Vaccine

You won’t find me defending DEI programs, but I don’t see much pushback within the academy.
Tangent alert.

Speaking of DEI. I just listened to the MLS Next Fest Welcome Webinar and a good portion of the webinar was devoted to DEI and how important it is to MLS Next. A lot of platitudes but not much substance. If any sport has DEI covered its soccer. My son's team alone has the following ethnicities: Black, White, French, Filipino, Iraqi, Mexican, Columbian, Spanish, Puerto Rican, Albanian and Japanese and I don't even know everyone's background on the team.
 
What kind of kerfuffle are you seeing up north? Charter schools aren't perfect but the existing high schools that converted to charter have given a lot of kids the opportunity to get out of really bad high schools, at least in San Diego. At the pre-high school level you see a few fly-by-night charter schools. The charter high schools in our area are comparable to the regular publics (except for sports where the charters are superior ;)) but far better than the schools where a lot of the kids come from.

The biggest kerfuffle I hear is the crappy schools complaining that they are losing enrollment (aka $$$) to the better charter schools. Which to me is "too bad, so sad".

It's contentious for a lot of reasons. I do think the legitimate charter schools get a bad wrap here. That said, there's a lot of corruption. I wasn't really intending to bring this into debate...just that education is already super divisive.
 
It's contentious for a lot of reasons. I do think the legitimate charter schools get a bad wrap here. That said, there's a lot of corruption. I wasn't really intending to bring this into debate...just that education is already super divisive.
Unfortunately anytime you have public money available there is going to be corruption. Our politicians (on both sides) don't seem to have the willpower and/or our government doesn't have the capability to hold anyone accountable for the misuse of public funds.
 
Unfortunately anytime you have public money available there is going to be corruption. Our politicians (on both sides) don't seem to have the willpower and/or our government doesn't have the capability to hold anyone accountable for the misuse of public funds.
Cut these people some grace bro. Many were bought and then bribed. Once that happens, Jeff and his girl will find a way to get them over to the Island man. Did you see The Firm?
 
South Korea, having one of the highest vaxx rates in the world, 82% of population fully vaxxed, and masks, has set daily records two days in a row and it’s hospital system (which isn’t extensively staffed…see squid games for the issues) is nearing collapse. Also has 5 omicron cases from a new source: Nigeria. Speculation now is omicron might be all over Africa and some speculating it might not have been an aids patient after all but a reverse zoonotic source (cat or deer related).

japan meanwhile has close to zero covid now as covid is collapsing in that country. The main difference in policy between the 2 is Korea still has a contact trace (which has collapsed in recent days) and Japan has pretty much shut its borders post Olympics. Neither can fully explain the difference in what’s happening.
 
South Korea, having one of the highest vaxx rates in the world, 82% of population fully vaxxed, and masks, has set daily records two days in a row and it’s hospital system (which isn’t extensively staffed…see squid games for the issues) is nearing collapse. Also has 5 omicron cases from a new source: Nigeria. Speculation now is omicron might be all over Africa and some speculating it might not have been an aids patient after all but a reverse zoonotic source (cat or deer related).

japan meanwhile has close to zero covid now as covid is collapsing in that country. The main difference in policy between the 2 is Korea still has a contact trace (which has collapsed in recent days) and Japan has pretty much shut its borders post Olympics. Neither can fully explain the difference in what’s happening.
Grace, you know the Japanese are the most meticulous hand washers in the world. That has to be the reason.
 
Germany announces nationwide lockdown for the unvaccinated

I didn;t know Hitler was back in power. Wow, this getting intense fellas & Grace T. I wonder what President Biden will say today. I'm told by a reliable source in the spiritual realm that the world is being told to "Lockdown Now!!!"
 
It's contentious for a lot of reasons. I do think the legitimate charter schools get a bad wrap here. That said, there's a lot of corruption. I wasn't really intending to bring this into debate...just that education is already super divisive.
In AZ charters get less money per student vs public schools. And with that money produce better outcomes.

Are all of them good? Nope. Like any biz, school, etc, some are not good. But the good thing about a charter school is that if it fails, it GOES away.

When I drive through a bad or so so part of town and see a nice new charter being built, I think how lucky those kids will be to now have a choice/chance.
 
Talk about waking up to Groundhog day. This is never going to end. I will now sit on my fence and chirp away until real change comes.

I guess what their saying is this contaminated guy flew from Africa to SF and was tested for Omicron. He had been vaccinated twcie but did not get the booster. Based on this fact, it seems if this guy had been probably boosterred, he would be safe? Everyone now needs to go get a booster because of waning issues.

 
Chief concerns seem to be it's efficiency is much less than initially reported (only 30% in stopping hospitalizations) and might encourage further mutations.

The Pfizer drug seems to have fewer concerns (but I'm now somewhat skeptical of any data Pfizer now produces on anything).

This drug makes the viral polymerase a "sloppier copier", so it actually elevates the base substitution rate during viral replication. The idea is that if elevate the base substitution rate high enough virtually all the packaged genomes will encode dead virus. While this might be achievable, IMO the approach introduces a second drug site target besides S to select viral variants. But if it worked well enough, I could see using it for immuno-compromised people who have a hard time maintaining elevated Ab titers or memory stem cell populations. But not a big improvement in terms of an overall strategy.
 
In AZ charters get less money per student vs public schools. And with that money produce better outcomes.

Are all of them good? Nope. Like any biz, school, etc, some are not good. But the good thing about a charter school is that if it fails, it GOES away.

When I drive through a bad or so so part of town and see a nice new charter being built, I think how lucky those kids will be to now have a choice/chance.
One of the great side benefits of charter schools are that they are eroding some of the power of the teachers' union. Unfortunately it also makes them a target of legislation by politicians that are beholden to the unions.
 
More on the criticism of the numbers released on the Bangladesh study. Very top line: they made their claims based on a differences of 20 or so cases, that could be accounted for by differences in survey, and which nevertheless showed no difference in cloth masks or for the younger people surgical masks.

 
interesting piece on what we were talking about yesterday. science is becoming less innovative because of a trend in researchers to limit original research and instead rely on a handful of popular topics and engage in the citation game. follows the trends we discussed in journalism and entertainment too. this guy Iirc is a lefty.

 
Things in Germany are teetering. Merkel has retired and Germany is trying to put in place a vaccine mandate. There's been large protests against mandates. the incoming chancellor has to rely on a coalition to rule and the libertarian leaning free democrats are opposed to vaccine mandates. they are talking about a lockdown of the unvaccinated (but that lasted in Austria only a few days before they went to full restrictions).

 
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