StrangeSox

People are relying a lot on the mail for things right now thanks to COVID, including vital things like medication, as mentioned in my post.

Tropical storms? Godzilla?

Meanwhile, nearly 1/4 of all mailed prescriptions in Cook County have been delayed. Either this is deliberate sabotage of a vital government service for political reasons, or it's simply a staggering level of incompetence. Either way, it's putting people at risk.

re: the plasma thing, my understanding is that there's barely even enough to do clinical trials let alone have it be a widespread treatment.

hell of a day for Zoom to crash nationwide

To that point, you're absolutely correct:

lol much less funny though:

Assuming the Oxford studies get enough data and the data looks good, absolutely. They're on track to know their initial phase 3 results by January I think. Not sure about Moderna. On the plasma stuff, FDA says this:

The short answer is that if they cut this corner, we won't have enough data to know if the vaccine is safe or effective.

Right? Today was supposed to be my wife's first day of in-person learning. Until 2 1/2 weeks ago, that was still the plan! Now it is (thankfully) fully remote learning starting next Monday. The HS district where we live was even more short notice after the IDPH put out new guidelines last week. They completely shifted gears over the weekend. So instead of prepping and planning and training and deploying since May or June, they've got a couple of days or weeks to scramble.

Sounds like administration failed to give staff proper training on new and unfamiliar tools.

The thing that's always made me roll my eyes is that pitchers have never had a problem making a big dramatic show after a huge strikeout or something, but then act like huge babies and try to physically injure a batter who dares celebrate a big hit.

Tatis did nothing wrong, baseball dinosaurs go away

who ever could have seen this coming

Metro East has reached 'mitigation level' and will face new restrictions in Illinois. Here's the tough new crackdown: https://capitolfax.com/2020/08/16/state-announces-mitigation-effort-in-metro-east/ Once a region meets resurgence criteria, mitigations will be implemented. For Region 4, mitigation measures taking effect August 18, 2020, include the following: • Meetings, social events, and other gatherings are now limited to the lesser of 25 individuals or 25 percent of overall room capacity • All bars, restaurants, gaming facilities, and casinos will close at 11 pm, matching the newly imposed closing times for St. Louis • All reception halls closed • Party buses not allowed to operate • Reservations required for each party at restaurants and bars, and no congregating indoors or outdoors • Indoor tables reduced to six people or less • No dancing indoors • Removal of bar stools at bars to help prevent congregating • Tables should continue to be six feet apart I'm sure this will do the trick!

It's a shame they didn't realize the inevitable outcome before causing even more community spread.

Good polling outlets release all their data and methodologies so you can see what the raw responses were, how and why they weighted the responses, and all the crosstabs of how they get to the topline numbers of "Biden xx% Trump zz%". I think generally though they take the answers they get as honest. How many people are going to spend 10+ minutes on a call with a pollster just to "trick" them out of the thousands they call? Here's a random recent example from Quinnipiac of Florida in July of a variety of questions. https://poll.qu.edu/florida/release-detail?ReleaseID=3668

Surveys are usually 800-1500 or so people total. Odds are you won't be called. Sampling sizes for accurate representation are based on statistical formulas. Whenever you see an "NBC" or "Fox News" or "CNN" poll, it's a poll paid for by that organization but conducted by an independent 3rd party polling firm that will poll all sorts of different things for all sorts of companies for market research. There are challenges with getting enough responses these days now that people mainly have cell phones and screen unknown numbers. Some outfits are trying out online polling with some success, but that's where they reach out to people to take a legitimate poll, not the obvious campaign push polls or website polls you might choose to find and respond to. They have to make some assumptions as to what an accurate sample really is. You don't just call 1000 random people and then take that as your result. Something that the state-level polls didn't do well on in 2016 was that they didn't weight their samples by education enough, and that ended up mattering. How many D's responded vs. how many D's are in that area/the country? How many R's? How many of your respondents have a college degree? Race/gender etc.? You can follow some twitter feeds like https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls who just tweet out the latest polls regularly. But for actual scientific polls, it's not something you go out and sign up for since that really skews your sample responses--people who are motivated enough to go find a poll probably aren't an accurate cross-section of the general public. All that said, I'm not sure how big of a "shy Trump" vote is hiding from the polls out there right now. Trump supporters don't really seem to be shy about it these days.

Those are the claimed reasons. Not sure why we should give political appointees and their spokesmen the benefit of the doubt. The recently installed postmaster general is a big Trump donor. Again, just yesterday, the President publicly stated that he's refusing additional USPS funding in order to stop mail voting, which currently polls heavily in favor of his political opponent. We've already seen issues with mail in ballot processing this year in New York. It seems prudent to investigate and prepare for these things proactively rather than after it's too late.

Mail is piling up and deliveries are taking longer. This is intentional in order to stop mail voting. The President of the United States said so publicly yesterday.

Very good news if it can be confirmed.

Cutting hours, imposing work rules that make sorting less efficient, removing sorting machines. Mail is piling up and the USPS is being deliberately destroyed during a pandemic. The House passed another relief bill back in May.