peejman

I dont think any reasonable person expects 100% effectiveness from a mask. I also don't think any reasonable person would doubt that they do not reduce the rate of transmission. Particularly in our world of poor manners where lots of folks don't cover their mouths when they sneezed or cough, pick their noses and teeth, and touch lots of things they shouldn't.

I'm quite sure he doesn't. Salvation is by faith, not by works. Relinquishing control is hard, i struggle with that every day. The choice is yours, all you have to do is ask.

Hence my leadership skills comment. If he had any he would have told Trump to sit down, shut up, and listen to someone who knows what he's talking about. My memory of the mask use issue was they were initially afraid the public would suck up all the masks leaving none for the medical folks, so they fibbed to prevent that.

Indeed. I'm sure he's a smart guy, but I don't know how someone with such minimal leadership skills ascends to head of the CDC. I'm also sure Trump hamstrung him a bit at the beginning, but the total lack of recovery is telling.

Welcome!

Sticky point for sure. Suicide can be self murder or self sacrifice. Murder is a sin, but sins can be forgiven so I don't think it's a ticket straight to hell. It can be an extremely selfish act or an extremely selfless act. I watched a family member with a treatable condition not even try and slowly fade away over a few weeks, leaving her husband of 50+ years, kids, grandkids, and great grandkids behind. Which was that? It still bugs me.

I can imagine pulling up next to you and my kids looking over doing the "honk the horn" motion and seeing that.

Does modern medicine help you live longer or die slower? I do not wish to become a burden on anyone, my biggest fear is my mind going before my body.

It'll be whatever makes the drug companies the most money. Capitalism and all. Also, this type of virus tends to mutate compared to polio or measles, so I think that will also drive it to be just another annual flu shot. I find this curious as well. I had my annual physical a couple weeks ago and of course I chatted with the doc about covid. He thought the continuing increase in reported deaths odd as well as no one had called him with symptoms in several weeks. He also said hed had only 1 patient die, and that person weighed 500lbs with a list of other problems.

Try hard to stay positive. The stress is as bad as the bug.

None of the vaccines we got as children were one-and-done. Most take 3 doses, some up to 5 doses. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html

Hope you feel better soon!

Appearance of empathy is more important than actual empathy in our society.

And a huge tree stump. The boy looks about 10.

I'd guess the batteries have degraded due to lack of use. The lights usually have a min battery voltage threshold before they'll light.

We feed the song birds which in turn feed the raptors. Circle of life and all that. As for the pigeon, stop feeding for a week or two and it'll move on. The song birds will return.

I'd say the impact would definitely be non-zero if pregnancy tests were only 50% accurate. Imagine the uproar if tens of thousands of people thought they were pregnant, began to prepare, went through all the prenatal stuff only to find out months later they weren't. And the converse, tens of thousands thought they weren't pregnant but were. High risk pregnancies and deaths due to complications would definitley climb.

There's a reason we call it the far east.

I have a couple "tactical" guns socks from Midway USA for my AR's. They work in that they help prevent idiot marks, but would not say they slide in/out easily. It takes some doing to get them over the optic and pistol grip.

Yeah... most of my rifles don't get shot often, time and range access being the biggest issues.

Cool pocket watch. A guy I work with used to do repair/restoration work on stuff like that.

One of my great uncle's was in the signal corps and did some of that around Europe.

Tubs don't stay full of water for years. That said, I have a 50 gallon aquarium on a crawlspace and I braced the floor underneath in a similar manner.

I may or may not have participated in similar antics inside a warehouse back in the day....