This is the unfortunate truth of a lot of US labour laws and why I prefer it up here in Canada. I know with certainty that my coworkers (even university coops!) have access to good healthcare and have provincially mandated vacation time. I work hard in my position and carry a fair amount of responsibility that I've accrued over the years - but I don't want any of my coworkers, no matter how junior and no matter how short their stay at this company may be, to struggle to live a healthy life.
I could be wrong, they could be from anywhere in the world, but it seems more likely that they’re American than European if their life is dedicated to work
No, it's not a secret. I put a recording of the explanation (in my native language) on YouTube and got 1 like and no comments. I just don't want to collect more downvotes here. It just an idea, not even hypothesis.
It's a great little editor and I'm using it all the time.
I just wish they added a VBR profile for encoding h.264 video. Every time I make a clip with OpenShot, I have to run the final result through meGUI, converting CBR to VBR, reducing the size of the file quite a lot, while quality remains the same.
The default h.264 profile in meGUI would be perfect. Constant Quality mode, Quality = 23, AVC High Profile. Looks the same as high quality CBR but the video is many times smaller.
> there are billions of dollars of economic incentives for suppression of early treatment, because vaccines are still under EUA that could be questioned by the availability of therapeutics with decades of safety data
Conspiracy theory. Rather old and naive, I should add.
Zero Hedge is a cesspool of pseudo-science when it comes to COVID. The best data source can be twisted into complete nonsense when folks have political agendas - so namedropping JHU in that context is just empty rhetoric.
Well, maybe it's not "empty" rhetoric, since clearly some naive folks are persuaded by it.
What you're doing is called a character attack. I agree with you about zero hedge, but that doesn't change what you're doing. A character attack is usually used when one doesn't have a counterpoint against the point being countered.
"There are financial incentives to sell vaccines" might be a conspiracy theory, but anyone not considering this reality a factor is delusional. I don't think they're selling us snake oil and scaring us into getting it, but there is definitely a motive beyond (but probably including) public health and that is to recoup the cost of development of the vaccine, at the very least.
If you don't make it clear that bullshit is bullshit, if you pretend like it belongs to the realm of sanity, then the debate becomes a farce - some kind of Monty Python absurd comedy.
Sure, but "there are financial incentives to push vaccines" is not bullshit. It is very real, and probably a non negligible factor in how the PR around them is being handled. Not to say public health is not a factor, probably the largest factor, but profit is always a factor as well and in this case would be a very real perverse incentive.
Is there a better analysis of cross-region variations in Delta cases and deaths in India, which identifies non-Ivermectin factors for the difference in outcomes?
> I stopped following news since being fully vaccinated some time ago
You're mostly fine, but you should not get disconnected completely from the news.
Vaccine efficacy seems to wane slowly (faster for old people). Probably before the 1 year mark you should get a booster shot.
The Delta variant is skewing some of the initial estimates, for the worse.
The odds that you will catch the virus but have no symptoms or repercussions are still rather substantial, but definitely less than 50% (estimates vary). So there is a chance that you can still transmit it. Please wear a mask indoors in public places.
Before Delta, it was reasonable to resume almost all activities after being fully vaccinated.
I don't believe that is true any longer. There are too many breakthrough cases, presumably driven by a much higher viral load that can overwhelm defenses. (The figures I have seen are 1000x in the upper respiratory tract of infected people; I haven't been following well enough to know what the increase is in actually expressed viruses. But it's going to be a lot, and viral load has proven to be a very significant factor for transmission.)
Vaccinated people are still mostly fine, even with Delta. You just don't get the close to 100% protection against severe disease, it's a little lower than that. It's still pretty good protection against severe cases (talking about mRNA vaccines).
What's clearly disappointing is that the vaccines are not very good at preventing Delta from spreading. I have not seen good estimates, but the numbers floating around seem to indicate the vaccines (again, mRNA) are still at least 50% effective against spread, but nowhere near 100%. That's the biggest gap right now.
It is true that viral loads are orders of magnitude higher with Delta. That is still compatible with all the statements above.
Sorry, I was only disagreeing with the summary "You're mostly fine [because you are fully vaccinated]". I agree with everything else you said. My only disagreement is that I read "you're mostly fine" implying that it's still ok to resume (or in this case continue) regular activities. In my opinion, that is definitely no longer true if you live in or near an area with overburdened hospitals, and at the very least changes your calculations in other areas because it's again important to reduce transmission.
Before Delta, I felt like reducing transmission was good but not that important compared to the disadvantages of isolation. Delta shifted the tradeoff back in the other direction. How much is debatable, but personally I feel that quite a few activities that were ok, aren't anymore. I'm definitely still doing more than pre-vaccination, though.
To be honest, Livermorans sounds a bit more natural to me than Livermorons. And it does appear that some people from Livermore call themselves Livermorans, like "Cheryl is a native Livermoran" [1].
I think you miss the point: it’s a friendly in-joke that the people who stay in that area are “morons”.
You see this in places where there isn’t much to keep you there except your profession, typically government. I’m aware of Livermore and Lemoore, but I’m sure there are others.
No, this has nothing to do with those of us that choose to live here being stuck because of our professions, what the heck gave you that idea?
Everyone I know who lives here LOVES Livermore. It’s decent commute distance to most places in the Bay Area, is surrounded by beautiful hills, 40+ wineries, an award winning downtown, and the friendliest people of any biggish California city I’ve lived in.
It’s a joke, but related to the awkward sounding and looking term Livermoran.
There is a LOT more keeping the 100k of us in Livermore than our professions.
My apologies; I grew up half and half between Marin and Fresno and that’s what I recall for both.
If I mistook where the term up north came from then I do apologize.
Edit: I think an issue was with my explanation. The people I know in both areas actually love it; people outside the area think they are stupid for living there. Therefore there is some appropriation of the pejorative.
Once again, if that’s mistaken in reference to Livermore then I apologize.
But hey, "freedom", yay!