TimB

And therein lies one of the problems with these late season snowfalls. For non-weather enthusiasts, “but it snowed on April 20th” always trumps “March and April were both 5 or 6 degrees above normal” when it comes to discussing how a period fits into longer term climatology.

I was looking at this yesterday and most climate sites in the Midwest and interior northeast were running 5+ degrees above normal for the month. I don’t think all of those gains will be completely erased at any climate site, so every climate site will finish April above normal.

GFS really doubling down on its endless winter temps.

Bottom line here is yes, winterwx21 is absolutely correct that physical fitness goes a long way to prevent covid from sending you to the hospital or killing you. On the other hand, “if you could just get your resting heart rate down to 32, covid will be nothing more than a mild cold” probably won’t be successful in getting many people off of their couches.

There have been too God damn many of these since life has started to return to normal.

I seem to remember just about every Memorial Day when I lived in Wisconsin, some news outlet or the NWS always documented the May 27-29, 1947 snowstorm that affected Wisconsin. Also, 4/12/07 and even 5/11/06 come to mind from when I lived up there (but I think the latter was just a dusting).

This “fitness can prevent severe covid” debate is turning into the new “masks can make you sick.” At least this one has more legitimacy, but we’re beating a dead horse here.

I’d bet that Potter County and the rest of the northern tier sees measurable snow next week as well.

You’re right. Hiding the bad news from the public is never a good idea either.

I just feel like this will fan the flames of vaccine hesitancy, and this has already been a bad week in that regard.

I don’t immediately suspect a conspiracy. But a lot of people will. You’ve seen from this thread itself how many people throw rationality to the wind when it comes to this vaccine. I’m not saying he isn’t knowledgeable or privy to the issues at hand, but in my opinion he shouldn’t be the communicator of them.

Ah, the optics don’t look quite as bad now that I see the updated article. I think Kessler is a more palatable source than a corporate bigwig is.

I agree with this, but let’s remember that Pfizer is a business and isn’t necessarily just producing this vaccine out of the goodness of their hearts. I would argue that it’s fairly likely that a booster is required, but from an optics perspective that information should be provided to the general public by an actual medical expert (in human medicine), not the CEO of one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world (who happens to be a DVM).

Exactly. Pfizer didn’t do all this work only to produce a vaccine that didn’t require a booster that could allow them to make a killing off of American citizens and our artificially high drug prices.

Interesting that this information is coming from the Pfizer CEO in this respect.

I’m distracted by the fact that 69.420% is one of the benchmarks here. But I think the point is that the rate will probably slow down as time goes on and more people who want the vaccine will have already gotten it.

50% of adults or 50% of the US population?

I agree wholeheartedly that there’s always incentive to get more physical activity and lose weight, pandemic or not. I just don’t know if psychologically “because covid is more likely to kill you if you get it when you’re obese” would be enough of a PSA for the average overweight person to try harder. Think about all the arguments that smokers’ loved ones use to try to get them to quit, often to no avail. It’s not quite the same thing because of the addiction factor, but to some extent overeating is similar (though there are many, many other causes of obesity).

Careful, remember what happened the last time an athlete’s name was mentioned in this thread. That said, of course having a heart and lungs that are in good working order (as many athletes do) will likely reduce the severity of covid if you do get it in many cases. But I do see two issues here: 1. A massive number of people died in the early months of this pandemic. Even if a lot of them started exercising as soon as they heard about covid, they wouldn’t have had time to get into good enough shape to make a significant difference before they contracted covid and died. 2. We now have something that prevents severe covid even more effectively than exercise.

I think they’re at least native to the area and not stuff we accidentally imported.

Do swarms of those show up on radar like other flying critters can? Maybe we can at least get some pretend storm cells.

Ah yes, we’re halfway through spring. The day formerly known as Tax Day. Still 45 more days for something to happen.

I would take anything to break up the monotony of this boring spring. Could be a rare snow event, could be a severe thunderstorm risk, could be a freezing rain event on the penultimate day of April (yes, I just thought it’d be fun to use that word in the correct context).

I’m obviously of the opinion that vaccine passports to attend sporting events, concerts, etc. are just fine and dandy. That said, I think there’s even more of a case to be made for having vaccine passports for international travel. Do we really want unvaccinated Americans or whatever country is having a surge at the time traveling to other countries and spreading covid? It’s one thing for unvaccinated people to spread it to other willfully unvaccinated Americans who know the risks they’re taking, but it’s an entirely different thing to go to Jamaica or Cancun or something and start an outbreak among people who haven’t even had the opportunity to get vaccinated. Yes, there’s the argument that it discriminates against people in poorer countries with less vaccine access, but I can’t imagine a lot of people in these countries are jet-setting around the world.

You mean a freezing rain event in PA on April 29th isn’t plausible? (The 12z had 80s with mid 60s dewpoints for that day.)