CincyBillsFan

This is to broad and violates Henderson's rule that actions to thwart a pandemic should minimize societal disruption. The damage done by deviating from normalcy can be extensive. We are seeing that first hand now. We will pay a steep price for the lock downs over the next few decades. Nothing can stop the spread of a respiratory virus in it's tracks. The best you can do is manage the spread and focus on protecting the most vulnerable. I'll take my lead from DA Henderson over the CDC any day of the week. After all this guy used to head that organization among others: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.552.1109&rep=rep1&type=pdf

This is where risk/benefit calculations come in. Required vaccinations for schools make sense given the threat of the problems they're meant to deal with. Last I saw most school systems don't require children or teenagers to get the flu shot do they? This is in spite of flu outbreaks often emerging from schools.

I actually forgot to answer your question in my first response. This is actually a good point you're making and is a classic what comes first the chicken or the egg type question. Testing has confirmed that many virus can be passed from asymptomatic people to others. The caveat is that in most of these cases the virus remains at very low levels in the person it transferred to and they also are asymptomatic or suffer only minor symptoms. This is how herd immunity is quickly generated in human populations. During flu season if we were to test EVERYONE we would find asymptomatic spread. But we generally restrict our testing to symptomatic people. For covid the fear of the virus made the simple fact of catching the virus a problematic endpoint. Yet for the vast amount of people symptoms were slight or not apparent. It didn't help that our tests were to sensitive for practical public health actions. I guess what I'm trying to say is that those with symptoms are far more contagious then those without. And not only are they more contagious but their overt symptoms lead to their delivering higher doses of the virus to those they infect. Bottom line is that quarantining symptomatic folk would have been the most logical, effective and importantly least disruptive way to deal with covid. Spoken in hindsight of course.

What beliefs are that? As a 60+ year old I got vaccinated. And yes I'm a retired scientist. For what it's worth I worked on an anti-AIDS drug in the early 1990's. As far as the covid goes we are staring to get a clearer picture of it's etiology. Many of the assumptions made in March/April 2020 have turned out to be incomplete or flat out wrong. BTW, those are not my beliefs but what the aggregate data indicates.

One of the oddities about our response to covid versus the historical response has been the amount of testing and the sensitivity of the tests. Some of these tests can detect covid at very low levels in the body. This resulted in a couple of complicating factors: 1) The virus was being detected in people at levels below which it could trigger symptoms 2) The tests appeared inaccurate because people would test positive then negative then positive. This was likley due to the sensitivity of the test which was catching the covid at very low levels and at the limit of it's sensitivity. Monitors don't put me in TO for posting this but DA Henderson was America's greatest infectious disease specialist. Just Google his resume to be blown away. This is the guy credited with leading the effort that wiped out small pox. Here is a scientific article he wrote on how to handle future pandemics like covid. For some reason we choose to ignore this mans advice. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.552.1109&rep=rep1&type=pdf

You will find a lot of contradictions in the data as the science is far from settled with this. But the current belief is that asymptomatic people rarely pass it on. To be perfectly blunt the CDC has been less then stellar during the pandemic. I'll leave it at that.

Skyline! When my Buffalo friends visit they fall into two groups: those that love the chili and those that hate it. Those that love it though must get their fix ASAP after they get here.

I think the only mitigation effort we did that worked was urging people who experience symptoms to quarantine. The bulk of the data I've seen shows that asymptomatic rarely pass covid on. We made a fatal mistake early on by quarantining healthy people instead of focusing on the sick. Every vulnerable person in the US has had the opportunity to get vaccinated. IMO the only people vulnerable are that way by choice.

The last time I started posting sources I got put in TO. I'm a scientist by profession and the bulk of the current thinking on covid indicates that asymptomatic people rarely pass covid on.

Florida has more people then NY State and is about the same size. On top of that Florida was visited by millions of tourists the last 6 months while NY State has largely remained closed down to tourism. By any reasonable consideration Florida has a much better covid profile then NY. And they are not seeing a spike. I've read several studies employing Meta analysis to look at covid infection & death rates across the US and the world and so far it doesn't matter whether you locked down tight or stayed wide open or everything in between. Covid is a classic respiratory virus that spread through the human population in much the same way that most respiratory virus do. It's actually been eye opening how little our mitigation efforts impacted covid.

I'm surprised that so many Bills fans are willing to throw Beasley away for this. Watch any of those exciting YouTube 2020 Bills highlight videos and see how often Bease is making critical catches in the games. The Bills are a weaker team without Beasley. I always thought the introduction of the vaccine would return sanity to the crazy world of covid. The vaccine places the responsibility for ones health back on the individual where it belongs. As long as everyone has access to the vaccine you can chose to protect yourself or not. We will never have 100% vaccine compliance. And as long as you don't work in health care or a nursing home vaccination should be a personal choice. IMO the players association should have never agreed to what they did with the NFL.

Here's the data for Florida which is not only densely populated but the site of vast tourist migrations over the last few months. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/florida/

The reality is that a vast amount of people, particularly those under 40, are alreday effectively immune to covid and if they catch it the viral load remains low and they don't develop symptoms or they exhibit very mild ones. They also are much less likely to pass the virus on.

You have an insane amount of immunity with either the vaccination or naturally derived immunity. There are a lot of medical people advising against those that have recovered from covid getting the vaccine. Others are recommending that those who had covid previously get only one shot.

We have an idea that for the vast majority of people not to much will happen as covid is a corona virus and we have experience with that class of virus. BTW, do you know what will happen to you after getting vaccinated in 3 years? And for the record I chose to get vaccinated as I'm over 60 and the risk/benefit ratio made sense to me. If I was healthy and 30 I'm not sure I would have opted to get vaccinated. For sure if I had covid previously and was under 40 there is no way I would get vaccinated. Would you?

Looking at the data for each state I'm not seeing any spikes in the Southern States. There were spikes in several northern states (Michigan & PA for example) with tough lock downs in place in April but so far in June everyone is seeing covid cases and deaths fall or stay steady at very low levels. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

What if they already have had covid? Their acquired immunity is every bit as potent as what they would get from the vaccines. And most people in Beasley's age group, under 35 won't get sick from covid. I think that number is over 98%. The solution is simple. Test Beasley on a regular basis. If he doesn't catch the covid what's the issue? I'm over 60 so I chose to get the covid vaccine. When I turn 65 I'll get the shingles vaccine but right now the risk/benefit ratio for shingles in the under 65 crowd says don't get the vaccine yet. It's a personal choice. Every adult has the option to protect themselves by getting vaccinated. What Beasley does or doesn't do won't impact those that get the vaccine.

This is why I'm very optimistic about this season. I think we have a number of guys that can make that 3rd year leap. And if they do the Bills will be formidable. I especially like that they are scattered across areas of need for the team - RB, TE, D-line and O - line. I expect that we will be pleasantly surprised by these players and the rest of the NFL will be shocked.

I would take Tonyan AND Knox! BTW, when I posted that I thought the same thing. I really believe Knox is going to explode on the scene this season.

I would take GB's RB & TE in a nanosecond. IMO GB has a much more BALANCED set of skill players then the Bills have.

True. But I know that the Bills offense would suck without Allen.

The TD throw to Diggs in the the 4th quarter against the Colts. It was like Allen beamed the ball to Diggs and it just appeared in his hands in the end zone. Also the throw to Knox down the seam in the 2nd NE game.

People worry to much about this. Allen made an impressive jump from his rookie year to year 2 with screaming fans in attendance. I believe the jump we just saw in year 3 would have happened with packed stadiums. Allen's play has improved as he has gained more experience and the Bills have built a better offense around him. Take a look at the roster changes from Allen's rookie year to his 2nd year and then the additions of a truly elite WR and a very good right OT his 3rd year. We should be confident that Allen's trajectory continues to be up and a full stadium will prove no more problematic to him as it would to any elite QB.

Are you claiming that Kelce & Knox are at the same level and the difference between them is the QB throwing to them? The last 2 years that Kelce played with Smith he was already recognized as an elite TE. Knox hasn't come close to matching the numbers Kelce had with Smith. And for the record I think Knox will have a great season and become a top 10 - 15 TE this year. That Kelce's numbers got even better with Mahomes is more the result of Kelce continuing to improve; Mahomes being a better QB then Smith and Reid recognizing what he had with Mahomes & Kelce and channeling more of the offense through them. As far as "homers being homers" goes I'll take a homer every day of the week over fans who only ever see that that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

I would not swap Allen for Mahomes and my reasons echo a lot of others: * I think they're about equal today with Allen having a slightly higher upside. * I think that over the course of a career Allen's bigger size and superior athleticism makes a difference. * I don't buy the argument that Mahomes outplaying Allen over the last couple of years matters to the discussion today. Just put the Bills offensive roster from 2018 & 2019 alongside the Chiefs from 2018 & 2019. Enough said. Given the big difference in supporting personnel, the statistical comparison from those years mean almost nothing.