Gym class is one of few parts of high school – mostly junior high – that I’ve actively tried to blot from my mind. Don’t get me wrong – some of the gym teachers at my high school might not have been sadistic sociopaths. Some of them may have grown as human beings. I’ll leave it to divine judgment.
I do remember that many of ’em, when they weren’t articulating the humor they found in making the less team-sports-inclined kids feel like fish out of water, communicated primarily in slogans, to the depth of “no pain no gain” and “loooong slow distance” and other such repositories of the wisdom of Western Civilization. I don’t remember much, but I remember the slogans.
I thought about that when Governor Walz explained his new testing policy on Friday. Emphasis added by me:
Gov. Tim Walz coined the phrase “Minnesota moonshot” to refer to his goal for COVID-19 testing in the coming weeks.
It’s a “moonshot” because the level of testing he says is necessary is hard to imagine in current conditions.
Over the past six weeks, Minnesota labs have run more than 39,000 total tests statewide. Before the state begins returning to normal, Walz said he was aiming for some 5,000 tests per day or 40,000 a week.
And another story came out Friday as well, spelling out the details. I’ve added some emphasis:
Walz has said that a massive increase in testing — both tests that diagnose people who have the virus and tests that determine whether someone has developed antibodies to fight the virus — is necessary to restart parts of the economy.
Walz is planning to use $36 million from a state COVID-19 fund for the first phase of a several-step process: A three- to four-week period in which Mayo Clinic and the U of M will create a central lab to accommodate the expanded testing. Clinics and hospitals around the state will also be ramping up their efforts to take samples from potentially infected patients, which they will then send to that new central lab
The state is also planning to establish a virtual command center, to coordinate the state’s response with health care systems across Minnesota. The center would help determine where the tests are needed most on a given day, and how best to quickly address outbreaks that occur.
A new website, in which patients can see exactly where all the testing sites are among other resources, is also in the works.
Well, I”m glad there’s a plan.
Or was, anyway.
The sharp-eyed among you, and those that still pay attention to the Minnesota media, may have noticed something – the first story, announcing the Governor’s “moon shot”, was a month ago, and the bit with the “details” – really, a list of aspirations fit entirely for public relations use, which is all it takes for most Twin Cities media to run the story – came out a week later. A month after the “moonshot”, after the “three to four weeks” the governor called out for getting the state – with its formidable concentration of hospitals and immense public health bureaucracy – up to 20K tests a day, we’re noodling along around 5,000, on a good day, and that’s pretty recent.
And you can scan the Twin Cities media every day looking for any sign that a single reporter is going to follow up on the complete flop that Walz’s slogan turned into.
Not only are we testing at 3/4 the rate of South Dakota, and 1/3 the rate of North Dakota – we’re lagging every Minnesota “progressive’s” rhetorical punching bag, Mississippi, by a solid quarter.
Governor Walz is a gym teacher. God love gym teachers – but chanting “no pain, no gain” isn’t going to move any needles.
Not outside of Twin Cities newsrooms, anyway.
Funny how incompetence and corruption go hand in hand.
Of course the governor can’t lift the lock down until he has a steady, rock-solid supply of this week’s unobtanium.
can we just open everything up and let people decide if they want to go to places?
POD, your freedom is their enemy.
It really is amazing that after 3 years of screaming Trump is a fascist/dictator the people that are actually acting like that are Democrat governors around the country. And MP yes it is, that is so scary, I cant believe more peple dont realize that. But as Dennis Prager has said, Health Uber Allis. People would rather be safe than free, sad fact, and leftists know this.
Oh Ellison just sued a bar for opening up too early, we all need to support that bar.
Not only was he a gym teacher, he was a battalion Command Sergeant Major. Which, in general, are as worthless as a gym teacher. But make no mistake by the title, he commanded nothing. Was also stripped of CSM rank when he decided he wanted to not deploy and retired instead. That’s some leadership there…
SMH didnt he do that specifically to run for Congress? This guy trys to play himself off as a normal person when in reality he’s as sleezy as they come.
Testing everyone? Those test swabs, in addition to whatever viral load they may reveal, also have a sample of your DNA. What an opportunity to compile a massive self-identified, volunteered sample, DNA Database of “everyone” in MN. Wouldn’t that really simplify law enforcement efforts in the future?
Think of it we could test “everyone” in the USA.
Isn’t that how the CIA located Bin Laden?
POD – even if he was planning to run, none of his soldiers (whom he is supposed to represent) got to choose not to go. Likely one of the reasons he doesn’t call attention to his military time.
Remember that Walz does not represent the people who are losing their job or business to the shutdown. I doubt if Walz knows, on a first name basis, anyone who has lost a job, lost a business, or taken a pay cut do the lockdown he has imposed.
Huh.
Somehow, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas and Wisconsin all managed to reboot without a moonshot. They just said, go ahead, y’all.
Think about that; no moonshot…How did that ever happen?
I can picture all of the low IQ leftists in MN…huddled in the basement….maskies in place….tin foil hats scrunched down tight….tuned into MPR waiting for the countdown. They’re not going anywhere without a countdown either, because SCIENCISM!
Meanwhile, the state of Georgia has done some 200,000 tests since April 24, when it lifted its lock-down.
This chopper;
Laughing my butt off as you described Emery. I have always suspected that he lives in his mommy’s basement anyway. And, we all know how important those tests are to him.
I also want to know if he’s sent any of his gubmint checks back. Since Trump approved them, surely he and the rest of his tin foil hat wearing buddies have done so.
Im surprised he hasnt commented on this thread yet. Get this at my (admittedly small) company, Im actually back at the office today, things are different and its not the entire office but its refreshing to have some sense of normalcy again. Also at what point will the ban hammer hit Emery? Should we start taking bets?
Test and Trace! Test and Trace!
I work retail in an “essential” industry. I’ve been working 50+ hours per week since this happened, and my employer has limited access to no more than 250 customers at any given time, but that’s only counting people through the front door. Even if they started Test and Trace at the levels wanted, how the hell do you trace my contacts?
SmithStCrx on May 18, 2020 at 2:10 pm said:
Test and Trace! Test and Trace!
I work retail in an “essential” industry. I’ve been working 50+ hours per week since this happened, and my employer has limited access to no more than 250 customers at any given time, but that’s only counting people through the front door. Even if they started Test and Trace at the levels wanted, how the hell do you trace my contacts?
In my state, the fine print on “contact tracing” says that it only counts as a contact if you are face to face with the other person, distance less than 6′, for ten minutes or longer, mask or no mask.
The emperor has no clothes.
The central CA City of Atwater, has turned the tables on His Excellency Gavin Newsom and declared it a “sanctuary city” from Newsom’s draconian lock down order.
https://www.theblaze.com/news/california-city-sanctuary-city-newsom-lockdown?utm_source=theblaze-breaking&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20200518Trending-CalifCovidSanctuary&utm_term=ACTIVE%20LIST%20-%20TheBlaze%20Breaking%20News
What strikes me is that I’m not entirely sure what more testing will do, especially since we don’t have a tiered quarantine system. I can imagine testing everybody within X proximity of the “kung flu”, but that doesn’t solve the problem at all unless we decide that we’re going to divide people into “virus positive” (quarantine), “virus positive plus symptoms” (strong quarantine), “virus negative” (no quarantine), “antibody positive” (presumed safer) and “antibody positive post symptoms” (almost certainly safer).
But what we have is no particular quarantine, but a general quarantine that the idiots are going to basically ignore. And so we have a lockdown while the subways are not cleaned every few hours (something that should have been started 80 years ago, really, as any New Yorker knows), while nursing homes are forced to accept known COVID patients, while nursing homes are forced to allow post-COVID workers back without a 0(*&)&)& retest of virus availability, and while states are categorizing COVID deaths by the place of death (the hospital) rather than the place they likely caught the disease (those nursing homes).
Makes sense that Governor Cuomo doesn’t want people to be tried for this, because he’d be doing life, along with half his administration.
A judge in Oregon ruled that Oregon governor Kate Brown’s power to issue executive orders has expired, so her edicts no longer have the force of law.
Science-worshipper Kate Brown responded; “The science behind these executive orders hasn’t changed one bit. Ongoing physical distancing, staying home as much as possible, and wearing face coverings will save lives across Oregon.”
But it is not science. You can’t find peer-reviewed research that shows that any of this has any effect on the spread of covid-19.
Testing makes sense if you are an epidemiologist, but only to study the spread of a virus in a population. If you have a test with 20% known false positives, or negatives, or both, and you have enough tests, you can simply add in the uncertainty.
Testing could also make sense in a setting where you control contact (nursing homes & prisons, for example). But even then you can’t trust the numbers, if this thing is a contagious as the epidemiologists say that it is. If you have a 20% false positive/negative rate, that means of the fifty caregivers tested at a hospital or a nursing home, ten of them will test incorrectly.
It really is unobtanium. The epidemiologists can just say “my models are wrong because I don’t have the thing that I can’t get.” Unobtanium covers a multitude of sins.
None of the epidemiologists seemed to think sending sick people back to a nursing home was a problem, or that people in a nursing home needed special protection.
Imagine if Fauci had said, back in March “Look, ventilators are important, but we need to make sure the people working in nursing are using PPE.”
He didn’t.
seless as tits on a boar.
They will get the central lab up and running.
Don’t worry about that.
Worry about the fact that once it is up and running it will never go away.
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We didn’t need more proof that degenerates are using sciencism to keep their low IQ citizens in a state of panic, but there it is…
“Virginia’s count of COVID-19 tests to date includes results from 15,000 as-yet unreliable antibody tests, skewing the state’s testing capacity and its outlook on the spread of the virus,”
The Bat Flu hasn’t, but the reprobate scams are mutating faster than anyone can keep track of. And the reprobates are arguing among themselves lest their neighbors scam call their own into question!
At this stage of the game, and it most certianly is a game, if you’re wearing a maskie, you’re signaling advanced, stage 4 stupidity. Please stay at least 6′ away from me; forever.
Look at this shit…
“Gov. Ralph Northam, a physician, said Thursday via Twitter that he had not been aware until recently that the two types of tests were being combined.”
…..
“On Monday, Northam’s chief of staff, Clark Mercer, said the state decided to conflate the two types of results to improve Virginia’s testing rankings, suspecting that other states were doing the same.”
The little faggot in charge isn’t even on the same script his minions are reading! Northam is playing dumb, while his Chief of staff, the guy he talks to all day, every day, is using the old “well, everyone else was doing it, so..” excuse.
And when it all comes crashing down, I 100% guarantee you that Northam will boost his troops morale by reminding them he kept PP abbitiors running full tilt but shut down the shooting ranges and churches.
Forget the country, I don’t want to share my planet with these people.
PM, agreed that if we uniformly have 20% alpha and beta error, we’re in a world of hurt, but on the flip side, there is something that the Koreans appear to have done to put the kibosh on this a lot more selectively than we have. I’d also point out that when you get test A plus test B plus symptoms, you’ve got a much higher degree of confidence, even though these tests are not statistically independent.
I’d also guess that some tests are going to have better selectivity; everything with the same alpha and beta indicates little more to me than “somebody didn’t do a gage test”.
One note on governors keeping the abortuaries open; abortionists tend to be older doctors who’ve been doing the procedure at least since the Reagan administration, if not since before Roe. It would be poetic justice if some of these guys learned the hard way that while their clients don’t generally suffer from COVID-19, they can sure carry it.
Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea are islands (South Korea is essentially an island). All are doing contact tracing & have a low count of covid-19 deaths.
California has about 3,000,000 illegal aliens. They typically live in crowded conditions. How are you going to contact trace them? How are you going to get them to voluntarily self-quarantine? We are talking about people who routinely use false names & fake ID’s. Also, you cannot stop migration between states, not in the medium and long term, anyhow.
God, my Mom now lives in VA, that state is a mess
Rational person: “Governor Walz, 90% of covid-19 fatalities in Minnesota occur in long term care facilities. How do you intend to protect the elderly and the sick in long term care facilities?”
Walz: “Do you know how difficult it is to maintain social distance in a pontoon boat? Pontoon boats are hereby banned. And all citizens must wear two masks, one on top of the other. That’s how my administration intends to fight covid-19 deaths in long term care facilities.”
MP, Cali probably has more wetbacks than any other state, but MN has plenty. Same goes there…how you gonna trace anything when you have a population that lives by being untraceable?
And they are using hijacked SS numbers, fake names, fake addresses, some of them have a wife & family here, and another wife and family south of the border. They have people that they swear are family that they are not related to, It is not uncommon for them to say that a fifteen year old wife is really a sister or cousin.
Our border is so porous that most central American immigrants go back and forth at will, they live part of the year in the US, and part of the year in their home land.
One of the the most lefty classes I took in college was physical geography. I actually paid attention, did all the work, and came to conclusions that are 100% opposite of the conclusions the textbook’s authors wanted me to come to.
“And they are using hijacked SS numbers…”
Wanna get a lefty slob to stfu about “but teh immigrants pay teh taxes too!!”?
Remind them that if they are, they’re using stolen SS #’s and identity theft is a felony in every state in the union. 1/2 of them will respond “well, yeah sure, but they wouldn’t if we gave them drivers licenses!!” But the other 1/2, the 1/2 with >99 IQ will quietly walk away.