StrangeSox

Here's some napkin math illustrating why a big jump in transmissibility is so scary. You go from a baseline of 129 deaths to 978 with the new variant from just a month's worth of infections starting with 10k cases.

NIH scientists developed the spike protein in the Moderna vaccine. The federal rollout of the vaccines, just like with testing and ppe, has been a huge disaster with no clear end in sight. But sure, yeah, they've done a bang up job.

Yeah he's a propagandist who isn't worth taking in good faith

Another report out on the UK variant finding increased R0 of +0.4-.7 That's a substantial difference in how fast/easily it can spread. No known biological mechanism at this point, thankfully no apparent increased mortality. More transmissible is worse than more deadly with all other things being equal, though. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-42-sars-cov-2-variant/ The South African variant spreading nearly as fast but having existing immunity evasion is more troubling but reports are still early on that one.

The supreme court has also fully endorsed partisan gerrymandering, so entrenched political minorities are that much harder to remove.

Very little support showing efficacy and durability of waiting twelve weeks for the booster, though. Use what was actually tested on the timetable it was tested. Don't start screwing around and potentially making things worse. They're already bad enough. If you want to see if this works, do it as an actual trial with regular schedule and delayed doses and closely monitor to see what things actually look like. The UK has already taken a number of big gambles on this pandemic and lost every one. Edit: a number of discussions from smart people with relevant expertise. Big one is that it'll further erode already shakey public confidence. Ongoing vaccine rollout disaster and now corruption deSantis did similar at The Villages in Florida.

Means testing inevitably screws some people over and undermines broad political support. You're also trying to do it as stimulus to spur demand rather than direct relief, so even if you don't "need" it but you spend it you're still accomplishing the goal. Better to send everyone a check and recoup them from the wealthy with taxes on the backend. Cleaner, cheaper, simpler.

It's a clear way of demonstrating the continued failure of our government, especially at the federal level, that has led to massive death and suffering. Will it continue at this pace? There is reason to hope it won't. But that doesn't excuse the ongoing failures that are causing more people to die every day. I don't think mass death events are hilarious. I don't think repeated failure to take available steps to prevent more deaths is hilarious. I think the people who continue to fail and continue to get thousands of Americans killed every single day should be held accountable.

Yeah, it's a clear way of demonstrating that the current pace is exceedingly slow.

Glad the people in charge get to skip to the front of the line. Truly, we'd be lost without their leadership.

Open'r up

Lol

I hope Pace and Nagy are "sleeping with the fishes" [being courted by the Dolphins]

wow turns out means-testing is actually garbage and screws over people for no real good reason, who would have guessed from every other time something gets means-tested

It "came at the cost of UI" only because of our failed political class, though. We can do both. We need to do both.

some of the best day hiking we've ever done! The federal government can afford to do both, so do both.

Governments pay for many goods and services. They already cover education from K-12 or even pre-K-12 in many places. Saying "hey let's cover another few years for education that can help keep us competitive economically but which is currently indebting our younger generation at unsustainable levels" doesn't seem like some sort of crazy, insane idea. Public colleges used to be much better funded and consequently much more affordable to attend.

We ought to be funding all forms of post hs education or job training, imo.

Academia has been gutting professorships for a long time now. More and more teaching is done by TA's and poorly paid adjuncts. Tenure-track positions are withering away. All of that extra tuition money isn't going into their pockets. It's going to admin and increasingly lavish campuses.