ESPN.com: Knicks hire CAA’s William Wesley to advisory role

From Woj:

The New York Knicks have hired CAA’s William Wesley as executive vice president/senior basketball adviser, the team announced Wednesday.

Wesley has been a consultant in the coaching division of CAA for 13 years and has a long professional and personal relationship with new Knicks president Leon Rose.

Rose and Wesley worked together at CAA and have a history back to their starts in New Jersey.

“My long history with and respect for Jim Dolan and Leon Rose, as well as the chance to be part of the New York Knicks, made this an opportunity I wanted to pursue,” Wesley said in a statement. “I look forward to joining the current staff and moving the organization toward a successful future.”

Known as World Wide Wes in basketball circles, Wesley is considered one of the great connectors and relationship builders in the sport. Wesley joins a front office that includes Rose, general manager Scott Perry and chief strategist Brock Aller.

Rose said in a statement that Wesley is “one of the most well-connected and respected people in the basketball community and he will be a tremendous asset and resource to both myself and the New York Knicks.”

This had been rumored at the time that Rose was hired, but was premature at the time since Wesley was under contract with CAA at the time.

It’s probably a meaningless hire either way. He has worked with Rose for years, so it makes sense Rose would bring a guy with him.

I don’t think it means that the Knicks will starfuck any more than they were already going to starfuck (which could be a lot no matter what).

507 replies on “ESPN.com: Knicks hire CAA’s William Wesley to advisory role”

The Knicks are going from league laughing stock to league pity case. It’s getting to the point where the organization is so poorly managed, it should no longer be acceptable to make fun of them. We spent years hoping to get out from under CAA. We finally made some progress and now we are all in. It’s sad. I’m done.

Brian Cronin
June 24, 2020 at 12:13 pm
“Don Chaney won coach of the year in Detroit, but didn’t have much success in New York.l

Houston, but yeah, agreed with the overall point.

***

Oh, yeah, I forgot he was in Houston. In my mind’s eye, he was only coach of the Pistons.

And in looking him up, I learned that he was head coach for 12 seasons in the NBA and only had a winning record twice. BUT he won coach of the year that one year that he didn’t suck at coaching, so good for him!

(I guess that’s kind of like when they gave Kim Basinger an Oscar the one time she made a movie that didn’t blow)

“Wesley joins a front office that includes Rose, general manager Scott Perry and chief strategist Brock Aller.”

History in the making.
John, Paul, George and Ringo material.

if you don’t realize that Thibs is an excellent coach, I don’t know what to say.

Obviously, evaluating a coach is more complex than his record, his COTY award, or his 2 close finishes for that award in a very limited career. But if you help turn around a franchise, have a very winning record, were a strong contender for 3 straight COTY awards, and then get a franchise that’s in contention with the Knicks for worst in the league back to the playoffs quickly, we probably don’t have to have a week long discussion about his clock management, halftime adjustments, lineup structures, player development, timeout play calling etc.. to know we are dealing with a great coach. Hell, I don’t even care that other coaches say he’s a great coach. It’s too obvious.

Atkinson is a fine coach. We could do way worse. He may even be a great coach some day, But he hasn’t proven much yet and there’s a reason championship caliber players like Durant and Irving (who dealt with him regularly) wanted him out. It wasn’t because they think he gave them their best chance to win. It was because they lost confidence in him while observing his coaching.

Obviously evaluating a coach is more complex than [X factors] but we need to hire Thibs solely because of [X factors]

I’m hoping Rose just keeps adding more and more people. See how many people can squeeze money out of Dolan. No need to hire a coach yet though, who knows if there will even be a season next year.

He’s hiring so many people I’m thinking it’s because he has no idea how to fix the Knicks

A fascinating thing about Coach of the Year is that Thibs didn’t receive a single vote as Coach of the Year during his time in Minny. Coach of the Year votes, though, only count during the years Thibs received a lot of support. Not the other years. For reasons.

You’d think Thibs was Phil Jackson, how much you’re dedicated to him having no faults.

Coach of the year award is not exactly like Mvp of the all star game award or half court shot 10000$ award.
It shows that for one season (year) the coach was focused and in great control of his team, against 29 others and got the best from the guys he was coaching.
Is it sustainable ?
Pretty Difficult due to aggressive competition.
As any of the annual nba awards.

Is it repeatable?
Why not?

You don’t want to put it in a storage container. It should be put in the fridge uncovered and have it elevated above the tray it’s on so the steak isn’t sitting in pooling liquid. It should be uncovered so the liquid being drawn out by the salt evaporates.

good stuff vincoug…place it on a small rack on top of a plate….

Yeah, it’s similar to storing fruit like strawberries. You want them exposed so the fridge can wick the moisture away (preventing mold).

Thibs looks like he knows A LOT about steaks!
One more point for him!

It’s getting to the point where the organization is so poorly managed, it should no longer be acceptable to make fun of them. We spent years hoping to get out from under CAA. We finally made some progress and now we are all in. It’s sad. I’m done.

whoever started with that rooting for laundry shit last year – curse you…that is one sorry sounding thought, and it’s stuck in my mind now…

my general observation on bbq’ing steaks (and given that my dad and grandfather were both butchers) is that the quality of the beef will generally dictate the quality of what comes off the grill no matter what you do to it before it goes on and when it is on there…aside from setting it afire (and even then it can still be ok sometimes)…

Oh man, you guys read Begley’s interview with Woodson? He’s going after this HAM.
I feel like he has a good shot, and I kinda miss the circle goatee tbh…

Anybody watch Rose’s interview with Breen? Obviously, it’s all platitudes, but he at least didn’t seem to say anything stupid based on the beat writers’ tweets.

(Calling DSJ Jr a special talent is nonsense, but it’s also the kind of thing an executive says to talk up his own player at the start of a job. I mean he didn’t seem to say anything stupid beyond the expected BS of this kind of interview.)

I’ve called DSJ a special talent too.
Many times this season.
Not in basketball sadly …
In comedy.

Just as in Fizdale’s case I’d prefer to watch Rose work instead of talk before i draw any conclusions.
Know how to talk to the press ain’t bad tho.

(Calling DSJ Jr a special talent is nonsense, but it’s also the kind of thing an executive says to talk up his own player at the start of a job. I mean he didn’t seem to say anything stupid beyond the expected BS of this kind of interview.)

I for one am very disturbed that we seem to be going away from the innovative front office strategy employed by Phil Jackson of “publicly taking superfluous potshots at the players on your roster, including those you are actively trying to trade and those likely departing in free agency.”

I felt like we really gained a lot when our top executive shat on Shane Larkin for no reason and screamed “I am desperate to trade Carmelo Anthony” at the top of his lungs.

Oh man, you guys read Begley’s interview with Woodson? He’s going after this HAM.
I feel like he has a good shot, and I kinda miss the circle goatee tbh…

Hiring Mike Woodson would almost certainly be objectively stupid, probably more so than hiring Thibodeau. However I don’t think I’d be physically capable of being angry about a second go-around with the coach of the one good Knicks team for which I’ve ever rooted. I would criticize the move on all sorts of grounds, but my heart wouldn’t be in it.

Phil was a Visionary but his Knicks vision seemed slightly drugged perhaps by trade-allergy pills.
His Jr/shump giveaway-trade that played a huge role in cavs championship imo was a clear sign to me that he wasn’t fully aware of the league’s dynamics during his POBO days.

I was among the Knicks fans that were ‘screaming’: “JD give Phil the keys and Get out of his way” but seemed like Phil wasn’t as good in that role as he was as a coach.
What can you do?
Even MJordan sucks in other roles than a player…

Reposting from the previous thread.

So, about the NBA restarting. Avery Bradley isn’t playing because one of his children is at-risk for covid, Jokic and Malcolm Brogdon have both tested positive so far, and it’s taking place in Florida where cases are spiking and their idiot governor refuses to do anything about it in order to suck up to our idiot in chief. Anyone else thinking this might be a bad idea?

Oh, and I love that we’re totally in bed with CAA again. It was so great last time how could it go wrong? Remember when we won 54 games, made it to the 2nd round of the playoffs, and then traded for a 1RP and two 2RP for Bargnani? Good times.

I’d love to get Avery Bradley and Nerlens Noel instead of the 33 PF Musketeers we got during the legendary 1st day off-season…

The difference now is that CAA is us, not who we are bargaining with. Will Rose et. al. be as shrewd now that his legacy is about wins on the court rather than wins in having his clients sign large contracts and play in lucrative markets? It used to serve CAA’s purposes do do right by its clients at the expense of Dolan and his cast of buffoons running the Knicks. Now , Rose and WWW have seen what incompetence as an executive can do to tarnish one’s glittering legacy in a prior occupation. Does Rose want to follow Phil’s example?

As for me, I couldn’t care less about what connections are most important to Rose, so long as he makes smart deals and improves the team in some sort of non-stopgap way and without being a sideshow.

Say what you want about Mike Woodson, but his Hawks teams improved every year despite more or less returning the same group of guys and he’s the head coach who got Melo to buy into playing power forward full time.

You can absolutely hire a better head coach than Mike Woodson, but you can absolutely hire a worse coach than Mike Woodson too. He’s not even on my list of preferred candidates as he’s 100% “meh” as a head coach. I will say he was kinda ahead of his time with the switch heavy defenses, and it’s not his fault we traded for the worst basketball player in the NBA.

Give me Ime Udoka all day over Mike Woodson. Give me Kenny Atkinson all day over Mike Woodson. I think I put Mike Woodson and Tom Thibodeau on the same level of desirable as I don’t think either guy will tank your chances like Fizdale or Kidd and I don’t think either guy adds tangible value either.

I’m hoping Rose just keeps adding more and more people.

One my friends has a friend who is friends with Wes, so if Rose keeps this up he’ll get to me eventually

***I for one am very disturbed that we seem to be going away from the innovative front office strategy employed by Phil Jackson of “publicly taking superfluous potshots at the players on your roster, including those you are actively trying to trade and those likely departing in free agency.”***

Hey, there was that time where Phil tried to convince people that Tim Hardaway jr was 6’9”!

“So, about the NBA restarting. Avery Bradley isn’t playing because one of his children is at-risk for covid, Jokic and Malcolm Brogdon have both tested positive so far, and it’s taking place in Florida where cases are spiking and their idiot governor refuses to do anything about it in order to suck up to our idiot in chief. Anyone else thinking this might be a bad idea?

The infection rate is strictly a function of personal behavior. There are 106,000 total infections statewide from the beginning of the crisis here in Florida out of a population of 21M which gives an infection rate of about 0.5%. So 99.5% of the populace has managed to not get infected by using reasonable techniques including the myriad of olds that are terribly susceptible.

If the players and their ancillary personnel stay within the confines of the bubble, the vast majority will be fine. If a few decide to visit Diamond Dolls a few time the league will be shut down in 2 weeks.

I am kinda curious how the governor of Florida is an idiot with 5100 cases today and CA’s gov isn’t an idiot with 5,000 cases today and twice as many dead.? And how Cuomo isn’t an idiot for forcing infected patients into nursing home?

Just curious how that works?

Hey, there was that time where Phil tried to convince people that Tim Hardaway jr was 6’9”!

That really was amazing. It’s hilarious the crazy shit that Phil did that I don’t even remember because there was so much of it. It’s like if you looked at a list the crazy shit that Trump did in December, you feel like you’re talking about thirty years ago.

***I am kinda curious how the governor of Florida is an idiot with 5100 cases today and CA’s gov isn’t an idiot with 5,000 cases today***

California has 40,000,000 people, Florida has 20,000,000 people. Do you still not get it?

Rose and WWW have seen what incompetence as an executive can do to tarnish one’s glittering legacy in a prior occupation. Does Rose want to follow Phil’s example?

that’s pretty good.z-man, that actually is a decent base for some glimmer of hope…eventually things will get turned around and headed in the right direction – I mean statistically it’s got be an unlikely outcome that we could be consistently terrible for such a prolonged period of time…

now that wes is on board – a new era of glory is about to be upon us…

Just curious how that works?

be honest, you are not curious in the very least…you just want to argue…what is that 🙂

it’s not just you bob…it’s a thing…this is the place for it…it’s kind of fascinating…like a vice or something…peoples’ vices are often interesting…

okay then, what was the side dish you had with your steak?

favorite steak side dishes: applesauce, baked potato (lots of butter), green beans (more butter) and some french bread (you see a pattern)…and milk for the beverage, maybe chocolate milk…

***I am kinda curious how the governor of Florida is an idiot with 5100 cases today and CA’s gov isn’t an idiot with 5,000 cases today***

California has 40,000,000 people, Florida has 20,000,000 people. Do you still not get it?

Yes the infection rate yesterday was double CA’s understood. But FL opened 8 weeks ago. You are going to find the infection rates climbing back up everywhere when people go back to work. The virus didn’t go away. We have only gotten (hopefully) smarter and the olds should continue to sat at home. People under 50 have a 1 in 2000 death rate if infected where people over 70 have a 1 in 12.

And Caili had 6503 new infections the day before to FL’s 3286 on June 23 so the day before the rates were precisely the same.

Nationwide the 7 day moving average of infections is rising steeply as more states open to a greater and greater degree while at the same time nationwide death rates continue to decline.

As younger people go out to work and play the infection rates will continue to increase

favorite steak side dishes: applesauce, baked potato (lots of butter), green beans (more butter) and some french bread (you see a pattern)…and milk for the beverage, maybe chocolate milk…

I try to eat as ketogenically as possible so my beloved breads and pastas are out. Broccoli and spinach.

As a California resident, I will say this: Gavin Newsom fucked up the state’s coronavirus response. Shit opened way too soon here, especially in Los Angeles. The mayor of this town, the hapless Eric Garcetti, fucked up real good too. We NEVER got the curve flattened here but we went ahead and reopened anyway. I don’t know when I’m going to work again but it’s not gonna be any time real soon.

That said, Ron DeSantis is a next level dipshit and Florida’s response has been a complete joke. My parents live in Fort Lauderdale and are both 70 and have lung conditions so I’m not real thrilled with that asshole either.

There’s plenty of fail to go around for everybody.

Cuomo and De Blasio deserve plenty of blame, too. Morons act like this is some zero sum game, like “If Cuomo fucked up, then Trump didn’t.” When obviously it isn’t. There’s been plenty of fuck-ups out there. None as bad as Trump, but there’s plenty of blame to go around in NY, CA, NJ and other “blue” states.

” Morons act like this is some zero sum game, like “If Cuomo fucked up, then Trump didn’t.”

No intelligent person says this. While Trump was relatively quick to close off entry from China (for which he was pilloried) he committed the mortal sin of not shutting down international air travel from everywhere at the same time. He didn’t have the balls to take the heat from his allies and his enemies in America. That’s on him. Early on it wasn’t obvious Europe was going to be the major vehicle of seeding in this country, but it should have been. It was clear people had left China and traveled to Europe so it was only a matter of days/weeks til Europe became a major infectious route.

Of course only the CCP knew of the infectious nature of the disease early on and they didn’t let on until the rest of the planet (western competitive capitalist democracies) were thoroughly infected and their economies crippled worse than China. There will be a special place in hell for those bastards (hopefully).

Mr. Cuomo’s move was worse because he literally sacrificed thousands of innocent people in nursing home at the altar of political correctness and pure stupidity. YOU must take infected people into nursing homes.

Who could ever have imagined that could work out well.

“My parents live in Fort Lauderdale and are both 70 and have lung conditions so I’m not real thrilled with that asshole either.”

I’m in the same boat (68 but relatively healthy) but as long as they use their heads they’ll be fine. I walk around my complex a half hour a day with my wife, Have been to Publix 5 times since the beginning and been out to dinner twice in the last 3 weeks. I’m dying to go to a movie or a show or concert or sit down at a poker table, but it’s just unwise. Always sit outdoors to eat where the air is circulating and the tables are far apart. So far so good.

The olds just have to be smarter. But we couldn’t just quarantine the entire nation until a vaccine is found. AIDS has been around for 40+ years and still no vaccine. There is no guarantee there will ever be a vaccine. There wouldn’t he a country to re-open if we hermetically sealed everyone in place for 18 months.

People at very low risk have to get back at it and the olds have to be smart. The low risk people do NOT have to re-open by indulging themselves in high risk activity. That point needs to be hammered home better.

This is weird. I feel like I’m more of a fan of the FO than I am of the actual players. Meaning, there’s way more logical talent upstairs than it is on the floor lol. It’s early, but Rose is showing the kind of almost stubborn patience that Dolan wouldn’t let Walsh have. It was exactly what we needed then, and it’s exactly what we need now. Question is: will Dolan let Rose Do What Rose Do? Or trying to do?

As far as coaches go, call me crazy- but I’m actually warming up to Woodson’s candidacy. Of course, he’d be near the bottom of my favorites out of the reported candidates. But I don’t have a big problem with Woodson. In no particular order, I’d like to see one of Miller, Atkinson, Udoka, Woody, and maybe Kidd get a shot. I think Kidd learned alot this season coaching LeBron under Vogel. But he’d definitely be last on my list. I like Hammond too, but the fact that Pop gave the reigns to TIMMAY when he was out is a little concerning. She should definitely get a shot, but she’s probably being groomed for the San Antonio job. It’d be hard to pry her away.

I like Hammond too, but the fact that Pop gave the reigns to TIMMAY when he was out is a little concerning. She should definitely get a shot, but she’s probably being groomed for the San Antonio job. It’d be hard to pry her away.

It sure sounds like it’s Duncan that’s being groomed for the job, no?

And if it were anyone else but Tim Duncan, I’d agree that it was a demerit for Hammon for her to be passed over by Duncan, but, well, you know, it is Tim freakin’ Duncan. Pop’s worked closely with him for, what, 23 years now?

The amusing thing is that one of the reasons Udoka left San Antonio was because he was behind Hammon and Messina in the Spurs coaching pecking order. Pop’s bench is just an amazing place to be.

Indeed. Seems like San Antonio IS the coaching tree lol

But how much does Duncan really wanna coach? I think he has the mind for it, but given his personality and previous remarks about coaching- does he really want to be a HC?

Watching the Rose interview now. First, Mike Breen is just the best. Second, Rose comes across very genuinely. He didn’t say anything that was alarming. I wish he was a bit more forthcoming re: style of play, but there seemed to be a genuine humility and passion for success. I am cautiously optimistic about him.

Cuomo made some slow and some bad decisions, but considering that he was managing the global epicenter of COVID-19 for a while, he has done a fantastic job overall, even with the nursing home debacle. DeSantis has a lot more info and a lot more resources to work with than Cuomo did. To compare them is beyond ludicrous.

I also watched the interview just now. I agree with Z-man about except that I think he was forthcoming about the style of play. He clearly said it’s not up to him, it’s the coaches decision. He also said that the coach and management have to work together to build a team that has players that support whatever style of play the coach uses.

Indeed. Seems like San Antonio IS the coaching tree lol

But how much does Duncan really wanna coach? I think he has the mind for it, but given his personality and previous remarks about coaching- does he really want to be a HC?

Why would he be an assistant coach (and the head coach when Pop’s not there) if he didn’t want to coach?

Right, I wanted him to say that he would consider league-wide trends for successful play and choose a coach that was sensitive to that. I wanted him to say something about the use of analytics. (He hasn’t hired anyone suggestive of specific expertise in that area, to my knowledge.)

“To compare them is beyond ludicrous”

Yeah… you are correct… no single action taken by executive fiat in Florida killed 5,000 Americans directly. You can have any opinion or Cuomo as you wish but you are not allowed your own set of facts.

(He hasn’t hired anyone suggestive of specific expertise in that area, to my knowledge.)

That definitely has been a glaring absence in his hires so far.

Sure, us dumb New Yorkers are getting snowed by Cuomo, especially the most dumb college graduates. We’re so quick to forgive our charming leader, to the tune of an 87% approval rating.

Mouthbreathers like bob will work like dogs their entire lives to afford to send their kids to the best colleges, and when they come home will go on and on about how stupid they became.

The inevitable Mike Breen #metoo scandal (or equivalent) is going to devastate me. I love that man.

Florida is currently reporting more cases than Germany, Italy, Spain, and France combined. Or so I read in the paper the other day.

Cuomo did his best, and quite well overall, to handle a disaster that was partly of his own making. I will leave it to the historians to decide how well he did.

It’s clear that as a nation this is going just about as badly as it possibly could measured both by mortality and economic activity. There is no question that the largest part of blame rests squarely on the shoulders of President Trump.

At least Desantis and the Florida SG have finally sent out an alert strongly encouraging the use of masks. Imagine if Trump had done so three months ago.

We are doing better than Brazil. That’s all I can say about our response.

“Sure, us dumb New Yorkers are getting snowed by Cuomo, especially the most dumb college graduates. We’re so quick to forgive our charming leader, to the tune of an 87% approval rating.”

Ahhhh…. when the facts don’t agree with your arguments… go with the “well… the facts don’t matter because Ima smarter than you!”

Well played.

Brian Cronin: Why would he be an assistant coach (and the head coach when Pop’s not there) if he didn’t want to coach?

Good point. Maybe Pop talked him into it? But I remember him saying he wasn’t thinking about coaching at the end of his playing career, and I believed it too much maybe. My question in regards to Hammond and Duncan is if San Antonio doesn’t give Hammond a shot- who will? That’s if Duncan is the coach in waiting. Imagine the PR storm if Pop leaves, and they pass Duncan over for Hammond. So, it makes me wonder how even of a footing are Duncan and Hammond on for Hammond to have all this buzz? Can she make that jump if Duncan is clearly the lead assistant? Don’t get me wrong- I like Hammond. But doesn’t that structure hurt her chances elsewhere?

I think Cuomo and DeBlasio did the best they could after making the original sin of not closing down 2 weeks sooner. With a exponentially spreading virus, just a few days makes a big difference, and they failed that initial test.

Hard to know exactly what is happening in Florida/Texas/Arizona. My inclination is that most of the spread happens indoors, and those states are now HOT and unbearable outside for the most part so people are hiding indoors with crappy ventilation systems that are probably pushing all the virus around. The vast majority of cases in California are happening in LA where aside from the very coastal areas it is HOT. In contrast, in the northeast, true, people are way more careful because of how horrible it was here in march-may, but the weather has been really mild so far, easy to do everything outdoors. But already you can see people being much less adherent to social distancing here. The rubber will hit the road in the northeast in July/Aug when it’s 90+ degrees and 85+ humidity, people are forced inside, and at the same time, reopening introduces more people onto subways/trains/buses/offices.

My guess is that the rest of the country never gets nearly as bad as NY unless people are REALLY dumb, just because people don’t live in as close quarters as they do in NY, and public transportation is way less important in other places. But exponential spread is exponential spread, and just a little bad luck could unfortunately go a very long way.

“Mouthbreathers like bob will work like dogs their entire lives to afford to send their kids to the best colleges, and when they come home will go on and on about how stupid they became.”

Personal invective is a tried and true tact to take when your argument is weak. You really do not know anything about this. Do you think I say how stupid my neurosurgeon son is? Maybe you should try being a mouthbreather.

“Sure, bob, Cuomo is a mass murderer. Just ask any arch-conservative!”

Use any adjective you choose but he made an executive order/fiat where the direct result of such a poorly thought out idea in the name of political correctness cost thousands of older people their lives directly. The facts are in evidence. They are real things and inescapable sequelae of his actions.

Characterize them any way that assuages your conscience and votes. Feel free this is America….

NY was dealing with huge unknowns, and the greatest fear was that hospitals were going to be completely overwhelmed in terms of capacity, health care personnel and equipment (PPE, ventilators, etc.). There was also moronic resistance from the feds re: vastly increasing testing capacity. So what to do with elderly people so incapacitated that they required 24-hour care in a medical facility was a very tough call at the time. Asshole conservatives who are desperately looking for any reason to tear Cuomo down will second-guess every decision he made in the context of what we know now. But where was the outcry then? What alternative solutions were being offered by Cuomo-hating voices of reason?

It’s the same bullshit line of reasoning used to defend Trump. He actually did NOT prevent travel from China to US. Thousands of Americans and others returned to US from China after his so-called ban, either directly or through other countries. And obviously NYC, with its vast amount of business, educational and family connections to China, suffered most as a result. And at the Time, Trump was promising us that the virus would magically disappear, trying to convince us that deaths would be minimal based on nothing scientific and flouting experts like Fauci, saying that he was “shocked’ to learn how many people died of the flu, implying that COVID was overblown and should be regarded as a lesser problem, and a billion other criminally negligent things.

I think Cuomo and DeBlasio did the best they could

Sending back COVID-positive nursing home patients was responsible for… MOST… of the deaths in NY. Incredibly stupid and malpractice. Docs knew it at the time.

I think in retrospect that the nursing home thing was a terrible idea, but everything is very easy in retrospect. I can tell you from personal experience that all NYC hospitals were basically completely overwhelmed with the sickest patients many people have ever taken care of, with ICU nurses taking care of far too many of these people, non-ICU nurses and even pediatric nurses trained in a matter of hours/days to try and manage critically ill patients (“this is a ventilator, this is how it works, we understand that we have 1/2 the number of respiratory therapists available, now go take care of these patients), radiologists who hadn’t seen a patient in years learning on the fly how to order stuff and actually take care of unbelievably sick patients. Where I work, by mid April we literally had 3x the amount of ICU patients on ventilators in the hospital as the maximum pre-COVID ICU capacity. If the shut down had happened just a week later, it is possible that you would have seen the entire hospital system collapse. That’s what Cuomo and co. were planning for when they asked the nursing homes to take the patients back.

In retrospect, what they should have done is transfer all those patients to the Javits center, Central Park’s temporary hospital, or the USS Comfort ship rather than back to the nursing homes. But everything was on fire all at once, and as I remember it, the Comfort ship wasn’t supposed to take COVID patients for whatever reason. It definitely could have been much better, but the sheer amount of unknowns and the absolute chaos of this sudden flood of patients has to be taken into account too.

At the end of the day I think I’d give Cuomo a 4 or 5 out of 10. He made some bad calls, he made some calls that were too late, but at least he took the whole thing seriously, had daily briefings that reinforced the severity of the problem, and was able to convince the gigantic majority of people to stay home.

Is it a good idea to have political rallies in huge arenas with no masks required (those are for snowflake pussies) and no social distancing? Just wondering.

The “I ain’t gonna wear no mask because of mah freedums” argument seems to come mostly from bob’s fellow travelers, let’s be honest here.

“So what to do with elderly people so incapacitated that they required 24-hour care in a medical facility was a very tough call at the time.”

Jesus… you must get dizzy spinning so hard and need to see a chiropractor after bending yourself into a pretzel with the convoluted “logic” you espouse to try to put a patina of credibility on Cuomo’s moronic edicts

How about sending them to the 2600 capacity Javitz Center and the 1200 bed Comfort that that asshole President sent to NYC for the Governor to use at no charge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What kind of an absolute moron sends recovering patients into the most vulnerable population with a highly contagious infection. Nothing could possible go wrong there, right?

They were virtually unused the entire time

“Is it a good idea to have political rallies in huge arenas with no masks required (those are for snowflake pussies) and no social distancing? Just wondering.

The “I ain’t gonna wear no mask because of mah freedums” argument seems to come mostly from bob’s fellow travelers, let’s be honest here.”

I don’t blame you for switching the subject from Cuomo for obvious reasons…..

1200 bed Comfort wasn’t allowed to take COVID patients – only patients who had other illnesses. See this article for how poorly the Comfort was set up by the Navy/Trump.

Javits center definitely should have been used, but I’m not 100% sure whether there was a real infrastructure set up there to take care of the patients (nurses, pharmacists, techs, radiology, doctors, food service, etc)? See this article re: how difficult it is/was to set up something like this.

The Comfort ship was really the best option – a military hospital ship that is used to rapid deployment and had staff, ORs, ICUs, etc. But the rollout of that was completely botched by non-Cuomo federal/military leadership.

My guess is that Cuomo’s choice was to keep these patients occupying hospital beds, risking hospitals literally running out of beds, vs. sending them back to a place that had the infrastructure already in place, while hoping that the nursing homes would put enough precautions in place. Obviously that ended up being a bad call but nothing is as simple as it appears.

50 years ago I would go to this Italian restaurant in Detroit, Lelli’s. They had the greatest dinner, Filet Mignon Lelli. Five courses with the tenderest most flavorful steak. Years later I was imagining these wonderful meals. Since the internet had been invented I could find that restaurant, see its history. Burnt down reopened closed reopened etc. Then I discovered cousin Vinny was selling their secret sauce. It didn’t list ingredients, but the directions said it all. Pour half the bottle, four ounces, into a pan, add four ounces butter. Melt and pour over steak and mashed potato’s. The secret ingredient.

Bob?

Were you not aware that the USNS Comfort was blocked from having Covid-19 patients on board?

Did they not discuss that on Fox?

It is now a matter that is in dispute it appears but absolutely no one living in New York at the time could understand why it wasn’t taking Covid patients.

Do we get a retraction from Bob? Not counting on it.

It also should be mentioned that Cuomo has fulsomely apologized for the nursing home debacle. He owned it. Meanwhile, the next time Trump apologizes for something he has done will be literally the first time.

bobneptune: How about sending them to the 2600 capacity Javitz Center and the 1200 bed Comfort that that asshole President sent to NYC for the Governor to use at no charge!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When those facilities were set up, they were not intended for COVID patients. Was there an outcry about that, or is it just Monday morning quarterbacking on your part? Please show me evidence of the massive outcry by conservatives that nursing home patients were not being transported en masse to the Comfort. If you can’t find it, just make it up like your lib-hating buddies do.

Fuck Cuomo. I don’t give a fuck about Cuomo, he’s the same shitty governor and politician he has always been. Let me reiterate: fuck that guy. I’m mystified by his high approval ratings honestly.

So. About those rallies with no social distancing.
Good idea, or no?

Refusal to wear masks, does that appear to you to be a liberal thing, or does it seem like the kind of rank selfishness and science-denialism that aligns more with conservative thought? Just wondering if you’re capable of intellectual honesty.

I’m not sure where I missed the steak discussion, but my secret has been smear olive oil, liberal salt/pepper all sides, add a pad of butter, seal, sous-vide for 2 hours at 130 degrees, then sear on grill at 500+ degrees 1-2 min per side. Perfectly cooked every time.

I dislike Cuomo for a lot of reasons, and his coronavirus response has been mixed at best, but the nursing home decision was difficult to forecast at the time vis a vis the few other available options. If you think the hospital system is going to be overwhelmed–and that is what most every expert was predicting at the time–then you have to balance the risk to nursing home residents vis a vis adding to the risk to those in already overwhelmed ICUs. That’s a difficult calculus, and I don’t think there’s a clear answer. To assert otherwise is results-based thinking.

The greatest failure of Cuomo and DeBlasio’s COVID response (outside of not shutting down weeks earlier) is their refusal to mass release non-violent inmates when infection rates in prison are projected to be over 40% in June. Combine that with the atrocious health care, cramped conditions, and at-risk population, and you have a human rights disaster. It’s unconscionable.

That said, their response was lightyears ahead of that of any Republican governor. Florida will not reach New York’s highs in infection rate, but the curve is going to plateau for the next few months at a way higher rate than it would have been had they done a proper stay-at-home order.

Also, the economic cost of COVID is not really to due to stay-at-home orders at all–the data from the service industries (e.g. restaurant eating trends are pretty strongly correlated with rising or falling infection rates irrespective of stay-at-home order severity), states with no or weak stay at home orders (where service industries are still decimated), Sweden (where they didn’t close down but project to have -7% GDP for this quarter due to COVID, average for the EU), etc. show that people are avoiding going out and businesses are temporarily or permanently shuttering because of the virus, not the stay at home orders. Reopening states is not going to do much for the economy–what we need is massive fiscal stimulus, over and over and over. But McConnell and co. are only allowing one final stimulus bill next month, one smaller than the CARES act. That’s political and economic malpractice.

There is going to be lots of preventable death from reopening, with no clear benefit beyond my ability to sit on a bar patio and enjoy a beer. And don’t get me started on universities, who are trying to put a camel through the eye of a needle with their fall semester plans.

This has been a massive, historical failure on the part of the federal government. But by Republicans especially.

The fact that very old people were most vulnerable to Covid was well established in China and Italy. It was in the US press. I personally had discussions among friends when the nursing home decisions were being made and we all concluded it was lunacy. What we did in nursing homes when they had insufficient ability to quarantine and inadequate PPE was as close as you can get to genocide without it actually being genocide. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt because they are probably just idiots.

I listened to Rose yesterday. I was reminded of a lesson a learned about 20 years from listening to CEOs on conference calls with investors.

“Don’t listen to what they say. Watch what they do”.

“1200 bed Comfort wasn’t allowed to take COVID patients – only patients who had other illnesses. See this article for how poorly the Comfort was set up by the Navy/Trump.

Javits center definitely should have been used, but I’m not 100% sure whether there was a real infrastructure set up there to take care of the patients (nurses, pharmacists, techs, radiology, doctors, food service, etc)? See this article re: how difficult it is/was to set up something like this.

Nothing was set up for COVID patients excepting a few isolation bed/rooms in hospitals. However, they didn’t need special facilities to care for patients THAT WERE BEING RELEASED FROM HOSPITALS INTO NURSING HOMES. They didn’t need ICU facilities … they needed care for these patients which they easily could have provided at Javitz or the Comfort. How much high tech infrastructure does the average nursing home in Queens have…. not much.

I really don’t understand this line of thinking. These weren’t acutely ill patients or they shouldn’t have been released from the hospital in the first place. They just needed to be sequestered in a place and cared for til they stopped shedding virus. If they relapsed…. back to the hospital

But it was unconscionable to force them into precisely the worst place possible.

Hell they could have empties the Plaza hotel and gotten 500 military nurses to staff it and done that FFS. Cuomo mandated these Typhiod Marys into nursing homes with minimal high tech care. They could have sequestered these people ina number of places with the same level of care received in long term care facilities WiTHOUT INFECTING THOUSANDS OF THE MOST VULNERABLE.

All you need to know if putting recovering covid patients into nursing homes was when the PA public health commissioner mandated the same thing as Cuomo and the immediately pulled he own mom from a nursing home into a hotel. A real scum bag.

It like all the limousine liberals that scream against school choice and refuse to educate their own kids in the same schools they won’t let poor folk escape. Bastards.

No love lost for Cuomo over here. He was too slow to close down, and the nursing home situation was a tragic debacle.

You know what the irony is, bob? He owes his high approval ratings on the matter to most peoples’ only frame of reference being the job done by your guy.

Like I said Cuomo fucked up, but he didn’t:

1) slash funding to offices dealing with pandemic preparedness prior to COVID-19

2) oversee a complete failure in testing at the CDC towards beginning of the outbreak

3) do absolutely nothing at the federal level with the time given to him when the entire country was operating under stay at home orders

4) stop giving daily updates on the latest information and safety protocols

5) bully red-state governors into reopening prematurely, leading to a second wave before we finished the first one

6) refuse to engage in any kind of behavior modeling, in fact doing the exact opposite (modeling piss poor behavior)

7) hold multiple indoor political rallies without any masking requirement, with plans for more

8) cut federal funding for testing, which finally drew some pathetic little objections from Republicans, for reasons, to his credit I guess, about which he’s been very clear

So yeah, bob, if you’re wondering why Cuomo gets such high marks despite bungling his response to COVID-19, the answer is a bungled response looks great when compared with a “spread the pandemic as much as possible” response.

I know the increased Covid-19 caseloads in Florida, Texas, and California are troublesome, but before everyone starts panicking again, some of that is due to both more and more efficient testing. We now know what the high risk activities are, where the high risk zip codes are, have better contact tracing etc.. than earlier in the pandemic. It’s probably not quite as bad as it looks compared to before. We are probably just doing a better job of capturing asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases now than we were 2-3 months ago. That accounts for some of it.

Also, there is some evidence out of Italy that the virus itself may be weakening, That means that even if cases start rising sharply, the hospitalization, ICU patients, and deaths may not rise at the same rate as before.

Finally, since this time around it’s younger people that are coming up positive because we are doing a better job in nursing homes (and unfortunately a lot the elderly are already dead). The combination of even a mildly weaker virus with a younger population of positives could be surprisingly benign.

Everyone is focusing on cases, but cases can be almost irrelevant. There are many millions of cases of the common cold every year but no one worries about it. Watch the hospitalizations, ICU, and death data over the next 2-3 weeks (trailing data). That’s how we’ll know if the virus has weakened, whether younger people are handling it as well as expected, whether treatments are improving etc…

Every single medical professional I spoke to in March and April constantly and openly spoke about how dumbfoundedly idiotic everything about nursing home management was. This was NOT a ‘hindsight is 20/20’ thing. It was malpractice. If politicians were doctors, they’d get sued.

I don’t have data on hospital capacities, but I suspect there was mismanagement there too. The few hospitals I am familiar with at were NOT at capacity at any time. There were some that definitely were at times, mostly in Manhattan and Queens. I think – this is opinion, and I don’t have access to any data here, maybe someone can help- there were other factors leading to the functional overwhelming of the hospital systems without actual capacity. Some of this is due to poor interhospital communication and coordination, where it was basically impossible to transfer patients from at-capacity to under-capacity hospitals. Also, ~20 NYC hospital closures in 20 years (because condos make more money- see LICH), hospital mergers that leave lesser-than hospitals as 3rd world heaps of crap, and basically for-profit motives that make things like excess capacity a bad thing. Again, opinion, and willing to change my POV if I get more data.

Reopening states is not going to do much for the economy…

You realize reopening states means millions of people go back to work, right. This does little for the economy? The unemployment rate went from 3.5% in February to 14.7% in April and this isn’t a gigantic drag on the economy? Getting many of these people back to work isn’t going to do much for the economy? OK….

It’d be nice if people would wear masks but conservative America thinks mask wearing is for pussies so never mind. Mah freedum to not wear a mask supersedes your grandma’s freedum to live so sorry snowflakes.

“Everyone is focusing on cases, but cases can be almost irrelevant.”

Facts:

7 day moving average of daily infections in USA 5/4 (first day of FL reopening) = 28,900
7 day moving average of deaths in USA 5/4 = 1,861
7 day moving average of daily infections yesterday in USA = 32,404
7 day moving average of daily deaths in USA yesterday = 620

I can’t help myself, even after I tell everyone not to.

You do have to admire how Bob dodges a punch quite effortlessly. He quotes someone pointing out he was completely wrong about the USNS Comfort, says nothing about it, and then just blithely motors on as if his credibility is intact.

I give him this, he does a fair job of impersonating Fox News Editorial and he knows that the best defense is a good offense.

Nothing was set up for COVID patients excepting a few isolation bed/rooms in hospitals. However, they didn’t need special facilities to care for patients THAT WERE BEING RELEASED FROM HOSPITALS INTO NURSING HOMES. They didn’t need ICU facilities … they needed care for these patients which they easily could have provided at Javitz or the Comfort. How much high tech infrastructure does the average nursing home in Queens have…. not much.

You obviously didn’t read either of the articles I linked to.

You realize reopening states means millions of people go back to work, right. This does little for the economy?

Please explain how Sweden’s unclosed economy is projected to post a 7 percent GDP loss this quarter. The economic benefits of reopening are marginal, especially with everything operating at reduced capacity, never mind the increased healthcare costs/burden. Employment numbers are coarse-grained indicators.

Perhaps this paper might be of interest:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w27099
“On average, stay-at-home policies are not associated with higher joblessness in the US states that imposed them than in states that did not. We interpret this as evidence that the negative economic shocks were national and not local. There is however some evidence that stay-at-home has sectoral and occupational impacts. States with more jobs that can be done from home seem to have lost fewer jobs after implementing stay-at-home than states with fewer such jobs. This effect itself is not highly statistically significant.

Policy has been predicted to matter for the economy, at least in theory. We find no strong evidence of this in our sample. Stay-at-home is not the most economically important predictor of mobility and its local impact on joblessness is highly dependent on model specification.

The [statistically significant] association between own-state/own-county policy and growth of new cases of Covid-19 is weakened when accounting for neighboring state policies. It is further weakened by using a control group of counties on the side of a border that has no stay-at-home policy. This does not imply that local policy is unnecessary or fruitless since we believe that behavior responds to neighbor state policy. This implies there is justification for policy coordination if the objective is to mitigate the spread of disease and to reduce mortality.”

Without national coordination and action, we’re fucked. This is not going to be a V-shaped recovery. It’s going to be a severe, multi-year recession.

You do have to admire how Bob dodges a punch quite effortlessly.

c’mon owen – it’s a simple game for bob…he does not give one iota of feces regarding what you think or say, unless it provides an opportunity to engage…

actually – how often do any of us here ever actually change our minds about what we think…not too much i imagine…

it’s feels good to type thoughts down though – doesn’t it…

your post, my post, all of our posts are simply opportunities to hit that pinball ball release and tee up another round of bouncing off bumpers…

oh, i suddenly miss strat…

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz… Wake me up when Bob starts getting into Q-Anon. His current schtick just ain’t hitting like it used to.

“You do have to admire how Bob dodges a punch quite effortlessly. He quotes someone pointing out he was completely wrong about the USNS Comfort, says nothing about it, and then just blithely motors on as if his credibility is intact.”

What was I wrong about. Yeah the Confort didn’t have negative pressure rooms and wasn’t set up to be a primary infectious disease ward. It didn’t have to be. They could have easily put people that weren’t critical and recovering after being released from hospitals there and it would have been a million times better alternative than releasing them into closed spaces with reams of 85 year olds in failing health. Talk about master of the obvious stuff…..

That is so intuitively obvious it doesn’t need to be mentioned even to the slowest of the slow boys.

“c’mon owen – it’s a simple game for bob…he does not give one iota of feces regarding what you think or say, unless it provides an opportunity to engage…”

I would if any of it made the slightest bit of sense. Someone please tell me how putting infectious recovering people in a place with the weakest of the weak made any sense. AND MANDATING IT! Closing 5th avenue and throwing up MASH units in the street would have been far superior.

What you are wrong about is the idea that Cuomo had the authority to shuffle a bunch of recuperating Covid patients to the Comfort. He wasn’t allowed to do that and the ship never had more than 20% occupancy, with mostly non-covid patients.

“Please explain how Sweden’s unclosed economy is projected to post a 7 percent GDP loss this quarter”

Sweden’s economy did better wrt GDP than Germany ffs :

Sweden’s GDP increased by 0.1% in the first quarter, when seasonally adjusted and compared to the final three months of 2019. The median forecasters in a Reuters poll of economists had expected to see a 0.6% contraction on a quarterly basis.

German GDP fell at an annual rate of 2.3% in the first three months of the year. The German Statistical Office has forecast Europe’s growth engine will record a 10% plunge in GDP for the second quarter of 2020, dependent on the success of lifting lockdown measures.

Whatever happens in the future is speculative but Sweden is betting that herd immunity will prevail in the end.

But your question was why is Sweden’s GDP projected to drop I would guess when demand globally dries up and supply chains are disrupted you will probably sell less product. But the actual economic data so far favors the Swedish model.

***What you are wrong about is the idea that Cuomo had the authority to shuffle a bunch of recuperating Covid patients to the Comfort. He wasn’t allowed to do that and the ship never had more than 20% occupancy, with mostly non-covid patients.***

You’re allowed your own facts, but not your own opinions, Owen. Get it straight!

“What you are wrong about is the idea that Cuomo had the authority to shuffle a bunch of recuperating Covid patients to the Comfort. He wasn’t allowed to do that and the ship never had more than 20% occupancy, with mostly non-covid patients.”

There’s one gigantic hole in this argument Owen…. all Cuomo had to do was ask Trump to change the use of the ship…. he asked Monday and got approval from Trump 6 hours later…….

“In a phone interview on MSNBC, Cuomo said that he spoke with Trump after his own press conference and that the president granted permission for Comfort to accept COVID-19 patients.”

“We don’t need the Comfort for non-COVID cases, we need it for COVID,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a press conference in Albany, N.Y. earlier Monday, when he announced he would ask Trump to let the ship take that role.

At Monday evening’s coronavirus task force briefing, Trump said the ship would be used to treat patients from New York and New Jersey.

“It is set for COVID … hopefully that will be very helpful to both states,” Trump said.

Addendum…..

You’re allowed your own facts, but not your own opinions, Owen. Get it straight!

May the words you use be short and sweet….. because they soon may be the words you will have to eat….

This is really too easy fellas! Pro tip…. the Greek chorus should think a bit before chiming in 🙂

Whatever happens in the future is speculative but Sweden is betting that herd immunity will prevail in the end.

The -7% number is the Swedish government’s internal projection. That counts as good evidence that the GDP loss will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 7%. That’s right at the EU projected average of -7.1%, implying (in the small sample that we have to work with) that in the EU the presence or absence of lockdowns doesn’t affect the economy on a large scale compared to, say, massively changed consumer behavior and increased government outlay as a consequence of the virus going around. At this point, it should be obvious that the Swedish strategy is an abject failure–you’re getting higher deaths per cap with no significant economic improvement.

Here are some non-academic sources advancing a similar point:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-19/sweden-in-very-deep-economic-crisis-despite-soft-lockdown

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/sweden-didnt-impose-a-lockdown-its-economy-is-just-as-bad-as-its-neighbors-who-did-2020-06-25

But your question was why is Sweden’s GDP projected to drop I would guess when demand globally dries up and supply chains are disrupted you will probably sell less product.

This is precisely why reopening won’t do much to help local or national economies! The entire world–cities, states, countries–is in severe economic shock, and in the U.S. there has been extraordinarily little financial relief, coupled with international trade plummeting. There is no strong reason to think that lockdowns are the cause of worldwide economic havoc, and no reason to think that the U.S. economy will improve substantially once they are lifted.

Fella… you are contorting yourselves uselessly to defend an indefensible position. I mean Jesus… The man forced places housing the most vulnerable of the vulnerable to accept gaggles of Typhoid Marys and months later the Greek Chorus doggedly defends the practice…. just WOW

Well, I’m not with the Greek Chorus on this one, bob. Fuck Cuomo. Never liked him, he’s a feckless plutocrat.

Your side has to answer for its cultural position that wearing masks is some snowflake shit that is a violation of their freedums. That’s making things a whole lot worse. Those MAGA goobers who are so selfish and stupid that they shun masks are your fellow travelers, bob. What do you have to say about that? Forget about Cuomo and the boat for a minute and answer me that question.

Why is mask trutherism a thing that your redhat comrades seem to believe?

why politics i wonder…why not discuss and argue about the weather, which i personally find infinitely more interesting than politics…

how sad to think, politics now include health safety…you can take a “snap-shot” of all kinds of weird behavior – this was pretty unique

we inhabit a world with so many of these folks…now with increased coverage of everything – they seem like they’re everywhere these days, because – they are everywhere…they’ve always been everywhere…always will be everywhere…

i’ve always been fascinated by the increased lethality an “average” individual has been able to possess over the course of history…lots and lots of advances in weaponry…i guess the same now can be considered for thoughts and ideas…transmitting and spreading more consequentially now than any virus or weapon…

sadly, donald figured this out to a more effective degree and a lot sooner than others…

i truly believe madness is an infectious disease…

everyone has the right to speak – and, increasingly a means to be heard…and, what comes to mind first:

Think about how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of ’em are stupider than that

okay, enough negative thoughts for the moment, time to wash my mind…I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me….time to put on some tunes and get shit done…favorite track at the moment is something i came across when i was moving my cd’s around…one of my favorite discs of the 90’s…

that’s right man, shot him in the ass on the downstroke 🙂

One my friends has a friend who is friends with Wes, so if Rose keeps this up he’ll get to me eventually

Is it the inevitably of history or the power of positive thinking? DRed for GM!

are there any opportunities still for us to trade any of our guys to one of the teams still playing?

have the trade deadline rules switched up for the restart?

“Your side has to answer for its cultural position that wearing masks is some snowflake shit that is a violation of their freedums. That’s making things a whole lot worse. Those MAGA goobers who are so selfish and stupid that they shun masks are your fellow travelers, bob. What do you have to say about that? Forget about Cuomo and the boat for a minute and answer me that question.”

I’m happy to answer any substantive queries. I don’t know the actual answer about masks. At first Fauci said they were worthless and he is supposed to be the big macher on all things infectious disease and then he changed his tune.

In March on 60 minutes he said there’s no reason to be walking around with masks. I’m sure he didn’t actually believe that and wanted to conserve the protective devices dr’s and nurses in the direct line of fire but he should have said precisely that. Then the CDC reversed its position so its unsurprising the great unwashed is a little confused.

Viruses are so small these cloth/cotton masks can’t provide much of a defense but if they can block a meager amount of droplets then people should wear them in public places when in possible contact with the public.

I can only speak for myself but when I go to publix I wear a mask and latex gloves. When I go out for a meal at an outdoor eatery I wear a mask when I get out of the car and walk inside to be seated and then remove my mask and eat.

I think keeping distance is a more effective strategy but multiple layers of defense are better. I believe people who venture into public in areas where they will contact others are being disrespectful of the people around them even if don’t believe in it themselves.

I would also not believe a law passed mandating face coverings during a pandemic in public was an infringement on my rights of any kind.

I do think arresting a father for playing catch with his daughter without a single souls within a 20 feet IS an infringement of civil rights.

bobneptune: I’m happy to answer any substantive queries.

See what this guy did here?

We’re giving him the attention he doesn’t get from Russian bots in the comments section over at Breitbart. He will never operate in good faith — he will Gish gallop you into his grave. And here it comes, his old “bang the table” rebuttal, as ironic as ever. Let dinosaurs like this assclown die.

Did you happen to see Louie Gohmert yesterday? He ACTUALLY pounded the table.

See what this guy did here?

My response to” Roger” Jowels:

https://attachment.outlook.live.net/owa/MSA%3Aneptunestable%40msn.com/service.svc/s/GetFileAttachment?id=AQMkADAwATIwMTAwAC0wMjkwLWNjADdjLTAwAi0wMAoARgAAA6%2B%2F36zHpr9HuhjH8g8vRF8HAMqGJKaqx1dNqN8khkvO8AQAAAIBDAAAAMqGJKaqx1dNqN8khkvO8AQAA3%2BhhDAAAAABEgAQAFSncOBorhBDm%2BMgHY0ghck%3D&owa=outlook.live.com&scriptVer=2020061402.03&isc=1&X-OWA-CANARY=uJSI4xcAnk-z68MvR20jMdB_bgBIGdgYAmMVV88p7NMmR01ktrJhHEdcjx2iM5xkHCQ95ND52ro.&token=eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiIsImtpZCI6IjU2MzU4ODUyMzRCOTI1MkRERTAwNTc2NkQ5RDlGMjc2NTY1RjYzRTIiLCJ4NXQiOiJWaldJVWpTNUpTM2VBRmRtMmRueWRsWmZZLUkiLCJ0eXAiOiJKV1QifQ.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.jMmMjtTr-MlSEOcjEtKv3FYJ4421ZhT7DBtmEI2t8Iaj5Dsr-7gqEBKGRLA0kRLYeszPpkk21XbYHgumfOC0hzeZ1smb0bre-N3KcMnDx7V22rn9o3R7BZGnTSe4-THAFCvgfAlJkPn28AWb58Xd9c_I6y241JvaTUye4gdfIugDkCaVIfbqwrEmstM2XW7KG9xYHa80N3ybVYcjytIx3KPZtYv7oMCAObG7Kvq_erhW837UPSMquFrgdVnO1Qv6xvGtnwDjsba3CjvsbCDEupFgKsnzf_ZPLtmkqdz0BXXwhWo_Humi7p6FAi07wPH97Q9ud32ZAV6knFdSbCtjHA&isDownload=true&animation=true

We pause our regularly-scheduled political arguing for some actual Knicks news, via Shams:

Knicks have claimed two-way guard Jared Harper on free agency waivers and waived two-way guard Kadeem Allen, sources tell @TheAthleticNBA

Tommy Beer:

Harper is a quick, athletic, smallish PG (5’10) out of Auburn.

He appeared in 33 games for the Suns G-League affiliate this season and averaged 20.8 points, 5.7 assists and 2.7 made 3-pointers, while shooting 35.9% from 3-point territory.

Kadeem is no huge loss, though I know nothing about Harper besides his height and these stats. Not sure why we wouldn’t just sign Lamar Peters to a two-way, though.

Conservative media and the bullshit it spews has made the spread of COVID worse. There’s no point in really debating it. Trump is STILL acting like this is no big thing, that it’s all going to go away, that we don’t need to tests because you find more cases that way…

You can talk about Cuomo and the boat all you want, and for sure Cuomo and Newsom and DiBlasio and Garcetti and plenty of Democratic leaders deserve criticism. But this shit is mainly fucked up because the President is engaging in wishful thinking and really BELIEVES at some level that this shit is just going to go away and everything is going to be Great Again™.

He’s an ignorant cretin and he can’t hide it anymore, and he’s finished.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/25/fox-news-hannity-coronavirus-misinformation/?fbclid=IwAR1_WILft7piUcG7OzBwRgLav7fWAHi3XGVBhhnPvMttVFZvOfcpxbYJXPs

Looks like bob tried to post a link to an attachment that sits on his actual Microsoft account. Not surprised he doesn’t know how the internet works. Feeble-minded.

Good luck running on CHAZ and the preservation of Confederate monuments as your platform. Those are the core issues on Fox News right now, I know this because my wife hate-watches it every day.

Winning hand you got there, bobster!

Seriously tho, someone should probably delete bob’s stupid link post. His email address is in there and he could probably get doxxed. Unless he wants that for some reason.

it’s fucking outrageous the new politburo quietly cut kadeem allen for nothing. great two way prospect who was not afraid of the moment, unlike zero-way retread dsj who is a special talent as long as it isn’t 5 on 5. that’s it for me, enough caa oligarch bullshit. i’m out.

j/k kadeem will be like 34 years old the next time we play. except the part about him being better than dsj. meant that part deeply.

Winning hand you got there, bobster!

Don’t forget about the lobster vote!

I liked Kadeem. Sorry to see him go for Shane Larkin 2.0 but probably won’t make a difference.

The mask thing is an anti authority/government attitude run amok.

Republicans (especially libertarians) are generally anti government regulation/authority. I have no issue with that inclination, but what we are seeing now is freedom lovers taking it to an illogical extreme.

I understand that initially we were told by all the experts that masks don’t help and may even harm your heath if not used properly. So there is reason for people to think the “experts” are incompetent boobs (which they are a lot of the time), but most informed people knew that the government/media/experts were lying. They were trying to ensure that health care providers got the PPE they needed before the public hoarded it all (like toilet paper).

Then once manufacturing was ramped up, they told the truth.

And this is the problem with government/media bullshit.

Some people out there can’t think for themselves, don’t understand what actually happened, assume the worst about the government experts and media (with good reason) and don’t listen. The possibility that sometimes the government/media is correct and giving out the correct advice is harder for them to accept when they keep catching people in lies and incompetency. People have no respect for liars and incompetents.

From the very start I knew the “masks don’t help and can be harmful” advice coming from all experts was a crock of shit. But not everyone understood that.

They should have just told the truth, educated people on how to make home made masks, pulled all the high quality masks from stores and home delivery (which they eventually did in NY) and promoted home made masks non stop until manufacturing caught up to demand/need. Then there would have been less confusion, more trust, and less anti authority behavior.

I blame Trump/Pence for this even more that the incompetents and liars at CDC/WHO, Fauci, & the mainstream media. They would have listened to Trump even if they didn’t trust the others with good reason.

it’s fucking outrageous the new politburo quietly cut kadeem allen for nothing. great two way prospect who was not afraid of the moment, unlike zero-way retread dsj who is a special talent as long as it isn’t 5 on 5. that’s it for me, enough caa oligarch bullshit. i’m out.

He’s not a difference maker, but like I said earlier.

Don’t listen to what they say. Watch what they do.

Just like with everything else, Donald Trump’s motivation is to do what’s good for Donald Trump. And he thought it would look bad to suggest people wear masks because it would look like the virus was an actual real problem and not something that would just “go away quickly.” To this very day he doesn’t promote mask wearing, because he wants to create the illusion that everything is just normal.

Because that would be good for Donald Trump. Which is all the fucking guy cares about.

It’s not even good for him. That’s the bizarre thing. It’s just how stupid he really is. Could have won reelection easily if he had handled things just adequately. Still might of course.

I know the increased Covid-19 caseloads in Florida, Texas, and California are troublesome, but before everyone starts panicking again, some of that is due to both more and more efficient testing. We now know what the high risk activities are, where the high risk zip codes are, have better contact tracing etc.. than earlier in the pandemic. It’s probably not quite as bad as it looks compared to before. We are probably just doing a better job of capturing asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases now than we were 2-3 months ago. That accounts for some of it.

And Phil Jackson was a great GM too

I mean there are so many articles out there refuting this. For example, to quote the Texas tribune “ Regionally, some hospital officials are reporting that intensive care units are near or over capacity, and local leaders have warned that hospitals could get overwhelmed if the number of infections keeps climbing.”

Kadeem is no huge loss, though I know nothing about Harper besides his height and these stats. Not sure why we wouldn’t just sign Lamar Peters to a two-way, though.

Didn’t one of our new executive team come from the Suns? Maybe he was the driving force behind this.

Okay, I give Rose’s first personnel move a 10. We dumped a journeyman scrub and replaced him with an electric 22yo prospect with some upside who passes, shoots 3s, gets to the line and is lightning quick. He probably doesn’t amount to much, but at least there’s an outside chance that he does. Low risk, high reward…that’s what those 2-way deals are all about.

Here’s a pretty good scouting report.

Here are some NCAA tournament highlights.

And here’s a Knicks Film School reaction.

I watched some G League tape of Jared Harper last night. He’s a bold little f’er! I like him. His game is nice. I remember the SL game against his squad and wondering who the hell he was. I really believe the ONLY reason he’s in the G League is because he’s 5’10.5″. Westchester PG battles are gonna be epic. He’d be a nice change of pace 3rd PG if he makes the NBA roster. His game would definitely make it easier to roll with Haliburton and Ntilikina as the main PG’s. Oh man I’m so anxious to see how this FO builds the roster. Jared Harper’s not a big deal, but it’s in line with Rose’s due diligence mentality. In any case, I came away from watching tape on him impressed. This kid is fearless, confident, and scrappy- with a skillful game to compliment his attitude.

I’m rooting for him

He’s probably more like 5’10” but has a 6’5″ wingspan and is tough as nails and has a 40″ vertical. What I like is that he has very solid body mechanic on his 3-pt shot and seems like he pulls up effortlessly both spotting up and off the dribble. He reminds me a bit of Kemba Walker in that regard. He seems to lack finishing ability, especially with his left hand, and he seems tough but not especially strong. He also doesn’t seem as comportable with his jumper inside the arc. But hey, as a 2-way contract guy, he’s exactly who you want.

Yea, I’d like to see him better goin left. At his size you hafta be crafty when you get into the teeth of the defense- which doing so seems almost effortless with him.

I mean there are so many articles out there refuting this. For example, to quote the Texas tribune “ Regionally, some hospital officials are reporting that intensive care units are near or over capacity, and local leaders have warned that hospitals could get overwhelmed if the number of infections keeps climbing.”

You should try reading what what people say. It helps. smh

I didn’t say all of it could be accounted for by increased and improved quality testing.

I said to watch hospitalizations, ICU, and deaths over the next couple of weeks. That’s how we’ll know what’s really happening, Right now they are NOT growing at the same rate as the new cases. There are some places where hospital capacity is being used up, but overall the “reported” cases are going up way faster than the other data.

There is ZERO DOUBT there is way more testing going on now than in April and early May. Many states also have more data for targeting high risk jobs (like meat packing), high risk activities, certain zip codes, etc… to find more positive cases. They have been hiring contract tracers and accumulating data for that very reason. They want to find more positives so they can quarantine those people and slow the spread.

Back in April if they did 10 tests and found 5 cases, there were probably 50 positives they never found because they didn’t know where to look and didn’t have the testing capacity to find them.

Now, they do more tests and know where to look,

So the KNOWN percentage goes up and the UNKNOWN percentage goes down. What the exact total is is still unknown. But the actual new daily caseload now is not comparable to the prior peak and anyone that says otherwise either doesn’t know what they are talking about or is lying for political purposes.

What we have now is better testing & location of positives nationally, a few states where the caseload is clearly growing rapidly, and other states where the caseload is…

“Z-man
June 25, 2020 at 9:24 pm
Here’s Cuomo’s explanation for the nursing home decision. What’s bob uranus’s answer to this one?”

HaHaHaha…. Very cute…. I see what you did here. UR-ANUS… how thoughtful and original.

My first piece of advice to all you drones in the Greek chorus would be to follow Ronald Reagan’s precept , “Trust but verify.”

You got played here fellas because Cuomo a lying CYA politician (just as most republicians) will lie and obfuscate and tell half truths about anything. Here is lying baby Mario’s secretary’s quote from CNN that y’all think is the smoking gun to blame Trump:

” ‘Nursing homes should admit any individuals from hospitals where Covid is present,'” said Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa on Saturday during a briefing. “Not could, should … that is President (Donald) Trump’s CMS and CDC.”

That is a lie and not a direct quote … it is an edited quote and she left out a little clause. Here is the actual passage from the CDC actually quoted:

” Nursing homes should admit any individuals that they would normally admit to their
facility, including individuals from hospitals where a case of COVID-19 was/is present. ”

Note How Cuomo’s lying secretary artfully left out the operative clause, “THEY WOULD NORMALLY ADMIT TO THEIR FACILITY INCLUDING INDIVIDUALS FROM HOSPITALS.”

You geniuses think that changes the intent of the quotation. NURSING HOME AREN’T NORMALLY IN THE BUSINESS OF ACCEPTING RECOVERING DEADLY INFECTIOUS DISEASE CASES FOR OBVIOUS REASONS.

The CDC said facilities should accept patients FROM HOSPITALS where covid was present, not that they should accept patients themselves recovering from an active infections.

But the Cuomoites knew you drones are easy to play and they could edit a “quote” to change its meaning and no one would ever look to check if the “quote” was accurate cause y’all are dead in the tank and pathologically incurious.

And you have a…

And just for a little added pizzaz:

Politifact gave Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo a “mostly false” rating over his claim that his controversial nursing home policy was put in place due to guidelines from the Trump administration.

Hey… at least the didn’t give it a “pants on fire!”

look this is all true regarding Cuomo. he closed too late, he made some bad policies including the nursing home thing.

He also genuinely tried, and so if he made the wrong/late calls, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Trying gets one pretty far when it comes to public opinion, which is why he has a high approval rating now.

Trump on the other hand….is not trying at all. He’s doing the opposite of trying. He is willfully causing damage to this country and his constituents, which is why his approval rating is plummeting. Only the dumbest of the dumb and the blindest of his cult followers can justify his performance with the pandemic. Everyone else sees the simple truth that his whole life has been a plate of faking it until he makes it, with an extra-large side of bullying topped with being born somewhere between 3rd base and home plate.

Deeefense: You should try reading what what people say.It helps.smh

I didn’t say all of it could be accounted for by increased and improved quality testing.

I said to watch hospitalizations, ICU, and deaths over the next couple of weeks. That’s how we’ll know what’s really happening, Right now they are NOT growing at the same rate as the new cases.There are some places where hospital capacity is being used up, but overall the “reported” cases are going up way faster than the other data.

There is ZERO DOUBTthere is way more testing going on now than in April and early May. Many states also have more data for targeting high risk jobs (like meat packing), high risk activities, certain zip codes, etc… to find more positive cases.They have been hiring contract tracers and accumulating data for that very reason. They want to find more positives so they can quarantine those people and slow the spread.

Back in April if they did 10 tests and found 5 cases, there were probably 50 positives they never found because they didn’t know where to look and didn’t have the testing capacity to find them.
So the KNOWN percentage goes up and the UNKNOWN percentage goes down.What the exact total is is still unknown.But the actual new daily caseload now is not comparable to the prior peak and anyone that says otherwise either doesn’t know what they are talking about or is lying for political purposes.

I read what you said. It was ridiculous wishful thinking that even though positive tests are going up, things aren’t bad, it’s basically because we are testing more. If we were testing more but things weren’t getting worse, then the percentage of test results would be way down, but they aren’t. And hospitalizations and deaths will lag the increase in positive tests because that is the way the disease works.

KnickfaninNJ: And hospitalizations and deaths will lag the increase in positive tests because that is the way the disease works.

and the lag may be longer this time precisely because it’s the younger people getting sick. Will take a while to filter into the young people’s family/parents/grandparents, then when they get sick, the numbers for hospitalizations and death will mostly likely go up.

case fatality rate hopefully will never be as bad as it was in march/April in NY if only because the treatments are a little better now.

It seems Marbury isn’t too thrilled with bringing in World Wide Wes.

KnickfaninNJ: I read what you said.It was ridiculous wishful thinking that even though positive tests are going up, things aren’t bad, it’s basically because we are testing more.If we were testing more but things weren’t getting worse, then the percentage of test results would be way down, but they aren’t.And hospitalizations and deaths will lag the increase in positive tests because that is the way the disease works.

No, you still aren’t getting it my point, By focusing on new cases and how we are at all time daily highs, we are reigniting panic prematurely. Positive cases are the WORST metric for measuring the status of the pandemic and it’s impact when volume of testing, quality of testing, strength of virus, and the demographics of the positive cases are are all critical to understanding the outcome and they are all changing in ways that make cases look worse than the outcome is likely to be.

case fatality rate hopefully will never be as bad as it was in march/April in NY if only because the treatments are a little better now.

It’s early yet, but things are looking good. 33% and 20% reduction of mortality is pretty amazing, especially for a drug that has few serious risks. Might not be injections of cleaners, but it’s something. From the WHO website:

What is dexamethasone and does it work against COVID-19?
Dexamethasone is a corticosteroid used in a wide range of conditions for its anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant effects.

It was tested in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in the United Kingdom’s national clinical trial RECOVERY and was found to have benefits for critically ill patients.

According to preliminary findings shared with WHO (and now available as a preprint), for patients on ventilators, the treatment was shown to reduce mortality by about one third, and for patients requiring only oxygen, mortality was cut by about one fifth.

On a completely different note I listen to the Dunc’d On podcast evaluating LaMelo Ball recently. I find their draft previews very useful. I was expecting not to like him at all but that turned out not to be the case. Of course there is a big risk of a bust with him. And they know that, but he is still the person they would draft first in this draft of the people they’ve looked at so far. However they know this is a week draft and pointed out that he wouldn’t have gone higher than third in any of the previous drafts back through 2014. I felt that at least he had some clear NBA level skills particularly the passing. But we’d be stuck with a player who might never learn to shoot well. But at least he had enough that it was clear at some point he would probably be a decent back up and be a point guard if the shooting didn’t improve much. For many of the other draft prospects I can see them not being able to do any useful role at all in the NBA at all and he’s better than that. The only player they’ve reviewed so far that I thought was a sure shot to be a useful NBA player was James Wiseman but of course he’s a center which is much easier to find. They have not yet reviewed Halliburton up but I feel he looks like he could also be a useful NBA player.

Do we know if this was considered a weak draft before the NCAA season got shut down? I think that it’s awfully hard for pundits to do punditry if they don’t have narratives to draw on. Even the good draftniks are deprived of those precious 1000 minutes of play to decide if someone is a Knox or a Zion.

No, you still aren’t getting it my point, By focusing on new cases and how we are at all time daily highs, we are reigniting panic prematurely. Positive cases are the WORST metric for measuring the status of the pandemic and it’s impact when volume of testing, quality of testing, strength of virus, and the demographics of the positive cases are are all critical to understanding the outcome and they are all changing in ways that make cases look worse than the outcome is likely to be.

If you don’t measure a pandemic by how many people get sick how do you measure it? It seems that you made the medical judgement that these cases aren’t so bad, but there is no data for that and I see no reason to believe it. It is true that treatments are probably better so fewer people may die but there are still going to be a lot of really sick. There’s been something like a twenty percent rise in positive cases in the last week or two. Demographics don’t change in a week or two. There’s no way to interpret that as anything but bad.

Co-sign the LaMelo Dunc’d On pod being pretty good. They’re a little more bullish on his ability to develop into a shooter than I am, but overall I think their evaluation was thorough. It’s hard to not be drawn to him as essentially a bust-proof prospect after the Ntilikina/Knox experience–that passing/court vision isn’t going anywhere.

I like the Dunc’d On podcast but they are famously bad scouts.
But interesting to hear at least.

Positive cases are the WORST metric for measuring the status of the pandemic and it’s impact when volume of testing, quality of testing, strength of virus, and the demographics of the positive cases are are all critical to understanding the outcome and they are all changing in ways that make cases look worse than the outcome is likely to be.

lol this is just wrong on so many levels

what is “strength of virus”? Is that measured in virus strength units?

if you think just because most of the cases are now in the 20-50 year old range right now that that means they will stay in that age group, I would call that…very very optimistic. Because it’s not like those 20-50 year olds know anyone that might be older than 50 or 60, right? And the fact they are often not symptomatic or only mildly so probably means they will be less likely to take all the precautions necessary to protect the older people in their circles.

I hope we don’t move up in this draft and would stay far away from LaMelo and the abysmal efficiency he’s brought everywhere he’s gone. Not to mention that he’s avoided all the traditional college routes in order to… what? Cash in earlier? I know this is mostly his father’s doing, but he doesn’t seem to have any concept of how to play winning basketball, and I don’t see that changing.

Fancy passes are fun to watch, but they don’t mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. Deni has some fancy full-court skip passes. Lots of guys do. Elfrid Payton is a very good passer! Will LaMelo even become as good a player as him? A guy pretty much everyone wants out of nyc?

I’d love to stay at 6 and just take Killian, Deni, Onyeka, or maybe Haliburton. Just take a player with stats that aren’t terrible!

Can someone tell me why Cole Anthony is still in the Tier 1 of The Stepien’s rankings?

We have guys that know very little abut basketball running the organization. It was bad enough when we had a few people that do understand basketball being assisted by incompetents. Now it’s probably going to be worse.

Rasheed Wallace

“I mean damn, it can get worse. We all think they’re going to hit rock bottom but [the Knicks] keep going lower and lower,” Wallace told hosts Bonzi Wells and Zach Gelb on CBS Sports Radio. “I’m just a little bit confused by it, if you ask me. It’s one thing to have a former agent and agency coming in and giving you their input here and there, but to hire them full time, you’re taking on a lot. Because now, unfortunately, [Knicks owner James] Dolan is taking on their baggage.

“Whoever they had beef with or problems with, now it’s going to come up and affect them. Now that they have those executive positions with the Knicks they might not get these certain players. Or just going through the grapevine because there could be other agents mad at Leon Rose for trying to do this and that when he was an agent. It’s going to be interesting man. My thought is more power to them, I was with them for a while but this is a just brain fart right here.”

Frank: lol this is just wrong on so many levels

what is “strength of virus”? Is that measured in virus strength units?

if you think just because most of the cases are now in the 20-50 year old range right now that that means they will stay in that age group, I would call that…very very optimistic. Because it’s not like those 20-50 year olds know anyone that might be older than 50 or 60, right? And the fact they are often not symptomatic or only mildly so probably means they will be less likely to take all the precautions necessary to protect the older people in their cir

The strength of virus is the true IFR (infection fatality rate).

That means given exact populations of infected people, how many will die. There have been many estimates of that floating around all along, but the point is it’s not necessarily a static number. Viruses can mutate or lose strength and slowly die off on their own. What tends to happen is that the strongest variations kill their patients and die off themselves. The weaker ones survive and continue infecting hosts.

So for arguments sake, lets say the IFR was 1% at the start, it might be .6% now. That means all else being equal, fewer infected people will require hospitalization, ICU, or die. If on top of that you are doing a better job of protecting the most vulnerable people like the very old and sick in nursing homes (and not doing stupid things), even fewer people will die.

The question is what was the IFR before and what it is now?

No one knows for sure, but doctors in Italy are reporting lower tested viral loads and way more recoveries for people even over 80. They flat out said it’s not the same virus now as it was in March/April. The medical authorities in Italy tried to play that down because they don’t want irresponsible behavior in Italy to return but it’s still encouraging…

We have guys that know very little abut basketball running the organization. It was bad enough when we had a few people that do understand basketball being assisted by incompetents. Now it’s probably going to be worse.

I mean, this is never a bad bet, but did you really feel this strongly about cutting Kadeem Allen for Jared Harper?

We have guys that know very little abut basketball running the organization. It was bad enough when we had a few people that do understand basketball being assisted by incompetents. Now it’s probably going to be worse.

Well, one of the things that will be really great, you know the word “experience” is still good. I always say talent is more important than experience. I’ve always said that. But the word “experience” is a very important word. It’s an — a very important meaning.

Who the fuck is this guy that is peddling coronavirus lies?

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-losing-its-lethality-in-italy-according-to-doctors-2020-6

“In terms of the transmissibility, that has not changed. In terms of the severity, that has not changed,” she said during a press briefing on Monday.

“It may not be that the virus itself is becoming less potent,” Ryan said. “It may be that we are — as community and as a global community — successfully reducing the number, intensity, and frequency of exposure to the virus, which, on the face of it, the virus then looks weaker.”

The IFR in NY and basically everywhere with high prevalance was ~1%…. that is very high…. and that is high enough to proceed with extreme caution and not just accept whatever cockamamie unproved theory that it is less deadly than what the scientific community basically accepts as the IFR….

the IFR can move down over time… it’s not a static thing but that will happen once we have better treatments which we have some better treatments but we don’t know how effective it is…. and have better preventive measures like mask wearing and social distancing and contact tracing… things that states like florida, texas and arizona have not done…..

the reason cases are so important is because they are a forward indicator….. and it’s not just because they are testing more… the percentage of positive cases are also increasing….. and hospitalizations are also increasing…. deaths are a lagging indicator and it’s only a matter of time until vulnerable populations are hit.

Haha, it’s definitely Eric Jr. Jr. How did I need this to be pointed out to me! Embarrassing… and sad!

Well at least now we know Strat’s new alter ego

I didn’t want to say it because I got in some trouble last time, but boy the very specific, bizarre worldview is identical

Well, shit, there goes our chances of signing high-character guys like Marbury and Sheed.

“Z-man
June 25, 2020 at 9:24 pm
Here’s Cuomo’s explanation for the nursing home decision. What’s bob uranus’s answer to this one?”

Z…. I was curiously awaiting your pithy reply to my rebuttal of your earlier post.

Affectionately,

Bob Uranus

It is shocking even to me that you fellas would swallow the notion that the CDC a place lousy with career scientists and researchers would not only recommend nursing homes not only take active recovering patients but SHOULD do so. That didn’t seem a little odd to anyone?

Anyone want to see what Bob looks like, just google “Why retirement is bad for the rest of us.” His picture’s up there.

Begley:

Knicks have claimed ex-Net Theo Pinson, per SNY sources. New York will waive Allonzo Trier to make room for Pinson, sources say.

Bye, Iso-Zo…

As the resident Trier-optimist who also loved Theo Pinson in college and desperately wanted us to snag him as a UDFA, I have no clue how to feel

I guess, for some reason that has never been adequately explained, it was never gonna happen for Trier here. So hey, woo hoo!

I’ll miss trier, it’d be nice if we re-sign him on the cheap. Guessing some team will shell out $$$ for him.

Does this allow an Orlando-team to play him this season?

Wave Trier for Pinson?

Unless Trier has personal issues we don’t know about that contributed to him losing rotation minutes last year and being released now, we are talking about some train wreck level stupidity at this point.

Trier is a walking bucket and one of our only efficient scorers. He’s exactly what you want coming off the bench to light a little fire once in awhile. He had some maturing to do and had more to learn, but this is borderline insanity unless he has issues. For his sake I hope nothing is going on that we don’t know about. I have to think someone will give him a shot.

Trier is decidedly not who I would’ve cut, but Pinson just put up 20/6/6 in the G League and shot .383 from 3 on 329 attempts (a huge weakness for him at UNC). He’s a very mobile/switchable defender and is honestly just a blast to watch play.

Excellent flyer choice, but I continue to be baffled by this team’s approach to Trier. Hope he gets picked up.

bob, you really have reading comprehension problems. Or are just an insufferable asshole. Or both. You can spin the shit as much as you want, but no one at the time was questioning the strategy in the media and given the guidelines and the circumstances, his approach was one of those things that anyone with his head not up Fox News’ ass could get past. Did you even read this part?

When should a nursing home accept a resident who was diagnosed with COVID-19 from a
hospital?

A nursing home can accept a resident diagnosed with COVID-19 and still under Transmission Based Precautions for COVID-19 as long as the facility can follow CDC guidance for Transmission-Based Precautions.

It is so clear from reading the entire document that Cuomo was not going against any recommendations from the federal government. It turned out badly, maybe even predictably so, but that happens to pretty much every leader during a crisis, especially in the early stages. He lost some battles, but is clearly winning the war, especially when compared to nearly every Republican politician other than maybe DeWine, and CERTAINLY better than the leaders in the states overrun with low-IQ science-deniers like yourself.

After 30-secs of googling. Pinson looks like an excellent defender, but questionable scoring efficiency. Apparently he can pass a bit too, which is nice

Trier was a pretty bad defender during his time in NY, but it’s not like he was the only one.

Trier’s problem always seemed to be a lack of humility. I liked him but not enough to get worked up about. Gotta get your hands dirty on defense, he never really got that part of the game. Dude could score, though.

well, at least we’re making our way through the roster…from the bottom up…

wake me when julius is a wizard…

Who the fuck is this guy that is peddling coronavirus lies?

The board has some serious comprehension issues aside from not knowing much about basketball.

I peddled no lie.

One of the top epidemiologists in Italy said the virus he is treating now is different than what he was treating in Italy in March/April. I even qualified it by saying Italian authorities tried to play it down because they don’t want to encourage irresponsible behavior. They played it down with the exact explanation you posted. “Well maybe people are recovering better and viral loads are lower because we are wearing masks etc..” But they have no idea if that’s the reason. All they know is people aren’t getting as sick, when the doctor measured viral loads they were lower, and people that formerly used to die in 2-3 days at age 80 are now recovering.

If you don’t think that’s encouraging news and could apply to recoveries and the death rate in the US also, you must have some deep hidden desire for doom.

the reason cases are so important is because they are a forward indicator

Everyone already knows that cases are forward looking, but they HAVE increased testing and the quality of testing since the start of the pandemic. So comparisons to past caseloads are not a true indicator of what’s going on. It’s expected that you would find more cases and a higher positive rate if you are doing a better job of testing, tracing, and tracking. There were millions of cases out there previously we didn’t know about. Now we find more of them.

Hospitalizations have increased, but at the country level it’s by a very small amount. ICU and deaths continue to decline. What we have now is an outbreak in a few states, but many states are still declining. Using caseloads as the primary indicator overstates what’s going on unless your goal is to create panic or you don’t understand what’s going on nationally.

The board has some serious comprehension issues aside from not knowing much about basketball.

Ok yeah it’s Strat

To be fair, his generation pumped out quite a few strats.

ess-dog:
The Trier Era ends not with a bang but a whimper.

Are you saying that he’s one of The Hollow Men?
🙂

Apparently, Nets fans loved Pinson, but it was at least partially because of his team enthusiasm. Can anybody comment what he is like?

KnickfaninNJ:
Apparently, Nets fans loved Pinson, but it was at least partially because of his team enthusiasm.Can anybody comment what he is like?

I’ve read that he’s very enthusiastic and likable!

Sorry, couldn’t resist. His career FG% makes Frank look like a sharpshooter, though. Maybe Atkinson can have him work on his shooting?
🙂

When should a nursing home accept a resident who was diagnosed with COVID-19 from a
hospital?
A nursing home can accept a resident diagnosed with COVID-19 and still under Transmission Based Precautions for COVID-19 as long as the facility can follow CDC guidance for Transmission-Based Precautions

That was the problem.

They did NOT have the capacity to quarantine properly and did not have the appropriate PPE for residents or doctors, nurses and staff. But they were sent in anyway. That’s insanity.

My uncle is in one of those homes in Queens. He talks to my mother on the phone. He told us about the conditions. It was a disaster. People were dying left and right. He was exposed, but fortunately recovered.

I live near Creedmoor hospital in Queens. Mentally ill patients from the hospital are being allowed to roam the streets in the neighborhood, beg for money, loiter and even try to enter local restaurants even though there are positives in the institution.

It’s a nightmare.

Cuomo was an idiot and 40%-45% of the deaths in NY are on him.

The Trier saga will not be taught in the asset management textbooks but I’m glad he’s not coming back.

i remember as a kid getting creeped out whenever we passed pilgrim state on the LIE…that was one seriously spooky looking place…

i imagine i’d still be freaked out if i had to spend a night in that place…i think i may have seen them feature it on one of those haunted places shows…not that i would ever stoop so low to that level of entertainment 🙂

yes, and the answer is always: aliens…

okay, so deeefense is strat…hey strat – hope all is well for you and the family and you are staying healthy…health first – this silly bullshit second…

Hahahahahahaha oh my god, he switched back into his normal writing style.

Dude, we get it, you can’t stay away. It’s the trait of yours I find most relatable. Why all the obfuscation?

if trier fucks ups his destiny to have a big scoring year and sign a fat ben gordon contract that looks like a franchise crippling albatross about two weeks in that’s on him

If it’s Strat it’s Strat. I am all for a reset if that’s what he wants.

Pinson’s numbers are godawful. It’s pretty rare to make a roster decision where you give up 20 points of TS% but it’s the truth that Trier never played any defense at all. Looked like Melo out there.

I will be interested when Lance Thomas writes his memoir to hear what the real deal about Zo was.

As a UNC alum who went to games where Theo played, I absolutely loved him in college. He’s basically a jack of all trades wing with questionable shooting ability. He’s a switchable defender, very high iq player, and a terrific bench morale guy. His college performance was solid enough that I thought he should be a late first at the time of draft (but he was drafted near 60 instead iirc). If his G-League shooting is for real he’s an actual player. I’m just excited to have him around–he’s a hilarious dude that everyone loves as far as I can tell. At the cost of Trier though? He must have had some serious behavioral issues, otherwise it makes zero sense. This is the Knicks I guess.

38% on 229 3PTA is promising. Seems like Pinson and Harper are both athletic, uptempo, character guys. Hard to read too much into such low-level moves, but it’s a nice start.

This new guy Deeefense thinks this blog sucks and that nobody here knows anything about basketball yet he posts here many times daily

Weird

“Raven
June 26, 2020 at 4:42 pm
Anyone want to see what Bob looks like, just google “Why retirement is bad for the rest of us.” His picture’s up there.”

You will wish you look like I do when you are 68.

Hell if your 25 and an average New Yorker I likely look better than you today.

This new guy Deeefense thinks this blog sucks and that nobody here knows anything about basketball yet he posts here many times daily

Weird

Back in the heyday of comic book message boards, my fellow moderators and I would joke about the people who would sign up under new names and try to change their posting style where it’s like, “Hey, if you can totally change your personality, boy, you sure taught us a lesson!” We were talking specifically about people who were banned for bad behavior (you know, “Oh no, you got back in and hid yourself by eliminating the behavior that got you banned, how dare you!”), but it applies to the new name concept period. If you can pull off an entirely different personality to give yourself a “clean slate,” then whatever, but, well, come on, no one can actually pull off an entirely different personality.

Just like no one ever actually leaves a site when they say they’re going to leave.

Ha! I guess I should say, “No one can pull it off and then keep quiet about it.” 😉

Tough to know what to make of Pinson. Poking around the interwebs it looks like he was thought of highly coming out of college except that his shot was broken and possibly unfixable. But then he goes and shoots 38.3% on 329 3 point attempts in the G-league and 83.5% on 139 FTA. Those are both still relatively small sample sizes but certainly promising. His shot still looks like a catapult and he shoots it like 60 mph at the hoop, so I’m a little bit skeptical. But otherwise, hard not to like his ability to pass, great size and wingspan for a guard, and at least on limited video I watched, looks pretty quick twitch with good hips on defense. Dribble/pass/shoot/defend with good size, seems a good guy to take a flyer on especially since 4.5MM for Trier’s qualifying offer seems too pricey.

Ok yeah it’s Strat

Strat hated Trier and I doubt he’s playing 4D chess by pretending to not hate him now.

I was pretty convinced deeefense is reub but Brian told me he wasn’t. I’m guessing he knows for some reason.

Brian Cronin: If you can pull off an entirely different personality to give yourself a “clean slate,” then whatever, but, well, come on, no one can actually pull off an entirely different personality.

Very few highly proficient writers are able to write in a different voice ( Phil Klay did it in Redeployment), let alone amateurs. What is also amusing is once the renamed poster is identified, they often deny it before vanishing. If Strat, Robert Jr. Lockwood, and Deeefense want to meet at Ivarones on July 4th, lunch and drinks are on me.

“maybe bob is really just mike k trying to drum up traffic…”

The man actually has a sense of humor!

Cordially,

Bob Uranus

I’m late to the party but..

While I don’t mind a flier on Pinson, I still think Trier is the perfect backup at SG- whether we start RJ, Ntilikina, or Dot at the 2. He’s instant offense a la Crawford, but a more efficient scorer. So..I will miss him. However, we’re still good at the 2 with RJ, Dot, and Ntilikina. I’m happy that this move probably means Dot is in the team’s plans after his role wasn’t clearly defined this past season.

I still would like to see us be aggressive in going after Ingram or Joe Harris. I’d be happy with either one. I like RJ at the 2, but it’s been really hard to space the floor with him at the 2. By adding Ingram or Harris, it lessens that problem. Of course, there would still be the Randle sitchew….

Just like no one ever actually leaves a site when they say they’re going to leave.

wink wink it’s Strat hahahahah

Brian C. and Mike K. appreciation post. Thank you both for making this site possible.

Mike K is not congenitally capable of pretending to be right wing.

Voter fraud isn’t a thing but it does pop up. For instance, Donald Trump committed felony voter fraud and will do so again this election by claiming Mar a Lago as his residence.

It’s always projection with that guy.

We have guys that know very little abut basketball running the organization. It was bad enough when we had a few people that do understand basketball being assisted by incompetents.

Phil wuz gud GM
Wuz Millz fault Phil phailed
I am not Strat
I am new guy Deeefense

We really need to trade Randle. I’ve seen a Randle+filler for Love+pick deal thrown around…would that make sense? Is there anything Detroit could offer us to make a Blake for Randle deal make sense? Or maybe CP3+a pick for Randle? He’s just gumming up the works.

Z-man, I’d love to trade Randle for someone who can score from outside, but all those players make something like twice as much as he does and have longer contracts. Gordon Hayward makes similar money to those players but his contract is shorter. I’d rather trade Randle for him.

I posted that last week, stoner…

PS I’m taking a relative to a dispensary in MA today, any “medicinal” recommendations for an old guy with a bad back? I don’t know the first thing about strains beyond the basic sativa vs. indica difference.

Re: Russell, imagine a taller, longer, faster, more athletic Dennis Rodman with an all-time great IQ and historic leadership ability. He would definitely crack the rotation on a contender in today’s game.

My uncle had a stock answer to dumb questions like “Could [Russell] be great in today’s game?” “Of course not, he’s [86] years old.”

I’d go with an indica, which is more of a body high and less of a brain buzz. If you do edibles, stick to a 5 mg dose and give it a solid hour and a half to kick in. Eating too much weed is incredibly unpleasant. Don’t do that thing where you eat a gummy and then an hour passes and you’re like “that didn’t do anything” and then you eat two more. Trust me on this one.

I’ve never tried the various topical creams that are available but those might be helpful for back pain. In the age of COVID edibles are a really good way to go. Any kind of smoking anything is not great for your lungs. I’ve cut way down on smoking flower since this whole thing started.

Between Jared Harper, Kenny Wooten, Iggy, and Theo Pinson the Westchester Knicks, whenever the hell they’re allowed to play again, should be a pretty entertaining product.

Any value beyond that is very much TBD.

It’s easy to forget about how decent Iggy was as a college freshman and how young he is. Players his size who are as ambidextrous as he is are pretty rare. He definitely needs to build himself up physically and work on that shot, but I hope we get to see a lot of him next year.

And consider that barring trades, we’ll probably have two draft picks spending time in the G-League, I just might have to go to the county center a few times!

When I lived in Chicago I met a 6’2″ tall drink of water and managed, with my best standing posture, to trick her into a date. Halfway through she reveals (in true UChicago “Where Fun Goes to Die” undergrad form) she had never tried marijuana, in part because of a condition that made smoking risky.

Well, Bethany, you’re in luck! Cock Jowles has just baked half an ounce of Woodstock’s dankest into one 8×8 tray of brownies. We eat a very small amount, I already having sampled them for their potency. An hour later, I am really feeling it, and also the marijuana. She is not yet feeling the latter. In my high wisdom, I tell her, sure, go ahead and have some more. Out of sight, she does.

An hour later, as we’re leaving to walk her home, she gets light-headed from a sudden rush of THC and passes out, all 74 inches of her, dropping to her knees and going moderately hard face-first into my oven door, followed by deep-breathing in a semi-conscious plank pose. When she came to, she asked me if I had drugged her (terrible), and although I had, it wasn’t in quite the way she meant.

She would later crabwalk through my apartment (not being able to stand without getting dizzy) and stumble from my car door to her apartment’s. First date was our last, and I don’t blame her.

I inexplicably told this story on my first date with the now-and-forever Lady Jowles and she still went home with me. I do not think I would again tell that story on a date, not first, second or ninth.

I had a similar experience, but with having my date smoke really good weed after a couple of drinks. The conversation stopped, she asked me to take her home and that was it.

Z-man:
I’d be down for Hayward but why would the Celts do that?

That’s a good question. The only reason I think they might is that they are over the cap already and they actually need scoring down low more than outside shooting (which isn’t typical for most NBA teams).

seems you have found a most excellent reason for never needing to date again…

a woman that’ll spot your squats – shoot, you done found a winner already and need to hold tight on to that…

without question the best companions I’ve had over time had spent time in the military…they just seemed to have a great understanding for teamwork makes the dream work…

seeing how I’ve spent my life faded 24/7, I always appreciated having a reasonably sober partner around…more drugs for me 🙂

so, the great debate today – do I attempt to make ribs, or, simply go buy them…they seem easy enough to do, but, I’ve had mixed success, to be kind to myself…

I’m guessing similiar grilling process as steak, open grill over medium to high heat, a few minutes each side…I can do this…

Unless you plan on eating them at 8 PM, it’s too late.

I’m gonna rub them down in a couple of hours and plan on throwing them on the grill tomorrow night…

god daughters boyfriend gets off work around that time….although it feels like there are more than enough humans in my home already, he seems like a pretty good guy that treats her well…

I’ll use the same rack over plate in fridge thing (in this case racks over cookie sheet)…I just need to remember to be patient and man the grill once I put them on…I’ll set a beer or two next to the grill…

geo:
so, the great debate today – do I attempt to make ribs, or, simply go buy them…they seem easy enough to do, but, I’ve had mixed success, to be kind to myself…

I’m guessing similiar grilling process as steak, open grill over medium to high heat, a few minutes each side…I can do this…

https://media2.giphy.com/media/ToMjGpx9F5ktZw8qPUQ/giphy.gif?cid=ecf05e47869b747527dbfc5ec1a05eb0776937a79e7ba563&rid=giphy.gif

Cooking ribs is nothing at all like cooking a steak. Steak is basically all muscle and fat so you go hot and fast to cook it. Ribs have a ton of connective tissue so you have to go low and slow otherwise they’ll be tough as hell and basically inedible. To cook ribs on the grill you have to keep them at a temp of around 250 F and cook them for hours, literally all day. You can also bake them in the oven and finish them on the grill, real quick on high heat just to get some char, which will be faster. You should definitely use a spice rub; if you’re going to use sauce add the sauce at the very end or even after they’re finished. If you add the sauce at the beginning it’ll be totally burnt by the end, like eating ribs covered in charcoal.

thanks vincoug 🙂

yeah, I think i’m gonna go oven, then finish them off on the grill, I always feel like I’m leaving them on the grill too long…

The Athletic reports that several of the Delete Eight teams want to play additional games, too, maybe in Vegas. There is one outlier:

The Knicks, sources say, have expressed reservations about participating, in part because they have a roster with several soon-to-be free agents who might decline to take part (as many as eight players potentially). If accommodations could be made to help a team like the Knicks fill its roster by way of G League players, however, then that could be an X-factor of sorts.

For once in a rare while, Knicks management may be on the right side of history. Playing games this summer is going to be incredibly dangerous. It’s arguably irresponsible for anyone to try. But it’s super-duper irresponsible for teams with nothing to play for to do so.

Hahahahah Delete Eight

I did not coin it, but would happily buy a beer for whoever did.

For once in a rare while, Knicks management may be on the right side of history. Playing games this summer is going to be incredibly dangerous. It’s arguably irresponsible for anyone to try. But it’s super-duper irresponsible for teams with nothing to play for to do so.

I just couldn’t disagree more.

The don’t have to go to Vegas to do it. They could rent out the University of Vermont or Wyoming who have both the the athletic facilities for 8 teams and the dorm spaces if they want to go that way.

Vermont and Wyoming have virtually no active Covid cases state wide ( 198 and 318) compared to Florida (106,000!)

They could do it in Casper, WY or other such cities that have legit arenas that seat 9-10,000, facilities where G-league and CBA teams play. I’t not an impossible task bivouacking 400 people for a month (no playoffs).

The teams who didn’t get into the playoffs would be the ones who actually need the work. I’d like to see iggy, frank, mr, barrett, wooten, randall, dsjr, knox , pinson and harper get 8 games to play extended minutes. It would definitely be good for their development.

I agree the Knicks could find a way to practice basketball for their young players and have reasonable precautions against COVID. But I think they are worried about something else. They have a number of players on lightly guaranteed contracts for next year. An injury during a summer schedule would be very bad for those players. And since the players on those contracts are veterans, the eight games or so wouldn’t be very helpful to them. So I think the Knicks are protecting their players.

It would be interesting if the NBA created a “summer league” in August-September for younger players on eliminated teams (start it just after playoffs begin and include 6 bubble teams that get eliminated at end of 8-game regular season). make participation totally voluntary, include G-league players.

I agree the Knicks could find a way to practice basketball for their young players and have reasonable precautions against COVID. But I think they are worried about something else. They have a number of players on lightly guaranteed contracts for next year. An injury during a summer schedule would be very bad for those players. And since the players on those contracts are veterans, the eight games or so wouldn’t be very helpful to them. So I think the Knicks are protecting their players.

I am assuming UFA and players with options decline to play. We really don’t need to see anymore taj or payton or portis or ellington or bullock or harkless. The only player on an option or a FA is dotson that I would be interested in seeing play more.

In poker there is an important concept called “blockers” Blockers is the concept that card removal effects the chances your opponents have particular hands combinatorically. If you have AK suited or unsuited in you hands you have removed 50% of the combinations that your opponents can have of AA and KK. That’s a big deal!

The knicks have too many useless veteran blockers on their roster and I don’t mean shot blockers.

RJ, Iggy, Frank, Knox, DSjr, Mitch, Pinson, Harper, Wooten…some G-League filler…that’s all we need, right?

Wyoming? Really?

Safety or strip clubs…. which is your priority.

If you want the safest environment you follow the science/logic… go somewhere where there are few cases whether they have strip clubs/ casinos or not That means AK, MT, WY, HI. or VT. I don’t think Saipan in the Mariannas, Guam or the US Virgin Islands have the facilities.

But you could always have the tourney at the American Airlines Arena a mile or so across the Biscayne Bay from South Beach if that’s your priority. They only have 30,000 active cases in Miami-Dade county……

I love sports. We don’t need sports right now. Every sports league that comes back is going to be a start-and-stop train wreck. Let’s get the pandemic under control and then get back to the bread and circuses.

I love sports. We don’t need sports right now. Every sports league that comes back is going to be a start-and-stop train wreck. Let’s get the pandemic under control and then get back to the bread and circuses.

This is generally where I am, but I do think the NBA’s plan can be justified on very specific grounds: they have a reasonable argument that they’re providing a safer environment for players than the general population.

The bubble is kind of like a small oasis in which NBA players/staff are treated like citizens of countries with semi-competent federal governments. There’s nowhere else in this country I’m aware of in which there’s strict testing, contact tracing, and a boatload of other safety protocols.

Keep in mind plenty of players live in states acting completely recklessly, but even here in NYC the reopening process is far more aggressive than I think is wise.

Of course, it’s not without risk. Because of the close quarters and, obviously, basketball being played, a genuine outbreak could be a total disaster and prove that argument totally wrong.

At the end of the day I think they’ve set up a situation in which it’s more likely than not fewer people will get infected than if they didn’t return, so I don’t think it’s fair to criticize them on those grounds.

All of the other leagues are being unambiguously reckless and greedy.

“Let’s get the pandemic under control and then get back to the bread and circuses.”

The problem is you aren’t going to get the virus under control unless you have a magical way of changing human behavior. Case loads are increasing in 48 of the 50 states as of yesterday and rapidly increasing in 36.

43% of the deaths nationwide as of yesterday 54,000/125,000 were in nursing homes. 70% of the deaths in NY, MN and NH are from nursing homes.

Young people are virtually bulletproof from serious complications if they don’t have pre existing conditions.

However, if young people insist on hanging out at clubs draped all over eachother this pandemic will never get under control. A little common sense will keep everyone healthy.

I’m not particularly optimistic as H.L. Mencken famously wrote….”Nobody ever went broke betting against the intelligence of the American Public.”

I’m not probably going to be enjoying the return of sports all that much because everything is going to have this asterisk-y quality to it.

What’s the point, really? Great, the Los Angeles Dodgers are the world champions of a 60 game baseball season, whoop de doo.

However, if young people insist on hanging out at clubs draped all over each other this pandemic will never get under control. A little common sense will keep everyone healthy.

The IFR for young healthy people is so low, it’s not shocking they aren’t overly worried about it.

Had we has just managed nursing homes, elderly, and people with significant risk factors better (all of which was known from Italy and China), the number of deaths would massively lower. Since then, we’ve also learned not to put ventilators on people as quickly because it was killing some of them.

But the political goal of the media has been to panic people, destroy Trump, and to hell with the economy and what we need to do to control, it save lives, and save the economy.

It’s self centered of young people people to not wear masks and gather at bars and clubs because they risk bringing the disease home to their grandparents or people that are vulnerable, but their self centeredness is the least of our issues with them. If you ask me a lot of the young generation is delusional, bordering on mentally ill.

The baseball season might be the first one where the first ~80% of the games are nearly as exciting as the last 20%. For that alone it’ll be worth watching.

And as for asterisks, I see the concern, but that’s for the pundits to worry about. They could turn the NBA playoffs into a double-elimination tourney and I’d still consider the champs to be the final team standing. At the end of the day, the competition will still be there.

Since this season will be asterisked by consensus, no better time to test the Elam Ending in every playoff game.

Deeefense: The IFR for young healthy people is so low, it’s not shocking they aren’t overly worried about it.

Had we has just managed nursing homes, elderly, and people with significant risk factors better (all of which was known from Italy and China), the number of deaths would massively lower.Since then, we’ve also learned not to put ventilators on people as quickly because it was killing some of them.

But the political goal of the media has been to panic people, destroy Trump, and to hell with the economy and what we need to do to control, it save lives, and save the economy.

It’s self centered of young people people to not wear masks and gather at bars and clubs because they risk bringingthe disease home to their grandparents or people that are vulnerable, but their self centeredness is the least of our issues with them.If you ask me a lot of the young generation is delusional,bordering on mentally ill.

Which is it, the media has thrown everyone into panic or young people dont care about this? If young people dont care about COVID, should the media not be alerting them more often?

Trump has been nothing short of abysmal during this crisis.

It’s self centered of young people people to not wear masks and gather at bars and clubs because they risk bringing the disease home to their grandparents or people that are vulnerable, but their self centeredness is the least of our issues with them. If you ask me a lot of the young generation is delusional, bordering on mentally ill.

As usual the data does not support your view. As per this morning’s CBS poll, who is and isn’t wearing masks has little to do with age and a lot to do with political ideology.

67% percent of Democrats say they always wear a mask in public with an additional 22% saying they wear one most of the time. For Republicans those figures are both 27%. It didn’t have to be this way, but your guy doesn’t like the way his pudgy face looks with a mask and so the country must go through a lot of unnecessary suffering and death.

Actually when you consider how age tends to correlate with political ideology, I’m almost certain younger folks are doing a better job with regards to masks than people in your age cohort.

To be clear, plenty of people in my age group are being very stupid. It can be disheartening to see the weekend evening scene in lower Manhattan these days. The idea that this is the primary cause of spread is as ridiculous as the idea that an NBA executive who made Carmelo Anthony the highest paid player in the sport and traded for Derrick Rose really loved him some unselfish, two-way players though.

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” – Rahm Emanuel, then President Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff

“I’m not probably going to be enjoying the return of sports all that much because everything is going to have this asterisk-y quality to it.

What’s the point, really? Great, the Los Angeles Dodgers are the world champions of a 60 game baseball season, whoop de doo.”

I will have no problems celebrating when the Yankees win their 28th World Series this year 🙂

“As usual the data does not support your view. As per this morning’s CBS poll, who is and isn’t wearing masks has little to do with age and a lot to do with political ideology.”

Just as a point of order it is pretty silly to call a poll “data”

Secondly the comment you were flailing around trying to refute was:

“It’s self centered of young people people to not wear masks and gather at bars and clubs…”

You aren’t actually trying to argue that young people go to bars and wear masks when they are elbow to elbow , are you?

Thirdly while the daily infection rate has been increasing for the last month is primarily the result of young people no matter what your dopey, virtue signaling and completely irrelevant poll says:

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/longevity/504749-young-people-accounting-for-a-growing-percentage-of

Just as a point of order it is pretty silly to call a poll “data”

Secondly the comment you were flailing around trying to refute was:

“It’s self centered of young people people to not wear masks and gather at bars and clubs…”

You aren’t actually trying to argue that young people go to bars and wear masks when they are elbow to elbow , are you?

Thirdly while the daily infection rate has been increasing for the last month is primarily the result of young people no matter what your dopey, virtue signaling and completely irrelevant poll says:

Impressive maneuver around the point I was actually making: your guy actively discourages the use of masks and it has demonstrable, disastrous effects.

As I literally said in the fucking post, plenty of young people are being stupid as well. However, I don’t think you read the link you posted in response because I don’t think Strat was talking about people in their 30s and 40s. He was saying young people disproportionately don’t wear masks and I pointed out that’s almost certainly not the case.

The idea that a simple, neutrally worded poll can be “virtue signaling and completely irrelevant” is something one could only think if they have Stage 4 Fox News Brain. In other words I wasn’t remotely surprised to see you say it.

” He was saying young people disproportionately don’t wear masks and I pointed out that’s almost certainly not the case.”

It is pretty clear he was saying they don’t wear masks when they indulge in high risk behavior at bars and clubs where they can easily spread the disease because they are within a foot or two of eachother Whether they wear masks when properly socially distanced is far less relevant:

It’s self centered of young people people to not wear masks and gather at bars and clubs because they risk bringing the disease home to their grandparents or people that are vulnerable, but their self centeredness is the least of our issues with them. If you ask me a lot of the young generation is delusional, bordering on mentally ill.

“The idea that a simple, neutrally worded poll can be “virtue signaling and completely irrelevant” is something one could only think if they have Stage 4 Fox News Brain. In other words I wasn’t remotely surprised to see you say it.”

HaHaHaHa… If they ask you that question you are going to 100% answer it “Of course I wear a mask 24/7” precisely BECAUSE you know it is the right thing to say whether you do or not. You’ve been successfully been trained in a Pavlovian sense……..

If you ask me a lot of the young generation is delusional, bordering on mentally ill.

Old man yells at cloud

HaHaHaHa… If they ask you that question you are going to 100% answer it “Of course I wear a mask 24/7” precisely BECAUSE you know it is the right thing to say whether you do or not. You’ve been successfully been trained in a Pavlovian sense……..

Are you going to try to argue, with a straight internet face, that your guy hasn’t created a partisan divide when it comes to masks, and caution regarding COVID-19 generally? This might be the stupidest hill you’ve ever died on, and that’s saying a lot.

He doesn’t wear a mask himself. He’s going on an indoor, non-socially distanced rally tour and actively sabotaging any meager safety measures that might be in place. He has literally fucking said that people who wear masks are showing disapproval of him.

I mean trying to contest this might be the worst argument I’ve ever seen. Come on man, I promise I won’t tell Hannity and co. you conceded on this point!

Trump is modeling piss poor behavior and his whole administration is acting like this whole thing is over. There are a few “ashes” of the fire that need to be put out here and there according to that cretin. Uh huh.

They were caught in Tulsa removing stickers that encouraged social distancing, they’re having rallies in big giant arenas and megachurches where they don’t require masks and generally they’re encouraging all sorts of shitty selfish behavior. His leadership on this is a joke, he just wants the unemployment numbers to get better at any cost even if it means killing tens of thousands of people and it’s obvious to anybody who isn’t one of his cult members. It’s why he gets dismal approval ratings for how he has handled the virus and it’s why he has about four months left as POTUS.

JK47: and it’s why he has about four months left as POTUS.

  

(closer to 7, but who’s counting?)

He gets something like 37% approve, 58% disapprove on handling the virus, that 37% is his dead ender base that wouldn’t abandon him even if videos of him fucking a goat came out. Everybody else thinks he has done a shitty job. There’s no way for him to fix it either, it’s too late. He can’t just “kung flu” his way out of this shit.

Z-man:
bob makes me ashamed to be a boomer

If you wish to dissociate yourself, you can identify as a Generation Jones
“Generation Jones refers to people born between 1954 and 1964-65. We sometimes call them the ‘Lost Generation. ‘ They have this nickname because they were born between the Baby Boomers and Generation X birth dates. Generation X people were born between the mid-1960s and the late 1970s.”

the lost generation sounds way cooler…from here forward – that’s my generation…

gotta say, we were raised on some of the best music recorded- ever…

in Los Angeles County, officials said Saturday that the positivity rate there had risen to 9 percent; two weeks ago it was averaging 5.8 percent. In Texas, the rate climbed above 13 percent on Friday; it was around 7 percent two weeks ago.

Arizona’s positivity rates have been climbing steadily since early May and have been averaging above 20 percent for a week, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

And in Arizona, Florida and Texas, there’s not enough testing capacity for people who want to be tested. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/world/coronavirus-updates.html

Both notes are From today’s news. Clearly, it’s not increased testing that is driving up known cases. If it were, positivity rates would go down, not up, as you expanded testing to people less likely to have the disease. Instead, it’s more likely that the shortage of tests means that testing is more concentrated in those most obviously sick. And I don’t buy it that it’s not a worry because it’s mostly young people who don’t die of it as often. It’s still a serious disease often with bad Long term side effects.

I didn’t see it in a movie theater, I barely remember it getting much promotion…i can’t remember the original rating, but, it may have been an “r” rated movie at the time…

first time i saw it though on some cable channel, absolutely loved it, dark and creepy atmosphere…several fantastic performances…

what goes around, really goes around

it is encouraging to see physicians are having better success treating this illness…

more folks have come back to work…lots more traffic on the roads, more mobility for the virus…

not sure what percentage of the population has been exposed to date, what models call for possible final population exposure – ugh, I remember somewhere early on seeing 80%…I don’t remember hearing whether it was possible to be re-infected and whether the virus mutates…

I’ll be honest, I’m hopeful for it, but definitely a little nervous if school opens up in late august/early september…

it’s crazy, the kids will be healthy all summer and then boom, once school starts they’re coughing and having runny noses all the time…

teaching must require a seriously well trained immune system…

just gotta be as safe as possible, and as prepared as possible…

Italian doctors are starting to release academic papers on some of the possible reasons for the death rate in Italy dropping sharply from the beginning of the pandemic until now even after controlling for age. The good news is that they are seeing the same thing in Britain. Here’s a thread with some info.

https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1276695443427090432

KnickfaninNJ:
cognitive delirium affects Covid patients if all ages equally, and it’s a bad side effect.

that might explain some of the posting here…

Beating a dead horse at this point, but here’s another absolutely damning portrait of the federal response to COVID: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/with-trump-leading-the-way-americas-coronavirus-failures-exposed-by-record-surge-in-new-infections/2020/06/27/bd15aea2-b7c4-11ea-a8da-693df3d7674a_story.html

Here’s a nice tidbit for bob, who was telling me earlier there’s no partisan split on basic mitigation techniques:

The partisanship that has come to surround mask-wearing was on stark display on Capitol Hill on Friday, as House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) convened a hearing of the select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis.

Clyburn and the other committee Democrats attended wearing masks, while the committee’s Republican members were maskless, which led to angry exchanges.

Some other highlights:

Some states are still struggling to procure testing kits and supplies for the kits, including swabs, and have pleaded for the federal government to play a larger role in coordinating purchases, resolving supply shortages and distributing the tests. Doctors and health-care facilities are still grappling with shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), including private doctors’ offices that cannot perform routine procedures safely because they do not have the necessary equipment, according to the American Medical Association.

We’re doing so much winning, I’m sick of winning!

More than five months after the first test for the coronavirus was conducted in the United States, testing equipment is still being doled out based on which states manage to get federal officials on the phone to press their case.

Hmm, in hindsight, probably shouldn’t have put the con-man-turned-reality-TV-host in charge of the federal government.

HaHaHaHa… If they ask you that question you are going to 100% answer it “Of course I wear a mask 24/7” precisely BECAUSE you know it is the right thing to say whether you do or not. You’ve been successfully been trained in a Pavlovian sense……..

Are you going to try to argue, with a straight internet face, that your guy hasn’t created a partisan divide when it comes to masks, and caution regarding COVID-19 generally?

Humpy… are you really a lawyer? Do they always allow you to conflate issues in court.

As you can see in the quote above I never mentioned Trump let alone who is responsible for human conduct. I merely stated the obvious that lots of people lie when being polled and saying polls are “fact” is idiocy of the highest order.. Ask Hiliary about that. Or ask John Kerry who was being crowned and toasted by the media at 5 pm election day as a result of the exit polls. Pro Tip…. he lost by 3,000,000 votes…. people lie to pollsters all the time.

“Are you going to try to argue, with a straight internet face, that your guy hasn’t created a partisan divide when it comes to masks, and caution regarding COVID-19 generally?”

I’m going to argue the guys who caused the most confusion on this issue were Dr Anthony Fauci, the CDC, the WHO and the Surgeon General when they stated 6 weeks into the fiasco on 3/28:

U.S. Surgeon General
@Surgeon_General
·
Mar 28
1/3 Regarding masks:
@WHO @CDCgov & my office have consistently recommended against the general public wearing masks as there is scant or conflicting evidence they benefit individual wearers in a meaningful way, but real concerns about pulling from the healthcare worker supply…”

Right. All the wingnuts out here in Newport Beach and Huntington Beach and all of the wingnutty parts of Orange County aren’t wearing masks because Fauci said not to wear them in March. Mmmmkay.

Furthermore all the wingnuts at the Tulsa rally would have totes been wearing the masks but Fauci said not to in March, and they’re sticking with that. Same thing for all the little junior wingnuts at the rally in Phoenix.

Uh huh. All Fauci’s fault.

Wow. Just wow.

New York Times
“Paranoid hallucinations plague many coronavirus patients”
“…Just in time, someone rescued her, but suddenly, she was turned into an ice sculpture on a fancy cruise ship buffet. Next, she was a subject of an experiment in a lab in Japan. Then she was being attacked by cats. Then it became clear Fauci was at fault for people not wearing masks.”

Feel better, Bob.

” Then it became clear Fauci was at fault for people not wearing masks.”

Not even close to what I said. I said Fauci, the Surgeon General, the CDC and the WHO all up through the end of March were saying in unison masks were unnecessary:

@WHO @CDCgov & my office have consistently recommended against the general public wearing masks as there is scant or conflicting evidence they benefit individual wearers in a meaningful way, but real concerns about pulling from the healthcare worker supply…”

Then they do a 180 and say you MUST wear masks. Can’t imagine why anyone would be confused about that?

It did nothing to increase the trust in governmental information from scientists . Nor did the predictions that 2.8 million would die. Personally I wear one any time I go where I will be within close proximity. If it helps 10% (haven’t seen actual evidence it does)I’m all for it

And yes…. Trump would have been a lot smarter to hold his rally in Boone Pickens Stadium outdoors in Stillwater,OK and put one fanny in every 5 seats……

And I’m proud to be an American
Where at least I know I’m free
And I won’t forget the men who died
Who gave that right to me
And I’d gladly stand up next to you
And defend Her still today
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt
I love this land
God Bless the U.S.A.

i caught some of the trump rally stuff…that fucking song has got stuck in my head…whenever i think about it, all i can focus on is just how badly we fucked up our national virus response…this is gonna be a long six months…

Fauci has said that the reason they told people not to wear masks was because there weren’t enough to go around. They were needed for health care professionals. It was A shortage the federal government could have addressed in January.

Is this a serious conversation or are we in a bar in The Villages?

Another three days and I am still amazed Trump hasn’t cottoned to the fact that doing the best thing for the country is the best thing for him.

Owen: Fauci has said that the reason they told people not to wear masks was because there weren’t enough to go around. They were needed for health care professionals. It was A shortage the federal government could have addressed in January.

bob willfully ignored that part, just like gun rights fanatics willfully ignore the well-regulated militia part of 2nd amendment

” Fauci has said that the reason they told people not to wear masks was because there weren’t enough to go around. They were needed for health care professionals. It was A shortage the federal government could have addressed in January.”

Yeah…. that’s what he said in June after saying for months at the start of the crisis it might be dangerous to wear them.

This is what happens when supposedly “trusted” scientists knowingly misrepresent the truth for some sort of higher objective. You get a giant shit sandwich.

All he had to say at the start was this virus is serious business and we believe the science indicated masks may provide some benefit. We don’t have enough PPE to go around so we are federalizing all the inventory with priority to first responders who are the most exposed and without them the entire system will collapse.

We are ramping up production domestically and in the interim if you absolutely need to venture into public fashion a mask out of a scarf/cloth towel, etc.

That would have been the thing to do rather that treat the public like children and intentionally lying to them. People would be less confused and more likely to comply when you don’t flush your credibility down the crapper right at the start.

Fauci has said that the reason they told people not to wear masks was because there weren’t enough to go around. They were needed for health care professionals. It was A shortage the federal government could have addressed in January.

That was utterly indefensible. If you’re an appointed health official, you tell the public the truth. Once you lie to the public, and admit you lied to the public bc you didn’t trust them to act responsibly, you can’t expect them to believe you when you start telling the truth.

It also reeks of bullshit.

Since the logic behind wearing masks now is the same logic behind wearing masks then, I think it’s probably the truth (but I will absolutely concede that it is not a definitive explanation). And I agree, it was a bad move. We all get where he was coming from, and I’m sure the doctors and nurses were grateful, but in the long run it probably hurt more people than it helped by muddying the waters regarding mask usage.

That said, if you think there is anyone in the entire country who is not currently wearing a mask because Fauci said it wasn’t worth it in March, well, you don’t exist, because no one actually thinks that.

Owen: Hong Kong has had 7 covid deaths. 97% mask compliance on public transit.

Between this and TNFH citing a poll as evidence, it’s worth nothing that the statistical logic requirements of this evidence based community plummets significantly when arguing with Bob.

Hahahahahahaha bob has really outdone himself this time. For the record, I don’t think he actually believes the reason Trump chuds aren’t wearing masks right now is because of the initial confusion and mixed messaging months ago. It’s just that in order to defend Donald Trump, you have to pretend to be a moron (or you have to be a moron).

Anyway, extremely weird coincidence that New Yorkers, who tend to not take their cues from Donald Trump, are masked up almost to a person while states with a lot more followers in the death cult are struggling with compliance.

Trump could, of course, clear up any and all confusion on the matter with a single tweet if that’s what’s really going on, but as bob knows, it is not. He doesn’t like when people wear masks because that reminds other people that we’re in the midst of a global pandemic he doesn’t care to address. Trump himself has been much more honest than bob on this front, outright saying he views mask wearing as a form of protest again him.

Between this and TNFH citing a poll as evidence, it’s worth nothing that the statistical logic requirements of this evidence based community plummets significantly when arguing with Bob.

Agreed. It is worth nothing.

Hubert: That was utterly indefensible. If you’re an appointed health official, you tell the public the truth. Once you lie to the public, and admit you lied to the public bc you didn’t trust them to act responsibly, you can’t expect them to believe you when you start telling the truth.

It also reeks of bullshit.

This is a total misrepresentation of Fauci’s position (what a shock!) based on an out-of-context take.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/outdated-fauci-video-on-face-masks-shared-out-of-context/

Fauci was actually saying that people shouldn’t be walking around at all. In other words, if you don’t follow social distancing guidelines, a mask isn’t going to help, and it may deprive folks on the front lines of masks. In no way did he say that you should walk around without masks

That doesn’t mean that he wasn’t wrong to a degree about face coverings, but to suggest that he is responsible for what people are doing today or using his words as a justification for it is ludicrous.

That’s an interesting spin guys. Normally I reserve the word indefensible for when the Knicks trade unprotected firsts.

I do understand how careful officials have to be with the public trust. However, it’s crystal clear that if Fauci had said that masks are absolutely essential for 330 million Americans in the middle of March it would have caused riots wherever masks could still be found. It also would have displeased El Drumpf.

He has my sympathies and understanding.

“bob willfully ignored that part, just like gun rights fanatics willfully ignore the well-regulated militia part of 2nd amendment”

HaHaHaHa….. I guess your scholarly statist self isn’t aware that like the “gun nut fanatic” the US supreme court decided in 2008 that your “well regulated militia” statist argument is bullshit:

District of Columbia v. Heller, case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on June 26, 2008, held (5–4) that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to possess firearms independent of service in a state militia and to use firearms for traditionally lawful purposes, including self-defense within the home. It was the first Supreme Court case to explore the meaning of the Second Amendment since United States v. Miller (1939).

Read this a few time and suck on it , baby:

“guarantees an individual right to possess firearms independent of service in a state militia and to use firearms for traditionally lawful purposes, including self-defense within the home.”

Fauci was actually saying that people shouldn’t be walking around at all. In other words, if you don’t follow social distancing guidelines, a mask isn’t going to help, and it may deprive folks on the front lines of masks. In no way did he say that you should walk around without masks

I dunno, the full context still has him suggesting that masks aren’t that helpful, except for preventing people who are infected from giving it to others. But that’s the same logic for why we should wear masks, as if it helps infected people from giving it to others, then if everyone wears a mask, then we’re all protected. However, he does note the whole “it would create a shortage of masks” aspect, which I think was his bigger concern then.

But yes, either way, it’s certainly not a position that has been advanced for over three months now, so it’s immaterial at this point.

thenoblefacehumper: Anyway, extremely weird coincidence that New Yorkers, who tend to not take their cues from Donald Trump, are masked up almost to a person while states with a lot more followers in the death cult are struggling with compliance.

Just to be clear, the guidance is:

1. The most important thing you can do is stay at home.

2. The second most important thing you can do is keep 6 feet distance if you must go out.

3. If you can’t comply with the first 2, the least you can do is wear a fucking mask.

So hooray, New Yorkers, for completely ignoring the first two points of federal guidance because they want to get blitzed on a saturday afternoon in huge crowds standing close to each other. And let’s make fun of all the idiots who ignore the one point we pretend to care about, even though really those masks spend most of the time on our chins or in our pockets bc you can’t drink with a mask on.

Let’s also make believe all those people dining on the sidewalk without masks on are households who live together. 100% of them

It’s not the word “militia” that is at issue, bob, as a strict constructionist, why did the founders include the words “well-regulated?” Why didn’t they just say “militia” or “regulated?”

And just because right-wing justices interpret something in a particular way, it doesn’t make it correct or just…see Taney, Roger B.

Z-man: That doesn’t mean that he wasn’t wrong to a degree about face coverings, but to suggest that he is responsible for what people are doing today or using his words as a justification for it is ludicrous.

I don’t believe that his words are the reason people aren’t wearing masks. But I do think it’s fair to say he (and the CDC, and WHO) damaged his credibility on the matter, and it’s very understandable that people don’t take guidance from someone with damaged credibility.

“I do understand how careful officials have to be with the public trust. However, it’s crystal clear that if Fauci had said that masks are absolutely essential for 330 million Americans in the middle of March it would have caused riots wherever masks could still be found. It also would have displeased El Drumpf.”

The problem with this argument is he doesn’t believe your characterization even today. Look at his actual words From 6/15:

” “We also know that simple cloth coverings that many people have can work as well as a mask in many cases.”

‘Fauci also came out “unequivocally” in favor of wearing masks in public, even though they do not offer a guarantee.

“Masks are not 100% protective,” he said. “However, they certainly are better than not wearing a mask.”

He also advocated social distancing, with masks as a backup.

“So physical separation … is the best way to get a virus not to get to you,” he said.

bobneptune: “So physical separation … is the best way to get a virus not to get to you,” he said.

Exactly. And it’s the idiots in NYC who are flouting his guidance, just like they did back in early March when they were responsible for spreading the disease to a point that the entire economy needed to be shut down.

I guess that Donald Trump’s fault, too.

You should be wearing a mask if you need to get groceries or commute to an essential job. Not to get wasted on the street in close physical proximity to 2,000 people because you hate being cooped up in your shitty apartment.

I think Fauci said that masks are not in any way a foolproof defense and I think that’s still his position. It’s not inconsistent at all with what he said previously actually. If you are the only person wearing a mask in a crowded bar filled with asymptomatics it’s not going to help you much. If you are the only person in the bar with Covid and you are wearing a mask than it might help things a fair bit.

I will admit, there is no better way to own the libs than to blame Fauci for this. It’s classic trolling. As if anyone in The Villages would ever listen to Fauci anyway.

“Z-man: That doesn’t mean that he wasn’t wrong to a degree about face coverings, but to suggest that he is responsible for what people are doing today or using his words as a justification for it is ludicrous.”

He certainly is partly responsible whether your world view allows you to admit it to yourself.

The real question is … was the lockdown the proper way to go or was the Sweden route better?

Sweden has a death rate per million lower than Belgium, the UK, Italy and Spain and just slightly higher than France.

Another question that few discuss is what are the costs of the lockdown (beyond the economic, which are enormously substantial). How many extra suicides will we see due to the lock down. How many people died of heart attack and stroke because they were more fearful of getting infected in a hospital and ignored early symptoms. I saw an estimate the other day that there are usually 800,000 cancer screenings done per month in Americas and only 300,000 done each of the past 3 months…. how is that going to play out.

The butcher’s bill is far from being tabulated.

I am at least glad Hubert has quietly moved off his previous position of precautions taken to combat COVID being a bunch of liberal bullshit

This is maybe the must ludicrous argument we have ever had here.

“I AIN’T WEARING NO MASK I STILL GOT MAH FREEDUM” is not a thing that the latte sipping libruls are saying. It’s red state MAGA chuds. It’s Ted Nugent. It’s the Karen at Trader Joe’s throwing a hissy fit and screaming at the top of her lungs because of “Democrat pigs.”

It’s militia dudes in Michigan and it’s redhats at Trump rallies and not a single one of them is refusing to wear the masks because they were confused by Anthony Fauci.

And yes, it’s some dumb young people too. So dumb Gen Z idiots and red hat wearing idiots of all ages, those are your anti-maskers right there. My fellow NPR-listening, Prius driving, kale salad eating, Silver Lake living snowflake libtards are all wearing the fucking masks like responsible adults and everybody fucking knows it.

Come on now with this bullshit.

“As if anyone in The Villages would ever listen to Fauci anyway.”

The olds in south Florida are the only one’s listening. I was out for diner at a place in Delray (I may have been the youngest in the joint…it was like a scene from Cocoon) everyone walked in with a mask of some sort and they took our temperatures before seating us and we had a nice socially distance meal with another couple we know. The only person I was wary of was out 28 year old waitress 🙂

thenoblefacehumper:
I am at least glad Hubert has quietly moved off his previous position of precautions taken to combat COVID being a bunch of liberal bullshit

Yeah, that was never my position. Nice job channeling NahNah, though.

Seatbelts aren’t a foolproof way to keep you from getting killed in a car wreck.

So fuck seatbelts. Mah freedum.

JK47: “I AIN’T WEARING NO MASK I STILL GOT MAH FREEDUM” is not a thing that the latte sipping libruls are saying. It’s red state MAGA chuds. It’s Ted Nugent. It’s the Karen at Trader Joe’s throwing a hissy fit and screaming at the top of her lungs because of “Democrat pigs.”

Sure, man.

But now you’re Bob, responding to every critique of Trump with “whatabout Cuomo and DeBlasio”?

I’ll be you when you said “fuck cuomo” and kept trying to bring it back to the stupid rallies he was holding: fuck those MAGA hat wearing idiots. They’re dumb and dangerous, and they should be doing what they’re told.

But tell me what is worse for the spread of COVID:

A. idiots with MAGA hats going to a grocery store without a mask

B. Streets full of thousands of young liberals in cities drinking and partying in close proximity to each other every weekend with masks that sometimes cover their face but usually are off.

If you think it’s A, god bless you.

If you think it’s B, how do you reconcile that with the idea that Trump is the reason people aren’t listening to Fauci?

“And yes, it’s some dumb young people too.”

I agree with a lot of your post but not all. Not every Trump supported is a knuckle dragging anti logic Luddite You have a tendency stereotype people needlessly.

I believe we will discover in the fullness of time the majority of the recent covid spike is a result of millions of young adults who think they are bulletproof and not overly bright routinely not socially distancing rather than MAGA hat wearing Ted Nuggent acolytes in their 50’s and 60’s who don’t wear masks.

But we will see in the fullness of time.

Bob, you are a strange dude. You take all the necessary precautions yourself but don’t fault the President for not encouraging everyone else to do the same?

It’s just bizarre.

A friend of mine has gone down the Covid truther rabbit hole. He’s quite prominent actually. And across the last three months he hasn’t said a single critical thing about Trump while completely savaging the public health establishment.

It’s just strange.

Stranglehold is my favorite Nugent jam.

Just got back from a week in Nantucket. They were pretty open, but surprisingly people had masks and kept their distance. We got to finally eat out at a restaurant or two which was lovely, but we did pass on bar that looked packed and absolutely horrifying. Miss me with that shit. Now I’m back home and have no desire to go out unless I have too.

Drink on your stoop like a sane person, people.

There was a good ol’ yeehaw ‘Murican country music concert in East Tennessee yesterday, thousands of bro country fans packed in shoulder to shoulder, sangin’ songs about trucks and beer, no masks. Yeeeeee hoooo!

Now where’s the equivalent Vampire Weekend concert?

Just making the skullfuckingly obvious point that mask trutherism is really kind of a conservative thing, and to try to argue otherwise is really pretty goddamn embarrassing.

Just making the skullfuckingly obvious point that mask trutherism is really kind of a conservative thing, and to try to argue otherwise is really pretty goddamn embarrassing.

It boggles my mind that we’re having this conversation. Since apparently polls are Fake News now (bob’s 2016 example is hilarious–the polling average had Clinton winning nationally by 3% and she won by 2%), just look at the rallies, the states where wave 1.5 is emerging, or Trump’s own god damn words on the matter.

If you are trying to argue there’s not a partisan split on COVID precaution you are utterly beclowning yourself.

JK47:
Just making the skullfuckingly obvious point that mask trutherism is really kind of a conservative thing,

Agreed.

Can we get back to the point you and TNFH keep trying to dodge?

Masks are not the cure to Covid. They’re literally the least you can do. Staying at home and keeping your distance are still the two major guidelines that everyone – not just trump supporters and gen z kids – is collectively ignoring.

You pointed out a trump rally and a country concert. Both indefensible.

I’m pointing out the streets of NYC, the scene in the Hamptons, and every beach in NY, NJ, and CT. I’ll leave out the BLM rallies because I can understand thinking that cause is worth it, even though they’ve been pretty reckless, too.

How do you reconcile the idea that Trump is the reason people are ignoring guidelines when these liberal bastions who take their cues from authority are so openly disregarding the recommendations?

At a dealership’s service center getting my car worked on the other day. Camped outside in a lawn chair while a bunch of people sat indoors for hours not wearing masks because it was merely a “suggestion” in that county. Really enjoyed hearing the self-described redneck moan about having to put one on to talk with the triage mechanics. Didn’t even bother to fasten it correctly. He said to the employee that masks didn’t do shit and we’re basically just looking at an overhyped flu anyway. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his inability to walk the thirty feet from his car to the entrance without panting didn’t exactly bode well for him during a SARS pandemic. But I dunno, I guess there are probably Dems out there who wear “redneck” like a badge of honor.

And I went to a party in Southampton with a wealthy group of Democrats aged 30-50. Everyone’s mask was either a chin guard or decoratively hanging from their ear. I left after the fourth time I heard a drunk idiot laugh “covid is cancelled.”

It’s interesting that Bill Simmons spent a decade publicly excoriating Lebron for the decision when it turns out it he pitched the idea to Lebron’s team (now our front office) and is just pissed off that that the show was taken away from him. Anyhow apparently he said something about the Knicks today?

Hubert
June 29, 2020 at 12:03 pm

“Masks are not the cure to Covid. They’re literally the least you can do. Staying at home and keeping your distance are still the two major guidelines that everyone – not just trump supporters and gen z kids – is collectively ignoring.”

Hubert
June 29, 2020 at 12:16 PM

“I went to a party”

Anyhow apparently he said something about the Knicks today?

That they were Lebron’s first choice. Which is such bullshit.

Yeah, his out is that he only wanted him to do the Decision if he was staying in Cleveland. And after they lost to Boston and that wasn’t going to happen he stopped pushing the idea.

I loved Bill Simmons so much when he was the Sports Guy. His stuff was one of the first things I really enjoyed on the Internet along with a Pente server. Watching the evolution of his career has been pretty interesting and disappointing….

There was a coronavirus hearing in the House yesterday in which the Republicans refused to wear masks. It blew up into a whole thing. Today James Clyburn is saying he won’t recognize members of the committee who refuse to wear masks.

You’re telling me this isn’t a red/blue cultural thing? Something something Fauci in March?

Page 2 was a transformative experience for me. Simmons felt like he was outside of the Boys Club, like one of us (aside from him masturbating into a Red Sox or Celtics jersey). It’s been a long, long time since he’s produced any positive feeling for me.

JK47: There was a coronavirus hearing in the House yesterday in which the Republicans refused to wear masks. It blew up into a whole thing. Today James Clyburn is saying he won’t recognize members of the committee who refuse to wear masks.

You’re telling me this isn’t a red/blue cultural thing? Something something Fauci in March?

I’m agreeing with you that the mask issue is a red thing.

I’m going on to say it is a blue thing to be an idiot who thinks bringing a mask to a gathering of hundreds of people in close physical proximity is safe.

So how is it all Trump’s fault that no one is listening to Fauci when it isn’t convenient for them anymore?

All Trump’s fault? No one’s saying that. I’d say that Trump’s refusal to wear a mask does have millions of people thinking that they don’t need to wear one at all, ever. This is a death cult we’re talking about. If Trump starts painting his face blue as an aesthetic choice, a portion of his base will follow suit.

It’s just anecdotal of course, but the friends and people I know who are “liberal” are wearing masks, those more “conservative” are not. I think education level plays into that somewhat, as my college educated friends and acquaintances pretty much all wear masks.

Having said that, I’ve observed over many weeks that only about 10-20% of locals here in west Knoxville are wearing masks in public situations. This is a very conservative area, but probably more like 60/40.

Also, I think young people around here are wearing masks at about the same rate as older folks. I’ve seen a number of families where the parents are not wearing masks but the kids are. I’ve seen quite a few old folks not wearing masks. And, a lot of very overweight and obese people not wearing, which I find a bit alarming. But, c’est la vie, I guess.

I think education level plays into that somewhat

b-i-n-g-o

at least that was the same thought i had…sadly, i don’t think that’s entirely true though…that “muh freedoms” SHIT runs deep…sometimes ignorance takes different forms…

So how is it all Trump’s fault that no one is listening to Fauci

he spent weeks up there at the podium and in twitter specifically undermining fauci’s credibility in order to get the economy going again – my fellow americans, all you have to fear is death and economic devastation, go forth boldly without your masks…i understand why he did what he did…once again though – he just made the wrong choice, with the wrong words and behavior…

I really enjoyed Simmons’ “The Book of Basketball”, but he’s become such a pompous, condescending dick who lives to troll anyone who’s not a Celtics fan. I also think he’s lost a lot of credibility over the years, mostly because he’s such a blatant Celtics and Red Sox homer and can’t objectively talk about any other teams.

ah, worse sports broadcasters ever:
1). jim grey
2). bob costas

i can’t stand them two so much, hard to remember who’s next on that list…

i just don’t like their voices, but – jim grey and pete rose, and, bob costas with ken norton jr…those interviews were both good indications of the men they are within…

Bob Costas? He’s the worst sportscaster you can think of?

Most of the protesters I saw were wearing masks. And it doesn’t appear that is has caused a second wave, at least in NYC.

I think people can get on their high horse about protesting racial injustice if they want but they should recognize that racial injustice has killed a lot more people than Covid-19 ever will.

Page 2 was a transformative experience for me.

Same. Being able to read Ralph Wiley and Hunter S. Thompson articles on the daily was incredible. Had no idea at the time how good we had it.

Hubert if you care to scroll up on this exact thread, you’ll see that I literally made the point about anecdotally seeing some things I didn’t like among younger folks before you. Mostly related to nightlife in lower Manhattan.

I’ve also participated in protests in which masking was near universal, countless people were distributing masks and hand sanitizer, and distance was kept to the extent possible. So it doesn’t surprise me that there hasn’t been a protest related spike one can point to in NYC, at least not yet.

Generally I think you’re inferring way too much from your anecdotal experiences and equating them with both hard data (again, if polls are Fake Suppression Polls you can also look at which states are experiencing renewed outbreaks and draw plenty of conclusions re: political implications) and specific directives and statements from conservative politicians.

But hey, if you are correct and there really is a phenomenon of young people recklessly thinking they can basically do whatever they want if they’re masked, my advice to them would be to stop believing everything they read on knickerblogger.net 😉

How did you perform the mental gymnastics necessary to read that statement and translate it to “it’s ok to be reckless as long as you have a mask”?

Owen: And it doesn’t appear that is has caused a second wave, at least in NYC.

It doesn’t appear that MAGA idiots going grocery shopping without masks is causing the spike, either. They’re just providing endless hours of entertaining video with their stupidity.

It’s likely the new spike is being caused by the same thing that ignited the first spike: people aged 20-40 who live in cities recklessly gathering in large groups (at bars, restaurants, and now beaches) without social distancing.

Statistically speaking, that subgroup of the population is overwhelmingly blue.

Hubert – It’s clear from the data that young people are driving the latest surge. I don’t know how you get to the fact that those young people are Democrats (or Republicans.)

Undoubtedly though it has been Republican politicians around the country who have led the charge to reopen bars and the economy in general while eschewing the kind of common sense measures you have advocated.

I now live in Bucktown, a tony neighborhood on the Near West side of Chicago, and lived in Humboldt Park (a largely Puerto Rican neighborhood) before that. I see very rich white couples, who are presumably Democrats (this being Chicago), not wearing masks in Bucktown; I also saw older diabetic Puerto Rican men not wearing masks in Humboldt. In the redder suburbs I also see plenty of white people of all ages not wearing masks. While I’m seeing a number of maskless young people irresponsibly congregating in bars and parks in Chicago, Illinois’ case rates are currently declining and have been for a bit now. No one group is clearly to blame for any change in case rates. I think that this issue is not profitably thought about by blaming the mask-wearing behavior of specific groups–Gen Z, Trumpkins, boomers, whatever. What governs the case rate now is the stay-at-home strictures (or lack thereof) imposed by state and local governments. Understandably, cases in FL, TX, AZ, CA etc. are soaring because their stay at home orders were cut way too short and were mishandled in any case.

You should expect large scale risk-taking once stay at home orders are lifted, by significant pluralities in every demographic, because people are not good at assessing risk, especially with poor messaging and enforcement on the part of local, state, and national government; even worse, some people just plain don’t care. And large-scale noncompliance is what I’ve noticed.

At bottom it’s a policy failure at every level of government that allows for the spread of COVID. If we had a properly coordinated contact, trace, and quarantine response led by the federal government, we could be South Korea. Instead, we’re going to be in the epidemiology textbooks (along with Sweden, lol) as an object lesson in fucking up pandemic response. Let’s not obfuscate this reality with nonsense generational warfare and moral outrage porn (though if you really want to, maybe older whites should stop electing Republicans…)

Owen: I don’t know how you get to the fact that those young people are Democrats (or Republicans.)

The data that people aged 20-40 who live in New York City, Dade County, Houston, and Dallas are overwhelmingly Democrats comes from voting records in the 2016 and 2018 elections.

Those are just four of the places that have contributed greatly to the spikes. I didn’t check Arizona.

So laugh at the “mah freedom” crowd all you want. But it’s largely your cohorts who are spreading the disease bc it impinges on their right to day drink.

I know JK wants to think that Democrats are defined by the mask-wearing, NPR-listening crowd (just as Bob likes to think all Republicans are antiracist like him), but the evidence pretty clearly shows there are plenty of idiot mouthbreathers to go around.

Hubert’s “both sides bad” ax is constantly in need of grinding. Today’s no different.

There’s a lot of sharp axes in the “it’s all their fault” camp. Gotta keep up.

Trying to blame the behavior of Democratic individuals on Republican governors is pretty rich, though, so i figured this was a good day to grind.

“The governor opened the bar, so they had to go.” Jesus, I can’t roll my eyes hard enough.

I read an interesting note out of Texas about the hospitalization data.

It seems that every person that enters the hospital for whatever reason is being tested for Covid-19. If you are positive, you are automatically added to the hospitalization list even if you are asymptomatic and there for an entirely different reason. There is no distinction being made between being hospitalized FOR Covid-19 and being hospitalized WITH Covid-19.

The testing makes perfect sense. You want to protect healthcare providers and other patients. But you have to distinguish between those two groups. Otherwise you can’t know if the virus is strengthening, weakening, or staying the same.

Cases themselves are only relevant in light of the impact they are having on people over time. If the number of people that are getting very sick or dying is falling (lower IFR), that’s great news. It means the virus is dying out. We need consistent accurate data to know that.

Page 2 was a transformative experience for me.

If only they hadn’t shut down right after they started my Sports Legends Revealed feature there. 😉

It seems that every person that enters the hospital for whatever reason is being tested for Covid-19. If you are positive, you are automatically added to the hospitalization list even if you are asymptomatic and there for an entirely different reason. There is no distinction being made between being hospitalized FOR Covid-19 and being hospitalized WITH Covid-19.

If that testing was the reason positive tests were going up in absolute terms, then the percent of all the tests that are positive should go down because you are testing people without symptoms that wouldn’t have been tested under old protocols. So it can’t be the explanation for most of the rise in tests.

If the number of people that are getting very sick or dying is falling (lower IFR), that’s great news. It means the virus is dying out. We need consistent accurate data to know that.

Strat, it does not mean the virus is “dying out.” It could mean any number of things, from better treatments to better critical-care capacity or structuring. It could mean more efficient triage.

Holy shit, Reddit finally banned r/The_Donald.

MUH FIRST AMENDMENT THOUGH

Dang, I check in hoping to hear that new feller Deefense’s theory of team building but nah.

> It appears coronavirus victims enter the danger zone once their oxygen saturation levels begin to drop. Many don’t know this is happening until damage is already done. Pulse oximeters are expensive and the better ones are hard to get. Government should require all pharmacies to maintain one and offer walk-in tests (charging something like $2 per use). People who have mild symptoms then wouldn’t have to race to a hospital and the use would be affordable to lower income folks.

> Much talk about masks but almost nothing about goggles. A recent study I believe out of Singapore found a 17% reduced risk of coronavirus wearing a mask and a 22% reduction wearing goggles. I’d imagine tight-fitting ones like swimming goggles are better than Kareem-like models. Swim goggles, N95 masks, and disposable gloves are probably the best practical solution for those at the highest risk.

> Not much info on viral load. If you’re wearing a mask, you’ll likely breathe in fewer droplets. Does that matter in terms of severity of the resulting illness? Seems like an important variable to understand. I would think this would have been simple to test on monkeys.

> 20somethings gonna do what 20 somethins gonna do. We all know that. Just shut down the bars and clubs and keep them shut down. Maybe they go to some forest or park to drink; at least they’ll be outdoors. Most bars go out of business after a couple of years regardless of a pandemic so unfortunate but inevitable.

> Encourage people not to talk in indoor public spaces like subways/buses/stores (obv not restaurants).

> Vitamin D3 -> immune system. People indoors more. Darker-skinned people have naturally low levels. Many studies show low D3 in Covid patients. Correlation or causation? D3 inexpensive – what have we got to lose?

How about Fox News reporting Trump is in a “fragile” mood and might drop out of the presidential race if he feels he has no chance to win. I’m sure its total bullshit but the fact its coming from Fox News is pretty hilarious.

I will bet good money that Deefense is not strat. This is a much younger person.

In addition to Reub, there is another guy who keeps coming back under different names (I just remember “er” who also believed we were all dumb and Phil Jackson was smart.

Also, Strat denied statistics. Deefense uses them poorly. That’s another reub / er trademark.

Hubert wrote: I will bet good money that Deefense is not strat. This is a much younger person.In addition to Reub, there is another guy who keeps coming back under different names (I just remember “er” who also believed we were all dumb and Phil Jackson was smart. Also, Strat denied statistics. Deefense uses them poorly. That’s another reub / er trademark.

Years ago the legendary jon abbey wrote about Max Fisher-Cohen (paraphrased): It’s remarkable that someone as seemingly intelligent and articulate as yourself could arrive at the wrong conclusion with such regularity.

It strikes me the same could be said of Hubert.

The most depressing statistics of all:
(1) 40% of Americans still approve of Donald Trump’s performance
(2) 27% of Americans believe Donald Trump is a religious man

Neptune said he thinks the only solution at this stage is to partition the nation. I agree but it would be very difficult to implement from a geographic perspective. If you’re just looking at red state versus blue state it wouldn’t be that difficult but the real divide is urban/suburban versus rural.

Neptune doesn’t bother me as much as he appears to bother most of you. I think he believes most of what he writes but he’s also the consummate troll. I’m sure he sometimes stakes out a few extreme positions just to troll. I’ll start out like Hubert: I will bet good money that if the nation were to be partitioned and people had a choice where to live, Neptune would not be clicking his horse boot spurs together and saying “There’s no place like home” and be longing for Brownback’s Kansas.

Nah, Deeefense is Strat. No way it’s er, who meant well but did not write as eloquently as Strat. And it’s definitely not reub, whose awfulness as a human being shines through every pseudonym.

“We had a POBO who knew a lot about basketball but he was surrounded by incompetents” is Strat’s catchphrase. It’s probably tattooed on his ass.

I actually like Strat, as much as I bust his balls. Welcome back, amigo.

Fun story: I recently met Jon Abbey, although I did not know it was him. We have a mutual friend, and at an event (pre-covid) we got to talking. A few weeks ago, “Jon Abbey” starts to show up under the “people you may know” section of Facebook and it was him. Very nice guy.

This does not strike me as the same man who was paralyzed by fear of catching covid. Maybe he took my advice on meditation and learned to chill, but this nonchalant attitude about covid is decidedly unstratlike, IMHO:

Deeefense:
I know the increasedCovid-19 caseloads in Florida, Texas, and California are troublesome, but before everyone starts panicking again, some of that is due to both more and more efficient testing. We now know what the high risk activities are, where the high risk zip codes are, have better contact tracing etc.. than earlier in the pandemic.It’s probably not quite as bad as it looks compared to before. We are probably just doing a better job of capturing asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases now than we were 2-3 months ago.That accounts for some of it.

Also, there is some evidence out of Italy that the virus itself may be weakening, That means that even if cases start rising sharply, the hospitalization, ICU patients, and deaths may not rise at the same rate as before.

Finally, since this time around it’s younger people that are coming up positive because we are doing a better job in nursing homes (and unfortunately a lot the elderly are already dead). The combination of even amildly weaker virus with a younger population of positives could be surprisingly benign.

Everyone is focusing on cases, but cases can be almost irrelevant. There are many millions of cases of the common cold every year but no one worries about it.Watch the hospitalizations, ICU, and death data over the next 2-3 weeks (trailing data). That’s how we’ll know if the virus has weakened, whether younger people are handling it as well as expected, whether treatments are improving etc…

And again, this guy is interpretating data poorly. Strat is more likely to say all the data is wrong bc it’s not happening in his neighborhood than to cite data incorrectly.

Come on, Mike K… Pull off his mask like in Scooby Doo and let’s see who it really is!

Hubert:
Also notice how deeefense does not self identify as elderly or at risk

He got sniffed out in about ten seconds last time so he’s probably trying some thicker Clark Kent glasses

Okay, Deeefense.

What are your thoughts about the POBO tenure of Phil Jackson?

We tried partition. My history is a little hazy but I don’t think it ended well.

Hubert, I’d say that it’s easy to resort to personal responsibility but possibly incorrect. Show me some data. I’d say that the fact there were official reopening orders and people were forced to go back to work is likely to be by far the biggest driving factor. A lot of people had to show up at their jobs or lose them.

Can we un-ban Jon abbey and personally ask him back to the forum? He was the soul of this site up until his schism with Mike K over Robert Silverman’s journalistic style. Since Bob “The Animal” Silverman hasn’t contributed here in, like, 6 years, isn’t it high-time for jon to rejoin us?

I would trade him for Bob in a heartbeat, and throw in a protected first to sweeten the pot.

It could mean any number of things, from better treatments to better critical-care capacity or structuring. It could mean more efficient triage.

It could mean a lot of things, but since there are academic papers being written now suggesting that one of the possible things going on in Italy may be a weakening of the virus, that’s something we should be trying to determine. We need the data,

Millions of people get variations of the common cold, but none of us cares much because it’s not very dangerous. We are all afraid of Covid-19 because of the probability of getting very sick or dying. If that probability is falling sharply then the case numbers have less significance.

Pulse oximeters are expensive and the better ones are hard to get.

I bought one. I check my results a few times a week, especially if I cough or sneeze and I’m not sure why. It was $72. There were cheaper ones and more expensive ones. I think it’s a pretty good one, but what do I know. The only thing I am certain of is the Knicks still suck.

***I will bet good money that Deefense is not strat.***

You’re on.

(For my 3 year old who puts her shoes on wrong every time, I told her “do it the way you think is right, then switch it.”… That’s the way I’m going to gamble from now on too— bet the way Hubert would bet, then switch it!)

“Neptune doesn’t bother me as much as he appears to bother most of you. I think he believes most of what he writes but he’s also the consummate troll. I’m sure he sometimes stakes out a few extreme positions just to troll. I’ll start out like Hubert: I will bet good money that if the nation were to be partitioned and people had a choice where to live, Neptune would not be clicking his horse boot spurs together and saying “There’s no place like home” and be longing for Brownback’s Kansas.”

You couldn’t be more wrong. I generally believe everything I write. I don’t mind tweaking you fellows but I believe what I state. I don’t think white people are endowed with the original sin of racism. I just don’t . Etc. Etc.

You couldn’t be more wrong about moving away from the east coast though. You are correct, I would not go to Kansas because the weather sucks eggs there. However I have already looked at realtor.com (a half dozen times in the last month) looking at properties in the Gulfport/Biloxi, MS area. The weather is warm, they have a ton of casinos (I like to play 20-30 hours of poker a week pre-covid), I love seafood and my oldest son will be in Jackson , MS for at least the next 6 years.

Having lived in KY and UT for years I find middle America just fine I have absolutely no problem with it.

Would I miss going to lectures by Ai Weiwei and Paul Krugman at the CUNY Graduate Center and stuff like that, sure …. but I have a rational fear that many on your side will co-opt what would be a Swedish model (a capitalist society with a strong social safety net strong on individual freedoms) for a more Marxian model a little light on the civil liberties for the sake of the Ummah.

I’m fairly sure it’s Strat. He made a conscious effort to change his writing style, biographical details, and even some substantive opinions, but the mask has slipped a few times.

There’s literally one person on planet Earth who subscribes to the theory that Phil Jackson was a great executive who was stabbed in the back in never-specified ways by Steve Mills, but there’s also some other random stuff like this: compare and contrast.

Specifically:

This election should be a 45 state slaughter or worse, but somehow the democrats wound up with a candidate that’s probably less than a year away from needing assisted living. How they can be that dumb is beyond me. If they would have found anyone palatable to the moderate swing states they would have demolished him in every one of them.

If the democrats put up a moderate like her (but not a “has been” like Biden), they would win at least 45 states in one of the greatest landslides in history.

This is an extremely bizarre opinion given the very basics of the electoral map, so like the Phil Jackson/Steve Mills one I don’t think more than one person holds it.

Anyway Strat, instead of insisting on a safe space you should simply confront ideas with which you disagree. Your generation is too coddled. This political correctness stuff is getting out of control. It’s not how the real world works.

Come on, Mike K… Pull off his mask like in Scooby Doo and let’s see who it really is!

There’s no mystery here Hubert. Strat has already told you it’s him. Remember he took the name Robert Lockwood so people would know it was him (he talked about his guitar playing here)? Similarly, Strat has talked about how he values defense more than most other posters here. If you keep this up Hubert, Cronin is gonna start up those poker games with you again.

I think Strat should take a month off from posting. I get he’s cooped up but his recent posting history suggests his mental health could benefit from a break.

jon abbey posted with greater frequency than anyone else and he became a bit unhinged in his attacks on Silverman, ignoring multiple warnings from Mike K. IMO he should have been banned for 3 months and, upon his return, told he would get a permanent ban if he continued. I think a mental health break for abbey at the time would have been beneficial. Sure if he wants to return now, he should be permitted. I’m not so sure he’d want to return; once you break a kind of addiction, many have no desire to go back.

Your generation is too coddled.

just wait til the hair on your ass turns gray TNFH…you’re gonna want a little compassion and understanding too…

there comes a time when the children you raise have better bladder control than you yourself have…that’s a mighty dark abyss of human frailty to have to stare down in to…

oh yeah bron – i can stop posting at anytime…anytime…any time…time…

I wouldn’t go as far as JK47 and say I like Strat per se (he has been pretty ruthless in his assessment of me), but I do think his presence on the board can be valuable at times and I took no pleasure in seeing him pretend to go. I would welcome him back with open arms and no one should pass any judgment on him for not being able to abide by a self-imposed exile.

“Your generation is too coddled”

This just drips with irony…….its actually too delicious…. it just needs to marinate some.

This just drips with irony…….its actually too delicious…. it just needs to marinate some.

Yeah man that was actually the point

Hey Bob, do you genuinely believe that Trump didn’t know about the bounty system when he tried to get Russia to the G7? Or do you genuinely believe that intelligence officers risked their careers to keep him from shocking intelligence that should warrant sanctions as immediately as the Mueller Report’s indictments of the Internet Research Agency should have?

If you genuinely believe the shit you say, I pity you even more than I did five minutes ago.

If Trump doesn’t run again, it’s either some secret health problem or Putin told him not to. I’m sure Putin would rather not have any democrat in office so he might prefer another republican candidate to Trump

I honestly do just love to hear how people defend Trump. I am a fan of gymnastics too.

You couldn’t be more wrong. I generally believe everything I write.

Uh you sort of just made my case.

You couldn’t be more wrong about moving away from the east coast though. You are correct, I would not go to Kansas because the weather sucks eggs there.

I think you may have misunderstood. When I say “partition”, I mean creating two separate nations. So 1 out of 3 of existing Americans would be part of one of those nations. That 33% nation would be comprised of the 27% who think Trump is a religious man plus the neo-Nazis/white supremacists and a hodgepodge of others. Suburban Republicans (Rockefeller Republicans) are not gonna choose to live there. Principled conservatives like George Will and David Brooks are not gonna choose to live there.

So what you’d have is a Christian theocracy with few if any real scientists living there. No real artistic community. Get used to book banning if you live there. And they’d probably limit what you could view on TV as well. I find it hard to believe you would choose to live in such a place.

Such a split would not be without risks. One of the conditions of the break-up would have to be they’d get no nukes. Such a nation that denies science would not be able to survive for very long. They’d become impoverished and unstable over time. Would I want an unstable nation like that at my border?

“Hey Bob, do you genuinely believe that Trump didn’t know about the bounty system when he tried to get Russia to the G7? Or do you genuinely believe that intelligence officers risked their careers to keep him from shocking intelligence that should warrant sanctions as immediately as the Mueller Report’s indictments of the Internet Research Agency should have?

If you genuinely believe the shit you say, I pity you even more than I did five minutes ago.”

I don’t have any Idea and neither do you. Why would you be shocked that Putin would pay Fascists to kill American soldiers? Isn’t that kinda Putin’s job?

Hasn’t Trump put more restrictions/sanctions on Russia than Bush/Cheney when Putin invaded South Ossetia/Georgia and Obama/Biden when Putin annexed the Crimea? I thought so.

Obama is caught on a hot mic telling Putin’s slappy to give him some room til the election and Obama removes missile defense from eastern Europe and Trump is a cuck.

Your righteous indignation is akin to Ins. Renaud saying ,”I’m shocked, shocked to see there’s gambling going on here,” while jamming an envelope into his back pocket.

That’s some Jerry Seinfeld level funny shit……..

Oh FUCK off with that bullshit. Honestly I think you have some level of lead paint consumption these days.

That’s a dodge, a pivot, and a whataboutism, all in a swift combination that would make Sugar Ray Leonard envious

“I think you may have misunderstood. When I say “partition”, I mean creating two separate nations.”

I understand perfectly what partition means. I just don’t agree with you characterization of fly over country. By a lot.

I just don’t think when your Biden/Schumer/ Pelosi crew win this fall (as seems likely today) I don’t think you are going to like what comes of it 5 years from now. If it turns out to be Sweden I’ll be fine with it and surprised.

“Oh FUCK off with that bullshit. Honestly I think you have some level of lead paint consumption these days.”

Well that’s a convincing argument……hmmm…. maybe in CHOP it actually is!

Right, those revolutionaries Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are going to bring about the glorious progressive revolution of every liberal’s dreams and aren’t at all milquetoast capitalists. I look forward to the gay abortions, Green New Deals, mass gun confiscations, reparations and universal health care

bobneptune: Not every Trump supported is a knuckle dragging anti logic Luddite You have a tendency stereotype people needlessly.

…says the hypocritical, science-denier.

thenoblefacehumper: I’m fairly sure it’s Strat. He made a conscious effort to change his writing style, biographical details, and even some substantive opinions, but the mask has slipped a few times.

I guess I didn’t think anyone (other than Giana Dani) would be so desperate to hide their name that they would go to these lengths.

“Such a split would not be without risks. One of the conditions of the break-up would have to be they’d get no nukes. Such a nation that denies science would not be able to survive for very long. They’d become impoverished and unstable over time. Would I want an unstable nation like that at my border?”

What makes you think you and your pals on the coasts could dictate anything like that. Don’t you realize the land based missile silos are virtually all in flyover country. And the rural people have the real guns. And the military? Do you think most of the military is from Greenwich village or Olathe , KS? The SAC bases…. mostly in fly over country. If you are lucky, well let you have a couple of subs so you can be like France and Britain.

“says the hypocritical, science-denier.”

???? I’ve probably taken more university level science (real science) classes than 90% of you and have an abiding respect for the systematic pursuit of knowledge.

Because I don’t agree with your interpretation of social science seems not relevant to me.

The Nets will not have Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Wilson Chandler, DeAndre Jordan and maybe Spencer Dinwiddie in Orlando. They’re six games up on the Wizards right now.

So things are going great so far with the NBA restart. (Even if Durant and Kyrie were already out.)

bobneptune:
“says the hypocritical, science-denier.”

???? I’ve probably taken more university level science (real science) classes than 90% of you and have an abiding respect for the systematic pursuit of knowledge.

Because I don’t agree with your interpretation of social science seems not relevant to me.

I’ve taken university science classes, trust me I know more about science than actual scientists. -Bob

Here’s 3 studies, but what do these authors know they’re just actual scientists doing actual science instead of taking astronomy 101:

“We found that black drivers were less likely to be stopped after sunset, when a ‘veil of darkness’ masks one’s race, suggesting bias in stop decisions. Furthermore, by examining the rate at which stopped drivers were searched and the likelihood that searches turned up contraband, we found evidence that the bar for searching black and Hispanic drivers was lower than that for searching white drivers. Finally, we found that legalization of recreational marijuana reduced the number of searches of white, black and Hispanic drivers—but the bar for searching black and Hispanic drivers was still lower than that for white drivers post-legalization.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0858-1

“Conversely, class 6 (low threat, likely unarmed), which are LIH characterized by an apparent absence of force used by the victim, is the only class in which the plurality of victims is a non-white race (black, non-Hispanic). This finding comports with prior LIH research that finds that black Americans are not only disproportionately likely to be killed by law enforcement but are disproportionately unlikely to present an objective threat of deadly force (as measured both directly by mention of use of force by victim in incident narratives and by proxy through victim’s armed status) [5].”

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11524-020-00430-0#author-information

“high levels of structural racism in the domains of political participation, employment, and judicial treatment were generally associated with greater odds of myocardial infarction among Blacks (Table 3). In models adjusting for individual-level risk factors and state-level racial disparities in poverty, these associations were statistically significant”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4133127/#S11title

“Here’s 3 studies, but what do these authors know they’re just actual scientists doing actual science instead of taking astronomy 101”

My degree isn’t in “stars 101 although the brightest person I have ever been friends with was an astrophysicist who worked at Bell Labs with Arno Penzias.

“Why would you be shocked that Putin would pay Fascists to kill American soldiers? Isn’t that kinda Putin’s job?“

I honestly giggled. You mean new member of the G-7 Vladdie P?

Russian sanctions were passed with veto proof majorities in the Senate. Over Trumps objections that allegations of Russian interference in the election were Fake News.

But yes, he really nailed them with those sanctions.

bobneptune:
“Here’s 3 studies, but what do these authors know they’re just actual scientists doing actual science instead of taking astronomy 101”

My degree isn’t in “stars 101 although the brightest person I have ever been friends with was an astrophysicist who worked at Bell Labs with Arno Penzias.

That’s great Bob, but let’s get back to why you know more about sociology and psychology than actual sociologists and psychologists.

Name is Bron – James Bron:
The most depressing statistics of all:
(1) 40% of Americans still approve of Donald Trump’s performance
(2) 27% of Americans believe Donald Trump is a religious man

Yeah, but those numbers aren’t that solid. I bet if Trump held a press conference, stripped off all his clothes, and then masturbated for all to see while crying out “Rosebud!” that those numbers would plummet to 39% and 25%!

Everybody that has read this thread is a little bit dumber now thanks to Bob.

I’d spend time arguing with him, to point out all the idiocy behind everything he writes, but, really, what’s the point.

(Remind me again why jon abbey was banned but Bob Neptune lives to pollute this site with Fox News Cliff’s Notes everyday…)

“That’s great Bob, but let’s get back to why you know more about sociology and psychology than actual sociologists and psychologists.”

Fair enough…..

“high levels of structural racism in the domains of political participation, employment, and judicial treatment were generally associated with greater odds of myocardial infarction among Blacks (Table 3). In models adjusting for individual-level risk factors and state-level racial disparities in poverty, these associations were statistically significant”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4133127/#S11title

Correlation is not causation? Does this have a familiar ring to “scientists”? Just call me nutty that an observational study which relies on self reporting and doesn’t include minor confounders such as diet/BMI/etc. when evaluating MI’s is just a little specious.

And voter registration is a marker for systemic racism? Jesus, I’ve been discriminated against since 1972 and I didn’t know it…. no wonder my CAC score could be better…. where can I go to apply for disability/reparations?

“Everybody that has read this thread is a little bit dumber now thanks to Bob.”

Yall have been enlightened, ya just don’t realize it yet.

***Yall have been enlightened, ya just don’t realize it yet.***

If what you say is the light, I’m no longer afraid of the dark.

“allegations of Russian interference in the election were Fake News.”

Um…. the allegations were that the Trump campaign actively colluded with foreign nationals to influence the election. No one disputes agents from Russia spent ~ 660K on Facebook ads. The notion that the campaign colluded with Russia and violated any election law was never remotely proven despite years of limitless inquiry.

However someone with metaphysical certitude DID actually collude with foreign nationals to influence the 2016 elections. And who might that have been? Let’s guess????

I could go on but why bother…..

Correlation is not causation? Does this have a familiar ring to “scientists”? Just call me nutty that an observational study which relies on self reporting and doesn’t include minor confounders such as diet/BMI/etc. when evaluating MI’s is just a little specious

Of course, you’d have to explain why all the African Americans from across multiple states have a higher BMI than African Americans in other states and white people within their own state, which seems improbable or evidence of food deserts that exist only in African American communities.

There have also been previous studies, cited within the article, that show self-reporting MI is reliable.

Also, you’d need to invalidate a majority of studies that collectively form the scientific consensus in order to invalidate a theory.

But congrats you’ve managed to engage with the material at the same level as most college psych majors and reddit users, while showing a complete lack of understanding of how science is done.

but there’s also some other random stuff like this: compare and contrast.

Specifically:

This election should be a 45 state slaughter or worse, but somehow the democrats wound up with a candidate that’s probably less than a year away from needing assisted living. How they can be that dumb is beyond me. If they would have found anyone palatable to the moderate swing states they would have demolished him in every one of them.
If the democrats put up a moderate like her (but not a “has been” like Biden), they would win at least 45 states in one of the greatest landslides in history.
This is an extremely bizarre opinion given the very basics of the electoral map, so like the Phil Jackson/Steve Mills one I don’t think more than one person holds it.

Oh yeah, that’s a smoking gun.

Jeez, I guess I overestimated Strat.

Strat, here’s a tip the next time you want to come back:

We really don’t pick up a lot of new people, especially when there is no basketball. So anyone who just shows up with a new name like Deeefense or Knew Your Knicks, we will automatically know it’s either you, Reub, or er. The only way to throw us off the scent is to come up with a believable backstory of how you’re a long time lurker and come up with a reason as to why this particular conversation made you want to break your silence.

Oh yeah Bob, and while we’re at it I want to point out you clearly failed to come up with an explanation for why there’s no racial disparity in pulling over drivers only when they can’t determine race, why the search threshold is lower for minorities than white people, and why black men are disproportionately killed while unarmed and non-confrontational.

And then keep posting as Deeefense for a little bit.

Actually, you should get into an argument with yourself. Call out deeefense for having a stupid position and then have deeefense call your new character names and storm off in protest of his treatment.

That would be fun.

“But congrats you’ve managed to engage with the material at the same level as most college psych majors and reddit users, while showing a complete lack of understanding of how science is done.”

Scrambles to find approving nod gif

bobneptune: despite years of limitless inquiry.

I would hardly describe the inquiry as limitless. Justice was obstructed all along the way, and Mueller himself said so,

Strat: I bought one (pulse oximeter). I check my results a few times a week

Early in the pandemic, a 73yo diabetic on that stricken cruise ship who tested positive started live blogging his battle with the coronavirus. After about a week in quarantine, his oxygen saturation dropped to 92% and the Japanese doctors told him they would have to put him on a respirator if it went any lower. He remembered some deep breathing exercises he learned years earlier and started doing them. He said the next day his oxygen levels started to rise and he believes that’s what turned the tide.

Not long after that, NYC ER doctors noticed many patients had mild shortness of breath but very low oxygen levels (characteristic of people suffering from altitude sickness). Tragically, medical guidelines required intubation of patients below certain oxygen thresholds when hi flow oxygen therapy would have been more effective.

Why am I posting this? The pulse oximeters are very useful as an early warning sign but I think everyone should be doing some form of deep breathing exercises regardless of whether they have Covid symptoms. There are many effective methods out there. I chose to adopt Wim Hof’s approach because Dutch scientists had conducted a controlled clinical trial of people who were following his program of deep breathing/cold therapy. A toxin was given to his group and none fell ill. Everybody in the control group fell ill from the toxin.

I started his deep breathing program (not the cold therapy) on March 20th and have done it every day. I’m now able to hold my breath for a minute longer than at the start. Also the number of breaths I take per minute has dropped. My pulse rate has dropped. I also feel calmer and less stressed. Bottom line is I think deep breathing exercises afford some preemptive protection should you get the virus but prob also have some positive effects regardless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tybOi4hjZFQ

er was incapable of being articulate. His was more an ESPN.com Facebook-linked comment. There’s no possible way that he suddenly learned to use capital letters and punctuation. Also, 95% of er posts were about locating Melo’s used jock so he could bury his snout into it.

“allegations of Russian interference in the election were Fake News.”

Um…. the allegations were that the Trump campaign actively colluded with foreign nationals to influence the election.

Both allegations were made. One allegation was that Russia interfered in the US election and the other was that the Trump team colluded with them. The Trump team denied both allegations. Trump himself famously agreed with Putin that there was no Russian interference. But they were obviously happy that Russia was helping them win instead of being upset at Foreign meddling. Either way we have a Russian stooge as president; or should I say a “running dog”, the communist term for being a stooge?

Dear God, please cut thread…

Hey, Maccabi Tel Aviv is back in action, and Avdija is shooting it well. If we aren’t sold on any of the pgs in this draft, I wouldn’t be against rolling the dice on Deni.

There is some guy who has been hyping Avdija for a year on Twitter. I’d rather have Vernon Carey Jr. He seems unremarkable to me.

I’ve been doing 45-90m a day of walking. Really makes a difference on mood. Just wish I could sleep 8 hours of restful sleep a night. My brain will not let me sleep in.

Yeah, walking has been amazing. With podcasts.

Reading a book called Why We Sleep that has been quite revelatory.

Apparently surfing twitter for 2 hours before dozing off has some ramifications.

Even if you give Trump all possible benefit of the doubt when it comes to Russia, it’s becoming more clear that he goes into phone calls with Putin completely unprepared and gets his clock cleaned every single time. Which makes sense, really. Vladimir Putin has been on the world stage a long time and is an extremely cunning operator, while Donald Trump is a flimflam artist who read “How To Win Friends And Influence People” a long time ago and thinks that’s all he needs to know.

You-know-who will tell you “Trump’s tougher on Russia than any president evar and whatabout Obama” but unless you believe Carl Bernstein is a Deep State™ hack and Kayleigh McEnany is a bold truth teller the picture that’s emerging is very clear. Trump doesn’t need to “collude” with Putin to get his ass kicked by Putin. Putin owns him just based on the sheer fact that Putin is smart and Trump is dumb. The reporting on this is very damning.

I know, I know. FAKE NEWS1!!!!11!! You can always just “fake news” it all away.

Why We Sleep

I got this from the library a few months back but it got lost in my queue.

My go-to walking podcast has been from the Lawfare team. They put out so much content it’s hard to keep up. I get frustrated with the institutional faith on Rational Security — their hosts have advocated for some real feeble responses to the brazen corruption of DOJ under Barr, like letting the Flynn case go because of the “dangerous precedent” of a judge refusing to summarily dismiss a guilty plea (like, uh… what?) — but their analysis tends to be reasoned and well-informed. Stay Tuned and The Daily are the obvious ones.

We get the audio version of The Economist in addition to the print edition, which is great when I’m on the road for work, but their dumb app only lets you listen at 1x, 1.5x or 2x speed, the last of which is positively unlistenable, so it either takes 10 hours to get through, or 6.6 hours with limited retention. Really annoying.

Woj:

After positive tests for the coronavirus within the traveling party headed to Orlando, the Denver Nuggets have closed team’s practice facility for several days, sources tell ESPN. Facility was locked to players and staff starting Saturday, and could open again later this week.

So things continue to go great for the NBA restart…

So things continue to go great for the NBA restart

speaking of restarts, we could use a new thread this one takes too long to scroll through on the phone

I have a hard time with Michael Barbaro. I tried listening to his last one with Vince Champion and had to stop it. His interviewing style and questions are not for me. He also pours a little too much honey down his throat before taping, – the voice is just over the top. A little ASMR is ok but his voice makes me giggle.

I love Stay Tuned and some of the Vox podcasts and then some niche ones. Memory Palace is cool.

I am really struggling to understand why the death rate is so much lower now than it was in NY. It seems plausible the NBA could get through this without anyone dying. And it seems plausible the players would be safer playing than they would be at home, or at least as safe.

I warmed up to it over time. I’m glad someone coached the “mmhm” and “uh huh” out of him. A couple years ago, during the mid-episode self-advertising bits where they try to get you to subscribe to NYT, one of the producers actually addressed it, like, “He’s just being an engaged listener!” Yeah, sure, but also, could you not?

My buddy wants to make a $20 bet with me on the winner of playoffs. I said I think I’d rather bet $20 that the playoffs never finish. I wonder how much damage will be done to the brand if they have to cancel the Finals after Game 1. Or worse, if LeBron or another superstar tests asymptomatic positive before Game 7. Talk about an asterisk.

I’m more loyal to The Daily than I probably should be. It’s pretty hit or miss. Vox’s Today Explained is a little better IMO. I also like The Weeds and some episodes of The Ezra Klein Sow from them.

Why is This Happening from Chris Hayes is really good. He’s so much more talented and interesting than he can display in a cable news slot.

As far as sports go, I think Dunc’d On is the closest thing to a basketball related podcast that reaches the level of detail in the typical knickerblogger thread.

alsep73:
Woj:

So things continue to go great for the NBA restart…

I wasn’t against the restart at first, but the actual plan they decided upon is extremely flawed and the implementation has revealed further complications that necessitate the league outright excluding players or entire teams. Ignoring the other issues in the plan, I’d be fine if the NBA actually shuts down teams and players, that test positive but I doubt they’re willing to do that to the extent needed.

The goal shouldn’t be to crown an NBA champion, but merely providing entertainment to sports fans in a way that protects the health of the players. If that means random third stringers are the only ones healthy enough to play a 3v3 game or shutting down Lebron right before the finals, so be it.

I’d prefer it if they open several smaller camps and just televise scrimmages between the teams. Or even one team running a scrimmage amongst their healthy players. But even that may be asking too much.

Clearly the Florida plan is a bust.

Now three Pelicans tested positive for the virus, but Griffin wouldn’t say which players, hmm…

The NBA was the most likely sport to have a reasonable reboot. If the NBA is this fucked up already, MLB and the NFL might as well just call it a wrap.

“Let’s reopen a bunch of shit even though it’s a terrible idea” seems to be the official motto of 2020 though so whatevs

I also like The Weeds

I did it for awhile back in 2018 or 2019, but found it too bullshitty polisci seminar/wonkish for my liking. There was an episode on the “two-track” presidency that I found more inventive/speculative than descriptive. Not a very good thing to be when there is so much concrete shittiness to analyze in this administration.

Worse yet, the overuse of “like” as a filler word killed any interest I had. It’s, like, always, like, like this, and I, like, can’t, like, stand it. If it’s gotten better on that front, please let me know, because it has the podcast on permanent “no” for me.

Now three Pelicans tested positive for the virus, but Griffin wouldn’t say which players, hmm…

I’m not sure the NBA restart plan is a bust yet. We’ll see how many players overall test positive. Some of those tests may be false positives. It’s hard to say how many, estimates vary from 0% to 2% to 8% of Covid test are false positives. Since the NBA is going to do retests to confirm the first tests for everyone, this will be valuable data. It’s still likely that some or all of the positive tests will hold up, and it likely they will thus identify asymptomatic carriers of the disease. The whole point of the pre-Orlando testing is to find players like that. If that is successful, one hopes no one actually in Orlando will get the disease.

And I would note that if, say five to ten percent of the players can’t play because they are positive, that’s something like one player per term on average. Going into the usual playoffs of the past, many teams have one or more injured players who can’t play. Losing players to Covid seems similar in principle to losing players to injury, so I don’t see this as critically different than past playoffs.

I think the difference is that as soon as one player tests positive everyone else on the team is then presumed to be positive.

It’s not like if one guy blows his achilles out everyone else on the team does too.

What do you do if Jevale Mcgee tests positive in the fifth game of the WCF? I don’t know, how quick can they turnaround tests?

Owen, that’s not my impression. The players have presumably been self quarantining at home without meeting other players on their team before now. Certainly there haven’t been any team activities, although I know that doesn’t prevent socializing. Anyway, the NBA is testing everyone on the 22 teams. If there were three positives on the Pelicans, presumably the other 14 players were negative So I think there is no presumption of positive or negative, there is just testing and then repeat testing.

Also, when injured players are ruled out in the playoffs, it’s because of a physical inability to play. If a player tests positive but is asymptomatic, it’s a completely different thing.

I mean, Jordan had “the flu” and still went out and wheezed all over his teammates and opponents because he was able to put the ball into the hoop. Twenty-some years later and he receives praise for what he did (while hungover).

No one gave a shit about the safety of others, and it would’ve been no different in 2019 had a player suffered from flu-like symptoms but was well enough to dribble and shoot for 48 minutes. This is completely different.

bobneptune: Sweden

bobneptune:
“Sweden has a death rate per million lower than Belgium, the UK, Italy and Spain and just slightly higher than France.”

Oooph if its one thing I hate its academic dishonesty. You know that Sweden is a country with a far lower population density and lower rates of international travel than those other countries, you’re comparing apples to oranges and you know it you dishonest cretin. Sweden’s rate as compared to its neighbors Denmark, Norway and Finland (countries that much more similar in most respect, since I have to spell that out for you, you imbecile) is between ~5 and ~12 times higher. They’re no where near reaching herd immunity, the most recent data indicates ~7% of the population (albeit higher in more populated areas) had antibodies. No. Where. Close. I hate people who make this argument because adopting that strategy would be (and is going to be in the states that are choosing to put their heads up their asses) catastrophic.

I don’t mind if you want to be a contrarian jerk. Please try to do it in a way that doesn’t add to the number of dying patients I have to see daily.

“Sweden’s rate as compared to its neighbors Denmark, Norway and Finland (countries that much more similar in most respect, since I have to spell that out for you, you imbecile) is between ~5 and ~12 times higher.”

Yeah, was going to say the same thing but I have destroyed enough threads.

I guess if everyone goes into the bubble clean and no one comes into the bubble after, that works. I don’t know how that happens though. I don’t know, maybe they can make it work.

I am definitely enjoying watching the Premier League.

@JordanClarksons
keep the cameras rolling in orlando though, its bout to be a cold ass 30 for 30 in a few years

I think he means this is about to be a fiasco that will one day be the subject of a documentary that will reflect poorly on many involved.

Also, when injured players are ruled out in the playoffs, it’s because of a physical inability to play. If a player tests positive but is asymptomatic, it’s a completely different thing.

Of course it seems completely different, but the practical effect is the same as an injury. A player can’t compete for his team due to an unpredictable event. Teams are going into the playoffs with many fewer injuries than usual because of the long layoff since the last games, which has allowed players to heal. Instead of injury cases now teams have Covid cases. They have to compete with whoever is available, just like in any set of playoffs.

I think he means this is about to be a fiasco that will one day be the subject of a documentary that will reflect poorly on many involved.

I agree with Jordan Clarkson.

Russia isn’t a serious economic or political adversary anymore. Russia’s GDP is less than California’s and Putin has no intention of lobbing any bombs our way. Russia has no real political expansionist goals anymore. Putin and his oligarch cronies may be corrupt, but they are more free market oriented than much of the left in this country. They just want to make money and keep their border secure from NATO.

Putin is worried about a handful of things.

1. He doesn’t want NATO or any missiles near his border (hence the action in Ukraine when we started interfering in elections and politics there).

2. He wants access to oil markets and to be able to do business around the world.

Our entire Russia policy is based on a lie to remove Trump from office.

We should be doing business with Russia. We need Putin to help us combat China. That’s our REAL economic and political adversary. The media and left turning Russia and Putin into the villain has been one of the worst polices possible. Now instead of it being the the US, Russia, India, and Europe against China, it’s Russia and China doing business together as adversaries to us. Trump is a moron, but his instincts on Russia and China were correct. It’s left wing media and war mongering neocons that hate Trump that have made the world a much less safe place trying to drive Trump out of office with all these Russia scams. Putin sucks, but we can do business with him on radical extremism in the Middle East, against Chinese expansionism, and trade. It’s insane to drive him into the hands of China so he can salvage his economy all over Trump. It’s fucking dumb.

Sweden made a debatable moral calculation.

They knew going in that if they didn’t lock down as hard as other countries they’d get more cases and deaths up front than they would have otherwise, but with less damage to the economy. The hope was the population would regulate its own behavior enough to mitigate some of the short term health care burdens (and it has).

In the end, what they are gambling is that X deaths in 3 months is better than X deaths in 6-9 months as long as you don’t totally destroy your economy and country.

They don’t believe the cases and deaths will be much different either way. It’s just the timing that will be different. They are taking the case and death pain up front to limit the short and long term economic pain.

So Deeeefense, do you think the “media” is just making it up that Russia interfered in our election? Or that Russia considers us so much an enemy that they put bounties on US soldiers? Or that they send assassins abroad to kill people they don’t like? Or that they steal foreigners money whenever they can get away with it (read Red Notice” if you don’t believe this). They are acting like an enemy, and by your statement they are relatively small economically and thus not likely to be very helpful geopolitically if they were our ally. We should stomp on them as much as possible until they stop bad behavior. That’s the only language they understand.

alsep73:
I think he means this is about to be a fiasco that will one day be the subject of a documentary that will reflect poorly on many involved.

We’ll have no shortage of those.

Sorry, did someone on this blog just write that Putin and Russian kleptocrats are more free-market than the American Left?

You’re making Neptune look reasonable, and he’s as devoid of basic fact as anyone I’ve ever dealt with.

Deeefense:
Sweden made a debatable moral calculation.

They knew going in that if they didn’t lock down as hard as other countries they’d get more cases and deaths up front than they would have otherwise, but with less damage to the economy. The hope was the population would regulate its own behavior enough to mitigate some of the short term health care burdens (and it has).

In the end, what they are gambling is that X deaths in 3 months is better than X deaths in 6-9 months as long as you don’t totally destroy your economy and country.

They don’t believe the cases and deaths will be much different either way.It’s just the timing that will be different.They are taking the case and death pain up front to limit the short and long term economic pain.

They kinda missed a key variable:

If you’re an interconnected economy, and everyone you’re connected with shuts down, your economy is going to tank, too.

You can make a case that everyone should have made the cold-hearted decision Sweden (and the US in 1918) did. But it’s foolish to say Sweden should have acted independent of everyone around them and expect to have a unique outcome.

I greatly enjoyed an earlier fantasy about Bob being a Russian teenager living in a suburban basement of Moscow, hired to troll Knickerblogger, but clearly I had the wrong bot.

Of course, there could be two. Seems overkill for this site, however.

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti played in Moscow in 2011. We were all pretty weird looking at the time, but I was the least weird looking. I look kind of generically European. The other freaks in my band stood no chance. We were there for about five days, and over the course of that five days, the four other guys in the band all got shaken down for every penny of cash in their pockets by “police.” And not all at the same time either, it was several separate incidents.

The next time we played there I almost got electrocuted. There was a loose wire hanging from the ceiling at the venue and our local handler who was standing right next to me grabbed it to move it out of the way and she got blasted with god knows how many volts of electricity. They had to take her to the hospital and they told her that she should “probably” regain use of that arm in a few months.

On the taxi ride to the airport our driver pulled over and tried to start a fist fight with a guy in another car, but the passenger of the other car got out and was a giant behemoth MMA heavyweight looking guy and he just tossed our driver aside like a rag doll.

The kids who came to our shows were lovely but fuck that place. Russia can eat my ass.

Deeefense:
Sweden made a debatable moral calculation.

They knew going in that if they didn’t lock down as hard as other countries they’d get more cases and deaths up front than they would have otherwise, but with less damage to the economy. The hope was the population would regulate its own behavior enough to mitigate some of the short term health care burdens (and it has).

In the end, what they are gambling is that X deaths in 3 months is better than X deaths in 6-9 months as long as you don’t totally destroy your economy and country.

They don’t believe the cases and deaths will be much different either way.It’s just the timing that will be different.They are taking the case and death pain up front to limit the short and long term economic pain.

Thanks Bob’s alias, I know what they did and why they did it, I never debated that. I just pointed out that their deaths are much higher than their neighbors, they are nowhere close to achieving herd immunity based on the most recent antibody testing results, and as others have pointed out, they didn’t really stop their economy from slowing at all as compared to the rest of the EU. In fact, the architect in of this plan in Sweden has said it was likely a mistake. But keep on saying we should have done what they did, ignoring that we have a higher population density, fuller ICUs (because our wonderful capitalist system designs them to be ~80% capacity at baseline), and a more comorbid population on average. Just please don’t come to a hospital I work at when you get sick.

“and as others have pointed out, they (Sweden) didn’t really stop their economy from slowing at all as compared to the rest of the EU.”

HaHaHaha… This is the problem when the Greek Chorus chimes in and have zero idea what they are talking about. As this charts shows Sweden did very well as compered to the majority of EU countries:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Feurope%2Fcomments%2Fgzk99a%2Fgdp_growth_rates_in_eu_member_states_in_the_first%2F&psig=AOvVaw3g8yzC3xD-gxwWhcEFK0f6&ust=1593643022140000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCNDu3YbNquoCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

Hello my fellow New York Knick fans. I am a longtime lurker of this site. I have finally decided to engage in social intercourse with you all in the hope of having the chance to communicate with my favorite all time poster – GEO.

That is truly one amazing individual. We could all be better human beings by following in that guy’s path.

Now that we have come to the end of this thread, I, like my favorite person in the world, feel a confession of some sort is due. Well, here you go:
I’m a vile man, I confess it. My crimes and sins are beyond counting. I have lied and cheated. Gambled and whored. I’m not particularly good at violence, but I’m good at convincing others to do violence for me. You want specifics, I suppose. When I was seven, I saw a servant girl bathing in the river. I stole her robe. She was forced to return to the castle naked and in tears. If I close my eyes, I can still see her tits bouncing. When I was ten, I stuffed my uncle’s boots with goat shit. When confronted with my crime, I blamed a squire. Poor boy was flogged and I escaped justice. When I was twelve, I milked my eel into a pot of turtle stew. I flogged the one-eyed snake. I skinned my sausage. I made the bald man cry! Into the turtle stew, which I do believe my sister ate.

The burden of remorse we all carry can now be lifted for a time.

Well if Geo’s new friend can write of his days at Canterbury, I’ll sum up the full totality of all of Bob’s posts with this here Heroic Couplet, which is of course the only poetry form possible to sum up Bob:

Ah took a class, it wuz a science course,
Ah knew a guy, he wuz a astro force,
Ahm alwuz right, Becuz ahm never wrong,
Y’all are fools; ah looks good in a thong.

Regarding the NBA restart – I read about the Denver Nuggets closing their facility, and also Jokic testing positive over in Serbia.

If you test as asymptomatic (which Jokic was at the time of the positive test) does that mean your body will still develop antibodies to the virus?

geo’s super secret alternate account:
Hello my fellow New York Knick fans. I am a longtime lurker of this site. I have finally decided to engage in social intercourse with you all in the hope of having the chance to communicate with my favorite all time poster – GEO.

That is truly one amazing individual. We could all be better human beings by following in that guy’s path.

Now that we have come to the end of this thread, I, like my favorite person in the world, feel a confession of some sort is due. Well, here you go:
I’m a vile man, I confess it. My crimes and sins are beyond counting. I have lied and cheated. Gambled and whored. I’m not particularly good at violence, but I’m good at convincing others to do violence for me. You want specifics, I suppose. When I was seven, I saw a servant girl bathing in the river. I stole her robe. She was forced to return to the castle naked and in tears. If I close my eyes, I can still see her tits bouncing. When I was ten, I stuffed my uncle’s boots with goat shit. When confronted with my crime, I blamed a squire. Poor boy was flogged and I escaped justice. When I was twelve, I milked my eel into a pot of turtle stew. I flogged the one-eyed snake. I skinned my sausage. I made the bald man cry! Into the turtle stew, which I do believe my sister ate.

The burden of remorse we all carry can now be lifted for a time.

You had me going there for a minute…
🙂

Oh, and a good candidate for Post of the Year!

If you test as asymptomatic (which Jokic was at the time of the positive test) does that mean your body will still develop antibodies to the virus?

It is possible, yeah. My brother was asymptomatic and he has antibodies.

Can this site be coded so that the moment the words “Greek Chorus” are posted, a new thread is automatically triggered?

“I’m a vile man, I confess it. My crimes and sins are beyond counting. I have lied and cheated. Gambled and whored. I’m not particularly good at violence, but I’m good at convincing others to do violence for me. You want specifics, I suppose. When I was seven, I saw a servant girl bathing in the river. I stole her robe. She was forced to return to the castle naked and in tears. If I close my eyes, I can still see her tits bouncing. When I was ten, I stuffed my uncle’s boots with goat shit. When confronted with my crime, I blamed a squire. Poor boy was flogged and I escaped justice. When I was twelve, I milked my eel into a pot of turtle stew. I flogged the one-eyed snake. I skinned my sausage. I made the bald man cry! Into the turtle stew, which I do believe my sister ate.”

I wasn’t sure if this was written By Hemingway or Charles Manson…..

But for the record…. you are supposed to gamble and whore. The milking your eel in the turtle soup part….. not so much.

“It is possible, yeah. My brother was asymptomatic and he has antibodies.”

Its almost certain. Antibodies are the immune system’s response to a specific antigen, in this case the Corona virus. The only other way to have antibodies would be if he had been previously transfused with convalescent serum. You could certainly have an infection that did not produce any noticeable symptoms. From what I have read that is the majority of the cases.

oh my goodness, it’s grrm…better yet – the imp…

so, had to kill time while god daughter finally caught up to me in season 4 of the wire

ir’s funny, there’s maybe dozens of series which I’ve never watched before, wanted though to go over familiar ground…started with a band of brothers, then did season 2 thru 6 of a game of thrones, going through seasons 1 thru 3 of boardwalk empire

alright then – end of the thread, soon to disappear words…

*** major spoilers ahead ***
things I’m most looking forward to when asoiaf kicks off again:
– valyrian armor
– finally ice spiders, grrm is such a tease
– firewryms
– valryia, past and present, those chimeras from a world of ice and fire were pretty creepy, also want to read the beginning of the faceless men
– nymeria’s and arya’s connection
– jaqen h’ghar, the red priest on the boat
– more good times on the silence

More people may be immune to Covid-19 than we currently believe even if they don’t have anti-bodies. And in even better news “IF” (to be determined) those people also cannot spread the virus it has huge implications for the herd immunity level.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53248660?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_custom4=86995290-BB91-11EA-B29C-B2E64744363C&at_medium=custom7&at_campaign=64&at_custom1=%5Bpost type]&at_custom2=[Service]&at_custom3=BBC Science News

This sounds a lot like this paper from several months suggested.

https://www.nicholaslewis.org/why-herd-immunity-to-covid-19-is-reached-much-earlier-than-thought/

The text in the BBC article doesn’t support the headline. In fact, to quote something late in the article “ This doesn’t necessarily get us any closer to herd immunity, though, according to assistant professor Marcus Buggert, one of the study’s authors.”

And the paper you cited uses a lot a unverified assumptions built into a mathematical model to support the authors pre-formulated conclusion. If the math is complicated enough you can always get the conclusion you want by varying the assumptions. For example, the author assumes that people who are more susceptible to the virus are proportionally more infective. No evidence is cited to support this, and actually the existence of people who spread the virus without facing symptoms implies the opposite. It seems like the authors personal opinion written up as a scientific paper. When something like this survives peer review, let us know.

This doesn’t necessarily get us any closer to herd immunity, though, according to assistant professor Marcus Buggert, one of the study’s authors.” .

What they are saying here is that if those that are more naturally immune also do not pass it on, then it WOULD change the herd immunity math. They just haven’t proven it yet. However, it’s seems fairly logical and intuitive to assume that if you are immune on your own, you aren’t passing it on because you either aren’t sick at all or you are much less sick, much less contagious, and passing it on way less frequently and with lower viral loads. Now they just have to prove it.

That’s the assertion made by the second paper by looking at data in Sweden. He is suggesting that’s there is evidence of natural immunity and not passing it on.

So have other statisticians that have looked at data in countries with various degrees of lock down. They said the virus tended to burn itself out quicker than expected even without lockdwns suggesting high levels of natural immunity.

At the very least, there is reason for optimism even though most people seem to enjoy doom and gloom (especially on the left).

One of the dumbest posters to ever hit the site. Bravo.

However, it’s seems fairly logical and intuitive to assume that if you are immune on your own, you aren’t passing it on because you either aren’t sick at all or you are much less sick, much less contagious, and passing it on way less frequently and with lower viral loads. Now they just have to prove it.

Except that lots of evidence suggests that people who aren’t sick can and do pass the disease on to others.

Alas, poor CHOP…. I knew it , Horatio, a town of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.

One of the dumbest posters to ever hit the site. Bravo.

Uh yeah, I have no interest in getting into this one.

Look out, everyone! Bob’s got a new straw man on fire! Quick, quick! Look! Look before you start reading about Trump ignoring, or simply not reading, intelligence on a bounty program that targeted U.S. military personnel! Quick, look, before you actually open up the Mueller report and read anything from it!

You had me going there for a minute…
🙂

Oh, and a good candidate for Post of the Year!

Me too. He got rid of the elipsis and I was thinking OK this is not GEO. Then the narrator in italics reached the word “castle” and I laughed out loud.

Look out, everyone! Bob’s got a new straw man on fire

New????????? You guys were telling me how wonderful it was 2 weeks ago…..

First, thanks TNFH for the odd piece of basketball shoved into this thread. As post #470 or so, I’ll give you may favorite quote of the day (in the hopes that it will burn an end this thread and we can start anew), by someone who clearly doesn’t know anything at all about anything:

What must we conclude from all this? At best, our commander in chief is utterly derelict in his duties, presiding over a dangerously dysfunctional national security process that is putting our country and those who wear its uniform at great risk. At worst, the White House is being run by liars and wimps catering to a tyrannical president who is actively advancing our arch adversary’s nefarious interests.

Susan E. Rice (@AmbassadorRice), the national security adviser from 2013 to 2017 and a former United States ambassador to the United Nations.

Ingmarrrr: Me too. He got rid of the elipsis and I was thinking OK this is not GEO. Then the narrator in italics reached the word “castle” and I laughed out loud.

Well, to be honest I was joking there. The new screen username pretty much was a giveaway that it was geo or GEO…
🙂

Deeefense:
We should be doing business with Russia. We need Putin to help us combat China. That’s our REAL economic and political adversary. The media and left turning Russia and Putin into the villain has been one of the worst polices possible. Now instead of it being the the US, Russia, India, and Europe against China, it’s Russia and China doing business together as adversaries to us.Trump is a moron, but his instincts on Russia and China were correct. It’s left wing media and war mongering neocons that hate Trump that have made the world a much less safe place trying to drive Trump out of office with all these Russia scams.Putin sucks, but we can do business with him on radical extremism in the Middle East, against Chinese expansionism, and trade.It’s insane to drive him into the hands of China so he can salvage his economy all over Trump. It’s fucking dumb.

Goddamn, this guy…
BTW, anyone has any questions on anything related to China can ask a normal fucking Chinese guy like me aside from what you are told. At least I can provide another perspective, not like your “whoever is softer on China loses” talking heads.

thenoblefacehumper: This thread could use some basketball content, so read about Mason Jones who I’ve mentioned as a possibly intriguing 2nd rounder or UDFA. I also like Trevelin Queen.

I like Queen a lot. Not as high on Jones but sure, why not? fwiw it seems like this draft is weak at the top but deep with flier prospects. There should be rotation players available well into the 2nd round. Now who those players will be is the problem. Queen seems like the kind of player that is a few tweaks away from being really good. Physically he looks NBA ready.

the virus tended to burn itself out quicker

Thanks for the scientific explanation. See, the virus is basically a matchstick. Eventually it’ll just burn itself out.

At the very least, there is reason for optimism even though most people seem to enjoy doom and gloom (especially on the left).

Ah yes, the left. That’s why my wife’s Republican boss coughed just feet away from an HR person’s face “as a joke.” That’s why my counterpart in Utah was told explicitly that if he visits a customer with a mask on, he’ll be made fun of. That’s why another one of my wife’s Republican coworkers came down with flu-like symptoms, came into the office anyway, was sent home, and came back the next day, no mask on, to pick up his laptop during office hours, casually walking through the office like it was nothing. That’s why another of her Republican coworkers said he would pull down his mask to sneeze if he were forced to wear one in public. Because they just don’t even believe in doom and gloom. So fuck you, everyone else. I’m not wearing a mask because I don’t want to look like a fucking pussy. That’s the left, right?

Go fuck off.

So the new WH excuse for BountyGate is that it was in the PDB, but since nobody told him aloud about the bounties, he wasn’t “briefed” about it because, like a truly engaged leader, he doesn’t actually READ the PDB that is given to him.

Furthermore, the people who summarize them are too afraid to tell him things that will upset him because they are concerned that they will lose influence, so they refrain from telling him stuff like this but put it in the PDBs to cover their asses because they know he’ll never read it.

Sounds like a not at all dysfunctional way to run foreign policy, amirite? This is surely the best way to do things. Glad homey takes the job so seriously.

And that is the MOST GENEROUS possible explanation.

Rex Tillerson: “[Trump] doesn’t like to read.”

Gary Cohn: “It’s worse than you can imagine … Trump won’t read anything — not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.”

Katie Walsh, Deputy Chief of Staff, as written by Michael Wolff: “Here, arguably, was the central issue of the Trump presidency, informing every aspect of Trumpian policy and leadership: He didn’t process information in any conventional sense. He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-­literate. He trusted his own expertise ­— no matter how paltry or irrelevant — more than anyone else’s. He was often confident, but he was just as often paralyzed, less a savant than a figure of sputtering and dangerous insecurities, whose instinctive response was to lash out and behave as if his gut, however confused, was in fact in some clear and forceful way telling him what to do. It was, said Walsh, “like trying to figure out what a child wants.”

Anonymous, A Warning: “[W]hen Trump first took office, briefers were told not to send lengthy documents or summaries to the Oval Office. […] Officials were then told to just bring documents in PowerPoint format because Trump “is a visual learner.” Then, they were told to slim down the PowerPoint decks because “the president couldn’t digest too many slides.”

Maybe they’re all liars! But… wait.

Donald Trump: “I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page. That I can tell you.”

Mike Pompeo: “According to Pompeo, Trump has asked for his briefings to include as many visuals as possible—maps, charts, pictures, videos, and “killer graphics.” “That’s our task, right? To deliver the material in a way that he can best understand the information we’re trying to communicate,” Pompeo said. Trump has asked for his briefings to include as many visuals as possible—maps, charts, pictures, videos, and “killer graphics.” “That’s our task, right? To deliver the material in a way that he can best understand the information we’re trying to communicate,” Pompeo said.”

Two Portland notes from Royce Young, one applying to the larger problems of the restart, the other that will give all of us PTSD flashbacks:

Damian Lillard on his confidence in players following all the protocols of the bubble: “My confidence ain’t great. Because you’re telling me you’re gonna have 22 teams full of players following all the rules? When we have 100% freedom everybody don’t follow all the rules.”

With Trevor Ariza opting out of the restart, and the returns of Jusuf Nurkic and Zach Collins, Lillard thinks it’s possible Melo becomes the Blazers starting 3. “I could see us having a pretty big lineup out there.”

I’ve been waiting for a new thread but maybe I’ll just post this and then the inevitable flood of responses will close this thread up.

I’ve been away from Knickerblogger for almost a month now. 4 weeks ago late in the afternoon, our newborn daughter suddenly stopped breathing. We noticed pretty quickly, applied CPR and she got to the hospital very quickly. But she went long enough without sufficent oxygen that she suffered severe brain damage. After holding on and fighting for ten days, she passed away.

My wife and I are devastated. She was our first born and we really just wanted her, no other kids. We moved across country to Omaha to be closer to her family bc of her (also new job and cost of living). We had so many plans for the future for her and for our family. They were modest plans. We didn’t need or want much. Just her. And now she is gone.

I want to make it clear. She did not die from Covid. We aren’t exactly sure what happened. She was perfectly healthy and then she just stopped breathing. We think it was SIDS but normally that happens at night and you wake up the baby is dead and in our cause it happened during the day and we just happened to catch it in time for her to get revived.

This grief is unbearable and we are only at the beginning. We are doing ok all things considered. Life still has meaning. We still love each other and we will pick up the pieces and move forward. But we will never be the same.

Life is fucking fragile and these arguments we get into over politics, people being cavalier about covid or dismissing police brutality. There is loss and grief and suffering happening all around us. Why would we want to do anything to possibly contribute to it? Why deny people if they say they’ve experienced suffering.

If wearing a mask might help, wear a mask. It could save someone else’s life. That means a family not destroyed with grief. People are dying alone. We were lucky. They let my wife and I stay with her. Others not so much.

hi swift…my sincerest condolences for your loss…yourself and your wife are in my thoughts and prayers…

Damn, swift, thank you for your eloquence in sharing such gut-wrenching news…heartfelt condolences to you and your wife. Yet another reason to hope for the Knicks to finally turn things around.

Anyone who has kids knows they dread the thought of outliving their kids. The notion of an infant dying suddenly must be unbearable suffering.

Please seek out appropriate profession help as no human’s psyche is designed for such suffering.

Swift and abundant, that’s a heartbreaking story and my heart goes out to you. I hope you and your wife can be strong and support one another. My condolences too.

Oh, swiftandabundant, I’m so so sorry to read this.

Thank you for sharing the news, and thank you for the greater context you have framed it in. Very powerful.

So, so sorry, Swift. Thinking of you and your wife during this terrible time.

That’s awful, swift, my condolences to you and your family. I’ll let some other folks get some condolences in and I’ll start a new thread later tonight.

Swift, you and I bicker like schoolchildren but my deepest and most sincere sympathies are with you and your wife, for the rest of our time here together. I hope you find some light at the end of the darkness. Honestly have tears in my eyes for your loss.

Swift, I’m so sorry. You and your wife will be in my thoughts. Do something nice for yourself today, if you can.

Swift, there are no words adequate to describe the deep sorrow I feel for you and your wife. May both of you find the strength to persevere through this tragedy and find some solace in the love and respect you have on this site.

Thank you, everyone. I’ve wanted to post about it for a few days now. I’ve never met any of you IRL but I’ve come here everyday for the last 10 years and post all the time…I consider you all to be family and friends, which is so strange but what makes this place so wonderful.

I’m trying to stay team optimist but this is a punch in the gut. My whole life has been so easy but there has always been this creeping though in the back of my mind that one day the other shoe would drop. I just thought it would be something that happened to me…like I would get in a car wreck and be paralyzed or get some terminal disease. I never thought I would lose an infant, my first born child. I would give anything in the world to have her back. I would give my own life for her to be here right now.

Its so weird. It doesn’t even feel real at times. Like my wife and I have just returned to our prebaby life except now everything we used to do seems so meaningless. Thank god for our two silly cats who are also very empathetic and can sense the loss. Everything makes me sad. My wife and I went downtown to walk by the river and we saw a family with 2 little girls and literally turned into a puddle of tears. This shit is so hard. Friends and family are being great but they can never really know.

Its also so hard bc of the pandemic. Everything is closed. We can’t go to a concert or take a little trip or even just do a spa day. We just have to sit here with the loss.

We are going to start zooming with a support group but I wish we could do it in person. But I think that will help. And we are going to start therapy soon. We are giving ourselves some time though.

Living in that hospital and getting to know the nurses during the darkest of times, I left that hospital appreciating what they do and the care they provide even more. Anger is a part of this process. For me its manifesting with the people not wearing masks. Just wear one. People are dying. Grow up and stop being so cavalier with life.

Swift, I am so, so sorry. I’ll be thinking of you and your family. A support group and therapy sound like great ideas, and as you know you should always feel free to use this community as a resource to the maximum extent possible.

Swift,

I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to share with us. Not infrequently I’ll notice myself say “I was talking to my friends the other day ” when referring to KBlogger discussions, a group of people I’ve never met in person but probably communicate with more than those I have. I probably started lurking here 10-15 years ago before posting sporadically, and now I post almost every day.

I don’t need to tell you how terrible your loss must be, you already know. But it’s certainly important to spend time with family and support networks. Really try to put effort into working on your relationship with your wife because you both need it right now. Find things to make you two happy.

It’ll be difficult but remember the terrible feelings will get better over time. I’m sure everyone on this board is more than willing to offer you support, whatever form that takes. Don’t be afraid to ask for anything at all.

Swift, I am so, so sorry for your loss. What a tragedy, and in a time of no respite from anything. I can only say that we are here for you, and please, please, please keep visiting and posting often, as that is how this family can in some tiny minuscule measure help.

Swift I am so sorry for your loss. I can’t even imagine the pain you’re dealing with. My sincere condolences to you and your family.

My condolences swift. I can’t imagine what your going through. Thank you for trusting us enough to share.

As a most time lurker and sometimes poster I have great love for this blog and an odd affection for the people on it for over a decade. I am a father of 2 young children. They are my whole life amongst a sea of craziness, difficulties and life’s twists and turns. Cannot fathom what it would be like to lose one. My heartfelt condolences, Swift.

I lost my father at the beginning of quarantine. Not covid related. In these circumstances it has been excruciating for my mom. Your situation is that x1000.

Take good care,

Chris

I am very, very sorry swift. I’ve had some long nights in the NICU, but not this. A support group seems critical, even Zoom’d. I know I would likely avoid it, and it would be a huge mistake.

Dear God, I am so sorry to hear that, swift. It’s ok to break down, man. Probably even good for you. Be well.

I cannot imagine the depths of your loss, Swift. Sending you love. Thank you for opening up and allowing us to join with you in your grief.

Comments are closed.