The Reddit 20 Points, 10 Assists and 5 Rebounds Challenge

It depends on people knowing about the deal. If they don’t and they just treat me as an incompetent Earl Boykins I’m fairly confident I’ll drain 7 threes in 1640 minutes.

Well, Julius Randle averaged 20/10/3 this year, so maybe it’s not that hard?

Bo Nateman:
Z Man
I do not know if this would be helpful to the demographic of your student population but I will post it here anyway ( I voluntarilytutor students from my former school which is 99% Title 1)
“As of Monday, March 16, Spectrum is offering households with K-12 and college students free WiFi access and broadband (high-speed internet) for the next 60 days. But this only applies to households who do not already have a Spectrum WiFi and broadband subscription.

To enroll, or to ask for more information, call 1-844-488-8395 or go to spectrum.com.

Installation fees will be waived for new student households. For most new customers, self-installation is an option and free professional installation is also available.”

Thanks Bo. I think we’re on it via the district and our school newsletter but will doublecheck.

We loaned out devices to about 15% of our community yesterday…most had access but needed devices for multiple kids at home.

I’d probably blow my back out around the 15th minute. If we’re playing with no injuries — oh man I’m tempted. From the human element what opposing team/teammates won’t allow me to score a few points here and there to save my life?

Re: Reddit, It’s such a dumb proposition that I can’t even. If you didn’t play at least high-level D-3 college basketball and aren’t in your athletic prime, every team you played on would essentially be playing 4 on 5. You’d probably get run over and seriously injured at some point. In my prime (’80’s) I played in games/leagues with some just below pro-level talent and it was a joke to imagine myself or nearly everyone I’ve ever played with/against in an NBA game.

Well, playing 4 on 5, 20 minutes a night would lead to extensive garbage time and a team that stops caring if I shoot the ball. I just broke my arm, but if not, I think I would do it, 😛

Yeah, I’d probably get injured badly in the first game, I don’t think there’s any way a normal person can play relevant minutes in the NBA without getting destroyed physically in a couple of games.

If it takes Frank Ntilikina 2 months to get 20, 10, and 5, how the hell am I supposed to do it in a year?

I don’t need the money, I already scored a touchdown on the play-any-possition-you-like for 20 minutes a night in the NFL.

20 points, 10 assists and 5 rebounds over the course of a season?* If I’m guaranteed to play all 82 games for 20 minutes, I think I can stumble into 5 rebounds and 10 assists pretty early in the season. The 20 points will be the tricky thing. I was never much of a scorer even in my “prime”. And old man 6’2″ post player with limited vertical is an archetype that does not translates well to the NBA, so that’s a major strike against me. Granted my young man 6’2″ slasher type with modest vertical “prime” isn’t much better. Maybe if I cherry pick? I can probably pick and pop out to 17-18 feet now a days so maybe in garbage time when it’s been established I’m not really an offensive threat, I could rack up a couple quick baskets when players sag off.

For 250 mill, yeah I think I convinced myself to take the bet.

*Note* – At first I read that as average 20, 10 and 5 and was like what idiot would take that bet. There’s only 6 people ever that’s done it. And 3 of them were in the past 4 years

I think as long as your passes are accurate you can get an assist or two every 3 games or so. Getting the ball to your best shooter coming off screens should be able to get you 10 assists over say a 40 game period. Ideally, you’ll get your assists early in the challenge, before it’s scouted that your offense is limited. You can also stumble into some fast break opportunities. If you get the ball where people like it, which you should be working at in practice, getting the assists shouldn’t be too difficult.

Seriously, it would also depend on whether the opposing players had any skin in the game one way or the other. Would they set screens for you? Would they box you out on rebounds? Would the ref call fouls your way or let you get the beating you deserved?

I think the Corona is getting to us…

I also think that we just don’t really get how far superior the typical NBA player is physically and athletically. Just making a simple pass from the point to the wing is a totally different animal, these guys anticipate stuff so well and cover so much ground. Having typical NBA players to reckon with (something like a 6’6″ guy with a long wingspan, a 36+” vertical, and talent and instincts that put him above all the G-League and foreign players) and seeing how many of them can’t even get off the bench because they suck compared to rotation players makes the scenario so far-fetched as to be nonsensical.

Yeah, the particulars matter. Whether your teammates care and whether the other team cares about stopping you.

I have told my Dan Gadzuric story before here but yeah, NBA players are like the monsters in Space Jam.

Points wouldn’t necessarily be that hard if you just hung out by the opposing basket. My team wouldn’t want me gumming up the works on defense anyway. If everybody else boxed out for me I could do rebounds once I had the points in the bag and you only need 5. Assists would require me to be involved in a useful way, and 10? I’d need all inbound plays to be designed just to get me assists. Seems unlikely. Can I split the pot with the statistician? That’d help a lot.

Wouldn’t be able to get anything in garbage time, since everybody else is also playing for a contract in that situation.

not to be too weird (yeah, a little late for that) – but, super happy to read your words bruno…been wondering how you were doing down there in brazil…hopefully staying as safe and healthy as possible…

The step up in talent level from a typical D1 college player to any player in the NBA is huge.

You guys might know this story already, but Brian Scalabrine was in a gym a few years ago and got challenged by some D1 college players to play one on one. He completely destroyed them, barely giving up any points.

And that’s Brian Scalabrine, who looks like he never lifted a weight in his life.

The other thing to consider is the pace of the game…just getting up and down the court with world-class athletes must be a bitch…

Btw, my favorite basketball moment was when I was playing in a pickup game in Philadelphia. Winners stayed on and I looked over to see who was stepping on the court and it was Dr J, who was 48 at the time. We exchanged baskets for most of the game. I won, and when we shook hands, it was then that I realized he was wearing flipflops.

oh, that is just beautiful 🙂

not looking too great for toilet paper over the long haul…my level of civilization ain’t so high, so i ain’t got no bidet or hose to wash my booty…starting to wonder though if i can make a spray bottle work???

>>>>I would argue that the assists would be the most challenging. Facilitation at that level is an absolute nightmare outside of the top athletes with the complementary skill sets (as clearly shown, or not shown, by our beloved Knicks).>>>>

<<>>

We’d get to play against the Knicks at least twice, right?

The Honorable Cock Jowles: Considering that they were still underhand-tossing balls into fruit bins when you learned to dribble, yeah, I’d say so.

Listen sonny, you try dribbling a ball with laces. Or climbing up and down a fucking ladder to get the ball out of the peach basket. Or running a fast break in moccasins. And where do you think the expression “no harm no foul” came from?

Still mulling it over myself, but just want to point out that I think the ‘and a few fast breaks’ is about the most nonsensical thing said so far. I set a bunch of sprint records in middle and high school, but I can’t imagine any NBA player who couldn’t stay with/catch me if I was dribbling, and wouldn’t reject me into the rafters if I was stupid enough to put up a shot. I might be able to get an assist if I had a trailer, but not a layup. If I was going to score at all, it’d be on a couple of 18-footers when I was left alone. Although if my teammates don’t know about the bet (and that’s how Brian posited it above), I can’t imagine them putting up with me on the court for 20 minutes. You think they froze Frank out…

Do I get an offseason to spend all my time with a shooting coach and a trainer?

Because still no.

It’s Easier to Fool People Than to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled’? – Mark Twain

https://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/attheintersectionoffaithandculture/2020/03/an-antidote-to-coronavirus-panic-the-facts.html

Do yourselves a favor, take ten minutes, read this, think on your own a little and then lets discuss how it going to look on other end. We have an “I” now…but not for long. Will the recovery look like an “L”, “U”, “V” or “W”? I’m calling fora double dip “W” type recovery.

Do yourselves a favor, take ten minutes, read this, think on your own a little and then lets discuss how it going to look on other end.

Every single time you come on here, you spew bullshit even dumber than the time before. You’ve done well not to break your streak. Thank you for that fucking useless article. Now go self-quarantine yourself before you vomit all over this website again.

Jowles, you’re such a bully. Certainly I wish we would run into each other one day…only shared it because most here are smart enough to look at statistics, data and recognize real from hype. Whether its danger, talent, intelligence, – its all the same.

perhaps, this is playing out at a massive scale…

The people, having heard of the weaver’s abilities and the cloth’s fictious properties, were amazed and offered thunderous applause to the now beaming Emperor. None of them were willing to admit that they hadn’t seen a thing; for if anyone did, then he was either stupid or unfit for the job he held. Never before had the emperor’s clothes been such a success.

While expressing admiration at their Emperor’s new “invisible” clothes, a small boy cried out… “But the Emperor has no clothes!”

oops…make that the killer is me…i’m so embarrassed…

jerry actually played this at his show at the pico union project…i had heard it before, but, until then had never really paid that close attention to it…live it was eerie and magic…

Don’t need a gun
Pointed at me
Don’t need to run
Killer is me

So the sun
Shines upon me
Havin fun
Killer is me

most here are smart enough to look at statistics, data and recognize real from hype. Whether its danger, talent, intelligence, – its all the same.

you don’t need to be a statistician to recognize that there are over 7 billion of us stripping away the resources and destroying the environment of this fragile little pebble in the sky we all live on…

however, the only story that really matters at the moment is the one that bob shared a week ago about his friend succumbing to this virus…that’s not hype…

jim was absolutely correct: no one does get out of here alive, but, heck – let’s do all we can to hang on to those we love and care for…

it was tough today when a bunch of the workers here were sent home…warehouse folks that can’t work from home…broke my heart…they weren’t worried so much about the virus, but how they were going to take care of their family…they got some really tough choices they’re about to be faced with…some really tough choices…however…

In a forum with as much musical knowledge and talent as this, I am the Frank Ntilikina of guitarists.

I suck. I know it. But I still think there’s hope. 🙂

I think I mentioned a few weeks back that was trying to learn the introduction to Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing. That’s by far the most difficult song I ever tried. To be honest, it was quite a bit over my head. But I love that style of playing off the chords so much, I want to be able to do it competently eventually. Yellow Ledbetter is another example of the style and like and Feels like Rain by Buddy Guy also has some of that in the intro.

Well, I am 7 weeks into this personal challenge. I’m happy to report, while I can’t get through the whole intro cleanly every time, I can and do get through it cleanly some of the time.

So next time Frank goes 1-8, with 1 assist, and 1 rebound, in 25 minutes, remember, “Where there’s will, there’s a way”.

I’m sort of with Nassim Taleb on this.

Personally. I actually think the medical danger of coronvirus is being slightly exaggerated. I think panic is going to exacerbate the problems by causing a depression level contraction over the next few quarters.

HOWEVER, when the downside risk is so extremely large, you are WAY BETTER OFF panicking and preventing the worst case scenario from occurring than assuming everything will be fine and potentially inviting that worst case scenario. Some risks are so difficult to assess and predict and have so many unknowable consequences, the default value HAD TO BE shut it all down.

I feel like my own personal panic and lock down is having a positive impact on the result because I am doing way less actual and potential damage.

okay strat, is there though a particular song/lyrics that really touches you or that you really connect with?

I’ve always been more into music than lyrics.

Depending on the day and my mood, some music can generate a euphoric feeling in me that goes beyond anything I’ve ever experienced from alcohol or in my limited use of drugs.

Freddie Mercury and Brian May have put me in that special place a few times. Sometimes “Don’t Stop Me Now” does it for me, but not always.

Many years ago I saw Roy Buchanan live and he had me in another universe when he played “The Messiah Will Come Again”.

I’m mostly into rock and blues, but sometimes a good ragtime song will get me there.

Sometimes a good bluegrass song will do the trick.

Sometimes some deep dark blues song from the 30s will do it.

But I have different reactions to the same songs on different days. So it’s not just the song and lyrics alone. It’s also the timing, my mood, and probably even my brain chemistry at that moment in time.

>What medical danger are we talking about? The mortality rate with normal treatment, or the mortality rate — for COVID-19 or any other severe respiratory illness — when respirators are unavailable due to extreme shortage?<

Both are obviously an issue.

The health risk of COVID-19 for a relatively healthy person with a normal immune system and/or good treatment is probably not as high as the general perception right now.

The health risk from hospitals being over capacity, shortages of respirators, exhausted medical workers etc.. is the kind of long tail risk that people don't see coming until it actually happens. That's why it is best to panic to avoid the things you can't see yet.

There may be more things coming we aren't prepared for, including the downsides of a staggering economic contraction and borrowing/printing trillions of dollars to stop the bleeding, to go along with the additional healthcare risks I'm not smart enough to see.

rama got no use for your spurv plinth: Have you heard about this band JD & the Straight Shot? Opened for some pretty big acts….

lmao

I want to go on some corner and “cut heads” with that band.

The Honorable Cock Jowles: Every single time you come on here, you spew bullshit even dumber than the time before. You’ve done well not to break your streak. Thank you for that fucking useless article. Now go self-quarantine yourself before you vomit all over this website again.

lol this is the guy who tries to calm me down from time to time…

This is my favorite guitarist no one ever heard of. He plays a combination of Jazz and Blues. He posts short videos of his practice and songs on Facebook all the time, but there’s a lot of stuff of his on the internet.

Roberto Restuccia

Here’s just one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCGX-2ejisk

Strat, are you into Curtis Mayfield’s playing? He kind of invented that “Little Wing” style of chord comping.

Once you learn a few of those chordal licks you can kind of play them all. “The Wind Cries Mary” by Hendrix is a good simple place to start, that’s like the 101 course of that Curtis Mayfield style. “Castles Made Of Sand” is like the final exam. There are some good YouTube tutorials out there that I’m sure you’re aware of.

Now that I have some free time I might go back to my dad guitar hobby: learning Steely Dan solos. I had learned “Kid Charlemagne” and the intro to “Don’t Take Me Alive” but I’m a little rusty on both.

I think you underrating how scared a lot of people are.

Truthfully, I’m scared shitless about being able to go out and shop, getting sick, getting my medicines, taking care of my mom and brother without exposing them or myself etc.. I’m overwhelmed.

after reading what you wrote the other day i said fuck it – and, went home 🙂

that’s exactly how i felt inside at the moment: over fucking whelmed…

seriously though – thank you for being so honest and open…you have no idea how many folks connect to what you say…

you are a unique individual sir…i’m glad you’re here…

Also it’s fun to listen to and study Jimi, but he’s also one of the most creative and wildest talents in rock history. It’s like picking a reproduction of “Guernica” as your Oil Painting 101 final project.

I recommend playing easier stuff well than harder stuff poorly.

When I was in my mid-twenties, I played with Tom Riker and Reggie Carter both of whom had cups of coffee with the Knicks. I was still in reasonable shape ( playing multiple times a week). Riker is 6’10” and obliterated everyone in a half-court game. Carter, who was about my height played at 1/2 speed for most of the game. His friends were watching and woofing, if I scored on him or stopped him on D. When that happened he turned it up and made me look like Bobby Portis playing interior D.

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen
They did not know how
Perhaps they’ll listen now.

whoa…beautiful song…i had no idea what it was about though until now…

my favorite

Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?
You been out ridin’ fences for so long now
Oh, you’re a hard one
But I know that you got your reasons
These things that are pleasin’ you
Can hurt you somehow
Don’t you draw the Queen of Diamonds, boy
She’ll beat you if she’s able
You know the Queen of Hearts is always your best bet
Now, it seems to me some fine things
Have been laid upon your table
But you only want the ones that you can’t get
Desperado, oh, you ain’t gettin’ no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they’re drivin’ you home
And freedom, oh freedom, well that’s just some people talkin’
Your prison is walking through this world all alone
Don’t your feet get cold in the winter time?
The sky won’t snow and the sun won’t shine
It’s hard to tell the night time from the day
You’re losin’ all your highs and lows
Ain’t it funny how the feeling goes away?
Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you (let somebody love you)
You better let somebody love you
Before it’s too late

folks, Any death is a tragedy but tens of thousands of people die every year from “the flue”. It may be sad but its natural.

You are a fucking moron.

Let’s see how these “it’s just a flu” morons are feeling in a couple weeks when the hospital hallways are filling up with people gasping for air and breathing their last breaths in agony. Or when they catch the disease themselves and they’re lying in a bed intubated, with no anesthesia because it ran out.

For once in my life I really hope the stupid fucking assholes are right and I am wrong. It doesn’t usually work out that way.

Reub is a real piece of shit.

I read about half of Black Swan years ago and Nassim Taleb may be great at math but he is also fucking idiot.

Crosstown Traffic has good lyrics

I’m somewhat more into music than lyrics myself. The song that moved me most deeply from a lyrical perspective is Don McLean’s Vincent. I just read the wikipedia page and it said this: “The song was a particular favorite of the rapper and actor Tupac Shakur, and was played to him in the hospital just before he died.”

McLean was a heck of a lyricist. His song, “Empty Chairs” was the inspiration for “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”

Now we just need to have someone write a song inspired by “Killing Me Softly With His Song” to keep the strong going.

geo….also…when I hear those songs it puts me back in the school bus with the old am radio going….I didn’t get those desperado lyrics either…the first time I heard it was when i was about 9 yrs old on vacation with the family in san francisco and this women was playing it on the streetcorner trying to get some cash …every time I hear it …I think of that one time she was playing it…

how about this one…

Hello? Hello? Hello?
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone at home?
Come on now
I hear you’re feeling down
Well I can ease your pain
Get you on your feet again
Relax
I’ll need some information first
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts?
There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I’ve got that feeling once again
I can’t explain you would not understand
This is not how I am
I have become comfortably numb

I’ll tell you one thing about COVID.

People in Italy aren’t dropping like flies because COVID is super deadly by itself. People here are dying because our amazing (go look at it, this is not patriotism talking) national health system simply can’t handle the sheer number of guys who get that terrible pneumonia all together. In the city of Bergamo it’s esteemed that at least 50 people die *per day* without even leaving home because hospitals won’t accept them. In Italy. Stop saying bullshit about this illness. It can and does bring a nation to its knees simply by having the best TS% in 100 years at getting you VERY sick. I’m still young and I’m scared shitless because there’s a chance that if I get it I might not get the help I’d need because a lot of dumbfucks still roam the streets saying “yeah it’s just a bad flu”. STOP BEING SO DUMB

“I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you.
Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is to see you.”

Hard to top that one IMO

of all the music i listen to at work – hands down – pink floyd is by far the best to focus and work to…

AXS tv plays a lot of those artist and album docs…i am always blown away by just how smart and skillful that band was…

what they did was amazing, and, it was all just so well thought out and executed…

it’s amazing how at times people allow themselves to becoming so incredibly vulnerable by exposing some of their deeper, intimate and sometimes darker feelings…

when i was a kid my folks were always splitting up…i remember one year going to like four different schools…stayed with a lot of family and friends…pretty much homeless for a few years…

lived in frisco for about a year, i was in the 3rd grade and had to take like a bus and trolley just to get back and forth to school…i remember getting a skateboard for my birthday and sitting on it and riding down the hill the house i lived in…it’s a miracle i survived those hills and that skateboard (little tiny board that had an image of a knight and “blacknight” written on it)…not quite as dangerous as when i first started driving (i was an absolute lunatic), but, if i ever saw one of the god kids playing like that i’d have a heart attack…

Dylan wrote about a billion great song lyrics. Subterranean Homesick Blues is crazy brilliant

i’ve never had long hair, and, i blend in pretty well (except when i open my mouth)…but, these lines stick with me a bunch…maybe cuz i moved around so much as a kid, and, never really felt like i fit in:

Well you walk into a restaurant,
Strung out from the road
And you feel the eyes upon you
As you’re shakin’ off the cold
You pretend it doesn’t bother you
But you just want to explode
Most times you can’t hear ’em talk,
Other times you can
All the same old cliches,
“Is that a woman or a man?”
And you always seem outnumbered,
You don’t dare make a stand

that in the fact that as much as i love individuals…never been that big a fan of “people”…

my dad and his buddies would hang out in the basement listening to floyd and either eat shrooms or drop acid an and smoke weed or some combination of the above and I didn’t realize to later on why there were all so happy listening to that strange music….

I loved you in the morning
Our kisses safe and warm
Your head upon the pillow
Like a sleepy golden storm
Yes, many loved before us
I know we are not new
In city and in forest
They smiled like me and you
But now it’s come to distances
And both of us must try
Your eyes are soft with sorrow
Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye

Bob Marley ain’t bad also.
Or John Lennon.

For lyrics:

Dylan: Mama, You’ve Been On My Mind; Masters Of War; Pawn In The Game; Mr Tambourine Man; Idiot Wind; Dear Landlord; Jokerman.

Marley: Redemption Song.

Robertson: The Weight; Stagefright; The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down; Broken Arrow.

Stills: Helplessly Hoping.

Young: Southern Man; Trasher; Old Man; Ambulance Blues.

Prince: Ballad Of Dorothy Parker.

Morrison: Street Choir; Into The Mystic

George: Long Distance Love; Fat Man In The Bathtub.

Knopfler: Romeo And Juliet.

Simon: America.

Gershwin: I Loves You Porgy.

Byrne: Life During Wartime; Once In A Lifetime.

Seger: Against The Wind.

Wonder: Big Brother.

Hornsby: End Of The Innocence.

John: Madman Across The River; Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters.

Taylor: Fire And Rain.

Mitchell: Last Time I Saw Richard; Woman Of Heart And Mind; Case Of You.

Springsteen: anything off his first three albums, or the Ghost Of Tom Joad record. Notably: Incident On 57th Street; Lost In The Flood; Jungleland; Straight Time. Also: The Wrestler; My City Of Ruins; Brilliant Disguise; Stolen Car.

seger – turn the page…night moves

dylan – just like a woman

prince – erotic city

ac/dc – highway to hell (for these current times)

“Tears of Rage” and “I’d Have You Anytime” are great Dylan lyrics done better by more talented crooners (Manuel and Harrison)

As for betting my life for 2- 50 Mil
Haven’t decide it yet haven’t still
My heart yells: just do it!
But my body says: chill
Can i do it? Maybe…
But Why? Ain’t Real!
Do i wanna be rich?
Or just pay the bill?
Aaaah ! Fuck it…Anywise the League is ill !

Lyrics by Knew Your Knicks
All rights reserved

i thought it was 50 cent or beastie boys until you owned up to it…

pepper:
i thought it was 50 cent or beastie boys until you owned up to it…

Dylan’s spirit possessed me for a monent !!!

For songs that make for an awkward car ride with your mom try the album version of The End by The Doors.

I’d say buying a bootlegged Dire Straits CD during high school definitely helped me become a better appreciator of music.

Donnie Walsh: I like Richie Havens’ Just Like A Woman above the others, myself.

Affirmed.

Keep the lyrics coming…

I manage a supermarket in Ct and it’s been a rough few weeks. Employees have been absolutely incredible throughout the whole mess. Most of them make less than 12 bucks an hour and have honestly been through some shit (while putting there own health at risk)

Today the company announced that they were going to give everyone an extra 2 bucks an hour going forward. It was a good day!

a classic…green day did a good cover of this one…

As soon as you’re born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
‘Til the pain is so big you feel nothing at all

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you’re clever and they despise a fool
‘Til you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

When they’ve tortured and scared you for 20 odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can’t really function, you’re so full of fear

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

Keep you doped with religion, and sex, and T.V.
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free
But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

There’s room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me

I’m actually going on a podcast about Dylan pretty soon (each episode talks about a different Dylan song). We’re going to talk “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.” If anyone has any thoughts about that one, maybe I’ll work it in there (in its original version, when it was called “Phantom Engineer,” it was the closing song in Dylan’s iconic “gone electric” set at the Newport Folk Festival).

this is some good reading 🙂

okay, my personal fave opening verse:
 i got a sixty-nine Chevy with a 396
Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor
She’s waiting tonight down in the parking lot
Outside the Seven-Eleven store
Me and my partner Sonny built her straight out of scratch
And he rides with me from town to town
We only run for the money got no strings attached
We shut ’em up and then we shut ’em down

there’s another verse later in the song though that always touches me a bit more:

I met her on the strip three years ago
In a Camaro with this dude from L.A.
I blew that Camaro off my back and drove that little girl away
But now there’s wrinkles around my baby’s eyes
And she cries herself to sleep at night
When I come home the house is dark
She sighs “Baby did you make it all right”
She sits on the porch of her daddy’s house
But all her pretty dreams are torn
She stares off alone into the night
With the eyes of one who hates for just being born
For all the shut down strangers and hot rod angels
Rumbling through this promised land
Tonight my baby and me we’re gonna ride to the sea
And wash these sins off our hands

If it’s not deadlier, then we have overblown it by a factor of 1000.

your beliefs and thoughts are your business and choice…think about what is actually taking place throughout the world in terms of healthcare…

I realize you are not alone in what you think…the challenge there being we’re all stuck on the same planet…

what’s happening to health care systems around the world has got nothing to do with anything but this virus…this thing was never going to be anything but what it has become…

oh well…see the world as you wish…

“Dylan’s the GOAT for sure. Listening to all the different versions of tangled up in blue is just crazy… The blood on the tracks version is perfect but it’s cool hearing what he does with it on real live.”

Dylan recorded all of Blood on the Tracks with just guitar and bass in New York. He then went to Minnesota and re-arranged them with his brother (hence the title). What he created is, to me, the greatest album ever. But the crazy thing is that if he had never re-arranged the songs and had just released the original minimalist album, it STILL would be my favorite album ever. The songs are that fucking good.

But now there’s wrinkles around my baby’s eyes
And she cries herself to sleep at night
When I come home the house is dark
She sighs “Baby did you make it all right”
<<<<<>>>

When Springsteen met Ron Kovic at a motel in Phoenix, he left him the Darkness album with a note attached: “if this album can affect you half as much as your book affected me, I’ll have done my job.”

Not sure if he affected Kovic that much or not, but he affected everybody else!

you all are like that old vh1 behind the music series…

there’s always so much more than what you know…

very cool to learn more about stuff you really love a lot…

When i was younger i respected Dylan’s writing but thought that other artists were covering his songs better than his originals.
Byrds, The Band, Hendrix, Neil Young, Guns N Roses and Manfred Mann’s Earth band had played their part on that belief by making great covers of some of his top ones.
Plus the fact that i was more into rock than blues and folk.
Especially the track “Father of night” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band had become a 10 minutes Prog Rock Classic and probably the band’s most famous one.
Hadn’t listen to the original until recently when a cd copy of Dylan’s album New Morning fell to my hands.
Dylan’s version is 1min and 28″.
And…
It’s A fkn Beast!
A gospel one. And i ain’t a fan of the genre.
Melodically Powerful and Lyrically open to interpretations.
It instantly became my fave Dylan track.

><>>>>

Went to see the Gypsy is about him meeting Elvis for the first (only?) time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ9KIO1eXTA

Got it from another forum, a Harvard talk summarized by original poster below:
Notes from Dr. Xihong Lin’s talk on Wuhan’s strategy to combat corona
Lockdown with traffic ban and home quarantine changed R0 from 3.88 to 1.25, but that’s not enough.
Family to family transmissions still occurred
Infected cases couldn’t seek care because of the traffic ban
Stay at home was hard to enforce because people were allowed to go grocery shopping, which allowed them to infected others
Here, if you’re infected, you will get the people you live with sick, and if you try to get help (go to doctor, go to pharmacy, etc), you can infect everyone along the way
Solution: Centralized Quarantine [Suppression]
Take all people that are sick or presumed sick, and move them out of home/away from family
Test positive -> go to new field hospital
Suspected cases -> go to designated hotels
Have fever -> go to designated hotels
Close contact with confirmed cases -> go to hotel or dorm
If any of these groups go from unconfirmed to confirmed, move to the field hospitals
Move from field hospital -> standard hospital if they need ICU treatment
Timely medical care prevented mild cases from being severe.
For everyone else: Stay at home, government handles grocery delivery.
Free housing for healthcare workers so they are isolated from general population
R0=0.33.
60% of infected cases not ascertained, often asymptomatic, still infectious. [wuhan had a shortage of testing kits as well]
Workers went door to door to find all suspected individuals.
Healthcare workers are by far the most vulnerable group at risk of infection, highlighting the need for the proper protective gear.
Tufts university is preparing dorm rooms to contribute to house people here [preparing for central quarantine, or just off-loading some patients?]
As of March 16, all patients are out of field hospitals
As of March 18, no new cases in Hubei

No one’s talking about later Dylan stuff! Time Out of Mind is one of my favorite albums. Love and Theft, Tempest and Modern Times all have at least a handful of good songs… Here’s my personal top 10 (in no particular order) of the last 25 years for Dylan:

* Things Have Changed
* Workingman’s Blues #2
* Roll on John
* Make You Feel my Love
* Tempest
* Must Be Santa
* It’s All Good
* Cold Irons Bound
* Mississippi
* Highlands

Went to see the Gypsy is about him meeting Elvis for the first (only?) time.

Yeah, that’s precisely why I assume it probably wasn’t one of the songs from the musical. 😉 But then I figured, “I don’t get how ‘New Morning’ fits with a musical about the Devil and Daniel Webster, either.”

– what does that mean?

How many people get sick based on each sick person they come into contact with (3.88 means that roughly 4 other people get sick for every 1 new sick person). You want to get it under 1. Once you do that, you mostly have it under control.

From what I’ve seen, there are some military involvement. Military doctors took control of several hospitals as they were overwhelmed. Some field hospitals too. They probably helped with food supply and patient transfer once the city was locked down.
Locking down communities was mostly social workers and local police though.
If the situation gets to that point I presume the US military could be relied on.

JK47:
Dylan can do so many different things with lyrics. He has to be the GOAT lyricist just in terms of sheer volume of quality.

Leonard Cohen at his best was untouchable though. For sheer poetry and imagery I’d give him the nod over Dylan. Had a much shorter peak though, and didn’t have Dylan’s incredible versatility.

Lou Reed is also on my lyricist Mount Rushmore. Not sure who would be the fourth.

Does Bowie get a look for that fourth spot or am I just basic?

My biggest problem with self quarantine hasn’t been boredom. I guess I miss my long walks around the neighborhood, but not much else yet. It’s my nerves. I have all this time and some ideas, but I can’t sit still and concentrate on anything. I could easily be playing my guitar trying to learn new licks, binge watching “Better Call Saul”, doing some horse racing database work etc.. but I can’t. When things were normal I wished I had more times for that. Now I have the time but my body, nerves, and mind won’t cooperate.

>I read about half of Black Swan years ago and Nassim Taleb may be great at math but he is also fucking idiot.<

He has even worse interpersonal skills than our president does with the media.

The math is obviously way over my head.

I try to look past the way he treats people because I think he has very important things to say. From what I gather, it was a paper he sent to DC that contributed to closing off China early when Trump was getting advised by WHO and the "intellectual yet idiots" (that's a Taleb joke) that what was going on in China posed no threat to the US. He was also publicly clamoring for other strong actions related to closing off the Europe, schools etc.. earlier than anyone else I saw. He was saying it in January.

He basically probably is the smartest guy in the room when it comes to understanding the mathematics behind risks like these.

So imo, you have to put up with the extreme arrogance and crude behavior just to get the right answer.

There is a screen in the middle of the RCP home page showing world wide mortality and any objective person would say we are doing quite well relative to almost every other country:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/

>And don’t touch money….. use only your own plastic.<

The few times I was forced to use cash and got change I washed the money and change when I got home and went as far as spraying the inside of my pockets with Lysol.

At a large family gathering there was bound to be a lot of hugging, kissing, hand shaking etc.. So if Brennan was coughing or sneezing at all, it was going to be a major problem because he probably engaged in one of those activities with every person there. Some of the sneezes and coughs had to be in close proximity to others. Maybe he even shared the same car with a few driving to the party. A few were destined to get infected.

What's strange to me is that his family seems to have been hit especially hard in terms of the severeness of the illness and death toll.

It's hard to understand all the official data because things like symptoms and deaths are trailing actual infections and the rates are also dependent on knowing how many people were infected but remained asymptomatic.

However, when you look at all the known celebrities and sports figures that have tested positive (including Tom Hanks and his wife), they are not all young athletes, but they seem to be fine.

The patient zero at the conservative convention was supposedly shaking hands and doing selfies with a lot of people. I think a few came back positive, but I haven't heard of any serious illnesses or deaths.

This is a wild intuitive guess from the guy that knows nothing about this field, but it would not shock me if there are multiple strains or that certain genetic attributes determine how likely you are to get very sick and die over above age, existing health condition, etc.. I saw one article out of China that suggested blood type might be an issue. People with O blood were doing better. Certain things like that would tend to run in families.

This has interesting data…

https://www.politico.com/interactives/2020/coronavirus-testing-by-state-chart-of-new-cases/

>Great summary of the coronavirus situation by the father of the aids cocktail David Ho https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/tip-iceberg-virologist-david-ho-bs-74-speaks-about-covid-19&lt;

Definitely worth the read.

3M
@3M
To fight #COVID19 & support healthcare workers, we have doubled our global output of N95 respirators to an annual rate of over 1.1 billion per year, or nearly 100 million per month. Read more: https://bit.ly/396lRgR

Our death rate is very low relative to total confirmed infections so far, but we have a huge backload of “not recovered yet” relative to some countries that are ahead of us in the curve because we are just ramping up testing.

There’s a lot more around that too. We don’t have a good death count for the US. CV kills via secondary infections like pneumonia for a lot of people. Lack of testing means plenty of folks outside the recognized hotspots could have died early on and been missed. And we’re nowhere near an accurate count on confirmed cases, we just can’t test enough people.

Also the death rate isn’t the top line figure here. It’s the big things we don’t know, number infected and rate of spread. We’ve been lucky so far – the people around the first cases here mostly self-quarantined, as opposed to say SK where they tried to hide and act like nothing had happened. But we’re finally starting to get testing capability ramped up and our new cases curve looks worse than everyone else’s did at this point. The headline numbers should be scale of infections and rate of transmission – those are the forward looking projectors – and we simply do not have the data yet.

We’re also not doing much to limit the spread beyond voluntary and state-based measures which is silly. We should have temperature monitoring of all passengers at airports like every other country of means has, but nope! There’s a whole list of shit like this that we’re not doing.

There are military medical ships destined for NY and CA with 1000 beds that can do surgeries and other serious medical care etc.. for non corona patients.

There’s one moored in Brooklyn now. They’re waiting for actual orders that let them do shit.

I guess I miss my long walks around the neighborhood, but not much else yet.

Unless you’re in state-mandated lockdown or trying to walk down a congested city street, there’s no reason you can’t go on a walk while maintaining a healthy distance from other people.

This is probably heretical but I don’t really like Dylan. That’s probably because my dad used to listen to the same five Dylan songs on loop all day with the volume cranked to the max, but his voice is just like nails on a chalkboard to me.

I think Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa and King Crimson were wildly talented acts and I also have no desire to ever voluntarily listen to them

I asked Mrs. Z-man for her greatest song lyrics ever. She thought for a second and came up with “The Impossible Dream.” Pretty hard to top that one.

Songs of Love and Hate came on my machine’s album shuffle yesterday, hadn’t listen to that in years. Some really great songs on that one. Are they any other songs about the love between a fire and the woman being burned at the stake?

Stratomatic: Frequently wrong, but never in doubt: I’m not in the best of ways mentally right now and I’m coming from a less than ideal starting point. lol

Hang in there, strat…

Yesterday our crawlspace dehumidifier was serviced (I made the appointment over a month ago). When I went out to greet the guy, he reached out his hand. I was surprised and hesitated, but shook it, then when I went inside, I immediately washed my hands with soap and water. When he was finished under the house and I went back outside to pay, he reached out his hand again. Same deal.

The more I think about it, the more annoyed I’m getting. Shouldn’t businesses be instructing employees dealing with the public to NOT make physical contact?

Strat,
May I recommend two things that I have been doing:
1. Every day I do a 5 mile run ( more like an Eddie Curry rumble) on Randall’s Island while listening to music. Even with a 20 % increase in human traffic, it is easy to avoid human contact. The exercise releases endorphins, which combats depression and anxiety. It also diverts my mind from CoVid-19. From a risk-reward perspective, it is an easy decision.
2. I hate talking on the phone, but since I have been isolated at home, I have taken to calling at least one person, who I have not spoken to in a while ( in some cases 10 years). Since most of us are stuck at home, everyone I have called so far is very appreciative. We have the types of conversations one would have in a bar or restaurant and try to steer clear of the pandemic and stick to topics that make us both laugh. IMO it is important to socialize even if it’s not face to face.

IMO, the absence of sports to divert our attention from the events in our lives that are negative in nature makes it even more important that we find something to keep us from perseverating on the virus. To that end, this site is part of my own self-therapy. The depth of knowledge and sophistication across so many areas makes this the best read on the internet right now.

Stratomatic: Frequently wrong, but never in doubt:
>>Shouldn’t businesses be instructing employees dealing with the public to NOT make physical contact?<<

IMO, YES!

And I would advise that next time you not worry about what anyone says or thinks when you refuse to shake theirhand. I’d explain the risk.

Strat, what I wish I would have done is come out to greet him and cough loudly, then see what he’d do. I know he was just try to practice friendly “customer relations,” but…

still watching the briefing, thankfully trump has stuck to his script so far…

I’m not sure why though he likes to hover over the right shoulder of the different speakers…that would annoy the hell out of me…

I mean what the fuck – are you about to grab my ass or try to steal my wallet or something…back the fuck up please…

I took a long walk around the city the other night starting around 730. It was amazing how desolate it was. I would often go several blocks without seeing another person.

Definitely ok to take a walk I think as long as you don’t touch anything or talk to anyone.

I took a long walk around the city the other night starting around 730. It was amazing how desolate it was. I would often go several blocks without seeing another person.

Definitely ok to take a walk I think as long as you don’t touch anything or talk to anyone.

trying to imagine what it would have felt like in december to peek just a few months forward through the wormhole and read only this post.

As recently as March 8 Trump was composing “this is no big deal” tweets.

I don’t think Trump is that hard to figure out,

On one level imo Trump thinks it’s his job to prevent people from panicking, giving them faith that he’s handling the problem, and that everything is going to be OK.

On another level, everyone with an IQ higher than a rock can see he’s full of shit most of the time and that causes less confidence.

The reality is that he’s dumb, but he’s probably not as dumb as he appears to us.

On one level imo Trump thinks it’s his job to prevent people from panicking, giving them faith that he’s handling the problem, and that everything is going to be OK.

This is true, but he’s generally way more focused on optics— making it seem like he’s handling the problem— than in actually handling the problem.

My friend who works as a healthcare lobbyist in DC says that Trump simply doesn’t listen to experts in the healthcare field, thinks he know everything based on his gut, and simply ignores everything that doesn’t make him look good in some way. Trump missed the window to do something meaningful here because in his gut it wasn’t going to be a big problem, the experts were full of shit, and everything would work out.

It’s a massive, colossal failure of leadership. Now he has to go into turbo salesman mode and sell everybody on the idea that he took it very seriously all along.

“My friend who works as a healthcare lobbyist in DC says that Trump simply doesn’t listen to experts in the healthcare field, thinks he know everything based on his gut, and simply ignores everything that doesn’t make him look good in some way”

Pardon me for thinking the English translation of this is, “That POS would give my client the “favorable” piece of legislation my industry is used to getting…..

Give facts not anecdote please.

Right now I am under medicated.

I’ve noticed I’m consuming copious quantities of both cannabis and choc-o-late the last week or so…

thankfully I’ve been able to lay off the xanax…I have it ready just in case though…

I need to figure out a way to process what’s going on…cleaning, organizing, reading and watching movies are helping a bit…

need to take a walk today…no kids this weekend, still debating whether to drive and pickup more edibles today or tomorrow…

still thinking about the guy yesterday who I asked (shortly before he was about to be sent home) if he had a chance stockpile supplies…

I asked him like it was a fucking game…his response that he hadn’t the money to do so, and he had no idea what was coming next sure sobered me the fuck up…

bobneptune: Pardon me for thinking the English translation of this is, “That POS would give my client the “favorable” piece of legislation my industry is used to getting…..

Translation: “I will self-righteously defend everything Trump says and does no matter how blatantly ignorant, dishonest and self-aggrandizing it is because I hate liberals and fake-news media everything they stand for.”

Good timing pepper. How did you know that bob neptune lived on a hill?

My intuition from earlier in the thread may have some merit.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
@nntaleb
When you hear that the virus killed 4 members of the same family, you can bet that there is something genetic. When you see the family is Italian, something becomes both clearer and scarier.

Gabish?

2/ In other words, these people MUST have something in common that makes them susceptible to the virus: 4 is too yuuuge to be dismissed as a coincidence. (Conditional probabilities are low for healthy and young, so a few draws are <10^-4).
Hidden comorbidity is too explanatory.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/nyregion/new-jersey-family-coronavirus.html

If you want to know why the virus spread isn’t under control look at the results of this ABC poll from last Friday (the polling was done 3/11-3/12):

Right, it has nothing to do with the Trump Administration’s utter lack of preparation or proactive response once it became clear that this was a potential crisis.

1/22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China.”

2/2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China. It’s going to be fine.”

2/24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

2/25: “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away. They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”

2/26: “We’re going very substantially down, not up.”

2/27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

2/28: “We’re ordering a lot of supplies. We’re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn’t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”

3/2: “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”

3/6: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”

3/10: “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

3/13: [declares national emergency]

all we need is to superimpose his face on the army cadet guy in Animal House in the parade scene trying to tell everybody to stay calm…and then circulate that meme…i predict we will not even need to superimpose his face as in about two weeks he will be doing that standing in the street in front of the white house…

Momentary break to talk about that basketball sport thing — regarding Brian’s question about playing in the NBA — nice Duncan Robinson podcast on Ringer (the JJ Redick podcast). Fun to hear about a kid who came from nowhere suddenly successful in the pros. Doesn’t change my mind about whether I could do it (I know I can’t hit 45% from 3, even at my athletic peak, even all by myself in the gym).

Sad to hear about how good the Miami development program is, though. Sigh.

Yeah, the most depressing thing about this is that it’s going to get Trump re-elected.

That and having Paw Patrol on in the background. Equally disturbing.

“Translation: “I will self-righteously defend everything Trump says and does no matter how blatantly ignorant, dishonest and self-aggrandizing it is because I hate liberals and fake-news media everything they stand for.”

Well….. let’s just say I’m not assuming anything coming out of a lobbyist’s mouth as factual and unbiased.

And as to hating liberals (what unadulterated tripe) I’m married to a lifetime ultra liberal Economics professor at CUNY…. sorry about your narrative…..

While I certainly do not hate liberals…. they sure as hell make me giggle more than occasionally.

But keep the personal invective flowing instead of looking at facts.

Just to ruin your day Jowles:

Yeah, and as a former bandmate once mused, McDonald’s makes the objectively-best cheeseburger because they sell the most of it.

Hate to break it to you, but you’re an easy fucking mark.

those people in that poll were probably the same ones that thought Kevin Knox was a ROY candidate after the two week summer league cuz he dunked on some stiffs…once the real season started …reality settled in…the real season has not started yet dude…once those folks or their families get sick…their tune could change real fast….

” but you’re an easy fucking mark.”

You opinion is duly noted…. thanks for adding to the conversation.

“it’s been reported that they are testing more than other regions…hence more known cases…”

Do we have a citation for that?

And, of course if you have 8 times the cases of say, Florida, I’m guessing there might be a lot more testing. Chicken or egg?

Maybe he should have been more aggressive after they had the first outbreak in New Rochelle? Nahhhhhhh….. he’s on team D so he can do no wrong…. but the Orange menace

If Musicphiles Aliens attacked the earth and i were the President of our Planet and had to choose our best music stuff to send to them in order to save the planet I’d definitely choose the Pink Floyd.
Probably the only band that every earthling but also alien can relate too.
Intergalactic Eternal stuff.

Do we have a citation for that? And, of course if you have 8 times the cases of say, Florida, I’m guessing there might be a lot more testing. Chicken or egg?

The thing to note here is that bob neither seeks out information nor does he recall it once he’s acquired it. The rest of us are all aware of the shortage of tests, and that much of the blame for that lies with the administration who refused the blueprint from the WHO when it was offered back in January, and failed to use gov resources, namely but not exclusively the CDC, to ramp up testing capability because “more numbers will make me look bad” – that’s a quote from Trump. We all know this. Bob has seen this information, but ignores and dismisses it. He focuses on the metrics that put a rose-colored shine on the situation, so that his revered authoritarian figure looks better. Namely, death rates, which appear low. Nevermind that we don’t know what the death rates are for anywhere outside of China and South Korea and the chinese numbers are suspect. Nevermind that we don’t even have an accurate death count for the US since we didn’t have enough tests to check everyone dying of what was potentially covid-19. The numbers are low, some would say perfect.

NY cases are exploding, because we’ve finally started to get the testing capability ramped up. NY has run 45,437 tests, out of 182,697 nationwide. Over half of those tests have happened in the last few days. 10,356 postitive cases, out of 23,203 nationwide. I think there was a press conference with higher numbers, but there are the most recent published ones.

Which is a whole other thing: we don’t even have particularly accurate numbers within the US right now, mostly because there’s been no coordinated response on the federal level. Trump fired most of the experts and replaced them with sycophants.

Here’s another fun thing: my friend just flew into JFK this afternoon, on what was the last Emirates flight apparently. He’s been in South East Asia for the last few weeks. Every airport he’s been through has had temperature screening at the arrival gate and before your allowed into the terminal, and they quarantine people with fevers for testing. Except in the US, where they don’t check temps, don’t check where you’ve actually been, just wave you on through with the standard questions. But sure, Trump shut the borders and kept us all safe. GTFO.

Do we have a citation for that?

One of the links posted earlier (from Politico) shows cases tested and numbers of positive tests by state. NY has tested over 45,000 people, Washington State is next with 23,000 and after California with 12,000 tests conducted and all the other states with less. So yes there is a citation.

South Korea is on the same timeline as us, they got their first cases at the same time, but they took it seriously, got a testing program together quickly, and their healthcare system didn’t get overwhelmed.

That probably ain’t gonna happen here. But hey, some people still believe in Mr. “I Take No Responsibility.” What a fine leader. The buck stops elsewhere. The tests are perfect. Like a miracle it will all go away.

It must be exhausting trying to defend that flaccid blob of Velveeta.

For the record, I believe that deBlasio and Cuomo were both unforgivably slow on the draw. Nowhere near as slow as Trump, though. The quotes THCJ listed are not fabricated, not emanating from a liberal lobbyist, not even representative of his corrupt inner circle’s advice. They encapsulate the world as he, alone, saw it at that time, and he owns each and every word.

It is indeed possible that Trump is a truly venal and despicable lump of shit AND Cuomo is a dick. What I love about Bob is that he refuses to accept the blindingly obvious truth of the first, and thinks that people who do believe it somehow think Cuomo is a god. The first is willful ignorance at the most astonishing level, the second is spectacularly pathetic straw-man building.

It is indeed possible that Trump is a truly venal and despicable lump of shit AND Cuomo is a dick. What I love about Bob is that he refuses to accept the blindingly obvious truth of the first, and thinks that people who do believe it somehow think Cuomo is a god.

Projection is an amazing thing.

>South Korea is on the same timeline as us, they got their first cases at the same time, but they took it seriously, got a testing program together quickly, and their healthcare system didn’t get overwhelmed.<

To be clear, this is not a defense of our own lack of preparedness.

Asia has had a few of these outbreaks already and that partly explains why the region was more ready and more experienced handling the issues that would come up. The other being that some of the things they are willing to do in other countries would not be tolerated in the US. The press and citizens would go nuts.

That said, a competent country should have tried to learn from the Asian experience and been better prepared anyway. It should have been considered a national security issue. We could even be attacked this way. How could we not be better prepared?

You can’t really compare us to South Korea unless you use some sort of per capita number. They’re going to have less cases and be able to control it better because they have less idiots to deal with.

Now my opinion, you don’t have to agree and don’t trash me for it: I actually put a bit of blame on the hospitals too. Our hospitals are majority for profit businesses that make a lot of money, a lot. Why wouldn’t they have some sort of mask supply on hand? Like, I don’t know, maybe enough to at least cover half of your staff?

The reality is we all know government does shit slow which is why I can’t understand the obsession with socialism, they aren’t going to shit out 100 million masks in a week.

>Trump cut their balls off, just like the EPA, State dept, Dept of Ed, etc. and he didn’t respect a thing they said early on. Any prior president would have listened to them early on.<

I mentioned shrinking the infectious disease group (that was a short sighted disaster), but that's not what I'm taking about with the CDC.

The CDC apparently has rules kind of like the FDA where you can only use approved testing kits (to protect us from the evils of the private sector). The problem was that the CDC only developed a low quality testing kit, with slow turnaround, and not enough of them. When much better private sector tests were developed and getting ready to be ramped up, those private companies were forbidden to do so because they weren't approved. So there was a delay until the Fauci and administration could basically say F the rules, we need testing kits. Somehow they bypassed or fast tracked the approval process so private companies could ramp up. But that cost us a week or two of delays.

I’m not a trump defender; I think he’s been terrible on this. You can’t applaud his call to shut travel from China and ignore that he should have done the same with Europe once italy broke out. Hell he inexplicably left the UK open even after he shut down europe. He has no idea what is going on and should cede the floor to the experts like W did in 2008. At least W knew he wasn’t smart and let Paulson and Bernanke speak. Trump thinks this is a TV show and he’s the star so the doctors are his supporting cast. He’s awful. I would hope even Bob can see this.

But ffs…. There’s a reason every elected official at every level in both parties has failed pretty spectacularly on this: no one wants to destroy an economy (and that is what we’re doing) until it’s beyond 1000% clear that they have to.

And also, people suck. Maybe not here, this is a bright group that knew what was going on for a long time. But the people who live here don’t listen to anyone or anything. There are — right now — way too many people out in NYC. Maybe it’s dead by you but go to a park or the river, it’s jam packed like a spring Saturday. And all those idiots I told you that were out in the city last weekend, they’ve all been taking flights to Florida, California, or whatever cool place they think they can ride this out with their quarantine crew. 20% of them are probably positive and asymptomatic. So wait til all those idiots start infecting more areas. That shit ain’t a politician’s fault.

There still isn’t effective testing of airline passengers, unlike almost every other country in the world.

The guy can’t even read a teleprompter without fucking up. I don’t know why we expect him to solve the greatest health crisis of the 21st century.

Don’t want to support Trump but …
Boris Johnson the UK prime minister followed more crrriminally policy on the COVID-19 situation till one week ago by allowing public gatherings and even live concerts of 25.000 people attending with the sceptic of the herd immunity to kick in.
These decisions are not taken by the governments imo.
Look like experiments composed by scientists after billionaires’ orders.
Politicians seem like the conductors of these fatal symphonies.
Trump of course ain’t only a politician….

Always great being enlightened by the “fake news” police! You know, the guys that rail against media bias? From the Western Journal Wikipedia page:

“Western Journalism was founded in 2008 by political consultant Floyd Brown, who also founded the Political Action Committee Citizens United[2] and served as executive director of the Young America’s Foundation.[3]

The site was acquired by Liftable Media, Inc. in 2014,[4] which also owns the political opinion websites Conservative Tribune and Liberty Alliance,[4] and the human-interest website Liftable.com.[5] It also owns and provides content to dozens of conservative Facebook pages.[6]”

thenoblefacehumper:
My decision to sign a lease for a tiny but relatively expensive East Village apartment due its proximity to NYU’s campus and neighborhood nightlife was the John Wall contract of apartment rentals.

Arguably defensible at the time of the signing, but disastrous in hindsight…

Bad luck, tnfh. Keep your chin up, it will all even out, especially for a bright young guy like yourself!

I dunno, is anything on msnbc factual? Or CNN? Or in the NYTimes? What’s the fact-to-fiction ratio?

Typically, someone like yourself will take some random misstatement from MSNBC and lo and behold, it becomes MSLSD, never to be trusted again, But when the publication/outlet he is brainwashed into thinking is more “fair and balanced” spouts vomit that a jackass would kick you for repeating (e.g. the global warming “hoax” referenced above) it is glossed over, as is the veracity of a scumbag president who has told 20,000+ verifiable lies.

Raven:
Dear Bob,

Please go crawl back under your rock. In normal times your stupidity degrades humanity but only in tiny, hard-to-specifically-quantify stages. Right now, you echo the perspective of cravenly corrupt sociopaths who are leading us into the millions of deaths scenario. Go away. Please. Don’t come back.

Everyone else, i recommend we ignore anything else Bob posts (although I think that we can make fun of him if it’s about basketball). It’s just not worth it. It’s like having Kyrie Irving on this site, arguing about how flat the earth is.

Except much worse.

Sincerely,

Not Mike

Funny as hell, but a bit rough. I don’t think bob is a sociopath, just a garden-variety asshole. See bob? I got your back!

Sorry, didn’t mean to suggest Bob’s a sociopath. Just that he’s defending them.

And apologies if I was a little rough. My mom’s as good as dead right now. She’s in a home in NY, and she’s in the hospital every few weeks for something. The next something, be it a UTI or whatever, will almost certainly be her death knell, as she won’t get help for something that’s otherwise fixable but if not it will kill her, and god forbid if she does go in. Roach motel.

I’ve somewhat lost patience with people who defend really bad, indefensible people. it’s not cute anymore.

Doesn’t mean we can’t have a good discussion about who’s to blame. I think recent parts of this thread have been really interesting. I wouldn’t have looked at hospitals as anything other than victims until the post about why didn’t they get ahead of the curve, knowing what was coming and how unlikely the federal government was to support them. Not sure I accept the point, but it’s worth a good mull.

The US has been testing foreign travelers coming into the country as far back as February. I know this from personal experience. I presumed there is a constitutional reason they didn’t test US citizens (how can you not let someone back into their home country based on their temperature?).

It’s just “fill out a questionnaire,” it’s not actually testing anyone. As if travelers are going to be honest about their symptoms. A foreign national dealing with Trump’s CBP? Lie every which way in hopes of not ending up in one of the camps. And it’s not don’t let citizens back in, it’s keep them isolated until they can get tested if they have indicators. I can’t think of any constitutional reason. The US has done similar things in the past during epidemics. We did that exact thing with the cruise ship.

KnickfaninNJ:
It’s unfair to complain about Bob’s post of the Western Journal article.I read it and it seemed apolitical and probably factual.I didn’t know that sitesreputation until you guys complained about it.But a simple google search shows other sites, for example CBS news, reporting something similar. So I think he was being helpful and maybe he’s owed an apology for some of the comments on that particular post.

lol

Grocer, it’s not just “fill out a questionaire. On Feb 28 they stuck a thermometer in the mouth of a Thai national who I am dating. She had a mild fever and they wanted to send her either to Thailand or quarantine. She got her company’s lawyer to come get her into the country. She then quarantined herself for 14 days.

“And the world is busting at its seems and you’re just a prisoner of your dreams holding on for life. You work 9 to 5 but somehow you survive until the night”

dolly parton: working 9 to 5…

hope your mom stays well raven…I understand…cuz I’m in and out of my house all the time still, can’t really go hang out with mom…

couple of more on the more seasoned side family members with some serious health stuff going on that got me worried…

worried about the young kids…this just ain’t a good time to have any kind of health situations going on…

real scary thinking that there’s a good chance 50% of the population may become infected…

“It’s unfair to complain about Bob’s post of the Western Journal article. I read it and it seemed apolitical and probably factual.”

Of course it it…. but does that even matter? I simply posted a piece that I read that quoted a study from American Journal of Gastroenterology. I posted it is a public service to those that didn’t know GI symptoms often PRECEDE CV lung symptoms.

Note no one disputed the veracity of the piece itself…. they were just triggered by the source.

And, by the way, I spent the greater part of my adult life in a barn so do you actually think being called names by people in the internet is going to bother me in the least? I’m pretty un-triggerable.

It just shows some people’s lack of argument. Not a single person has disputed factually anything I posted today and I have assiduously refrained from invective and God knows I’m justified to do so.

Cliff’s notes:

Trump has picked up 10 points to a majority position in polling in a week as to his handling of this mess…
If you have GI symptoms be extra on guard for C/V. Deal with it fellas…..

““And the world is busting at its seems and you’re just a prisoner of your dreams holding on for life. You work 9 to 5 but somehow you survive until the night””

Bruuuuuuuce.

(ps— I did include this song way back in the 9:15pm post from last night)

(pps— why aren’t these posts numbered anymore?)

The article bobneptune posted seems fine, and possibly even useful. So thanks for that bob, no snark.

made it through the fridge and most of my food, cleaning and medical supplies…

let’s share secrets…

so, I’m a fairly well intentioned individual…generally neat, maybe not the absolute biggest fan of actually cleaning stuff though…

the kids visit, but, it’s just me in the house, my general cleaning strategy is just avoid making a mess…I know I should get a cleaning service, but, just not a big fan of strangers, even more so not having them going through my home…

point of the story – it would seem over the course of some years I’ve accumulated quite a bit of cleaning supplies which were purchased, but sadly never used…I’m good on cleaning stuff, for a good while…

went through and checked expiration dates in the kitchen…didn’t have to toss too much…oldest item was some boxes of cup of noodles (way in the back) that had 2014 on the box…

nothing from 2018 or 2019, but, a few more items with 2017 on them…

right now still got everything out all over the house (like items with like items :), gonna just empty every cabinet throughout the house and figure out how to re-stock…

need to hit the closets and garage afterward…probably do more working from home the next few weeks…try to sneak a little home maintenance in to my schedule…that’ll make me happy…

two items I came up short on: toilet paper and lysol disinfecting spray…not too bad overall, still a lot of work to do…

been thinking about those “doomsday” prepper people a bunch the last few days…I gotta imagine they’re laughing their asses off and thinking: we told you

“if I absolutely had to put pen to paper and write down all the lyrics to a Bruce song: spirit in the night”

If I had to, I could probably go from Blinded By The Light all the way up to something off the Rising album, from memory, without stopping. Maybe I’d get a word wrong here and there, but not many:)

(btw, my kids think I’m a magician because they put the Springsteen xm radio channel on and watch as I sit there calling out the next song before it even starts. They’re like “how do you do that??”, and I’m like “it’s all in the Akashic Records, just open your minds….”

yes, I absolutely live that song…

“If it turns out to be accurate that’s great, but given the mass amounts of disinformation and outright lies rolling around right wing media outlets everyone’s initial response should be distrust. No one should default to trusting consistent liars, even if they try to play the victim afterwards.”

This is really silly.

The link I posted had the headline: Study Finds Unexpected Coronavirus Symptoms That Could Be the First Sign of Infection: Digestive Issues.

Even the slow boy could divine this wasn’t a right wing hit piece with the smallest modicum of intellectual curiosity. It directly quoted and linked that other world famous entity of the vast right wing conspiracy The American College of Gastroenterology.

Sometimes when you check your so called brain at the door and indulge in knee-jerk reactions you end up kicking yourself right in your posterior

“Put another way, it isn’t about whether the point made in the article was true or not, ”

Ummmmm… it actually is……… good attempt at backtracking from an untenable position…. shift the goal posts a bit more, Please!

The link I posted had the headline: Study Finds Unexpected Coronavirus Symptoms That Could Be the First Sign of Infection: Digestive Issues.

Even the slow boy could divine this wasn’t a right wing hit piece with the smallest modicum of intellectual curiosity.

Because what really matters is the headline. This is why you’re the sucker. It’s as if you think the moral of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” is that we need to take all claims of wolves seriously at all times no matter who the information comes from. Please.

Has anyone considered that such a player would be probably the most widely hated player in NBA history, both among your teammates and the general public? I don’t think it’s worth it, even for millions.