Stoner

How so?

I've heard many credible public health experts say the death toll is undercounted. There have been stories about "excess deaths," deaths you wouldn't have expected to see if the pandemic didn't happen. You could very well use that number and say it's the mitigation that killed those people, but that bit of data has led those experts to believe the direct Covid 19 death toll is in excess of 200,000. I took a shot at you for your really very terrible nursing home comment. I think I've been civil otherwise. You had a dustup with someone else. I don't think you've been savaged by any means in this thread. Unless comments were deleted and I didn't see them. I saw your remark on the disrespect you've been shown and had to chuckle. You wouldn't want to go back in time and be PASabreFan for 15 years here. I've been personally attacked so many times I've lost count, with little to no support from the powers that be, who often have joined in the attacks (including a recent mysogyny accusation). You are by comparison a MFP.

I thought maybe I was totally full of it, but I watched some Sidney goals in Pittsburgh. Their very cool horn definitely goes off later than in Buffalo. Maybe two seconds after the goal? Goal, crowd reaction, horn. Meanwhile our horn guy is trying to show off his reflexes. And so several times a year we have the horn blasting and lights flashing after a non-goal. If I had to guess, the quickness of the horn goes back to the beginning, 1987. The team was down, the Aud was a morgue and the powers that be wanted something to cover up the lack of cheering. "The instant we score, hit that button!"

In light of some mini-doubt on Dahlin's future greatness, consider where he ended up and how that clearly will impact his development. Now imagine him starting out on Tampa or another top-flight organ-eye-zation. Thus, Hot Take: The final eight teams in the playoffs vie for the top pick in a weighted lottery.

1. The Sabres should change their goal horn. 2. The goal horn should sound a second later than it does now... 3. ... because (HOT TAKE) the fact it sounds too close to the goal being scored is a deterrent to scoring. It explains everything. If you knew if you did something you would instantaneously be blasted by a loud, painful sound, would it affect your ability to do that something? (This is based on my theory, as yet untested, that the goal horn in Buffalo comes sooner than in other arenas.) Also dougallenmeddlingjaymoran.

I think the public health folks have been lowering expectations of late for the vaccine. Dr. Fauci said it's very unlikely to be a highly effective vaccine (but that's defined as upper 90% effective). The vaccine could be as low as 50% effective and still be acceptable. We're looking at the flu shot here. The answering on the rushing charge is that safety corners aren't being cut, companies are just producing vaccine "at risk," meaning they're producing vaccines before it's proven they work, which saves a lot of time (but costs a lot of money if the vaccine doesn't pass muster in Phase 3).

You're not looking at it from both sides though. I challenged you to estimate how many lives would have been lost without so-called drastic measures (I don't think a lot of what was asked was "drastic," but that will have to be another debate), and you didn't. It was a really cold and rational calculation that had to be made — what response will save the most lives? I have no idea if the mitigation steps we took as a country (or 50 mini-countries, actually) were the ideal response, but I know it was better than what you would have done, chase after herd immunity that even Sweden hasn't come close to. Now, you would have helped a lot of the non-Covid victims you've talked about (if they had avoided getting sick and ending up intubated), but you don't consider the cost of achieving that. Instead of 2,000 deaths a day, try on 15,000 or 20,000 for size. You'd have real panic, and even more businesses would have closed as people hunkered down for survival and not because the guvment said so. How many citizens would have died if police and fire departments had been wiped out? And the hospitals truly would have been overrun, even in little southern tier towns. People were still in the hospital for other things in May. What if every resource at your hospital had been directed at Covid 19? You wouldn't have restricted visits to long term care facilities, I'm guessing. What would that have produced? There's a sweet spot. You're missing it like an Alexei Zhitnik slapshot. Most of the rest of us are at least clanging one off the post.

Any signs of fall there? Goldenrod is coming out here, and the hillsides are subtly starting to show color change.

Big picture: It looks like the U.S. is going to get a do-over. Daily new cases have been dropping, using a seven day average, for about two weeks. And unlike the first drop-off, this one is looking to be very steep. Daily new deaths are just starting to taper off. We have a chance as a country to push this thing way down and this time keep it down with more, faster testing, contact tracing and, most of all, common sense.

Wouldn't the person coming in for the psych consult be offered a virtual visit? How many people would have died from Covid if you could have had your way? How many of these non-Covid deaths you're referring to would have been avoided? And here's your chance to report on the fallout you've seen.

My doctor referred me to a specialist. I get 2-3 calls every day with messages left telling me to call the specialist back to schedule. I've about had it. I suspect they are desperate for business, and when I go in, I'm getting the Deluxe Bone Marrow Biopsy (drill into one femur, get the second femur half off!).

YES! (To the second point.) And I love it for that reason, although I know it's slowly killing me.

I've found they're not really user-dependent (as long as you can aim and hold the thermometer relatively still). The issues that crop up involve your target (hair in the way, person won't stand still) and the ambient atmosphere (hot rooms are said to be a problem). I don't understand your point. They're accurate if used properly, but they're not accurate? Also, I'm pretty sure you're not seriously arguing for replacing mass temperature checks with on the spot exams or relying on subjective observations like sweating and skin color. I wouldn't rule out fever in an elderly person who wasn't sweating. Those folks are cagey.

Sort of. They are dependent on being a certain distance (most of them have a range, albeit a narrow range). But it's not like if you're outside that range, you get an inaccurate reading. At least the ones I've used, you just get no reading. Not until you move the thermometer into that sweet spot. They're pretty idiot proof. And thanks for the shot at the people who are doing this thankless job. Nothing like being way too close to dozens/hundreds of people on a daily basis during a pandemic.

New forecast? Partly sunny, 20% chance of showers. It begins. But Sunday's still a solid "Sunny"!

To the first paragraph, you lost me a little. These are temps taken on different people. Maybe I'm being neurotic, but I'd expect to see 97.5, 96.5, 96.8, 98.1 etc. You're right. The infrared is reading the temperature of your forehead surface. I'm always over 100 when I take my temp first going in for work, then it drops down to near normal, sometimes within a minute.

That's how the choir people got Covid!

Hoping there are some nurses, CNAs etc. who can chime in here. Not sure it's something the docs can comment on. Temperature checks at businesses, airports and the like are being touted as ways of keeping sick people out. However, I observed something on TV just now, the same thing I've noticed at work when I take people's temps: when you take temps using the infrared thermometer without waiting long enough between readings, you tend to get a very similar run of results. The CEO of Frontier Airlines was on MSNBC. As he spoke about what the airline is doing to protect people, the video behind him showed a worker taking temps. You could see the readings. It started with 97.6 as the worker took a new reading, which was 97.7. There was a cut, and the new reading displayed 97.5 as the worker took two new temps in a row — 97.6 and 97.4. A third shot showed the thermometer starting at 97.6. I get a similar lack of spread when I go room to room in quick succession. Now, it's kind of old thinking that the average human temp is 98.6. It might be up to degree lower, so the readings at the airport could very well be valid. Maybe our stat man Shrader could opine on the chances of getting six readings so similar. I tracked down the manual for the thermometer I use, and you're supposed to wait one minute between readings. I have no scientific explanation for why not waiting would result in the next temp being so close to the last. But there must be a reason for the one minute rule. To add to the intrigue, when I did temps spaced out by several minutes or longer, the spread was more pronounced, although it wasn't unusual to get 96.9 and 96.7 in a row, but not for six to eight results. There's a couple in the same room whose temps I take together, and we have a running joke about who's going to "win." She's 96.6 and he's 96.7. Then the next day he's 96.8 and she's 96.9. I haven't mentioned it to the boss. I'd rather get skewed results than have to do it the old fashioned way.

Are you saying there are few Wawrows left covering the Sabres? Or few writers of Wawrow's quality left in journalism? Because I'm pretty sure AP employs many Wawrows to cover sports.

It's been unsettled (the weather). It's hump day in a pandemic, so there's no way the good ole National Weather Service would be trying to pump up the masses with a glorious weekend forecast. Nah, that never happens. My Saturday forecast: Sunny. Let's see what happens.

Hoo boy, a little dated there.

Maybe I'm growing soft, but it's hard not to feel a little sorry for them. You won the lottery, now you're back in your Camry vigorously scratching off tickets outside the mini mart.

The articles themselves address the issue directly. There are only theories as to why Sweden bent the curve so dramatically after their spike. Trust in their health experts, higher level of societal responsibility (flying in the face of the theory that Sweden bent the curve by telling everyone to go crazy, folks, go crazy), measures the government took, their health care system etc. But it doesn't appear to be that enough people got infected to close down the virus.

Enjoy it while it lasts. nfreeman threw some change on the lawn and told me to stay outside for awhile.