Open or Close

 

(Personal opinion - have not cross checked this with actual data)

The last school year started after the first wave. 

Some places started with schools open with a virtual option, some started with a virtual only option. 

Places with schools that started virtual saw a lot of debates on the best time to open, teacher and kid vaccinations etc. Then the second wave hit and most decided to wait it out. Most ended the year with majority of kids in virtual classes. 

Places with schools that started open saw more kids return to in person classes throughout the school year, even through the second wave, and ended the year with most kids attending school. 

Clotty matters!

Through all the AstraZeneca vaccine clot pauses and mess, I heard the numbers being compared to lightning strikes and shark attacks to show how rare it was. Covid is known to cause blood clots. Never saw numbers being compared to covid clot count. Was searching for data and it is hard to come by. While vaccine side effects are rigorously monitored, actual disease stats do not seem to be. The only study I could find was this from UC San Diego (https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2020-11-23-study-covid-19-infection-combined-with-blood-clots-worsen-patient-outcomes.aspx) which was on 8000 patients. This is miniscule compared to the millions of points of data we have on the vaccine. 

Anyway, listing all the data points I could find to compare numbers here. Please do message back with criticism / comments / more data. 

From UC San Diego Study: 

Blood clot in Covid patients: 1 in 5

Blood clot in severe Covid cases: 1 in 3

From UK Astra Zeneca Numbers (https://cosmosmagazine.com/health/medicine/covid-19-vaccination-and-blood-clots-by-the-numbers/): 

Blood clots reported- 79 in 20 million: 1 in 253,000

Deaths reported - 19 in 20 million: 1 in 1,052,631

How do we compare those numbers now? 

From CDC website: Deaths from blood clots annually in the USA: 60,000 to 100,000

Taking 80,000, this is approximately 1 in 4,375 people die every year due to blood clots (irrespective of COVID or vaccines)

Now if you take the covid death rate of 1 in 100 (before vaccinations started)

and use that with 1 in 3 severe cases have clots from UCSD study, 

Chance of death from Clot in Covid of around 1 in 300. 

So final numbers from above: 

Chance of dying from blood clots for a normal human: 1 in 4,375

Chance of dying from blood clots due to covid: 1 in 300

Chance of dying from blood clots after getting AZ Vaccine: 1 in 1,052,631

Navigating Fox News

Did a lot of nyt.com and foxnews.com during the elections. NYT’s deceptions are subtle, usually with the data. Sometimes the chart timeline is specifically cut to prove their point, sometimes Y axis is exaggerated to show the inflection points. 

Foxnews.com on the other hand is the opposite. Typically the main page will have an explosive headline, featuring AOC, Pelosi or anyone to catch the reader. (one example that got me to click before inauguration was - 'Pelosi made national guard sleep on the Capitol floor'), then you click in and read the actual (and very factual I must say here) article (this will have the details of NG sleeping on the floor, had nothing to do with Pelosi) and if required at the very end a kind of legal captcha. 

This video (https://youtu.be/nA-10vPcA-4) is a screengrab taken on November 19. 

1. Main page headline - Giuliani detailing election fraud.

2. Click through and article headline is different - Trump campaign is dropping the lawsuit - that was what Giuliani said in that press conference

3. Read through what was said in that conference (and a lot of hook ads) and get to last two paragraphs where they put the legal captcha - ‘Trump lost MI by 155k votes & nobody has found any evidence of election fraud’

🙂

Green New Everything Deal

One habit I've tried to carry on from the 2020 elections is to look everything up at the source where data is available. Pretty much all election count information and details were posted on the respective county websites. 

The Green New Deal - have been hearing about it for ever. Had an idea it is about addressing climate change, probably by some extreme measures. Never gave much attention to it given everyone dismissing it as far left and will never pass. 

The congress website has all these and you can read the green new deal as introduced HR109 here: https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres109/BILLS-116hres109ih.pdf

I do see why so many folks are opposed to it. The bill covers the damage climate change causes and goes about setting goals to address this. But then, it also reads like a bucket list of everything else that was ever on the table which may or may not have anything to do with climate change. Just pasting a few from the bill: 

 - ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the US

 - promote justice and equity

 - repair historic oppression of indigenous people......etc.

 - cleaning up hazardous waste sites

 - guarantee a job with a family sustaining wage

 - strengthen and protect the right of all workers to organize unionize and....

 - strengthen workplace health safety anti discrimination....

 - provide high quality healthcare for all people of the US

 - affordable housing

 - economic security

So is this something cleverly devised to call me a climate denier or an actual plan to fight climate change? 

    

Mask Mandate!

After losing my Dubai Malayalam radio station on TuneIn, I recently started listening to Radio Malayalam 98.6FM from Qatar. Heard them go "Remember to wear your masks. We still have the 200,000 Fine and 3 year prison term in effect". 

So obviously googled it up and found a press release on 17 May 2020 with the $55,000 fine and 3 year jail term. 

And the next thing I thought was how did COVID do in Qatar. And I really do not have to say anything about this next chart and what happened to it in June 2020 :) 

Persistence!

Our 6 y/o: Can I play on the iPad please?

Mom: No

6yo: Let me know when you change your mind

Mom: I am not planning to change my mind. 

6yo: Well, you can always change your plans! 

Vaccine News

 Vaccine news: it started with the trials and things that went wrong...and once vaccinations started, it switched to who is refusing to get vaccinated, who got an adverse reaction...new strains...etc.

More than 68 million vaccine doses have been administered in the United States so far and the count of vaccinated people who got hospitalized for / who died of COVID-19 is ZERO!

It has been 100% effective at preventing serious illness and death.

Am sure whenever the first vaccinated patient is hospitalized, the news will be there, having a field day with it...till then they will try their best to stay away from that one stat that really matters