Watch until the end. https://t.co/mzU4zu3YOv
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) April 17, 2020
“When I said ‘smother your children in their sleep and their sell their organs for money to buy crack cocaine,’ I meant ‘puppies are cute.’ I apologize for the misunderstanding. I blame the Oxford comma.” https://t.co/wyslKjANfX
— TBogg (@tbogg) April 17, 2020
There will be no mass cosplay in San Diego this summer as #ComicCon gets upended by the coronavirus pandemic. Its organizers are looking for a 2021 return. https://t.co/PkShreq7pL
— AP Entertainment (@APEntertainment) April 17, 2020
Cosplay related…
Russia will postpone the Victory Day parade, looks like. This year, Hitler wins, everyone.
— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) April 15, 2020
Where in the news system can I go to find out today how much closer we moved yesterday to meeting conditions for quarantine to sensibly end? Or did we lose ground? That would be news I could use. Instead I have 13 accounts of some wild-ass thing he said. https://t.co/MQH0mT5q1b
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) April 16, 2020
WereBear
One thing you can rely upon with the Republican party these days: they will unerringly choose the worst possible path, set out on it, and scream at anyone who suggests otherwise.
We have to work with what we can reliable expect, and that quality is not going to change…
WereBear
Also, can we view Trump’s apparent determination to kill as many of us as possible as a Hitler-in-the-bunker scenario?
Baud
@WereBear:
I wonder if the fact that decent people cannot go outside to protest will hurt us or force us to use more productive methods.
eclare
@WereBear: I think Cuomo finally realized that yesterday.
NotMax
Start the weekend with rousing anthem.
:)
Edmund Dantes
https://twitter.com/chrisnoessel/status/1251392814333587457?s=20
A modest proposal.
eclare
On Monday I start a six month contract, originally supposed to be in the office, now remote. I’ve never worked from home before, never worked for this company before, have no idea about processes, this will be interesting!
raven
My niece’s husband owns the company that does the “building wraps” for comic-con and other big events like the Super Bowl.. He is in real trouble.
OzarkHillbilly
Today in WI election news:
ThresherK
Since this is an open thread: I watched a video about the hurdy gurdy, ended up listening to this very short street organ snippet.
I challenge my fellow jackals to name that tune.
J.
Regarding the Danziger cartoon, I would think the four horsemen would welcome Trump. More souls for them.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Infectious diseases are infectious.
Who knew?
OzarkHillbilly
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Nobody! Nobody thought this could happen! One day it will just go away, like magic!
Bex
Re the Danziger cartoon, an interesting take on the Book of Revelation. https://www.abc.net.au/religion/catherine-keller-and-john-thatamanil-why-we-hope-this-is-an-apo/12151922
WereBear
@eclare:
It was a pivotal moment. You can’t manage Trump with flattery: that’s another lie.
I guess that was our Fort Sumter since this Civil War is virtual: let’s stop pretending.
Cheryl Rofer
I give the demonstrations maybe a week.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bex: Thanx for that. Thought provoking.
leeleeFL
@J.: He and his followers have no souls, don’t be nonchalant with the plot, hm!?
Nicole
@WereBear:
And after 3 Congressional bailout bills, none of which included any general aid for the states, I think he’d had enough. I was glad to see the vent; his going after Schumer and Gillibrand was getting a bit old for me. They’re in the minority, and McConnell has made it clear he’s content to see the world burn as long as his piggybank is full while everything is going up in flames. So yeah, yesterday’s briefing was nice to see.
MagdaInBlack
@Bex:
Thank you
OzarkHillbilly
Bad Choices Make Good Stories – Finding Happiness in Los Angeles (the source for the above chicken quote) had this in it’s Goodreads summation:
Cracked me up, not least because it was reminiscent of my first marriage.
Gin & Tonic
Approximately 20% of all current known cases of COVID-19 in Kyiv are from the Pecherska Lavra monastery, which is under the control of the Moscow Patriarchate. Yet they are still encouraging their faithful to gather for Easter celebrations tomorrow.
MattF
I do wonder what the Orange Toddler will try next. Pooping his pants?
debbie
@WereBear:
It’s the new Voter Suppression, dont’cha know?
cintibud
Happy Retirement to me! Six to Eight months early!
Well actually I’ve been furloughed. 90 days. Along with a number of co-workers. The company will pay my health insurance during that time. After that only a month until Medicare.
Stunned, trying to look at this as a good thing and not get depressed, this should work out OK. Kinda of a shitty time to retire though, working from home was going well and keeping me busy. I was one of those people who thought their job was very safe but the company is cutting down to a skeleton crew.
The company says they want us back but I may get used to being retired after 90 days
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
More numbers on the SBA PPP recipients – 83% of the initial $$$ went to 27% of the applicants. I’m pretty certain that the EIDL numbers are even worse.
Amir Khalid
Anyone for Taiwanese baseball? (CNN link.)
OzarkHillbilly
@MattF: Pretty sure he’s expert in that.
oldgold
Dorothy A. Winsor
@cintibud:
That’s a big transition to hit you suddenly. I’m glad they’re covering your health insurance anyway.
debbie
I want to know why there isn’t a noisier pushback from every Dem politician and official about Trump’s highjacking of supplies and why we haven’t found out where they were diverted to and then handed out to.
OzarkHillbilly
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I saw an article (wish I could remember where) that the recipients were disproportionately in red states. Made me a little hopeful for you.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Gin & Tonic:
The Moscow Patriarchate has always been overloaded with raging assholes.
There’s good reason why the Bolsheviks treated them harshly.
Geminid
@Amir Khalid: Thanks for the tip. I can’t watch, but it’s good to know people are still playing baseball.
MattF
@debbie: Bear in mind all the IGs that have been fired. Makes any accusation baseless.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@OzarkHillbilly:
Texas got disproportionate help, but we’ve had some assholes protesting because Andy Beshear has been proactive, thoughtful, competent and empathetic in running a solid shutdown – something that enrages Teatards.
cintibud
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thanks. Not really “retired” as I have applied for unemployment since there is a chance I will be asked back – and I might go back.
Taking money out of savings instead of putting in is very anxiety producing, a total change. I’m not even sure how that works yet. Guess I’ll figure it out
MattF
@Gin & Tonic: Hmm. And the Russian Orthodox Church has always been an arm of the Russian government. However, stupidity and fanaticism are always a possibility.
Nicole
@cintibud: I’m sorry for the abrupt change in circumstances. Sending hopes that after the 90 days furlough, you get to choose whether you want to continue early retirement or go back for your last few months.
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
DeWine’s starting to talk about a careful reopening. It will be “interesting” to see how he proceeds amid the noisy protesters and small business owners. I am confident the reopening will be fucked up because this place is full of fucked up people.
Snarki, child of Loki
@J.: “Regarding the Danziger cartoon…”
Inaccurate cartoon. Trump’s should be facing the other way on the 5th horse.
debbie
@MattF:
Yeah, no IGs are a problem. Still, politicians could be lots noisier. It shouldn’t all be on the governors.
raven
@cintibud:
The Retirement Maze: What You Should Know Before and After You Retire
MazeDancer .
Snow. Yes, we have snow.
April is the cruelest month…
Bye-bye, Daffodils.
Been out to feed the birds. Knock the branch-bending load off my juvenile pine tree.
Cats, hearing all the food pouring, greet me with “But where’s our 2nd brekkie?”
Have to settle for watching birds
NotMax
@debbie
Restaurants can serve only appetizers?
//
debbie
@NotMax:
I demand photos of sports bars’ patrons practicing social distancing!
JPL
@Cheryl Rofer: Less if the news media ignored them. They’ll start seeing the results of their follies in seven to fourteen days.
cintibud
@raven: Thanks! Checking it out now
Gin & Tonic
@MattF: This is more complicated, as it is not the Russian Orthodox Church, but the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Since last year that church has had ecclesiastical independence, and a Patriarch in Kyiv. The churches under the Kyiv Patriarchate are complying with government guidelines, but some remained under the Moscow Patriarchate, and are currently ignoring science and the law.
satby
@MazeDancer .: Yeah, my early daffodils are pretty kaput after 4 nights of hard freeze. Hoping the later blooming ones are still ok.
Happy Saturday, everyone. Especially @cintibud: because you may find you love retirement.
JMG
We have snow, but it’s not below freezing, and temps will rise this afternoon. Possible daffodils will survive.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JMG:
Our snow has melted. It’s sunny and above freezing. It’s amazing how that lifts my spirits.
Amir Khalid
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
These assholes seem to believe that government, even competent government that serves the people’s interests, is the enemy of liberty. I think that makes them basically anarchists.
I recommend to all jackals this YouTuber, Dr. John Campbell. Dr Campbell, a retired A&E (or as you say in America, ER) nurse and academic, provides a daily Covid-19 news roundup for Britain and the world, as well as useful backgrounders in the relevant medical science.
MattF
@Gin & Tonic: Ah, I see. Move the item from the ‘Inscrutable Gentiles’ folder to the ‘Russian Nationalism’ folder.
NotMax
Really? No one else impressed by how the singer in the link at #5 can belt out a number?
(Not to mention that As We Stumble Along as a concept seems in keeping with the times.)
raven
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
All the snow has turned to water
Christmas days have come and gone
Broken toys and faded colors
Are all that’s left to linger on
I hate graveyards and old pawn shops
For they always bring me tears
I can’t forgive the way they rob me
Of my childhood souvenirs
Dorothy A. Winsor
Clips of babies wearing hearing aids and hearing their moms and sibs speak to them for the first time.
NotMax
@MattF
“We are Orthodox, not orthodocs. Ponimayesh?”
//
Dorothy A. Winsor
@raven:
That’s lovely, raven. Thanks.
satby
@NotMax: started at the bottom of the thread so hadn’t seen it yet. Was the guy in the intro also the singer?
Sab
@ThresherK: Neither of us have any idea although both of us think we have heard it before.
raven
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Try “Far From Me”. Ain’t it funny how a broken bottle, looks just like a diamond ring.
mad citizen
@cintibud: Congrats indeed in this weird time!
Uncle Cosmo
@Cheryl Rofer: Watch how quick those cowards scatter when a few of them start coughing & sneezing in their ranks. And in another week we’ll start seeing stories about hotspots of infection springing up in the batshit-insane hinterland.
Ten years back they could play games with teabags & triangular hats. Virus plays for keeps.
raven
@ThresherK: It ain’t this.
Uncle Cosmo
@NotMax: What’s your problem, boychik? I immediately fwded it to a once-&-hopefully-future dance partner, a native Noo Yawker with a jones for musical comedy.
NotMax
@satby
No singing on his part. It’s a scene from the play (although relocated to a sky high terrace for the video), wherein his character is a recluse who imagines his favorite show being staged in his apartment; he doesn’t interact with the other performers but does break the fourth wall with the audience.
MagdaInBlack
@raven:
and down the rabbit hole I go ☺
Seems like good Saturday morning coffee music
raven
@Uncle Cosmo: This is what they think:
Plenty of people are desirous of disaster for this country and they expect to be around to pick up the pieces and turn America into some sort of politically correct half-assed socialist state.
Inside every liberal is a little tyrant screaming to get out – witness all these blue state Governors on their power trips
Sab
@debbie: It’s interesting to watch Lt Gov Husted talk about vote by mail since he was king of voter suppression in his stint as Sec of State.
raven
@MagdaInBlack: Don’t forget Hell in There.
satby
@Dorothy A. Winsor: one of the best moments working at the eye doctor’s office 30 years ago was when a little 3 year old boy who was legally blind came in for his first pair of glasses ever. His vision impairment was so severe that even with the tiny frames and ultra thin material (for the time) the lenses were very thick. But we put them on him, and his mother and grandmother were overcome when it was immediately obvious he had never really seen their full faces before. It was a gift to witness.
Uncle Cosmo
FTFY!
Croaker
12 Days and Counting…
MagdaInBlack
@raven:
My husbands favorite ?
Baud
@raven: Fuckem.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I know Trump wants people back to work because he knows he needs a good economy and stupidly believes that making things look normal will magically make them normal, but I’m wondering if his itch to do rallies is as strong a motive. I see his staff is talking about staging them in states with fewer cases of the virus (for now).
Chief Oshkosh
@Uncle Cosmo:
Probably not. I suspect that many localities will intentionally avoid stating cause of death was COVID-19 (especially without testing). It’s all part of shitgibbon’s plan – not the plan to reopen the country intelligently, rather, the plan to get re-elected.
Uncle Cosmo
@satby: When I was in second grade the school called my parents in & urged them to take me to an opthalmologist, after my teacher realized I couldn’t see the blackboard (from the second row) well enough to read it.
One of my clearest ;^D childhood memories is riding home from the optometrist wearing my first pair of specs, staring out the car window in gobsmacked wonder: So that’s what the world really looks like!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@satby: What a great moment to be part of.
@Croaker: I missed hearing whatever is going to happen. So what’s going to happen?
cmorenc
@Cheryl Rofer:
We can only hope the dude in the Fox clip lamenting that the allegedly ridiculous shut-down was preventing him from being able to buy lawn fertilizer has a more sensible wife who never lets him hear the end of what a colossal jerk he made of himself on TV yesterday whining about that particular deprivation. Even better if she has the ability to summon the female equivalent of Gilbert Gottfried’s voice when she mocks him.
MomSense
So all these liberate idiots are going to get themselves infected at their stupid protests and later go to the grocery store and pharmacy while asymptomatic to infect those of us who aren’t complete idiots. There is apparently a protest planned for Augusta, Maine today. I’d love to point and mock except they are going to make good people sick.
Spanky
@cintibud: Well, you made me check, and today is my 400th day of retirement. Mine was voluntary, though a bit rushed as I obtained a new superior who was ignoring his superiors, and I could see the shit storm was coming fast, so I bailed about a year early.
You could well find that the urge to go back fades remarkably fast. Or not. Time will tell on that, but in any case it’s good to recognize the interruption in the natural flow of your career and make peace with that.
In the meantime, welcome, fellow gentleman* of leisure!
(During the past 13 months of “leisure”, I’ve needed PT for my back and now have tendonitis in my elbow. Please don’t do what I did. Just ease into doing any major projects you may be considering.)
rikyrah
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Look at the map with this tweet
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Rallies and golf, just like in Jan. Feb. and beginning of March.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
RE: a careful reopening
I think that California Governor Newsom, among others, has spoken about building social distancing into post pandemic society.
So, for example, the maximum seating and spacing of seating in restaurants might change.Waiters might be required to wear masks, and guests might be handed disposable menus. Total occupancy might be limited.
But this could be odd. Would a dinner party be seated so that each person is six feet away from their other guests?
I do not know how social venues would be handled. Movie theaters, seating in a sports stadium.
satby
@Uncle Cosmo: Same, although I was almost in the 5th grade, because I always sat in the first row. I never could see what was on the board but read before I was in first grade so the problem wasn’t obvious until 5th grade math, when I would get out of my seat to stand inches away from the board to see the problems ?
But I had the exact same feeling as you! Especially realizing that other people could see things like the individual leaves on trees and I hadn’t ever known that.
rikyrah
The thing is…
This is all on Republicans.
From the bad design, to people not being able to apply…to the amount that this clown refuses to raise…
To the incompetence of re-opening beaches???
ALL on Republicans.
cintibud
@Spanky: Many thanks and thanks to all who wished me luck. I’ve never been a workaholic, always prioritized family but still it’s hard to imagine not turning on the PC before even getting my morning coffee. I’ve been working from home since back surgery in Nov and have really liked it. Now I’m not sure what *more* I’m going to do during the day. I’ve already been taking regular breaks to do my PT exercises, chores, bill paying etc. Now I have all day to do that and I’m a little nervous. Guess I can spend the extra time figuring out what I’m going to do with my extra time!
Reminds me of the barnaked ladies song about Brian Wilson: “So I’m lying here
Just staring at the ceiling tiles
And I’m thinking about, oh what to think about”
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I think the C guy is a hard core unreconstructed communist just waiting for May Day to arrive so he can belt out the Internationale.
Croaker
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Counting down days before COVID-19 spreads through the “grass roots” protestors – Michigan, Minnesota, Kentucky, Utah, North Carolina, Ohio.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Sorry it is rather scary, but if you zoom into the picture. Look at the glass on the right hand side.
https://www.dispatch.com/news/20200416/yoursquove-seen-photo-of-ohio-protesters-herersquos-story-behind-it
Ohio Mom
Cintibid: I had an awkward month between Ohio Dad losing his job and health insurance, and me qualifying for Medicare — we checked with David Anderson and he helped us save much money and protect my ability to be covered. I’m sure he would be happy to help you navigate that.
Choosing among Medicare options was a bigger challenge. We consulted with a volunteer we were connected with through the Council on Aging but who knows if that program is still up and running.
satby
So, question for the legal experts here: if a person voted in the primary in Milwaukee, WS due to the Republicans’ reckless refusal to postpone or expand mail voting and gets infected with Covid-19, do they have standing to sue the legislature? Would the city of Milwaukee?
Immanentize
@Brachiator:
And churches
germy
Croaker
@Immanentize: won’t have my Hammer and Sickle this year we have to put them away
Barbara
@Baud: The five conservative justices have the moral standing of a piece of shit. Consigning people to death from the safety of their isolated homes with 24 hour Secret Service protection. They probably don’t even do their own grocery shopping.
I am so angry today. My sister can’t get tested even though she works with medically fragile people and one of her coworkers tested positive. She was told to keep working unless she has symptoms, and not to accept “extra” shifts at other locations. She is essential, but this is why developmentally disabled people and nursing home residents are at such high risk. If people like her stayed home, what would happen? That she can’t tested is just an abomination.
O. Felix Culpa
@cintibud:
Oh yes, it is very anxiety producing at first. I still monitor the outflow pretty carefully, but am somewhat less anxious about it. Our retirement system sucks: we’re dependent on what we can manage to save and the vagaries of the market, as well as other projections of the unknown, such as how long do we expect to live. Give me a solid pension any day. That said, congratulations and good luck!
Immanentize
@satby: Sorry, no right to sue because of various forms of immunity — legislative immunity and qualified immunity for the government.
I should add — the ballot box is still a form of legal action.
Barbara
@germy: You first, Scott. Lead the way. Show us how it’s done.
Brachiator
I had been working on a project and then slept hard afterwards when it was finished, so I missed some of Trump’s antics, and did not realize the degree to which he is attempting to mobilize the “liberate” protestors. Trump is not content to recognize the limits to his presidential authority in seeking to force the states to re-open, so he is using authoritarian populist tactics to incite his base into forcing the states to comply with his wishes. And the right wing propaganda machine is working with him. I noticed that the conservatives behind The Federalist podcast have been pushing the idea that red states which slow walked or ignored lock down procedures were doing the right thing, and that “liberty” and the economy were more important than protecting the population.
In the UK, I think a government minister openly suggested that if a nursing home called the NHS to come see about a sick person, elderly people most at risk would not be given the option to be put on a ventilator. This was walked back and now there are discussions about cocooning the elderly.
My mother, who is 91 and probably in an at risk group, recently made a hard, cynical observation. She speculated that the US might decide that “death from Corona Virus” might come to be accepted as a natural cause of death, and that Trump and other conservatives might simply declare society open and America back in business, and that those who are at risk be forced to accept the possibility that they will be culled from the population.
She noted that people would be more likely to accept the idea that mainly old people would die, and that this idea would never even be considered if the virus primarily hit newborns and children up through the age of adolescence.
And sure enough, you are seeing discussions among conservatives start to move towards acceptance.
O Brave new world, with such people in it.
satby
@Immanentize: but if the spike showing the increase in infections after the election is well publicized, it will depress turnout, which is exactly to goal of the Republican party. Are we citizens really without any other tools than gerrymandered and rigged elections to protect ourselves?
OzarkHillbilly
I suspect the Secret Service is putting the kibosh on any such plans. Not that rump couldn’t over rule them.
Brachiator
@eclare:
I began working from home before the pandemic hit. Even though I had worked at home a few days a week before, I discovered as part of this new assignment that there is a kind of remote working culture that has evolved among people who do this regularly.
There were earlier remote learning tip threads here. I don’t know if there were any formal remote working threads, but the topic was discussed. Maybe somebody can post a link to these.
I hope you at least got some info from your employer about set up and tools that you will be using.
One key thing is to make sure you set up a comfortable work area.
Good luck!
Immanentize
@Brachiator:
You obviously love your mother, but that “probably” just does not fit there. My Mom, 89, is super healthy, used to walk a mile or more a day weather permitting. Locked down in her apartment now.
Immanentize
@satby: somewhat — but actual freedom loving people as we saw are willing to risk a bit to kick out fascists. I don’t think the SCOTUS expected to be blamed for this, but they will be.
Ohio Mom
Today’s Cincinnati paper had an article on a Columbus wedding dress shop owner who sueing the state because she was not given due process to contest her shop’s designation as non-essential.
Missing from the article of course was the background story about how the conservative group “dedicated to protecting our Constitutional right’s” identified her and enlisted her.
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense: There is going to be one in Jeff city on Tuesday. I am sorely tempted to go for that exact reason. I won’t, because I have better things to do. Like trim my toenails, remove lint from my belly button, pet my dogs, feed the cat,….
satby
To clarify, other non-violent means.
Perpetrators shouldn’t profit from their crimes. And I didn’t think there was legislative immunity from crimes like depraved indifference homicide.
Ok, but the point is voting isn’t supposed to be a death defying feat. And a government is supposed to exist to protect its citizens. @Immanentize
leeleeFL
@Uncle Cosmo: Third grade for me! Used to sit less than a foot from.the TV screen, no one thought anything of it. Failed the eye test in school, glasses in 3 weeks! It was like Christmas!
Brachiator
@Immanentize:
RE: Movie theaters, seating in a sports stadium.
And schools and colleges. Should remote learning become the new normal?
I don’t know whether it was California or Los Angeles county schools, but I heard a news item estimating that at least 25 percent of students did not have access to remote learning tools. They did not have computers or smartphones, or regular access to the Internet.
In deciding to push remote learning, officials assumed that everyone was at least comfortably middle class.
Trump’s stupid, hard-headed insistence that we get “back to normal again” has pushed aside conversations about how we might best adapt to a post pandemic world.
We should be thinking about investing in post pandemic infrastructure.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Brachiator: Sort of an extreme version of the hostility you see in “OK, Boomer.” The resentment is there to be cultivated in more people than we might hope.
Immanentize
@Ohio Mom: This is a great example about how rules made in an emergency often are challenged as arbitrary. In part because they are. Of course, the best way to proceed is to define what counts as “essential” before a disaster strikes. But who wants to do that?
I actually end up being an “essential” worker as a college educator because, who knows why. But I can get a letter allowing me to be in Boston even after curfew.
Immanentize
@Immanentize: And speaking of Curfew — from Desk Set (couldn’t find a viddy):
satby
@Immanentize: One of the best of their movies!
Found it!
Immanentize
@Brachiator: Whether online learning should become the new normal (it shouldn’t) it is the reality until at least next Fall. Just got word that at my Uni., even summer session 2 (starting after July 4) will be 100% online. And I’m teaching this summer!
Croaker
@OzarkHillbilly: Don’t forget sleeping. A good 8 hours or more. At least one beverage of choice too…
Pennsyltucky-
Gathering planned on Monday
HARRISBURG, PA — A mass gathering protesting business closures and the statewide restrictions aimed at fighting the new coronavirus is scheduled to take place next week in front of the State Capitol in Harrisburg.
Organizers say thousands of people plan to attend the demonstration at noon Monday. One of the groups organizing the protest, ReOpen PA, has garnered more than 17,000 members in its Facebook group after being launched Monday.
Immanentize
Duplicate
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Don’t forget our god given 2nd Amendment solutions!
Immanentize
@satby: Thank you. I love that scene. And her character throughout.
OzarkHillbilly
@Croaker: Sadly, sleep is a thing I am oft deprived of.
narya
Yesterday was a perfect microcosm of These Days: after working remotely all day, engineered a trip to the grocery store and was excited to find lemons, onions, peanut butter . . . my whole wish list, basically. Picked up beer from my local brewery (one person in the store at a time, everyone masked & gloved, including me, ordered ahead of time). Virtual happy hour w/ same brewery, later that night. Dinner w/a friend who has been as isolated as I have been (neither of us has been w/ anyone else in a month and both of us are obsessive about hand washing). And talked to my (immunocompromised, 85-year-old) mom, to find that her last remaining relative of her generation, a first cousin whom I also adore, is in a nursing home, with the virus, and pneumonia, and dementia. (there’s a longer horrible story there, but that’s enough.)
And the sun’s out, and as soon as the phone and iPod charge, I’ll be going for a run. With a mask on.
MattF
Dana Milbank has lost his cool.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: non-violent!
@Immanentize: me too. Also a big fan of Adam’s Rib, well all the Tracy-Hepburn movies.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: but doesn’t the thought of those Yahoo’s complaining about being kept safe make you yawn?
Immanentize
Ooops. I just stepped on a pair of my readers. I didn’t see ’em.
germy
I took a walk this morning and a guy had his dog off leash. Of course the dog wanted to sniff me all over (maybe smelled our cat). What’s wrong with using a leash?
Brachiator
@Immanentize:
RE: My mother, who is 91 and probably in an at risk group….
I wrote it this way to deliberately omit details about my mother which she has not given me permission to discuss.
On my mother’s side, we are very long lived. And my mother is continuing the tradition and doing very well.
However, older people are decidedly more at risk. There are a couple of ways of looking at this. From one analysis.
Another way of looking at the risk of fatality:
We are learning that the disease involves severe attacks on the lungs and the heart. This makes it more difficult for more elderly people to survive no matter how strong and healthy they are, and puts people with certain health conditions more at risk. Another health researcher noted that with respect to the elderly, the virus tracks the natural decline in overall healthiness that you see in general in people age 65 and older.
Aleta
Covid-19 threatened to kill this restaurant [Little Sesame in DC] . It turned into a community kitchen instead. (3 min.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxI_Nx9I4As
rikyrah
@Brachiator:
This is what the Lt. Governor of Texas put forth.
Maddow has been the only one on this story. The Feds refuse to collect the national data about deaths in senior facilities.???
Ohio Mom
Immanentize: I guess “Develop a policy defining what an essential business is, and an appeal process for businesses claiming they were misidentified as non-essential” should be put on someone’s to-do list. For the next time, as epidemiologists assure us is inevitable.
It’s not that the shop owner’s claim has no merit, it’s that the organization using her as a test case has bad motives. They aren’t the ACLU, they are a right-wing outfit mad at Governor DeWine for acting like a Democrat and closing Ohio down.
You gotta give the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy props for being agile, imaginative, and thorough.
Feathers
Snowing in Boston. Was going strongish when I woke at 7. Let up now. Seems to be about an inch.
My building was built in the 1920s, so it has a very Agatha Christie murdery vibe. The back staircase has a broom closet for each apartment, so I’m going to take my raincoat and leave it there to wear down to the shared basement to take out the trash and do laundry. There are still a lot of people going in and out of the building every day. Only 12 units.
Frankensteinbeck
Am I allowed to strangle Reuters, the organization? The previous thread, which I am vastly too late to, has an article saying the WHO says 19 doesn’t produce antibody immunity, except the article itself is about two paragraphs long, and the only quote from the WHO is that the world is nowhere near herd immunity state, which… well, no, it’s not. Even the worst hit places aren’t close to 50% infection rate, yet.
PST
@cintibud: At least I think you’ll like Medicare. Even people who had really good employer-sponsored insurance, like me, love it. By way of comparison, I had one cataract removed with private insurance and one with Medicare, simply because the timing worked out that way and my doctor doesn’t believe in risking two eyes at once. Same room, same ophthalmologist, same everything, except the cost to me was minimal for the second. I’m 66, so my friends and I have all been making the move, and no one I know has complained.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Observers in the UK suggest that something similar is happening there in order to downplay the total number of deaths.
The official UK statistics include only those who virus sufferers who die in the hospital. People who die in nursing homes are not included, nor are tests given to confirm that the virus was a contributing cause of death.
This, despite the fact that the presence of the virus has been confirmed in a staggering number of nursing facilities.
And in Pasadena, California, early on there was this sobering statistic from a recent news story:
The most current death count has risen to 14, but I am unsure of the breakdown. But focus on nursing homes continues.
germy
@PST: What worries me about Medicare is not Medicare, but choosing a supplementary private insurance plan to cover the remaining 20%.
I see commercials on antenna TV every day for this and that Medicare plan, and they all seem shady, with all the unreadable fine print on the bottom.
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: I buy all mine at Job Lot, for $2.99 or less. That way when they break or are lost, I don’t care so much.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
Good morning, jackals. A few quick hits:
Our own Colorado idiocracy is planning a Michigan-style protest in front of the Capitol building tomorrow. I could wish they’d all catch the ‘rona and die, but I don’t want them overloading the hospitals and taking the innocent with them. Getting a couple of estimates on roof repair today (fun!)
Re ComicCon: someone may have mentioned this already (if so apologies): this year’s Worldcon is going virtual. I had not planned on attending as it’s in New Zealand (no money/time), but I may see if I can swing this. Could be interesting.
mr. h’s facility is starting “window visits” next week. You sign up for a time slot, then talk to your person through the (locked) front door of the facility. Both of you are masked and the conversation is via cell phone (the one in the facility is sanitized after each use). It’s not ideal but it’s something. Will let you know how it goes.
Hope everyone is keeping well. I plan to order pizza and a bottle of wine from the local Italian joint for the One World concert tonight. I’ve been rewatching The Great British Baking Show and am currently streaming MST3K-The Gauntlet for brain candy.
Gotta go–one of the feline overlords demands lap time!
debbie
@Sab:
Right! I listen and wait for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. “But seriously, folks…”
BC in Illinois
@Uncle Cosmo:
It was 8th grade for me when it was discovered that I had (as I remember it) 20/20 vision in the right eye and 20/200 in the left. Whatever it was, I had good vision in one, bad in the other. No depth perception at all.
Immanentize
@Brachiator: Yes, my doctor told me that age is an independent risk factor, research is showing, starting at 55. He has been blunt — saying if I end up needing to go to the hospital, I will die there. And I am barely 60. We know this is a bit hyperbolic, but he wanted to set the right time. He reinforced this by emailing me advance directive forms.
I love my Doc.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: Thanks for that too! I wouldn’t have thought of there. It’s right next to the Harbor Freight in East Medford, so easy (if I ever go over there).
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: There’s a protest planned for tomorrow, Sunday, in Olympia, WA at the capital building. The local Fox station is pushing this. The legislature is shut down and no one would be there on a Sunday, anyway. I expect the Usual Idiots to show up.
It was initially expected to rain quite a bit on Sunday but I am disappointed to see that the forecast has changed to Partly Cloudy.
Barbara
@Brachiator: Here is what I might say to her: Society has bent over backwards for the last 50+ years to ensure that elderly people have medical care through the Medicare program. The needs of everyone else are met only through a lot of kicking and screaming, and either at the knife’s edge through underfunding, or at great, sometimes obscene expense. So while your mother might be right about the possibility of “acute” diseases being taken more seriously if they target people under the age of 30 (did she feel that way about HIV?), she is wrong when we considered where our treasure is directed in a global sense — because when judged that way, we do not take the health of younger people more seriously than that of older people. Medicaid is always funded in a way that makes services difficult to obtain for many people, with constant threats of cuts, while Medicare is virtually untouchable. There isn’t a lot to be said right now, when we are at a point of feeling close to desperation about our own imminent vulnerability, but when we once again get to fly at a little higher altitude and survey the wreckage of what passes for a health care system, it is critical that we stop thinking about old versus young and start thinking about what is sustainable for all of us. I don’t know many old people who don’t rely on young people in one form or another.
BC in Illinois
@BC in Illinois: Left field, center field . . . whatever.
I think it was center field. Left field was too important a position for me to be assigned there.
leeleeFL
@MattF: This article made me subscribe last night! Been wanting to, but thus and $29/year. No brainer!
Aleta
I’m guessing these protesters include many who believed A. Jones and other rw’ers in February that the virus was an intentional bioweapon* from China. Yet they protest without masks. So Chinese bioweapon is not so scary after all? (Or lemmings are brave.)
I know, masks which would undermine their point. (Which appears to support of the right of companies to fire lower-wage workers if they won’t go back to work? The right of the government to refuse unemployment benefits?)
* Now that Chinese bioweapons suggestion has turned into a more mainstream attempt in support of the T campaign—to blame WHO for ‘spreading China’s lies’ along with the suggestion that the Chinese government knew early on that virus originally came from a Wuhan bioresearch lab (that also does bioweapons research) and was transmissible, but hid the information.
Kattails
@Bex: Thanks for that, it was very a new take on this very old theme. I also read the article that followed in the internal links about why Donald Trump is a threat to our spiritual well-being.
PST
I forgot about that part. There is one basic choice to make: you either get straight Medicare plus a supplemental policy, or you get “Medicare Advantage.” With straight Medicare, the government pays the providers and the insurance company pays that last 20 percent of doctor bills. It is highly regulated. Every company’s policy covers the same thing, and they always follow Medicare’s lead, so the private part is practically invisible. That is what I have and my friends have, so that is what I was talking about liking. With Medicare Advantage the government pays a premium to an insurance company and the company pays the providers. It can offer extras that Medicare doesn’t cover, but it can also use narrow networks and closer control over claims to reduce costs. The shady-sounding commercials are all for Medicare Advantage, because the plans are different and compete with one another. Reasons for choosing between straight Medicare and Medicare Advantage would make a great Dave Anderson thread (or maybe there already has been one).
germy
@PST: Thank you. I wasn’t aware of the difference.
I like the idea of the private insurance company being invisible.
catclub
@Croaker: In my bit of Mississippi goddam, there were encouraging signs of mask wearing a week ago. Now there seems to be backsliding.
… after a whole week.
So seeing someone who is elderly in a mask. while most others aren’t,
is a little depressing.
Brachiator
@Barbara:
My mother was contrasting wise social policy with short sighted social policy. Trump would not understand anything that you have written, and his supporters and most conservative pundits are eager to support him.
The foolish decision to try to force states to “return to normal” endangers those most at risk from dying of the virus. And the plain fact is that it is easier for right wingers to rationalize these proposals because it will not affect infants and children as severely as it will hit the elderly.
opiejeanne
@germy: There is one dog who is always off-leash recently, and the owners (or their kids) think it’s hilarious. Other dog-walkers yell at them to get it back onto its leash, because of the dangerous corner,* because of what a nuisance this particular dog is to everyone out walking, and because they don’t appreciate the particularly nasty barking fits it has when it sees another dog or any human.
*it is a very dangerous corner, cars come careening around the bend and sometimes take out our fence. People have nearly been hit by these idiots who think of the curve as some sort of challenge. Right now there isn’t much traffic through the neighborhood, and the birds and woodpeckers and frogs are most of the sounds during the day, except for that one idiot who seems to really love his leaf blower…. *blinks*
But I digress.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Considering he has to deal with the press who dare ask him nasty questions. But then he could do these rallies now in South Dakota.
Kattails
It just occurred to me that we have a local, functioning drive-in movie theater last I heard. It’s probably been limping along, but could see quite a resurgence this summer. That would be kind of neat. The acoustics have to be better than those old hang-on-the-window speakers, surely?
Of course, today it’s snowing, so… watching my poor birdies trying to find any bugs. Just went out and turned some garden beds to see if any bugs available, and raked a couple of leaf piles over, maybe something underneath them. Warm tomorrow. It is just gloomy.
frosty
@cintibud: You’ll get used to retirement in 90 days. I’m 2 months into retirement, stayed on the books so I could work if needed, and already I never want to look at a budget or fill out a timesheet again.
Ohio Mom
Germy: There is a catch to going with an Advantage plan, let me see if I remember it correctly (I advise you to google this on your own).
You sign up with an Advantage Plan first thing. It’s easier than looking for separate Supplemental and Drug plans, it’s probably cheaper and it has all sorts of goodies like free gym memberships.
Years pass and now you have A Serious Health Condition. You want to choose say, a specific heart surgeon, the one who does the minimally invasive surgeries, or the oncologist who does research on your fairly rare type of cancer.
Oops, the doctor you want is not included in the very limited list of doctors in your Advantage Plan. No problem you think, I’ll just switch to Traditional Medicare.
The catch is, the Supplemental Plans could not take your health history into account way back when you were 65 but now, years later, they are allowed to, and their rates are going to be a lot higher. If you can find one that will underwrite you, what with your rare cancer or heart disease or whatever.
Don’t get me wrong, I like being on Medicare. But it is an ugly kludge of a program and as a result, not easy to navigate. Lots of pitfalls.
frosty
@raven: @cintibud Good book, I read it on your recommendation and changed some of my plans based on it.
PersistentIllusion
@Uncle Cosmo: I had the same experience, but in first grade. “There are leaves on the trees.” I don’t remember if I felt trees were just large green lollipops or something else. It was a very long time ago.
Suzanne
@rikyrah: Soooo the disease-and-death pattern is exactly what I expected, based on my knowledge and experience in my job. And that is that nosocomial infections are appearing to be the major vector of transmissions. The ways that designers of hospitals and senior facilities fight those are primarily with SPACE and secondarily with easy-to-clean surfaces. But I keep hearing about these senior homes where they are having outbreaks, and SURPRISE! they have residents sharing rooms and bathrooms. There is going to be absolutely no way to control spread of an infectious disease in conditions like that. Zero.
Sab
So I just found out my 95 yo dad is in the nursing home with the highest covid19 count in my county.They are aking in new covid 19 patients released from the hospital but too sick to go home. So they are putting them in the only secure facility, which happens to be my dad’s unit. I would be okay with that since he is 95 with dementia, but he has a nurse’s aide. Neither she nor I bought into that level of risk for her when she took the job. She has a big family that needs her.
ziggy
@Suzanne: Interesting point, how do you think the nursing homes should approach the problem at this point? Would it make sense to move the patients to dedicated Covid hospitals immediately?
Sab
@Sab: Edit not working.
Sab
@Suzanne: My dad has a single room but they eat in a small common dining room. Nobody told us (me and his nurse’s aide) that they are bringing covid19 patients onto his floor. I would never have accepted that level of risk for her, especially since she hasn’t been warned.
CarolDuhart2
@Ohio Mom: She doesn’t want to face reality-or the real possibility of going out of business. Wedding dresses can be shipped to recipients, but she’s probably not at that level. She feels she needs to have people coming in to her store, but they won’t. Nobody is going to try on a dress that somebody else has tried on during corona. There are not going to be conventional weddings with hundreds of guests and dozens of fittings. My advice to her (but she’s too stupid’s to take it) would be to find some plan B or prepare to sell off her stock.
These magats think that Trump saying “it’s open” is going to have people flocking back to the stores to risk COVID when there are no tests, no cure, or even an established treatment. A lot of this is save-your-own life compliance with a little help from local and state government. Opening up a wedding dress shop is meaningless with no customers willing or able to take the risk.
Jinchi
On the plus side, you live in a place that considers education essential at all.
Sab
@Ohio Mom: Our best wedding dress store got wiped out by one nurse who had ebola. Also in Ohio.
Jinchi
I think the California plan is to cut the number of tables by half. So you wouldn’t be 6 feet from other members of your party. You’d be further from the next table over than you were in the past.
This wouldn’t start until the 6-foot distancing rule was over in any case.
ThresherK
@Sab: Tangent to my question about the tune:
That is the the bridge of “Let Me Entertain You”, from Gypsy.
It was on a street organ, but part of me wants to be on a carousel some day and hear it.
I figured it out in ten seconds and I am worried about how my brain is applying itself, as it must be forgetting some very important things in order to do this.
Bill Arnold
@Frankensteinbeck:
<blockquote>Am I allowed to strangle Reuters, the organization?</blockquote>
That piece was appallingly misleading, I agree. I was too late to complain about it as well.
Mohagan
@Uncle Cosmo: I was in third grade when the same thing happened. I’d learned to read fine and always sat in the first row. As a kid, you don’t realize anything is wrong. My mother was like “so that’s why you always want to sit in the first row at the movies!”. I can remember seeing that trees had individual leaves on them, not just a green blur.
Ohio Mom
Look, I get that the wedding dress shop owner is in a bad spot, so are countless other small business people of all sorts. She’s not uniquely burdened by the shutdown.
But just as those “Free our State” anti-quarantine protests are complete set-ups organized by Right-wing groups, so is this court case.
The outfit representing the shop owner is the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law (1851 was the year the Ohio Constitution was adopted).
You can see all the great causes they have championed on their website, including a brief in the current case against the Individual Mandate, but you won’t see list of their funders. That’s pretty typical of of what’s been called The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. They like to do their funding and organizing in secrecy.
Now it might be interesting to know how the owner and the 1851 Center got hooked up; I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out she’s very active in Republican politics. That’s the type of background information the media won’t put effort into researching though.
Suzanne
@ziggy: If they move them to “COVID hospitals”, they will not survive. The reason I put the term “COVID hospitals” in scare quotes is because all hospitals are COVID hospitals right now, or they are useless.
So I have been involved in nothing but surge planning for the last three weeks, and I have seen a whole lot of what other hospitals are doing. It is simply not feasible to build what we think of as a hospital bed quickly enough for this crisis at significant scale. They cannot build electrical and medgas capacity quickly, which only a few exceptions. So what most hospitals were looking to do was to build additional capacity for non-COVID people, or for people who had COVID but weren’t really all that sick. What is happening is that there are a lot fewer non-COVID people than expected, because people are staying out of hospitals because absolutely no one wants to go to a hospital right now if they can help it, and all the conditions that lead to injuries and traumas are way, way down. So other than in a couple of hotspots, these surge spaces are being closed down, some of which never saw a single patient.
I’ve been asked how the Chinese built hospitals so fast but we can’t. The answer is that they didn’t really build hospitals (mostly), like what we think of as hospitals. They built wards for people who they didn’t want to send home. But those people mostly weren’t that sick, and in the US, we would have sent those people home, or told them not to get medical care at all and to ride it out. The situations are not analogous.
Once an infection is in a nursing home, it’s pretty much over.
Suzanne
To expand further on what I just said, there was a piece in the FTFNYT this week about how the Javits Center has had something like only 20 percent of the patient capacity they expected, and the Comfort is also mostly empty (I don’t remember the exact percentages, but the point is that they are not that helpful). The Comfort is designed to treat injuries, not respiratory illnesses, and it is proving exceedingly difficult to move patients around in tight conditions (turning a hospital bed even in an eight-foot-wide corridor is already challenging). The USACE did a whole bunch of work looking for places to build surge capacity and they are already closing some of those places, most of which were never used.
And in the US, we discharge people to their homes. In China, they weren’t letting sick people go home. Those “hospitals” they built were essentially dormitories with very little medical infrastructure. They had some medical staff working at those, but the vast majority of those patients, if they had been in the US, would be sent home to be cared for by family members.
If we as a country want to be genuinely prepared for the next pandemic, or terrorist attack, or mass shooting, or whatever…. we have to start building real hospital capacity and real senior living center capacity NOW. There is no building ICUs quickly, in significant numbers.
Mohagan
Went back and read comments from other glasses wearers and it’s funny how we all (me included) talk about seeing the leaves on the trees.
Suzanne
@Sab: Since this virus has such a long stealth period, I am not optimistic that it can be kept out of any nursing home, even if they do their best to separate patients by floor or unit or what have you.
Even before all of this happened, hospitals and senior living facilities were hotbeds of infections. By some measures, nosocomial infections (which are infections contracted within hospitals/nursing homes) are one of the top five causes of death in the US. There’s debate over exactly how bad the situation is, but it’s more like, “Is this a HUGE problem, or merely a BIG problem?”. And that’s with just the usual suspects like MRSA and norovirus and flu and enterovirus and C-diff.
ziggy
@Suzanne: So ideally, if someone is in the situation where they need that level of nursing care, would be to put them in a residence by them self, with a dedicated 24-hour nurse. Obviously not affordable by the vast majority of people :(
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So the answer to why Trump is against testing, he doesn’t like being tested
https://www.yahoo.com/news/had-trump-claims-victim-covid-211624561.html
The guy is an animal that looks like a human, nothing more.
Suzanne
@ziggy: Yeah, I don’t see a good solution. Dedicated senior living centers of all kinds (assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing) are only as safe as the staff. One sick staff member or visitor and it’s there and it will spread like wildfire. I have long thought that we need better options for aging in place or at least with family, but that’s risky, too, since family members also need to do things. And many families cannot provide the kind of care and connection their family member needs. Or if there was a home health worker, that person also may be exposed in the course of daily life.
I have told SuzMom that I will never put her in a skilled nursing facility.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
This is a worldwide problem, and there needs to be innovative solutions. In the US, 20 percent of the deaths have been associated with nursing care facilities. There have been serious outbreaks in Italy, Spain and the UK. There has also been a significant cluster of cases in nursing homes in Japan, which has a reputation for treating it’s elderly well.
Note that in Japan, there was also a serious outbreak of virus cases, but not fatalities, involving a sports gym. This suggests that we will have to rethink how we deal with a variety of social spaces where bodies come into proximity with each other.
Also, nursing homes and some gyms may be places where staff regularly circulate among customers or patients, potentially infecting people even if the areas are relatively well maintained.
People got to think about these things in new ways.
Brachiator
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Trump is a goddam fool. He found the test to be uncomfortable, and so may be against testing. A smarter, more empathy driven president might push for less invasive tests.
His Republican enablers refuse to rein him in, or are too afraid or too stupid, or both. I could at least understand why GOP leaders stuck with him when they were getting something out of him; but this death cult thing is absurd. And these fools are willing to drag the country down with them.
Another Scott
Quasi-dead thread, but I don’t want to muddy the nicer threads upstairs…
ICYMI, Abdul Malik Mujahid at WaMo – Hindu Nationalists Are Using COVID-19 to Fuel a Humanitarian Disaster in India
Read the whole thing.
Schrodinger’s Cat has told us about Modi and the BJP. She’s ahead of the curve.
Pompeo’s State Department continues to be a disgrace.
January 20, 2021 cannot come quickly enough!! 276 days to go…
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Yes, the thread may be dead, but damn. Damn, damn, damn. We have an authoritarian pandemic around the world, an existential threat to the future of democracy.
J R in WV
@Uncle Cosmo:
When my dad was in elementary school, the teacher tested all the kids’ vision with one of those “which way do the Es point” chart. Dad flunked, and the Teacher said, “Why, your eyes are bad!” What she didn’t say was “Tell your parents!”
So for the next 10 years he couldn’t see a dammed thing!
One day he was with his dad in Charleston, and asked his dad where the newspaper office was. It was across the street with a big sign, which he couldn’t see. And that’s when he was taken to an eye doctor, and got his first pair of glasses.
Because the teacher didn’t contact his parents, and didn’t tell him to tell his parents. Dad may be been a little bit too… literal?
apocalipstick
@OzarkHillbilly: Hey. OH, aren’t you impressed with the performance of our representative, Jason Smith?
J R in WV
@Mohagan:
It happened to my dad, which is why it never happened to me. I was in to see and eye doctor so early, so young, I don’t remember it I just remember always having glasses. Now when I see a tiny child with glasses, I’m glad to see that some got that taken care of right off.
LongHairedWeirdo
@J R in WV: It might not be a matter of being too literal. It might be that no option was presented, like “you might need glasses to see better.”
It’s like, if your dad’s gym teacher had said he was bad a playing kickball, he wouldn’t have gone home and said “I’m bad at playing kickball”. It is, after all, the sort of judgment that kids have handed down. If the teacher had said “you need to practice kickball more if you want to get any better”, he might have gone home and said he needs them to get him a ball to practice with.
An adult hearing about poor vision knows precisely what that means – have the eyes checked, and get glasses or contacts if necessary. A child doesn’t have the same experience and expectations, and might need to be led a bit further. I could well imagine myself, in early grades, thinking “boy, it’s odd that my teacher said *I* had bad vision, when I know so-and-so (with thick and heavy glasses – this was in the bad old days, when cheap, light, plastic lenses were science fiction), and the teacher didn’t mention *them* having bad vision,” and not spotting the obvious conclusion (“maybe that’s because so-and-so sees fine *with* glasses!”).