not to the extent that people want to take it here. The infringement on one's liberty of getting yet another in a long list of required vaccines is minimal, particularly given that the vaccine has been proven safe. If you want to argue about this as an unwarranted infringement on personal liberty, you'll have to justify it by comparing it to other such infringements that we tolerate or even think are good.

It is a tragedy that this angry loser creep was not in jail. That's the whole point of what criminal justice scholars call "incapacitation." And we have thousands and thousands like him who really ought to be in jail out there committing their own particular favorite brands of crime, whether its theft or the drug trade or, in this case, intentional vehicular assault. Having said that ... I haven't seen any offical or media attempt to minimize the horror, the evil of this act. They said "no indication it is domestic terrorism" and that appears to be correct as "terrorism" is defined by the law enforcement community: a violent action or threat of violent action in service of some type of intended political result. So by saying "not terrorism" they're not saying it was not a big deal; they're just saying that there's no indication that it was what we commonly think of as terrorism. As far as it being a hate crime: what we're hearing about this creep's social media profile gives ample reason to investigate why he did this and who he was targeting. If he swerved to avoid black people and plowed through white people, well, yes, that's pretty good circumstantial evidence. If he posted "it would be better off if all these white people were dead" that would be really good direct evidence. But so far we don't know, we just have leads to follow and theories to guide that. In other words ... everyone ready to pounce on the media here is really barking up the wrong tree.

I am in the uncomfortable position of ... agreeing with you. These bail reform laws are extreme. There is no reason why someone who is accused of a potentially deadly assault-by-vehicle/domestic violence related should ever be released on $1000 bond, or for that matter, any bond without a bail hearing in which the judge can be presented with the full version of what is alleged and what measures may be taken to protect the community pending trial. Gotta love how the elected DA is trying to throw his assistant (who handled the bail matter) under the bus ... I have zero doubt that the Assistant DA was following office policy/guidance, much of which is driven today by a "no room at the inn" policy of bailing out suspects on as low bail as they can post. And all of this is aggravated by a ridiculous overemphasis on how we are incarcerating too many people. Incarcerating too many people who don't pose a risk of reoffending in a way that endangers the community? OK, I'll let them argue that. Incarcerating too many people like this killer? No. We are incarcerating too few people like this.

And so ... we see the shift from the statistically ignorant - "almost half of those hospitalized are vaccinated, so obviously the vaccine doesn't work!" - to the political, without even admitting to the error in interpreting statistics. This is what the anti-vaccine camp has had to resort to as the original favorite - "it's too new, it's untested, who knows what long-term side effects will emerge in a year" - has been shown to be unfounded. What life is being "upended" by requiring people to get vaccines? I got a whole laundry list of vaccines to attend school in Erie County. They lined us up to get the MMR vaccine in school with that little air gun thing. My kids have to show vaccine cards for all the classic diseases that have thankfully been controlled or even eradicated by vaccines. My booster shot literally took 25 minutes of my life a few Saturdays ago ... got an appt at the local supermarket, walked in, got the shot, went home, resumed whatever I was doing (I don't remember, so it was certainly less important than getting the shot). You wanna talk about shifting goalposts? It's the anti-vaccine mandate crowd that specializes in that.

Good Lord, people are willfully ignorant. I SAID REDUCE THE NUMERATOR TO FIT THE DATA. 5,500 or 550 or somewhere in between. Take your pick. You'll be reducing the numerator for the vaccinated accordingly. THE RATIO WILL REMAIN THE SAME. What does this say about Buffalo schools?

If you would actually read instead of standing at the ready to mock, you would've seen that I made the numbers easy - no decimals for the math challenged!- and said you are free to reduce numerator by a factor of 10 or even 100 as you see fit. It doesn't change the concept or the ratio ....

We also learned the the "md" in plenzmd obviously stands for Maryland and not Medical Doctor

OK, I shouldn't have to waste my time doing this, but ... here it is, in as simple/understandable way possible. 1. Let's use nice round numbers. Population of Erie County = 1 million adults. 80 percent of adults fully vaccinated. (We will set aside under 18s now because they are a very small number and weren't eligible until recently) That means: 800,000 fully vaccinated adults 200,000 unvaccinated 2. Assume 100,000 people hospitalized (I know, way too high, but feel free to reduce that by a factor of 10 or 100 ... I trust you learned that in 5th grade math?) 55 percent of those are unvaccinated That means 55,000 unvaccinated people hospitalized with COVID 45,000 vaccinated people hospitalized with COVID 3. Do the math: - 55,000 unvaccinated people hospitalized out of a total population of 200,000 unvaccinated people. 27.5% chance that if you are unvaccinated you are currently hospitalized. - 45,000 vaccinated people hospitalized out of a total population of 800,000 vaccinated people. 5.6% chance that if you are vaccinated you are currently hospitalized. 4. Do the ratio if you know how. 27.5 : 5.6 = 4.9. So what have we learned? - vaccines will not eliminate the possibility that you will get COVID and have serious enough symptoms to be hospitalized - vaccines WILL reduce your risk of getting COVID and having serious enough symptoms to be hospitalized by about 5X Why isn't the ratio higher? Didn't the Evil Dr. Fauci suggest it was something like 12X? Doesn't this mean he is EVIL and POSSIBLY PART OF A GRAND CONSPIRACY?? No. No it doesn't. It most likely means there are confounding variables. We know vaccine acceptance was much higher among elderly people, who are the same people most likely to have severe symptoms if they get COVID, so that 55:45 split is likely not evenly distributed among age demographics. And, of course, there are always other confounding variables -- those with preexisting conditions were urged to get the vaccine first (and qualified first), and, of course, preexisting conditions are a huge contributor to the likelihood that your COVID infection will cause serious complications. It isn't that hard to understand. Nothing I've done here requires more than arithmetic. No calculus, not even HS freshman algebra ....

This is just profoundly ignorant. If I'm not mistaken you are a gambling man (person). You really should know at least the minimum about interpreting statistics.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/josh-allen-patrick-mahomes-two-high-cover-two-data-11637552010?st=eszmchtgi8gx64h&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink The problem for offenses like the Chiefs and Bills is they thrive on going deep and aren’t as accustomed to nickeling and diming their way down the field. On early downs, excluding situations when the game is out of hand, Kansas City has passed 62.3% of the time—the second most often in the league entering Sunday’s games, according to rbsdm.com. The team that’s far and away first in that early-down passing metric: the Bills, at 68.7%. Typically, that’s one of the things that makes their offenses cutting edge and effective. But their struggles to do that against these defenses they’re seeing more often has weaponized their own styles against them. *** Allen hasn’t struggled quite as much as Mahomes in these situations, with 0.187 EPA against two-high going into Sunday. But it has also been deployed against him effectively, with the past few weeks showing how. The team that used it most against him, the Jaguars, limited what had been the NFL’s best offense to its worst output of the season. Allen, afterward, said Jacksonville used “two-high shells forcing us to throw underneath” and that he didn’t do a good enough job against it. “We’re going to learn from this,” he added. Fortunately for Allen, the next week he played the New York Jets, who apparently didn’t know much about this. They used two-high just three times against him—and Allen torched them in a 45-17 win.

Chargers' WR Mike Williams starting to look like our old Caveman Mike Williams, the "deep threat" we acquired for a brief moment before he disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Ben's arm is so shot, trying to wind up and still throwing wobblers like old Billy Kilmer, and in fact looking like paunchy old Billy Kilmer (there's an old guy reference for you). Yet ... somehow they keep plodding along with other teams unable to put Ben out of his misery.

Yeah, I was trying to figure that out. But then I just went "I hate Ben" and started enjoying the game. Until now.

Chargers are the new Bills! Finding Chargers-ey ways to lose.

Herbert is really good, and he got to that point really fast. Basically his rookie year was the equivalent of Allen's 2nd year.

May I suggest: "Would you rather be the victim of a surprise kick in the nuts, or would you rather have hot chili oil sprayed in your face for 3 hours?" Not to worry ... I'll double-post my Collinsworth Veneration of Mac Jones comments so you won't miss them.

Thank God you're not watching SNF. I mean, I assume you're not watching ....

You will love him as soon as he anoints Allen as the once-again frontrunner for the MVP.

Not to worry. I will transcribe any Collinsworth praise of Mac Jones, Bill Belichick, and the Patriots for you. I may even start a separate thread on it, just like those recurring "Chris Simms says Allen now playing like the genetically engineered son of Staubach and Favre" threads. 9:07 EST: Collinsworth suggests, Michaels agrees, that Chargers kind of happy that Miami took Tua and they were left with Herbert. More to come.

I thought posting a snarky reply like this, but I couldn't come up with the right pop culture late 1970s reference. I thought Donna Summer, but that just didn't seem to capture it. Debbie Harry is ... perfect. Congratulations, Sir Andrew - your mind is just a tiny bit more cluttered with pointless knowledge than mine.

You're right - a select text/quote error on my part. But the point is some other poster is just horribly wrong about 80% of life! 😜

So people will know what I'm disagreeing with you on? EDIT: sorry, I misread your take on Brown. Hey, we agree on that one!

Edmunds: I disagree. He was a risk because he was so young - by the time he hits his peak years, he'll be a free agent - but he's been really good and well worth the pick. Oliver: yeah, I wish he were the second coming of Aaron Donald, but he's been generally productive. I think I would've liked an O lineman with that pick. Bass: fantastic. A steal. Epenesa: with where he was chosen I think the pick was fine. I don't think using high picks on Epenesa, Rousseau, and Basham in consecutive drafts was wise. Brown: he looks like he'll be a good one, and he's already a starter. What do you want from a 3rd rounder? And Doyle was a 5th rounder, which is always kind of a crapshoot.

True. But I think this may say more about the state of the 2021 Seahawks than the excellence of a Cardinals team with McCoy at QB.