Brussels Times: Belgian scientific base in Antarctica engulfed by Covid-19 despite strict measures

• All personnel fully vaccinated? Check. ☑
• Frequent testing? Check. ☑
• Quarantined over the incubation period? Check. ☑
• Covid-19 outbreak anyway? Check. ☹

We can’t stop this.

This is how we know Star Trek is fiction:

This kind of thing is how humans break computers in that world. Here in reality, it’s how computers break us humans.

(from [xkcd])

… they have to be injected into somebody to have an effect. This is an obvious, common sense, undisputed fact. Why are so many people of influence and power (most disappointingly Gov. Gavin Newsom) acting like it’s not?

Today, in this age of online data, we have the advantage of having the actual numbers a click away. As of today, 31,161,075 doses have been distributed, of which 12,279,180 have been administered, leaving 18,881,895 doses chilling out in the freezers. Despite all the public clamor to administer the vaccines, 60% of the doses made for US use so far are still just sitting there in inventory, despite us being over a month into the rollout.

And over at the New York Times, they deem it it important enough to extend their morning newsletter to … try and convince people that they should go get vaccinated:

Right now, public discussion of the vaccines is full of warnings about their limitations: They’re not 100 percent effective. Even vaccinated people may be able to spread the virus. And people shouldn’t change their behavior once they get their shots. These warnings have a basis in truth, just as it’s true that masks are imperfect. But the sum total of the warnings is misleading, as I heard from multiple doctors and epidemiologists last week. “It’s driving me a little bit crazy,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown School of Public Health, told me. “We’re underselling the vaccine,” Dr. Aaron Richterman, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said. “It’s going to save your life — that’s where the emphasis has to be right now,” Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine said.

No, it can’t save my life if you won’t let me get it. If everybody in the US was offered the vaccine right here, right now, you’d have 200 million takers, maybe even 250 million. Getting people to want the vaccine is not the problem right now!

Professionals at Pfizer, Moderna, and BioNTech did incredible, amazing, invaluable work, developing astoundingly effective vaccines in record time, and their work will save millions of lives. And it’s being wasted by political-driven delays when every day that vaccination is postponed another 4,000 Americans die needlessly. I can only imagine how infuriating this deadly government obstruction must be to the vaccine developers, hearing about thousands, then tens of thousands of American lives that could have been saved if only all 30 million doses they made so far had been administered right away.

The corrosive effects of the lies from the government officials in Sacramento and DC are despicable and deserve discussion and long-overdue corrective action, but that their “plan” was “do no planning and let the insurance companies, medical facilities, and county health departments deal with it on their own” is deplorable, and that they’re still refusing to get those vaccine doses off the shelves and into people’s arms is unconscionable.

A: At least one more day.

We now have some poll numbers, and hence a more analytical take on the matter at 538.

How long am I going to keep beating this drum?

Anything less is not justice. Every delay further harms this nation.

Seditious conspiracy — 18 U.S. Code § 2384

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

The power to pardon insurrectionists and to command the armed forces needs to be removed from the leader of the seditious conspiracy now.

So, what now?

Let’s take a look at the Constitution of the United States of America, Twenty-Fifth Amendment, Section 4.

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President. …

Well?

Source (from Freefall by Mark Stanley)

While SCP-1471 (see an animation regarding it if you like) is intended to express creepiness (stalking in particular), it strikes me that it is a very good analog of chronic illness. Bad decisions and/or bad luck lead to the creation of this … thing that is now going to be with you forever.

It’s just … kind of … there. Always. But because it’s always there, always with you, you pay it no mind. You don’t have to learn to not let it bother you, that just happens, because our minds adapt. (Which is not saying that we ever come to ignore it.)

Among those with it, there’s immense variation in how severely it impacts one person versus another. And even in the cases where it affects people the exact same way physiologically, there are big differences in how different people respond psychologically.