ewsieg

I'm certainly no expert, but a broken arm/knee surgery probably would the times you would want an opiate. My father in law had a bad knee, but instead of having surgery right away, the doctor was all to willing to keep giving out Vicodin. He was probably on it 2-3 years. He wasn't doing anything illegal, just asking for them. He was lucky enough to realize there was a problem and cut himself off. That was probably more physically taxing for him than the knee pain ever was.

Monday’s Bullwark was a guy that has specialized in making movies more marketable in China. Much of it was stuff I think most on this site are aware of with China, but some specific examples made for an interesting podcast.

I talked Covid with my long term care / rehab center working brother and he mentioned they get fined 65k for every patient that develops Covid while they are there. Technically the state has to prove they got it from a staff member, but they are a bigger facility and the only question the state asks is "has any employee tested positive in the last two weeks'. If the answer is yes, they are fined and they also get some other mark against them that affects their rating and can impact federal payments. Apparently it's a federal agency that set it up, but it's up to the State to enforce and Michigan has chosen to follow with the above procedure. Mind you, they can only enforce mask mandate in the common areas. They aren't allowed to force testing, even on their own dime, and once family is in the room with a patient, they are allowed to unmask if they are vaccinated, but they aren't allowed to demand proof. All visiting limitations were completely removed by the feds as we were heading up in our current spike as well. Oh joy! Fast forward to today and my wife woke up with a rash all over her body. Doctor office tells her to get a Covid tests before they'll let her come in or go to the emergency room. Looked around the house as I knew I had a few, but with company/family in town, we moved everything and the kids helped. Finally decide to run up to the store, none at Walgreens, try CVS, none there either. Wife ended up going to the hospital. They don't get her a covid test and diagnose her with an allergic reaction, but want her to follow up with her doc. Tonight I searched again and found a test so now she can see her doctor tomorrow, but this crap is ridiculous. Luckily I have insurance that covers most of the emergency bill and I can afford my 200 dollar copay. Many people can't though.

97.1 was talking about football players as they head into january 1st. You can be damn sure they need to be dying from Covid before they call the team doc up and let them know they have symptoms. They want to play and even moreso, they don't want to be the reason themselves and those in close contact with them don't have to go into Covid protocol and risk missing the game too.

I'm not going to say you're wrong, but there are some legitimate complaints from the anti-vaxxer side which IMO, 'science' hasn't clearly dictated how we should react either or at least shown the side that touts 'science' doesn't necessarily have a great grasp of everything either. There was a recent poll where roughly 40% of democrats polled believed that 50% of unvaccinated folks that got Covid would need hospitalization. I guess creating fear helps drive up vaccination rates, but in turn i'm sure it hurts in other factors associated with our society and certainly leads to more hostility/division. Just Christmas day, my aunt/uncle that tout 'science' and decry the Trump voters in my family showed up at my Grandma's. Their daughter usually hosts Christmas, but didn't want people together due to Covid. My aunt was wearing a mask. I know she's vaccinated/boosted, but just figured she was playing it cautious. I don't feel the need at this point, but i'll respect it from anyone that choses to do so. Soon after they got up to leave and she mentions to my brother and I how she just hasn't felt good since the day before, headache, runny nose, sore throat, and occasional cough. Are you freaking kidding me? It was at least a KN-95 mask, but seriously, wtf? If Grandma gets Covid soon after Christmas, I'm sure they'll be the first to blame my mom or uncle (Trump voters and both vaccinated (which i'm guessing she doubts)).

Yup, Covid has pretty much made everyone look stupid at one time or another. Just pointing out that if government was in charge here, we’re still would have been fucked. I’d argue that capitalism allowed us to get testing ramped up better more quickly though.

Would a company that wants to make money, continued to produce and sell these, if let’s say government officials would have had the foresight that testing was still needed? Biden has done many things right with Covid, testing is not one of them. For the last few weeks I’ve been able to see rapid tests and get them easily now though. Still PCR’s take forever to get responses.

Wouldn't go that far, he's actually producing products. But the revenue vs company worth is striking.

I mean, we all know it'll flop, but a value of a company doesn't necessarily have anything to do with products. See Tesla.

I agree with you. When I say 'this board', I'm referring to at minimum, a majority of folks. There is one specific person I can think of that often writes stuff that maybe you could argue it's not celebrating, but certainly callous. I think most people on this board are guilty of occasionally expressing their anger about the Covid situation as a whole in a callous manner at one point or another, I know I certainly have, but my 'fuck them' moments were not celebrating anyone's death, just expressing annoyance at the continued stress some folks are putting on the economy, health care, even their own families.

Is the theory that the person that started this may have had a common cold at the same time still possible? I remember a few weeks reading that, it apparently helps the virus evade the immune system better, but upside was less severe. For our family, Christmas plans aren't being cancelled. Grandma is in her 90's, but has the booster and in overall good health for her age. In years past when my Dad was still around, I could see Mom and Dad staying home as even the flu was dangerous for him. I do know folks that the entire family is fully vaccinated, boosters and all, with no folks that would be considered 'at risk' and they are staying separate this holiday. That I don't get.

Same here. Which is why this law should be supported by all, including the NRA. But nope, won't happen. That said, i'm not sure how much this law will help either. Those responsible already do this, now we have to hope the irresponsible follow suit because it's now a law on the books. Still, if it helps in one case, it's worth it.

This is me today, after getting a Moderna booster after getting Pfizer originally.

It's an issue for the facility I reference that my brother works at. They are at full capacity based on staffing levels, but way less beds in use than normal.

Smerconish, while he has a national TV and radio show, was born, raised, and still lives in PA. He's a much bigger name in PA than he is in nationally. Would have been a good platform for Oz. That said, points out why the GOP is on track to no longer be a national party anymore. You're not allowed to even try to expand the voter base out of fear of the oversized oompa loompa in Florida and his crew.

Even if the United States quickly became 100% vaccinated, it was always still going to be with us. Until there is a legitimate good faith effort to ensure every person on this earth has access to vaccines, it’ll be a larger issue. Please don’t think I’m praising them. They are making major mistakes. My point has never been that the GOP is handling this better, it’s that maybe either good governance may not really matter due to how powerful this issue is or maybe the “follow science” governors are making some mistakes too.

There was a political divide before the vaccine even came out with multiple democrats stating they would be reluctant to take a vaccine that came out under Trump. With the fact that democrats are the more reasonable party at this time, I do wonder if Trump actually won, does the GOP push the vaccine and the Dems fall right in line and overall are vaccination rates are much higher? I guess we'll see. The peak doesn't seem as high, but we seem to be more sustained than we have ever been in the past. Yup, DeSantis is an idiot with some of the things he's done, but 1) he was absolutely advocating the vaccine and put State resources into various campaigns as well as early on targeting communities that had an older population (regardless of demographics despite media reports) and 2) Florida had more, but not twice as much, doing the math, Florida peak was about 114 per 100k, last week Michigan hit 88 per 100k. In terms of deaths, looks like .2887616% of the population died in Florida vs .2691498% here. Florida deaths are coming down and positivity rates are near the bottom of the nation. Michigan still is sitting around 15% positivity rate and death counts are climbing. There is a point that Florida had a few months lead in terms of medical knowledge, but if medical knowledge was that big of a factor, how come it's not just Florida, but just about every state experiencing recent spikes seeing some of the their highest numbers ever?

Yes, but I'd argue most people are. I think people should have a choice and outside of the very few examples where a legitimate doctor says they shouldn't get it, I think people are stupid not to get it. People that make the choice not to get vaccinated must realize and accept the consequences as well. Examples could be losing employment, or allowing health care providers to not cover hospitalization costs. I've always felt it was serious even though it does have a high recovery rate. It can have a high recovery rate and still be much more deadly than the flu, both can be true. Overall i've agreed with the democratic response over the republican response on this virus, but I don't like the feeling that only one side is right and the other is wrong. Rather this is a seasonal virus or not, so far it's shown that pattern, and like clockwork when the South is showing high numbers, the media (and this board) talk about how republican leadership has blood on their hands. But when it happens in the North/NorthEast, just blame the unvaccinated (even though vaccination rates are much closer than most realize. Granted, some of the policies being advocated by the GOP are wrong, i'm not arguing that they are better. But IMO, don't complain about the unvaccinated when you have control of the government and no real steps are being made to get these vaccines out to everyone. The WHO is endorsing efforts by scientists in other countries as they try and reverse engineer some of the covid vaccines. Anyone think that maybe it's time to tell Moderna and Pfizer it's time to publicly provide the instructions on how to make the vaccine? Yes they made it, but in large part to decades long public support on researching MRNA. Meanwhile, as numbers spiked even higher in the last few weeks, the long term care / rehab center my brother works at were instructed by the state that they could no longer provide any limitations on guests. Can't even require masks. Great timing! But hey, he's in Michigan so he should just trust the government as they follow science, amirite? He was given equipment by the feds which would allow him to rapid test visitors and has repeatedly tried to get the state to allow him to do that. Nope, not allowed. But hey, both Whitmer and Hertel have been back out in the spotlight a bit more telling folks they need to get vaccinated and be smart, so all is good.

From your partisan eyes, I'm sure they did.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/us-coronavirus-deaths-by-state-july-1.html I know some are going to talk about different stats, but according to this, we're back up to #2. How many pages of this and the motownsports page were filled with anti-Texas / anti-Florida memes/comments talking about how horrible their governors were for advocating for the vaccine, but telling people they had their own choice and fighting to ensure they had that choice, vs our governor that advocated for the vaccine and said that people maybe shouldn't have the right to not get it. So for those trying to understand the difference, one thinks you should get it, but thinks it should be your own choice. Whereas the other thinks you should get it, but isn't going to do much to ensure that you do in fact get it.

BS, they did not do that. They did criticize aspects of it, no doubt. And as much as you want to believe the narrative that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, there were some legitimate concerns. I mean, think of that drone strike, pretend Trump was president when that happened, you're opinion of that change even a little?

You followed this up with a post about possibly bringing Ukraine into Nato. Didn't we also make promises to Russia we wouldn't encroach on them as well, then we added a bunch of eastern bloc countries to Nato. Not saying adding Ukraine is a good or bad thing, but just sayin'.

It's not just Paul either. I'm assuming it was true, but it was also on Twitter and I didn't follow up on it, but apparently one of the KY congressman has been around for a bit and has a history of voting no on nearly all federal assistance requests, except when they impact KY. The quote of his response was something like 'I have a clear conscious with my votes because while I don't like federal assistance for other places, even with my no votes they almost always pass, so when it effects us, I must due this so my district gets their fair share'. If even 50% true, what a POS.

not everything has to be about race. This has to do with 'my tax dollars shouldn't have to help assist every natural disaster that happens' and then going through a natural disaster and realizing how badly assistance may be needed. The sad part is, they'll suffer amnesia and 6 months from now, start voting against other states again.

I think because he pushed it, it won't end up just being probation, I'd say 30-90 days. I don't know the sentencing guidelines but I have a hard time believing they put him in prison over it regardless of how much they want to make an example out of it.