Saturday, November 30, 2024

Rachel Maddow and the Covid Chronicles

 Maddow has issues with Trump's cabinet picks particularly Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to head the NIH.  He was a signer to the Great Barrington Declaration out of Stanford University which was basically against covid lockdowns in general and said herd immunity is the way to go.  There was an important caveat to this however: targeted protection for the most vulnerable groups (e.g. the elderly, people with co-morbidities etc.).  In other words during that covid timeframe you didn't invite Grandma over for the holidays.  We all understood this, everyone was on the same page but Maddow has outright lied about Dr. Bhattacharya and his views.  This wasn't exactly the Swedish model that basically said go about your business and the deaths will frontload early and then level off.  In the U.S. we had one of the highest covid death rates despite the lockdowns and mitigation efforts the 6 Foot Rule not even based on science as Fauci later admitted.  No matter to Rachel Maddow.  We also have early footage of Maddow stating emphatically that when you get covid-vaccinated the virus can't use you as a host and transmission stops with you blah blah blah which we now know is not true.  My brother has been hyper-vaccinated which is what most doctors still recommend these days and he still came down with a few cases of hardcore covid.   I'm not even clear whether Maddow and her hero Dr. Fauci even believe we have functioning immune systems but many people say she's in the pocket of Big Pharma and the military/industrial complex.  Word on the street is she's dragging MSNBC down the tubes with her.  Rumor is Musk might buy MSNBC outright.  Maybe Walmart, maybe Yonkers, maybe a feral cat colony island.  The times they are a'changing.

28 comments:

  1. Gonna have to start calling you Soapbox Z.

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  2. Miss him. Probably had a lot of libertarian thoughts on the covid measures. Would have liked to hear what he had to say.

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  3. It was kind of strange shopping with the 6 ft. rule in place and the circles on the floor. Turns out Fauci pulled it out of his ass.

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  4. Hard to estimate any distance - aerosols of covid virus have around the same density of cigarette smoke, except you can see and smell the smoke. World Health group said 3 ft. Worked for us, can't complain. Glad you found a new expert, Dr. Buttacharya. Good to have reliable sources. keep up the research.

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  5. The 6 foot rule. It's pretty much impossible to enforce a mathematical abstraction at all times. People move around a lot. Even if a person could stay 6 feet apart from other people at all times chances are you're gonna be where another person was just a few seconds ago. The 6 foot rule was never accompanied by a time rule.

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  6. Dr. Bhattacharya. Seems to me despite Rachel Maddow's caricature of his views he splits the difference. For the majority of people covid was never a serious threat so the idea of herd immunity made sense. For the truly vulnerable do absolutely everything to protect them. The Fauci approach was all one way. The Swedish approach was way the other way. The Bhattacharya approach seemed middle of the road to me but never became public policy.

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  7. Herd immunity - worked for the Black Plague. 500 million dead.
    Too bad they developed a vaccine for it. We seem to have leftwing and rightwing medical experts now. Hi, Doctor - I got this tinnitus, but first how did you vote? Whole thing a bit silly. We note that Dr. Bhattacharya is an expert in health and government response.
    Must get his advice from someone who knows the difference between H1N1 influenza virus and Herpes Simplex. Was it Hegseth that said he didn't believe in viruses because 'you can't see em'?
    I have a lot of thick books on the subject, daughter teaches virology and immunology at a midwest university. Very complex subject, but she has turned out thousands of nurses and hundreds of physicians
    professors and teachers. Pick on me, leave her alone. :)
    (we wonder if she had Nurse Nancy back in the day?

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  8. Black Plague. Difference is COVID-19 always had a less than 1% fatality rate according to the CDC. The most vulnerable groups became fairly well defined early on. Because of its high contagion rate that number when you crunched it turned into a lot of deaths but that's a mathematical ratio nothing political about it. Covid never posed an existential threat to the vast majority just sayin'. The lockdowns never made sense to me. Vaxxing every living person on the planet not the way to go imo. The covid vax underwhelming at best causes health issues in a significant minority at worst. So how many jabs did Maddow get?

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  9. You yourself said once viruses ain't alive I believe. Some people believe in terrain theory. I ain't arguing. Hegseth doesn't look to be the best choice but that's Defense. I ain't arguing.

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  10. I'm sorry I don't have any massive virology books on my shelf. A few Stephen King books, an almanac, a Spanish dictionary, some field guides.

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  11. I figure you wrote the book on Feral Cats. Good enough for me. You are right, viruses do not meet the tight definition of life. Like, I think, therefore I am, nor do they eat or breathe and reproduction for them is to invade an animal or plant cell and use that cell's advanced molcules to make more of their copies (replicate). IMO, Maddow who researches her stuff deeply, reported what was known or thought at the time was attacked as a liar. Smack talk, as you
    note. Heck, I've been accused of being a traitor on blogs that
    hated my opinion. Dunno, woke up feeling great this morning,
    and my opinions today seem tepid, if not rosie.

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  12. Odd thing. When you were first writing about Maddow, I went to comment and Blogger said "Contains sensitive material - deny or accept." Naturally being sensitive, I accepted and everything went away. Weird.

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  13. Oh yes. I made an off-color joke and a Google red flag went up next to the post from my end. It was allowed, you could read it if you accepted it but I thought the whole thing was silly so discarded it and started over. Google Community Guidelines. Patrick M must've had a lot of red flags. I kind of thought with blogging you had a bit of latitude.

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    1. OK. makes sense, I will erase it from my memory bankes.

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  14. You get in trouble at work. You get in trouble on your blog. Oy vey.

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  15. Just to be clear Bhattacharya never advocated for herd immunity among the elderly and vulnerable, never said the elderly should go out and play Bingo during the pandemic. Lying or shallow research on Maddow's part.

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  16. Agreed. Clears the guy with the long funny name. Sorry, still a Maddow fan.

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  17. Wonder what they will do with healthcare costs. Spent 10 grand on
    this old couple last year. Insurance and meds. Thankfully we weren't sick!

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  18. The problem is never fixed no matter who's president.

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  19. I guess - probably the same with all our other problems. If it was easy,
    they would fix them. What's up with property taxes, they go up at twice he rate of inflation?

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  20. Never understood it. They don't even seem to have payment plans. Forget the convoluted math. Why can't they say most homeowners owe say $800 a year and be done with it?

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  21. Trying day yesterday - Mrs. had a list of shopping and visits. But her car in the garage wouldn't start. She called the closests place, the tire store that Ted ran for the last 20 years, but Josh does now. "Could they send someone to fix it?" The place is so good you can barely find a place to park = little shop, 6 stalls and 2 warehouses full of stuff. But they said they could but it might be a couple hours.
    Which turned into 4 hours. But the guy crawled under the kitchen steps under the garage porch, put a power pack on the thing and had her start it up. She followed him over the garage, then said it would be over an hour. So I picked her up. It was dark when we went to get it. Had to replace the battery and adjust some computer stuff. I
    thought $130 was high, but the bill explained the dead one still had warranty, the new one's price being $180. No charge for coming or replacing it. After googling battery prices, I figured we got a good deal. No wonder the place is always crowded with customers.

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  22. Your whole day changes in an instant. Mixed feelings - Your colonoscopist is having car problems.

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  23. Had to put a new battery in the truck. That's two in one week. Is that
    assault and battery?

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  24. Helping the mechanic buy a nice steak dinner and maybe a new Smart TV.

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  25. Had to sit in the waiting room for 45 minutes opposite a young woman wearing those popular torn tight jeans. No extra charge.

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