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Remember the people claiming all this as “Alarmist Non-sense”? Where are they today?

I'll wear a mask when I'm required. I never did or will argue about that. But whenever I'm allowed to, I unmask. I feel safe enough to do it. You'll like this: I have already been to two plays and one bar here in Chicago that require you to show proof of vaccination to enter, AND to stay masked inside at all times. Personally, I think that's overkill. After all, if everyone in the place is vaxxed, who are we protecting with masks? But hey, them's the times we're in. So in that specific situation, I comply because I have to, and cheat for air when I can.

Well, if you’re not mad enough at me yet, this will certainly send you over the edge: my 5’1”, 103-lbs. 60-year-old wife takes a walk through that very neighborhood every single day alone, all by herself, and I don’t lift a finger to try to stop her! 😅

Yeah, well, I didn't get triple-vaccinated just so I can continue to be masked at all times and never go to restaurants. Shit, I could have stayed unvaccinated for that. I'm inclined to disagree that "how worried should I be" depends 100% on my habits, because that would suggest that if I am fully vaxxed and unmasked, I should still be just as worried as someone who is completely unvaccinated and unmasked, because only my habits would determine whether I am in real danger. I gotta believe that being vaccinated makes a positive difference when I am unmasked out in the world, which is sometimes. That's why I wish we could have the data on people who get COVID, knowing what level of vaxxed they are, which brand of vax they got, and whether they were hospitalized or have died. It would give me some sense of scale as to whether I should be really worried because the vax doesn't matter after all, or whether I can be reasonably confident that I'll be OK. Here's a simple example of what I mean, and let's make up some numbers for it. Suppose one million people get Omicron, and that 500,000 are unvaccinated, and 500,000 are fully vaccinated. Let's pretend Omicron gives you zero protection from getting COVID in the first place. If 50,000 (10%) unvaxxed Omicron carriers get hospitalized and 5,000 (1%) of them die, and 50,000 (10%) vaxxed carriers are hospitalized and 5,000 (1%) die, then I'm going to be plenty worried, because that means I have as much chance of dying from Omicron as literally anyone, regardless of my vax status. On the other hand, if 50,000 (10%) unvaxxed Omicron carriers get hospitalized and 5,000 (1%) of them die, but only 5,000 (1%) vaxxed carriers are hospitalized and just 50 (0.01%) of them die, then I'm going to be basically not worried at all, because instead of having a 1 in 100 chance of dying from Omicron if I get it, I'd have a 1 in 10,000 chance instead which, to my way of thinking, is too low to even think about. That means my vax status makes a huge difference. If we had this kind of information at our disposal, we who are triple-vaxxed could determine a level of risk that right for each one of us, and I think strictly due to our diligence, we've earned that right. Again, I recognize that always being masked everywhere all the time gives me the maximum protection. But also again, that ain't what I vaxxed up for.

I hear factoids like this and I always wonder what's below the hood. I would really like to find some website, some data source, that would tell us how many cases there are, how many hospitalizations, how many deaths, broken out by age and gender, whether they were vaccinated, which brand they vaccinated with, and whether they've received one, two or three shots. Also, whether the person contracting can be is classified as immunocompromised. For example, I want to know what percent of otherwise-healthy people age 40-59 who have gotten three Pzifer shots contracted it and were hospitalized and died, versus those the same age and condition who got one J&J shot. That kind of thing. Otherwise, when I hear things like two-thirds of people getting COVID during such and such a period were fully vaccinated, I simply don't know how seriously to take it, or how worried I should be as a triple-vaxxed healthy guy. I hope that's not by design.

There's something to that. Because people "in the game" generally go after one another, too many people feel the problem is, in a way, taking care of itself. Hey, they're killing each other, they're gang members, so let 'em. The problem with that is that it's not only people actively involved getting hurt. Sometimes it extends to their family, especially their children who, regardless of how young they may be, are sometimes targeted in an effort to hurt people involved. That's why whenever I hear of some small child shot and killed in a seemingly random shooting on the south side, I always wonder, or even assume, that they've been targeted because of someone else, because these gangsters aren't shooting random people on the street. There's a purpose to what they do, so they sometimes shoot little children not because they're in the game, but because they are game-adjacent. It's depressing.

A high percentage of people back then felt exactly like that. The difference is that FDR didn’t give a **** because he had a third term mandate and super duper majorities in both houses of Congress.

You may be right. Or it may have been some posturing on their part to eventually get him down from 10/340 to, I don't know, 8/240, or maybe 10/2-something.

Not speculating about you or what you think here, but just in general, I think the problem with labeling the shooting victims "felons" is that it completely excuses the kid for shooting them dead. As in, who cares if they were shot dead, after all, they were felons, so fuck 'em. It suggests that felons deserve to be shot dead, or that people who shoot felons dead deserve a pass for doing so, or at least, people who shoot felons dead don't deserve as much punishment as people who shoot non-felons dead. It's too close to a slippery slope.

In what way, do you think?

I really think Correa is going to land back with the Astros, and really, they'd be nuts to let him go. With apologies to Shorty, Correa's is the best homegrown player on that team, and he's on a clear Hall of Fame trajectory. In a way, he's kind of like their Barry Bonds: everyone in his baseball hometown adores him, and everyone outside that town hates him. And I don't see the Yankees signing him anyway because half the guys on that roster were there when the Astros cheated past them into the Series in 2017, and since Correa is the public apologist for that whole shameful incident, they'll never forget that. Besides, I'll bet that in far less than ten years, we'll be wiping our brow for having dodged a bullet by not signing him, and maybe that's why the now-analytics-savvy Tigers lowballed him.

Nope. They have a series of tubes.

lol djtjr saying tfg "has to lead"

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess Valenti and Rico. How close am I?

So it was McCartney that put the fool on the (Capitol) hill? Groovy!

QFT. Teach that blacks were ever prevented from voting? CRT. Teach that southern states passed Jim Crow law to enshrine second-class citizenship for blacks? CRT. Teach that blacks were routinely lynched in the early 20th century? CRT. Teach that Reconstruction was not the worst period in American history? CRT. Teach that black slaves didn't really love their masters? CRT. It's all CRT. All of it. And schools, at least white schools, are going to stay far, far away from teaching anything about the experience of black people in America, on any level, because they won't want to put up with the hassle. Which is the point of the whole thing.

So what if they were felons?

Perhaps he means last year and earlier this year on the other board. You can look it up. Oh, wait ... 🙄

That reminds me: I'm gonna have to grow a goatee before 2025.

Yes. Well, at least that part of the general population that works for the arms manufactures and their lobbies.

If you can get Sue swearing, that's when you know for sure it's serious.

And I'll say this about CWB Chicago: if I were doomscrolling that website every day, I'd probably think that Chicago is a lawless criminal hellscape on the verge of social collapse and maybe even civil war between the good guys and the subhuman scum, and in that case then hell yes I'd want unvetted vigilantes armed to the teeth patrolling the streets and alleys and rounding up anyone who looks at them cross-eyed.

Here's some more information I found, just from looking at the data. The 24-block area the neighborhood association wants to patrol did have an uptick in violent crime, it's true. In the ten full months covering February to November, the two beats covering the area, 1433 and 1434, experienced about 55% of its violent crime during this period within the most recent four months (i.e., 40%) of the period, versus the first six months of the period. Of all 274 Chicago PD beats, they ranked 7th and 4th, respectively, in percent of crimes over the ten months that took place during the last four. In the entire City of Chicago, the percentage of violent crime concentrated in those last four months was 42.6%, which is close to the 40% you might expect just based on even distribution of incidents across the months. This means that contrary to the declarations of some, particularly the bleed-and-lead local media, crime does not appear to be on a runaway trajectory throughout the entire city of Chicago. That makes the increase in violent crime in beats 1433 and 1434 outliers, based on the data. In terms of total violent crimes, for the first six months of the period, these beats respectively ranked 240th and 237th of 274. The spike in the last four months brings them up to 224th and 218th. There could be any number of explanations for the spike in these specific districts. Maybe the street gangs held an executive council meeting in which they targeted these beats for an increase in scary violent crime activity. Maybe a few bad guys decided to target the area recently all on their own. Or maybe it was simply a random spike in crime irrespective of any other consideration. Who knows. What I do believe is hiring a team of armed guards who nobody knows and who is accountable to neither the city nor the taxpayers, and whose prospective employers have been unreachable for questions, is at best an overreaction to the reality of violent crime in the area, which is among the lowest in the city.

I'm responding to the ideas presented. It's not personal for me. Let's just say I'm naturally skeptical of people who try to tell me they have the real information that the fake news isn't telling you.