Octopus Overlords

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 8:49 amIndoors is another matter. I would estimate we have near 100% mask compliance here indoors in my area. I actually recently walked into a pool store and the woman behind me came in without a mask. The kid there yelled 'Where is your mask' and she eeked out loud and went back to her car to get it. That is the only time I can remember seeing a person without a mask indoors in a store since at least early April.

A Randolph man is accused of throwing hot coffee at a QuickChek convenience store employee after allegedly refusing to cover his nose with his mask, police said.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 2:39 pm

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 8:49 amIndoors is another matter. I would estimate we have near 100% mask compliance here indoors in my area. I actually recently walked into a pool store and the woman behind me came in without a mask. The kid there yelled 'Where is your mask' and she eeked out loud and went back to her car to get it. That is the only time I can remember seeing a person without a mask indoors in a store since at least early April.

Just be careful if you're in a NJ convenience store and think you're going to tell someone that wearing a mask below their nose isn't correct.

A Randolph man is accused of throwing hot coffee at a QuickChek convenience store employee after allegedly refusing to cover his nose with his mask, police said.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 2:39 pm

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 8:49 amIndoors is another matter. I would estimate we have near 100% mask compliance here indoors in my area. I actually recently walked into a pool store and the woman behind me came in without a mask. The kid there yelled 'Where is your mask' and she eeked out loud and went back to her car to get it. That is the only time I can remember seeing a person without a mask indoors in a store since at least early April.

Just be careful if you're in a NJ convenience store and think you're going to tell someone that wearing a mask below their nose isn't correct.

A Randolph man is accused of throwing hot coffee at a QuickChek convenience store employee after allegedly refusing to cover his nose with his mask, police said.

Octavious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 2:55 pmI've been trying to figure out if I know that guy. Could be a transplant in Randolph. If he's not he totally would have been in my class.

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 2:58 pm

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 2:39 pm

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 8:49 amIndoors is another matter. I would estimate we have near 100% mask compliance here indoors in my area. I actually recently walked into a pool store and the woman behind me came in without a mask. The kid there yelled 'Where is your mask' and she eeked out loud and went back to her car to get it. That is the only time I can remember seeing a person without a mask indoors in a store since at least early April.

Just be careful if you're in a NJ convenience store and think you're going to tell someone that wearing a mask below their nose isn't correct.

A Randolph man is accused of throwing hot coffee at a QuickChek convenience store employee after allegedly refusing to cover his nose with his mask, police said.

I'll take that any day over the Michigan mask murders.

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 3:02 pm

Octavious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 2:55 pmI've been trying to figure out if I know that guy. Could be a transplant in Randolph. If he's not he totally would have been in my class.

Yeah I looked. I don't think he went to RHS. My five minutes of sleuthing has his family in Nutley. Thanks creepy Google!

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 2:39 pm

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 8:49 amIndoors is another matter. I would estimate we have near 100% mask compliance here indoors in my area. I actually recently walked into a pool store and the woman behind me came in without a mask. The kid there yelled 'Where is your mask' and she eeked out loud and went back to her car to get it. That is the only time I can remember seeing a person without a mask indoors in a store since at least early April.

Just be careful if you're in a NJ convenience store and think you're going to tell someone that wearing a mask below their nose isn't correct.

A Randolph man is accused of throwing hot coffee at a QuickChek convenience store employee after allegedly refusing to cover his nose with his mask, police said.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 3:31 pm

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 2:39 pm

malchior wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 8:49 amIndoors is another matter. I would estimate we have near 100% mask compliance here indoors in my area. I actually recently walked into a pool store and the woman behind me came in without a mask. The kid there yelled 'Where is your mask' and she eeked out loud and went back to her car to get it. That is the only time I can remember seeing a person without a mask indoors in a store since at least early April.

Just be careful if you're in a NJ convenience store and think you're going to tell someone that wearing a mask below their nose isn't correct.

A Randolph man is accused of throwing hot coffee at a QuickChek convenience store employee after allegedly refusing to cover his nose with his mask, police said.

It's now "aggravated battery" in Illinois.

(What was assaulting an employee before? "Substantial Impoliteness"?)

Octavious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 3:34 pmI think NJ is the new Florida....

Holman wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 5:16 pmWould I be wrong to assume that we'll have a campus-wide outbreak before mid-September, and that we'll be switching to remote instruction again then?

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 4:37 pm

Octavious wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 3:34 pmI think NJ is the new Florida....

And yet, we have this awesomeness:

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 5:22 pm

Holman wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 5:16 pmWould I be wrong to assume that we'll have a campus-wide outbreak before mid-September, and that we'll be switching to remote instruction again then?

If you don't, someone else will and then everyone is going to scramble. I'd make sure whatever you're organizing can handle a switch to fully remote design, because it's absolutely happening.

We were actually provided a series of statements to include on our syllabuses (no, that's really the word) regarding the pandemic and special considerations we're taking into account based on roundtable/survey feedback that was collected after the Spring semester.

These are very strange times.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Tue Aug 11, 2020 9:15 am Russia has waccine. We are all saved, thank you Mother Russia! You show us the way!


No public data, only rudimentary testing. Ok.

malchior wrote: ↑Tue Aug 11, 2020 11:44 am

Freyland wrote: ↑Tue Aug 11, 2020 12:02 pm

malchior wrote: ↑Tue Aug 11, 2020 11:44 am

The "So good to see you" sign over the exit at the end is a nice touch.

malchior wrote: ↑Tue Aug 11, 2020 9:42 am

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Tue Aug 11, 2020 9:15 am Russia has waccine. We are all saved, thank you Mother Russia! You show us the way!


No public data, only rudimentary testing. Ok.

My favorite theory is Russia is doing it to push Trump to try to force short-cuts into our vaccine development program and undermine it.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Tue Aug 11, 2020 12:34 pm Irrational rage and anger seems to be a common personality trait among anti-mask Trump supporters.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Tue Aug 11, 2020 12:34 pm Irrational rage and anger seems to be a common personality trait among anti-mask Trump supporters.

malchior wrote: ↑Thu Jul 16, 2020 10:31 am

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Jul 16, 2020 9:59 am Yup. Read about it here:

On the CDC site where data on available hospital beds and ICU was previously stored, a note now reads, “Data displayed on this page was submitted directly to CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) and does not include data submitted to other entities contracted by or within the federal government.”

“We don’t have this critical indicator anymore,” Panchadsaram said. “The intent of just switching the data streams towards HHS, that’s fine. But you got to keep the data that you’re sharing publicly still available and up to date.”

Panchadsaram said he and his team, which includes researchers from the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy and from Resolve to Save Lives, a public health initiative led by former CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden, have been tracking the data since April.

The whole thing astounds me. This flies in the face of the bare basic minimum standard of care - so to speak - that you need to achieve when you are cutting over a critical information resource *in the middle of a damn crisis*. The new platform needs to exist and you need to transition it to such a way that you don't interrupt the damn service. We don't know if the platform exists, works...we don't know anything.

WSJ wrote:Public release of hospital data about the coronavirus pandemic has slowed to a crawl, one month after the federal government ordered states to report it directly to the Department of Health and Human Services and bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Key indicators, such as estimates of the portion of inpatient beds occupied by Covid-19 patients, are lagging by a week or more, making it harder for citizens and local officials to get a handle on how the pandemic is progressing and for agencies to allocate supplies of antiviral drugs and personal protective equipment, public-health experts say.

The decision to switch data reporting in the middle of a public-health crisis was reckless, researchers and former public-health officials say.

“The transition has been a disaster,” as hospitals typically take time to adjust to new data systems, said Jeffrey Engel, senior adviser to the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, an association that represents state public-health officials. “What HHS said was that the CDC was not nimble enough and couldn’t handle new data elements, and that’s simply not true.”

HHS officials say the new system is more complete because more hospitals are reporting a more thorough set of statistics. But because the system is so new, it is taking time to ensure the quality of the data and control for variations in numbers such as the quantity of cases reported each day. The quality-control process has led to some delays in reporting hospital capacity estimates, HHS says.

Under the CDC, between 2,900 and 3,000 hospitals were reporting coronavirus-related data each day, while now, nearly twice as many hospitals are reporting, a senior HHS official said. But HHS needs more time to analyze the data to establish confidence in the results, this person said.

“We’ve been at it for a month now, so we’re starting to see the data stabilize and shake out. It’s why the data has only been updated on a weekly basis,” the official said. “In being more transparent, it creates some level of confusion [in the short term].”

...

“There’s been inconsistent reporting, there have been serious lags in the reporting. The last time I reviewed it, some data was 11 days old, and now it’s three days old,” Dr. Frieden said. “They pulled it away from CDC because it was updated three times a week, and now they update it once a week. Give me a break.”

HHS’s estimated patient impact and hospital-capacity statistics, for example, weren’t updated between Aug. 3 and Aug. 10, according to a review of HHS data by The Wall Street Journal. That data set includes indicators such as inpatient and intensive-care beds occupied by Covid-19 patients, which researchers say are key to understanding the pandemic.

“We’re not doing a good job of tracking either the virus or our response to it, and because of that we’re flying blind,” Dr. Frieden said. “That’s the big picture.”

Twenty-two state attorneys general, led by Maura Healy of Massachusetts, sent a letter in late July to HHS Secretary Alex Azar, demanding that the agency reverse the decision and return to the old data collection system.

“This sudden disruption...harms the nation’s ability to track and respond to the pandemic, hampers state and local public health authorities’ efforts to address the crisis in their communities, risks compromising the health data of millions of Americans, and undermines public confidence in any reports about COVID-19 coming from the federal government,” the letter said.

In early July, the White House coronavirus task force asked the CDC to add dozens of new elements to its National Health Safety Network system, which has been in place for about 15 years. The White House gave the CDC a deadline of two to three days, the HHS official said, but the CDC said it needed two to three weeks to implement changes.

HHS, on orders from the White House task force, on July 10 instructed hospitals to switch from the CDC’s system to a new one operated by a private contractor called TeleTracking Technologies Inc., the HHS official said.

Among the findings of the NPR investigation:

• The Department of Health and Human Services initially characterized the contract with TeleTracking as a no-bid contract. When asked about that, HHS said there was a "coding error" and that the contract was actually competitively bid.

• The process by which HHS awarded the contract is normally used for innovative scientific research, not the building of government databases.

• HHS had directly phoned the company about the contract, according to a company spokesperson.

• TeleTracking CEO Michael Zamagias had links to the New York real estate world — and in particular, a firm that financed billions of dollars in projects with the Trump Organization.

malchior wrote: ↑Wed Aug 12, 2020 12:31 pm Oh that was quick - it was graft. The firm that got the HHS contract is led by a man tied to Trump. Murderers.

Among the findings of the NPR investigation:

• The Department of Health and Human Services initially characterized the contract with TeleTracking as a no-bid contract. When asked about that, HHS said there was a "coding error" and that the contract was actually competitively bid.

• The process by which HHS awarded the contract is normally used for innovative scientific research, not the building of government databases.

• HHS had directly phoned the company about the contract, according to a company spokesperson.

• TeleTracking CEO Michael Zamagias had links to the New York real estate world — and in particular, a firm that financed billions of dollars in projects with the Trump Organization.

Something like draining a swamp...I'm sure a better image will come to me

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Wed Aug 12, 2020 12:38 pm Something like draining a swamp...I'm sure a better image will come to me. But yeah, the naked power grab and shifting of money to people and groups that already have money during a pandemic is astounding.

The sheriff in a central Florida COVID-19 hotspot has issued a directive prohibiting deputies, staff and visitors to department offices from wearing protective face masks, an order that came as a local mayor and city council squared off over a mask ordinance for businesses.

Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods sent an email Tuesday informing the approximately 900 people working in the department that "when you are on-duty/working as my employee and representing my Office – masks will not be worn," the Ocala Star Banner reports.

BREAKING: Effective this Fall, Boston University will begin approving the issuance of degrees to students who die before completing their college education.

Now, I can already hear the whining and just so you know I did not make this decision easily,' Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said in a memo to staff.