What I Learned from the Latest Debate

12/16/2015

Million of these on line. This from Michael-in-Norfolk.

If the Mets were playing, I wouldn’t have watched these mugs at all.
Trump has what the ball players used to call “the red ass.” He hears slights and does a quick sizzle. Just what we want in a chief executive.
Fiorina did not mention “body parts” or otherwise incite gun-toting lunatics. How statesmanlike of her.
Bush may have been put on earth to annoy Trump.
Rubio still looks like El Joven reaching for the water bottle.
Kasich remains the most adult person in that clown car. Not saying much.
I never believed in reincarnation until I saw Joe McCarthy back on earth as a sneering Texan.
I agree with about 12 percent of what Paul says. Otherwise, he’s a terrier yapping at the passing parade.
Christie still bragging about being a leader after blowing off a needed railroad tunnel years ago. No shame.
Carson declined to pick between two candidates’ points. Sounded like me when the teacher called on me in class. “Um, what?”
Come to think of it, if the Yankees had been playing, I would have watched them.

bruce

12/16/2015 09:17:56 am

George,

pretty much dead on.

I watched for a few minutes. quite incredible.

I made the same comment you did about cruz during a trip to paris a few years ago.

I was standing in line for sainte chapelle in paris talking to a guy from, I think, Alabama. he got very offended. I told him I didn't say he was like him, just looked and sounded like he could be a close relative.

on second thought tho. I was reminded of him when I saw Trumbo last week.

bruce

bruce

12/16/2015 09:35:32 am

looks like i need an editor in my dotage. pretty sure my first mention of paris would've sufficed.....

Brian Savin

12/16/2015 09:29:45 am

Kudos for staying with it, George. I lasted an hour. When they took a commercial break promising much more I got scared off to bed.

bruce

12/16/2015 09:54:13 am

George,

this'll show you that you've been wrong about the Donald.

and it's by a reputable source.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428506/donald-trump-good-guy

bruce

George Vecsey

12/16/2015 11:50:39 am

You mean, this Conrad Black?

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/02/black200702

Birds of a feather.

GV

bruce

12/16/2015 12:38:42 pm

george,

that would be the one. the great canadian press baron who gave up his citizenship to become a lord, but then went to jail in the states and....ah. screw it.

i read the story when it was in VF, but i'll have another look later on.

bruce

Ed Martin

12/16/2015 11:44:32 pm

The Ringling Clown College is suing for defamation.

George Vecsey

12/17/2015 07:53:38 am

Ed, where are the great PR people of yesteryear? What a grand PR suit that would be -- for giving bozos a bad name. Some of the thousands of clown-car mockups on the web have great nicknames for these people. GV

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

What I Learned from the Latest Debate

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