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N.E. Brigand

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Everything posted by N.E. Brigand

  1. Thanks. I thought the San Francisco event was later. But the post to which I was responding said Chinese New Year, so that's the date I looked up. Feb. 24 is four days before we first started discussing Covid-19 on DCP.
  2. When a story is really bad, one tries to cover it up by admitting to just part of it. Not saying that's what happened here (or at Mandarins, the other corps whose staffing has been discussed on DCP lately). Just noting one way in which scandal PR is sometimes managed. Yeah, even in the corps' 990, which is the only filing they're legally required to share, rebates owed to members would probably just be lumped in with all the organization's liabiliites.
  3. Speaking of precautions, this fact I just learned is so weird I have to share it: did you know it's been legal since 1955 to send live venomous scorpions through the mail? As long as they're only sent via ground, and only in a special kind of container-within-a-container packaging, and with both the inner and outer container clearly marked "live scorpions," and only if they're being mailed as part of a medical research or antivenin production project. I had no idea! Came across that while reading up on the current mail debacle, which some people in this thread were referencing in the past couple days. The delivery backlog has appparently resulted in a number of dead animals piling up in mail distribution centers; they were live animals when they were dropped off at the post office and they were supposed to arrive live at their destination. Mostly chicks and crickets, it seems. Anyway, carry on.
  4. No, "acceptable" is the word that people in the survey I mentioned were asked. To put it another way: I'm curious to know if anyone here thinks it's OK that many people have died? And if they do feel that way, I'm also curious to know why, back in March when that was described as a worst case scenario, no one here was saying (as far as I know) that they were prepared to accept that many deaths.
  5. Thanks. Would any cash change hands in advance? Would the other parties be guaranteed a full refund if the tour is cancelled? Edit: Never mind. This doesn't matter because I misunderstood your post.
  6. Well, there were plenty of people then saying that we needed to take huge measures to prevent totals like that from happening, so clearly lots of folks thought it was possible. I myself went on the record in April to say that I thought the first wave (which still hasn't ended) would result in 105,000 deaths -- and when we had surpassed that number in June, I posted here to note that I was, unfortunately, too optimistic.
  7. Yes I remain bleach-free. And I haven't looked up your posts from March and don't intend to. It has been my belief that NO ONE here was saying in March that 175,000 Covid-19 deaths would be an acceptable outcome. Are you saying that five months ago, you believed that it would be?
  8. That's fair. (Although if you just hadn't replied at all, I wouldn't have interpreted that as a "refusal" to do so.)
  9. We take steps to prevent the seasonal flu: we create and encourage people to get a vaccine, for instance. If not for that, we would have a much, much higher number of annual flu deaths. We don't just "accept" that higher number as inevitable. And we have taken extraordinary steps for other outbreaks. In the case of the swine flu in 2009, for instance, which ultimately led to 12,000 American deaths, some schools were closed, to cite just one measure. We didn't just accept that there would be a lot of deaths and do nothing. Likewise, with this outbreak, at various levels, we took steps with the hopes of keeping the fatality rate low. We were advised in March by the CDC that the do-nothing, worst case scenario could result in anywhere from 200,000 to 1.7 million American deaths. I can't think there was any American who looked at those numbers then and said, "That would be acceptable." Unfortunately, we seem not to have done enough, and we will easily pass 200,000 deaths in the next couple months. If this outcome wasn't acceptable then, I can't understand why it's acceptable now. Thank you for answering the last question. I am already on the record here at least twice taking the same position.
  10. Eh, if it's a trap, it's one I could never spring. If there are folks here who really feel that 175,000 deaths is acceptable, I legitimately would like to hear from those people and, if possible, better understand what lead them to change their positions from March, when no one would have claimed a number like that was fine.
  11. Are you saying you find it "acceptable," as a lot of those poll respondents do, that 175,000 Americans have died? And if I'll stipulate that officials saying on Jan. 25 (Chinese New Year) that it was OK to attend a large event were making a mistake, would you agree that any official encouraging people to attend other large events after that date was also making a mistake?
  12. Like you and garfield, I don't know anyone personally who has died of Covid, for which I am grateful. It's not that the disease was more deadly in the northeast. It's that a lot more people were infected in the northeast and were never tested. Remember how few tests were being conducted back then? It wasn't until March 17th that we conducted more than 10,000 tests in a day in this country. There were only three days prior to April 1st on which we had tested more than 100,000 people. There were only two days before May 1st on which we conducted more than 200,000 tests. Back on April 10th* I said we needed to be doing about 1,000,000 tests per day; later, when that seemed hopeless, I scaled back and called for an average of just 750,000 tests per day. We've never reached a million tests (the most was 926,000 on July 24th), and it wasn't until July 10th that we had a day with more than 750,000 tests. Over the past two weeks we've averaged 714,000 tests per day. I still think we should do more, because as many people have said since at least March, widespread testing (and subsequent isolating of those who test positive or have been exposed to someone who tested positive) is a huge part of how you control the outbreak. But even if our current numbers are inadequate, just imagine if we'd been conducting as many tests then as we are now: 75 times more tests than we were conducting for most of March. We would have found a LOT more Covid cases in the northeast, and that region's fatality rate would be much lower, right in line with what we're generally seeing elsewhere now. The virus was already circulating in the northeast (having arrived in New York from Europe sometime in January) before anybody realized it was here. It helped the rest of the country that a number of other states in March took steps then, with very few reported cases, to at least partially lock down for a while, but it was already too late for much of the northeast. New York City was hit so badly that there are parts of that city that actually may have achieved herd immunity.** (For a while, there was an argument circulating that the reason deaths were so high in New York was its policies regarding Covid and nursing homes. Even I thought so. But nursing homes in a number of other states with different policies have gotten slammed as well. As of July 10th, for instance, 40% of Texas cases were in nursing homes.) . *And back on March 13th, I wrote this: "However, the CDC's worst-case estimates are that anywhere between 200,000 and 1.7 million Americans could die of COVID-19. But a MAJOR point to remember is that those estimates assume no change in behavior or official response. Taking steps like closing schools and crowded events will make a huge difference." We're easily going to surpass that 200,000. Nobody on DCP at the time was claiming that 200,000 American deaths would be acceptable, and I doubt anyone in the country argued that in March or April. Rather, some people here were arguing that it would never happen and that it was irresponsible for people to offer such predictions. If I recall correctly, someone here even said, in response to one such citation, that it made them suspect the CDC had been co-opted by hysterics spreading disinformation. But now polls find that, depending on the group being surveyed, as many as 57% say that our current death toll of 175,000 is acceptable. That's just unfathomable to me. . **Here's an ironic tidbit: the most hard hit part of the country was a neighborhood in Queens named... Corona.
  13. Yes, we should definitely ally ourselves with the light rather than the darkness. But even right here on DCP, less than a month ago, cixelsyd posted a poll asking if DCI could have a 2021 season even if WGI was cancelled, and 51% of the respondents, i.e., a majority, said yes. I was one of them. Plenty of optimists out there and in here.
  14. There's a plaque at the bottom of the mountain with a great quote from Baxter himself, the man for whom the park is named: "Man is born to die, his works are short-lived. Buildings crumble, monuments decay, wealth vanishes. But Katahdin, in all its glory, forever shall remain the mountain of the people of Maine."
  15. Silly optimist that I am, I'm inclined to agree with everything in this post.
  16. Katahdin is much bigger than any elephant. Seriously, I highly recommend a visit to anyone who's up for a strenuous hike to the top.
  17. Exactly. And I think the opposite of this is what Edward Banfield in 1958 termed "amoral familism," which in its simplest terms is the belief that there is no common good, or as another commentator summarized it: "the tireless and cunning pursuit of ... short-run advantage, with concommitant nonbenevelonce ... [and] suspicion and distrust of others, who, of course, are presumed to be similiarly acting upon impulses of pure [self-interest]. ... In this environment, misery of mind and body are self-perpetuating".
  18. Well that would make sense. Katahdin is Maine's tallest mountain, located in Baxter State (itself some 300 sq. miles) which is about five miles north of Millinocket.
  19. To take just your first example: We in fact beat polio. With a vaccine. At least, in the developed world. Did we completely eradicate it from the planet? No. But it's now endemic in just three countries, and it hasn't been recorded as spreading here in the U.S since the 1970s. Meanwhile, right now, in this country, we have situations like this: "65 people attended a wedding in Millinocket, Maine on August 7. As a result, 53 people have now tested positive for COVID-19, and one person is now dead who did not attend but caught it from a guest." (I've actually been to Millinocket. Curious to know whether there was ever a corps from there or a competition held there -- or if not, what's the closest town where there was?)
  20. No vaccine = no audience = no tour. The only way out of this crisis is to beat the disease. Unless you're willing to have millions of Americans die from it.
  21. Well, that's why I said such measures may turn out to be "security theater": appealing but relatively useless. With the caveat, which I also made, that giving people peace of mind does have some value. As long as it's not a false peace.
  22. Reminds me of the "rule" about not splitting infinitives, i.e., not to do what Star Trek did. According to this "rule," instead of saying "To boldly go where no man has gone before," Kirk should have said "To go boldly where no man has gone before". But the reason that "rule" exists appears to be that there were some 19th Century grammarians who thought English was inferior to Latin and should be more like Latin. And in Latin the infinitive case is just one word, without any equivalent to our "to," and thus can't be split up. Modern grammarians have largely dropped the prohibition.
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