Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Let there be snark.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Good luck with your asparagus.

People are complicated. Love is not.

It was, in fact, named Jelly.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Every MSM headline appears to be written by DougJ. i hope he’s getting paid.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Infrastructure week. at last.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / Scenes From the Stupidest Country in the World

Scenes From the Stupidest Country in the World

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In March and April, when we shut down the schools, what we should have learned was that eliminating contact among children and practicing social distancing works in reducing the infection rates among children.

Sadly, this is America, and what half the country apparently ‘learned’ is that “KIDS ARE IMMUNE TO THE RONA.”

And, as the stupidest motherfuckers on the planet, we then launched our kids back into camps and schools, because for some reason we decided that children are a different species with a fundamentally different biology, and lo and behold, look what is happening:

As the nation focuses on safety issues around going back to school during the pandemic, a new report found a sharp increase in the number of Covid-19 cases among children in the United States.

There has been a 90% increase in the number of Covid-19 cases among children in the United States over the last four weeks, according to a new analysis by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association that will be updated weekly.

Hoocoodanode. In Florida, ground zero for stupid in this country, it’s even worse:

Florida’s number of official Covid-19 cases in children has more than doubled over the past month, data from the state showed Tuesday.

Covid-19 cases among children also spiked across the country during roughly the same period.

In Florida, the total number of cases in children 17 and under rose from 16,797 on July 9 to 39,735 on August 9 — an increase of 137%, according to Florida Department of Health data.

And you know what those kids are going to do? SPREAD THE FUCKING VIRUS TO THEIR PARENTS, GRANDPARENTS, BABYSITTERS, etc.

You know, when I was younger and eating mushrooms by the handful and consuming blotter by the notebook page and earning my degree in street pharmacology, every now and then I worried that maybe I was doing long-term damage to myself and would pay a heavy price later on in life. So far, it appears that chemistry ain’t got nothing on old fashioned stupid.

Reader Interactions

126Comments

  1. 1.

    Damien

    So we don’t need alien DNA to vaccinate against stupidity, just a boatload of psychedelics?
    Sign me up for the clinical trial!

  2. 2.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I really am pessimistic that even with we get Biden and a robust virus response next spring that the idiots won’t just do their best to undermine it. Short of stigmatizing science denialism as a form of racism I don’t see how the pandemic is going to stop.

  4. 4.

    kindness

    In the early/mid 80’s you could get a sheet of blotter in the parking lot of a Grateful Dead show for $40. I didn’t sell the stuff but supplied friends when they wanted some

    @Urza:  They would drop liquid form on to blotter paper and let it dry.  Hence blotter acid.  Sheets were 10 x 10 doses.

  5. 5.

    Urza

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: I don’t know quite what the right response is since they tend to dig in even harder when stigmatizing their stupidity.  But something needs to be done to fix society and move people out of dark ages mentality.

  6. 6.

    artem1s

    Sadly, this is America, and what half the country apparently ‘learned’ is that “KIDS ARE IMMUNE TO THE RONA.” AREN’T PERFECT EXPRESSIONS OF MEMEMEMEMEMEME UNLESS THEY GET TO DO ALL THE THINGS IN SCHOOL THAT I DID”

    Opening schools universities in Ohio is all about FOOTBALL and PROM and GETTING DRUNK EVERY NIGHT WITH YOUR FRATBROS! Apparently school isn’t for learning anymore (hahaha it hasn’t been for at least 5 decades). It’s all about making sure you set up your glory days so you have something to remember when you settle into your boring middle class white suburban life. At least until you have kids of your own and can live vicariously thru them! blech!

  7. 7.

    jonas

    Of course kids can get infected, but we know that they rarely get seriously ill. The question is how easily they spread it. I’ve seen reporting recently that claims young kids really don’t shed the virus as much when they breathe or cough, so the risk is lower, but others that claim the opposite. So whether a bunch of infected kids = major outbreak among adults they come in contact with is still not clear, imho. Teenagers are probably just as infectious as older adults, so high schools and colleges are screwed, particularly in states with high rates of community spread and shitty testing.

  8. 8.

    the antibob

    As the little Covid incubators say these days. “Slow your roll there, Damien… too much dip on your chips.” Also, I’m pretty sure this IS the psychedelic timeline. Bad acid. Not those nice patty shrooms.

  11. 11.

    Soprano2

    I’ve got a friend who’s a home care nurse for disabled children. She has a co-worker who’s currently quarantined because she caught it from one of the kids she was working with. This idea that kids don’t get sick is going to get hundreds of thousands of children and other people sick and dead.

  12. 12.

    Roger Moore

    One thing I haven’t seen as much discussion of is whether there are specific classes that are less safe than others.  For example, we know there have been several superspreading events associated with church choir practices, which suggests that school choir classes are probably risky even if we’re trying to keep the rest of school open.  I have similar worries about band, though maybe sticking with marching band would help to mitigate any problems.  Should we change which activities kids do in PE to minimize interpersonal contact?

  13. 13.

    jonas

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Oh, yeah. Red states will completely flout any recommendations from the Biden administration, refuse testing/tracing, etc., refuse a vaccine when one is available, yet still blame him for any rise in cases. Trump will be gone, but Trumpism will be around for a long time. This is a generational battle.

  15. 15.

    Kattails

    So, Cole, a neighbor of mine used to make a tea with mushrooms, red zinger (Celestial Seasonings) and his own honey.  Pretty spectacular birthday party one year.

    @Urza: scored some after panhandling change in DC during the anti-Vietnam war protests, luckily it was clean, spent the entire night walking around the city just in awe. Easy to carry, just nibble a corner, you’re good to go.

  16. 16.

    NotMax

    Had you abstained, today you’d be master of an almost top 5,000 blog!

    ;)

    @kindness

    Real professionals would provide it on perforated paper so it could more easily be torn into squares.

  17. 17.

    artem1s

    I worried that maybe I was doing long-term damage to myself and would pay a heavy price later on in life. So far, it appears that chemistry ain’t got nothing on old fashioned stupid.

    Lead gasoline. This is the last generation of adults that was exposed on a daily basis to micro levels of lead.  I am convinced the lead studies dropped the ball on studying the effects of low level exposure. The need to address high level exposure was important to focus on.  But the public got the message that eating paint was apparently the only way a kid could be at risk for lead exposure.  And according to those commercials it was those black babbies and their negligent Cadillac driving moms who were stupid enough to put themselves at risk. Never mind the quarterly ritual of changing your oil enjoyed by all suburban and rural youth, passed down by their fathers. Every farmer I knew had a tanker of gas on their property for fueling trackers and combines.  I shudder to think about how much lead I was exposed to as a kid thru direct contact, let alone the exhaust fumes from crappy old engines. And there were the 2 cycle lawn mowers where you mixed your fuel and oil! The oil industry had it’s role in covering up the risks and spent 5 decades enabling the auto industry who didn’t want to retool  their factories for engines that used unleaded gas and never had to answer for it.

    We are only 25 years out from the ban on selling leaded gasoline.  think about that. If we are very, very, very lucky, the damage won’t be passed on genetically.

  18. 18.

    dexwood

    We should not be surprised that a government putting kids in cages will sacrifice children in crowded schools during a fucking pandemic.

    ETA: Monsters, ghouls, and traitors all of them.

  19. 19.

    Kattails

    A letter to the editor in the weekend paper: COVID is just a one-sided scare tactic, why don’t we call it the nursing home virus, kids are only dying at 1/3 the rate of the seasonal flu (WTF???), 80% of those  infected have only  mild symptoms, mask wearing proven not effective blah blah. We just need to eat healthy and stay positive, meditate etc.

    Now I need to spend some time slapping this shit down, and am sure I’ll find plenty of data as faithfully supplied by our outstanding front pagers.

  20. 20.

    Karen S.

    @jonas: I heard in a news report on CNN or MSNBC yesterday that children over age 10 are prone to spreading the virus than younger children. I can’t remember who said that, but I do know that it was in the context of a report about the rise of infections in children. I only heard it because I was at my elderly parents’ house and my extremely hard-of-hearing dad had the TV’s volume cranked way up. I couldn’t help hearing at least some of the broadcast. :-)

  21. 21.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kattails:

    So, Cole, a neighbor of mine used to make a tea with mushrooms, red zinger (Celestial Seasonings) and his own honey.  Pretty spectacular birthday party one year. 

    Did he call it Tripping Balls tea?

  24. 24.

    mrmoshpotato

    @dexwood:

    We should not be surprised that a government putting kids in cages will sacrifice children in crowded schools during a fucking pandemic. 

    We also shouldn’t be surprised in a country with tens of millions of selfish, shithead (wo)manchildren who decided “Fuck Hillary!  I’m not gonna vote!”

  25. 25.

    leeleeFL

    @the antibob: when DeSantis demanded Florida open schools, my local TV news had a pediatrician on(no capital letter, he was an idiot) who announced that according to ‘data we have” children are not vectors for COVID 19 as they are for seasonal flu!  My 12 yo GRANDDAUGHTER looks at the screen and says, ” we haven’t been in school, moron, you have no idea what we can spread”!  12 yo!  I was SOOOOO PROUD!

  27. 27.

    Fair Economist

    Acute serious illness isn’t the only problem with COVID. A German study found that months after recovery, the *average* post-COVID patient had a heart ejection fraction (the percentage of blood in the heart it pumps out with each beat) loss of 5%. That’s comparable to a mild MI. And that’s the average patient, with only 1/3 even admitted to the hospital.

    I hope these people aren’t looking for their children to be competitive athletes, because even that is enough to kiss a competitive career goodby in most sports.

  29. 29.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @dexwood: Trump pretty much said so in his latest speech about getting those kids Back in School to help the economy.  “Just a tiny number of deaths (of children)”   So unless one’s child is disabled and / or has comorbidities like diabetes, cystic fibrosis, being a cancer survivor, being a transplant recipient, etc, etc it’s all good…or if they are just unlucky.  Oh well , thems the breaks!

  30. 30.

    RepubAnon

    @artem1s: “Soon we’ll be out, amid the cold world’s strife.

    Soon we’ll be sliding down the razor blade of life!

    But though we go- our sordid separate ways

    We shall never forget thee, thou golden college days!”

     

    – Tom Lehrer, Bright College Days

  31. 31.

    PenAndKey

    @jonas: Oh, yeah. Red states will completely flout any recommendations from the Biden administration, refuse testing/tracing, etc., refuse a vaccine when one is available, yet still blame him for any rise in cases.

    We are seeing this happen already with county sheriffs openly refusing to enforce the mask mandate here in Wisconsin. They’re claiming that their personal interpretation of the constitution trumps the governor’s authority to enact public health rules.

  34. 34.

    NotMax

    @Kattails

    Reminded me there’s a half box of Red Zinger dating from the 1970s in the recesses of a kitchen cabinet. Also a few other Celestial Seasoning teas from the same time.

    Stuff ought to be primo vintage by now.

    ;)

  35. 35.

    sdhays

    @jonas: I wonder just how much this will be true. I think there’s frustration even among the Republican governors about how shitty the federal response has been. I think some of them may cooperate as quietly as they can with the hope that things start actually working.

    Of course, I don’t see Brian Kemp, Ron DeStupidest, or KKKristi Noem doing that because they plan to run for Preznit in 2024 and they (probably correctly) believe that the way to win is to be sitting on the highest mountain of human skulls when the music stops.

  36. 36.

    germy

    @artem1s:

    I remember mentioning that years ago to a friend, who told me jet fuel is still leaded, and the airlines fly all over the country, so we’re still exposed.

    I suspect he was wrong, but I didn’t feel like an argument.

  39. 39.

    catclub

    @mrmoshpotato: We should not be surprised that a government putting kids in cages

     

    also note that a good economy plus kids in cages probably is ok for plenty of people to vote for Trump.  A shitty economy and incompetent response  to covid19 (and  kids still in cages) may be a bridge too far.

  41. 41.

    Major Major Major Major

    You know, when I was younger and eating mushrooms by the handful and consuming blotter by the notebook page

    Not gonna lie, this made me scroll up and check the byline since it could be so many of us.

  42. 42.

    catclub

    @germy: I suspect he was wrong, but I didn’t feel like an argument.

    yes there is still aviation gas  100LL  (low lead).

     

    But dosage matters, and testing of kids to see what their lead level are, show it is orders of magnitude lower than the bad times.

  43. 43.

    mrmoshpotato

    @leeleeFL:

    My 12 yo GRANDDAUGHTER looks at the screen and says, ” we haven’t been in school, moron, you have no idea what we can spread”!  12 yo!  I was SOOOOO PROUD! 

    Wise well beyond her years.

  44. 44.

    John S.

    @sdhays: Ron DeathSantis should be unable to have a career in politics after his bungling here in Florida. But then again, look at Prick Scott.

  46. 46.

    ArchTeryx

    @germy: He was wrong.  Jet fuel is almost pure kerosine, with a few lighter additives and dyes added in to tell the difference between different grades.  Now *avgas* (aviation gasoline), meant for piston powered engines, that may still be leaded, but that’s a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the fuel that gets burned, a loogie in the ocean. Commercial jets all use kerosine-based fuel and so do the commercial turboprops.

    I could be wrong about the avgas, though.  It was still leaded in the 70s, but that may well have changed in 50 years!

  47. 47.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: No, that’s definitely true. Not much Biden can do about it, either. He can’t even talk about that now.

    What’s he going to do, say “Elect me and I won’t be able to fix Corona?” Instead, this has to wait until after he’s elected. He’ll have to talk about how Trump mismanaged this thing so badly that a full recovery is going to be close to impossible and will require the cooperation of every American, and he hopes that his Republican friends join him in pushing how serious this is.

  49. 49.

    Nicole

    @Crashman06: @Karen S.:

    Our kids’ pediatricians told us the same. 10 seems to be the dividing line age for some reason.

    I read a piece a few months back that tall people seem to be at more risk for catching the disease that smaller ones (I have seen nothing since to follow up on that), but I remembered it when the “younger kids don’t transmit as much but older kids do” started getting media attention and I wonder if perhaps it’s because, by age 10, kids are starting to reach the height of adults.  I mean, that younger kids are just as capable of transmitting the virus, but because they are not near enough to an adult’s nose and mouth, it makes for its own social distancing.

    Cockamamie, most likely, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the under-10 crowd are just too short to transmit it to those at risk for more serious complications.

  50. 50.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Karen S.: Yeah, IANAEpidemiologist, but from what I’ve read, people see that “children under ten rarely get seriously ill and don’t seem to spread it as much”, and read it as “children under eighteen”.

    @Nicole: They respond differently when they do get sick too, so it’s probably not just height…

  51. 51.

    mrmoshpotato

    @NotMax:

    Reminded me there’s a half box of Red Zinger dating from the 1970s in the recesses of a kitchen cabinet. 

    Got any nails coming out of the woodwork that need a good whack?

    Also, mmmmmmmm red Zingers.

  54. 54.

    Nicole

    @leeleeFL: Your granddaughter has excellent critical thinking skills.  She’s ahead of about 85% of the people working in media, I’d say.

  55. 55.

    The Pale Scot

    @jonas:

    Red states will completely flout any recommendations from the Biden administration

    Which is why I’ve been saying that eventually the blue states will close the borders to all non-commercial traffic from those states. Which means here in Florida for example, all those snow birds and the sales tax revenue they bring are not going to be coming down. Even if they’re willing to live with the ‘Rona, because they will be stuck, like I am, in Florida, indefinitely.

  56. 56.

    MisterForkbeard

    @germy: I’m in the odd position of wanting it to be Harris but also really being okay with basically anyone.

    Whoever he picks is going to have a hell of a time, though.

  59. 59.

    laura

    @laura: also, before the clampdown, we were hearing lots of anecdotal stories about people our age (middle-agers) micro-dosing on the LSD on the regular. Who’s got the time and spare cells for that?

    In covid-related fuckery, our local paper is reporting that the vast VAST majority of CARES Act funds went straight to Sheriff Scott Jones for salaries for sheriff’s probation and park rangers. Less than 1% was provided to the county’s public health department. Why yes, Jones is a big ass trumper.

  62. 62.

    Frankensteinbeck

    I’ve been thinking about Russia’s claim to have a vaccine, and I keep coming back to the conclusion that Putin is much less powerful, intelligent, or both than his reputation suggests.  Now, the vaccine might not exist at all and be a mere PR announcement.  Russia spouts nonsense all the time, so that might be harmless.  But if Putin is actually going to mass produce and give out a vaccine, the risk there is huge.  If the vaccine has nasty side effects or doesn’t work, any possible gains from getting one out early are lost, and then some.  People get pissed when you promise and don’t deliver, much more than if you just sit around and do nothing.  That lesson has been playing out in Trump’s presidency.  Why take the very large risk of that?

    The possibilities I see are that he throws shit at the wall to see what sticks as a general philosophy, which means he’s much less smart than we give him credit for.  He doesn’t believe in science when it’s inconvenient for him and dismisses the possibility this could go wrong, which goes back to ‘much less smart’.  Or he’s desperate, in a much weaker position personally than we know, and is taking the gamble because he feels like he has no choice.

  63. 63.

    randy khan

    @Kattails:

    A letter to the editor in the weekend paper: COVID is just a one-sided scare tactic, why don’t we call it the nursing home virus, kids are only dying at 1/3 the rate of the seasonal flu (WTF???), 80% of those  infected have only  mild symptoms, mask wearing proven not effective blah blah. We just need to eat healthy and stay positive, meditate etc.

    It’s interesting – ready maddening – how people misunderstand infectious diseases.  The profile for COVID-19 actually looks a lot like the profile for the flu, in that risk of death is very low for the young and goes up rapidly after 60.*  But it’s not zero, and as we learn more about COVID-19 we learn that it can have long-term effects other than death, and it’s not clear at all whether the young are at low risk for those effects.

    *Not entirely an aside, although not directly on point:  In fact, the risk curve for the flu looks a lot like the risk curve for life in general, as overall death rates go up pretty precipitously after age 45.  Cheering, isn’t it?

  64. 64.

    Major Major Major Major

    @laura: Microdosing refers to taking a dosage far below that required to produce noticeable psychedelic effects. My friends who do it think they do better work (programming) that way. So it doesn’t quite take up attention or time? But it is, indeed, perhaps missing the point.

  66. 66.

    Gravenstone

    @Frankensteinbeck: Yeah, he’s either offering the Russian people as mass guinea pigs, or he’s selling snake oil in the hopes of quieting discontent and maybe trying to brag up Russian know-how in front of the world.

    If it’s true and effective, great for him. Anything else, he’s going to be in a world of hurt – ideally literally.

  68. 68.

    randy khan

    @germy:

    I remember mentioning that years ago to a friend, who told me jet fuel is still leaded, and the airlines fly all over the country, so we’re still exposed.

    I suspect he was wrong, but I didn’t feel like an argument.

    Turns out he was right.

    I’m kind of surprised.

  70. 70.

    mrmoshpotato

    @randy khan:

    kids are only dying at 1/3 the rate of the seasonal flu (WTF???) 

    “Fuck the kids!  Not enough are dying for me not to go out drinking! WWWAAAHHHH!”

  71. 71.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @MisterForkbeard: He’ll have to talk about how Trump mismanaged this thing so badly that a full recovery is going to be close to impossible and will require the cooperation of every American, and he hopes that his Republican friends join him in pushing how serious this is.

    Well,  take a gander at California; all the previous Republican governors are (literally) on board state effort to control the virus and there are still plenty of MAGA hats screaming FREEDUM and spreading the virus.  Thus my pessimism.

  73. 73.

    frosty

    @germy: I remember mentioning that years ago to a friend, who told me jet fuel is still leaded …

    Off the top of my head, and without looking it up, I doubt that jet fuel was ever leaded. Lead in gasoline was used to prevent engine knock, which is a problem specific to piston engines.

  74. 74.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Frankensteinbeck: Putin likely could be seeing if other countries fall for it (like Trump) pay Russia billions in a bondogle and then Putin can use the money to keep the Russians happy.

  75. 75.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Ken:

    Didn’t we have this same discussion about two years ago, when Russia announced their new nuclear-powered unlimited-range cruise missile?

    ‘Round and ’round the Earth she goes!  Where she goes boom, nobody knows!

  76. 76.

    JPL

    Big twitter rumor is that it’s Susan Rice.  Let’s hope that her son won’t campaign with trump against her.

  77. 77.

    Booger

    @catclub: So avgas for piston-engined planes, which I would suspect account for a tiny amount of the passenger miles travelled…whereas the big guys are running jet fuel, which is basically kerosene good enough to run through the pipes. No not that much lead exposure v. 1965

    Nothing like being the last one in the comment parade. But hey! We have a consensus!! So Biden’s VP will DEFINITELY be unleaded.

  78. 78.

    Burnspbesq

    @sdhays:

    Folks like those see the data that say the virus disproportionately (in numbers AND bad outcomes) affects brown people and say “that’s a feature, not a bug.”

  79. 79.

    cain

    @Urza:

    It’s simple – you tie their nationalism and patriotism to it. That’s what if I remember what the govt did during WW2 – you were supposed to buy war bonds to help the war effort.

    Democrats are very poor at this – but you need to have a steady beat of “you have to do this”  – buy all the billboards. Use iconic images like “uncle sam” – all of that. You need to use your propaganda machine.

    We’ve become dipshits as a party because we keep chasing white male voters. Once we let that shit go – then we can be better at this kind of thing. (the reason we chase white male voters is supposedly the union/blue collar workers) but you know lot of those folks are PoC too.

  80. 80.

    Major Major Major Major

    @JPL: This seems to be because Harris has a DNC speaking slot, as if the Biden campaign would be dumb enough to indicate his pick this way. (Apparently Kaine also had a speaking slot in the initial 2016 schedule.)

  82. 82.

    Ed Marshall

    I think at this point we all know what the October Surprise is gonna be, and it’s gonna be deadly, awful, preventable and not Good News for Donald Trump or much of a surprise.

  85. 85.

    pat

    No mention so far of the very serious inflammatory (I think) illness that has affected something like 90,000 kids?  Sorry I can’t be more precise.  I have to see if I can find that again.

  87. 87.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Ed Marshall: Yeah, I think so too. Bad as things are, it’s going to get worse, and unfortunately that’s the only way some people will get woke.

  89. 89.

    Roger Moore

    @sdhays:

    Only 25 years??

    There was a fairly long phase-out period.  It became illegal to make new cars capable of using leaded gasoline when catalytic converters were required back in the ’70s, but they kept selling leaded gas for a long time afterward.  Lead did things beyond raising octane rating, so cars designed for leaded gas were allowed to keep using it.  I’m not sure how people with vintage cars deal with this stuff, but they’re a small enough market that they’re on their own now.

  91. 91.

    The Pale Scot

    @laura:

    micro-dosing on the LSD on the regular.

    How the heck do you find Sydney that is reliably clean? The synthetic club drugs are notorious for impurities and substitutions. Since the guys in the Wamego Missile Silo got pinched, that’s gotta be hard to find. Back in the day I got mine from Chem majors with 24 hour access to the labs. But I’d imagine modern surveillance methods makes that a lot dicier.

  96. 96.

    Roger Moore

    @germy:

    I remember mentioning that years ago to a friend, who told me jet fuel is still leaded, and the airlines fly all over the country, so we’re still exposed.

    Jet fuel is not leaded; it’s closer to kerosene than it is to gasoline and has no need for anti-knock additives.  Aviation gas for piston engine planes kept the lead for a lot longer than fuel for cars did.  I’m not sure if they’re still selling leaded avgas, but if they aren’t the final phase out was quite recent.

  98. 98.

    JPL

    @NotMax: i’m concerned because she does have baggage.   How many times will we hear Benghazi

    I need to do some cleaning so I’ll do that.

  99. 99.

    Mallard FIlmore

    @jonas:

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Oh, yeah. Red states will completely flout any recommendations from the Biden administration, refuse testing/tracing, etc., refuse a vaccine when one is available, yet still blame him for any rise in cases.

    No country has developed a plan that is better than a hard lockdown. That is what will be needed here in the USA, but it will require total cooperation of state governors. There will be some Red States that resist or refuse.

    What can Biden do about refuseniks?

    • mothball military bases (for protection of soldiers)
    • transfer the soldiers and duties to conforming states
    • mothball-transfer federal offices
    • withdraw federal certification of airports

    That’s the start of my short list.

  100. 100.

    LeeM

    @germy: As many have stated, Avgas (100LL) is still leaded with reduced amounts of tetraethyllead (TEL), a toxic substance used to prevent engine knocking. Many of the piston engines in the fleet (and their 1950’s design) predate the lead reductions in fuel and simply don’t run well without the additive. The FAA isn’t about to knowingly allow a less safe or reliable engine or fuel modification practice.

  101. 101.

    NotMax

    @JPL

    Wasn’t picking on you, was directed at the whole media rabble’s “but we MUST know the announcement BEFORE the announcement!” mindset.

    It’ll happen when it happens. Sheesh.

  102. 102.

    sherparick

    @Urza: Ah, the very young.  Yes, that his how we old foggies use to drop acid back in the 1970s.  Surprise it lasted into the nineties.

  103. 103.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Ken:

    Didn’t we have this same discussion about two years ago

    No.  Lying about a new weapon is a wildly different situation.  There is no real cost to saying it and the weapon not existing.  Rolling out a vaccine that turns out to not work or be worse than nothing wipes out any gains you got from saying you had one, and then a lot more.  It really, seriously pisses people off.  Trump’s poll numbers collapsed when he started making national declarations that anybody could get tested and people tried and couldn’t.

  106. 106.

    The Pale Scot

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Dosage of the good stuff should be 500 mcg ave, imprecise manufacture creates various analogues that have other unpleasant physical or neurological effects. Cookers would add amphetamine (if the user was lucky) or other chemicals that were sort of trippy and dangerous but easier to synthesis. Back in the day cookers were mostly enthusiastic psychonauts more concerned with getting people tripped instead of the profit oriented foreign run drug cartels that control most of the club drug scene today

  107. 107.

    Gravenstone

    @The Pale Scot: 

    Back in the day I got mine from Chem majors with 24 hour access to the labs.

    True story from the early 80s – college friend of mine started life in the “jock” dorm on campus. When some of the upperclassmen learned he was a chemistry major, first question was “do you know how to make acid, man?”

    He moved to one of the sane dorms ASAP.

  111. 111.

    Major Major Major Major

    @The Pale Scot:

    Dosage of the good stuff should be 500 mcg ave

    I think the threshold dose is around 50ug, “a hit” averages around 80, so if somebody feels like taking 500, great, but I don’t know if it’s fair to say it’s what everybody needs.

    Microdosing, then, would be less than 50ug, and there are not very many drugs, even awful ones, that would have negative effects at that level.

    Depends on the delivery mechanism at the end of the day, but this rule of thumb still applies: if you can see it, it ain’t acid.

  112. 112.

    Sab

    @Gravenstone: My grandfather was a chemist during Prohibition. Same deal for booze. He could test it for safety at work. So he did.

    His mother was a teetotling Baptist.

  115. 115.

    joel hanes

    @NotMax:

    Sleepytime is still one of my mainstays for those nights when sleep won’t come,  or for anytime I’m feeling more agita than focus.

    And the newer, hard-to-find “Sleepytime Sinus Soother” is indispensible whenever I have a cold or bad allergies.

  116. 116.

    Ruckus

    John

    So far, it appears that chemistry ain’t got nothing on old fashioned stupid.

    Chemistry can make you stupid, but if applied judicially, the stupid wears off. Ingrown stupid reenforces itself, builds upon itself. And ingrown stupid often leads to justifying itself. And that leads to believing that the stupid is reality, which brings the end game of conservatism – justifying ignorant rational for doing/believing stupid shit.

  119. 119.

    cain

    @PenAndKey:

    Then they should be personally liable to whatever happens based on their situation. Make them sign it and own it.

    To them this is all fucking theater. I’m not sure what crowd they think they are pleasing – but they need to make sure they take 100% of the blame since they decided to short circuit everything by not following the guidelines of the state.

    Secondly, no money need to be allotted to them.. freeze them out of whatever they think they can purchase.

  120. 120.

    J R in WV

    @randy khan:

    August 11, 2020 at 12:22 pm

    @germy:

    I remember mentioning that years ago to a friend, who told me jet fuel is still leaded, and the airlines fly all over the country, so we’re still exposed.

    I suspect he was wrong, but I didn’t feel like an argument.

    Turns out he was right.

    I’m kind of surprised.

    No, he wasn’t right, and nor are you,. Avgas is for engines with pistons, little private airplanes. Big airliners use turbines, which burn kerosene based fuels, which do NOT contain lead.

    I would be interested in what proportion of petroleum fuel used in the US is leaded Avgas, versus motor fuel, versus jet engine kerosene based fuels. I bet it’s really low.

  122. 122.

    coin operated

    You know, when I was younger and eating mushrooms by the handful and consuming blotter by the notebook page and earning my degree in street pharmacology, every now and then I worried that maybe I was doing long-term damage to myself and would pay a heavy price later on in life. So far, it appears that chemistry ain’t got nothing on old fashioned stupid.

    I’m going to have to quote (and steal) that one for truth…

  123. 123.

    The Moar You Know

     

    I remember mentioning that years ago to a friend, who told me jet fuel is still leaded, and the airlines fly all over the country, so we’re still exposed.

    I suspect he was wrong, but I didn’t feel like an argument.

     

    @germy: dead wrong.  Jet fuel’s just straight kerosene with some additives so that (not kidding) it doesn’t grow algae in it.  No lead.

    Old school light aircraft – piston engine planes, your Cessna 172s, Piper Cubs, those planes use avgas, which does have lead in it – but not a lot.  And there’s not a lot of those planes out there, about 200,000 in the entire US.  By way of comparison, the freeway running by my house carries far more than 200,000 cars a day.

  125. 125.

    TupeloPhoney

    1. @leeleeFL: that’s pretty impressive for a 12 y.o. or even a H.S. kid lately.  Pretty sure she isn’t getting that in school these days, so take a bow for how well you have passed along critical thinking skills to your kid, and I’m sure your granddaughter directly as well.
  126. 126.

    leeleeFL

    @TupeloPhoney: Thanks to all who had nice things to say about the GrandDaughter!  She is the one the school tells us is a crap student!  One of the meetings, someone said she had a small vocabulary!  I asked if they had ever talked to her, or if they were going by tests?  Crickets!

    The home schooling may be the best thing that ever happened for her.

    Crazy….

    And, she’s an amazing artist!

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