What, Skeptical, Now?

New Oven Installed Oct. 24th

Now I’m cooking with gas. (I was cooking with gas before - I just wanted to use the catchphrase.) 

Rachel helped me inaugurate the new stove with an apple pie.

Neighborhood Signs

Mask It Or Casket

I figured eventually a study would come out that shows counties with no mask requirements suffer a lot more Covid than counties with mask requirements, and now such a study from Tennessee is available:

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine looked at the current COVID outbreak in Tennessee and broke the hospitalization numbers down by the counties patients were coming from and whether those counties had masking mandates. The results are stark. The growth in hospitalizations is greatest in counties without masking requirements. Indeed, the inverse relationship between masking and hospitalization lines up across the spectrum from areas with little masking to those where mandates are widespread.

Gotta Go, Got A Zoom Meeting

 

(Via Heather Poduska on Facebook - Bravo To Cooper Chiropractic of Wayland, Massachusetts.)

Colder Northern Hemisphere Weather is Pushing People Indoors

Conservatives Think We Are Such Chumps

On The Eve of Liberal Domination

The history of California 1994-2010 is a preview of what will happen in the rest of country. In a little over a week, Joseph Biden will be elected President. He will be the first of a string of Democratic Presidents that will occupy the Oval Office for the rest of the 21st Century. Without the whip hand of power, the Republican Party will completely collapse. I'm glad I have lived long enough to see it happen.

The Hope of Herd Immunity is a Mirage

 

Manaus, Brazil is the only place on Earth that appears to have reached herd immunity. Since Covid transmission there continues, they can't relax protective measures. The only long-term hope is for an effective vaccine:

“We believe that, theoretically, herd immunity for COVID-19 would be around 60 per cent of a population resistant to the virus, and this is why this research points to herd immunity in Manaus,” says Granato, a professor of infectious diseases at the Federal University of São Paulo, who did not participate in Sabino’s study. 

These findings mean that the virus will find less new victims in Manaus. But, Granato warns, “there’s still more than 30 percent of the population to infect there.” 

Sabino agrees: “Transmission might have slowed down in Amazonas state, but it’s still happening.”