Jonger

Recorded a few lighting strikes on my weather station.

18 minutes ago, Hoosier said:

It took a while, but in general seeing a lot more maskless at indoor places around here now.

Almost nobody wears a mask around here. Come next Tuesday, COVID-19 restrictions are over for everyone. 

5 hours ago, Hoosier said:

We may need a shirtless pic of Jonger to gauge his progress.  Haven't seen one in a while.

This is all you're getting brother.

5 hours ago, csnavywx said:

I find that it's the fructose that comes without the fiber that's the issue. Fruit is fine (unless in excess). HFCS, sucrose and fructose added to foods all tend to pile up and add a lot of load to the liver (since fructose largely can't be absorbed by tissues, unlike glucose -- it has to be processed by the liver), which then partially converts it to lipids that get stored. It's pretty uncanny just how similar ethanol and fructose get processed. The difference is, with ethanol, you eventually get tipsy or drunk and get a signal to stop. With fructose, you don't, and it since it doesn't trigger leptin production in the same way as glucose, the brain doesn't get a signal to stop either. Added sugars are *everywhere* and tough to avoid.

Look up the effects of low testosterone and insulin sensitivity. There's a direct link between obesity, lower testosterone levels and insulin sensitivity. 

This plays into the COVID outlook for patients.

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210527/lower-testosterone-in-men-tied-to-severe-covid-cases

And overall, the vast majority – 89% -- of the COVID-19-infected men, including those with mild disease, showed testosterone levels below what’s considered to be the normal range when they were admitted to hospital. The men in the current study with severe COVID-19 had average blood levels of testosterone of just 53 ng/dL when they entered hospital. Any testosterone level of 250 ng/dL or below is considered ‘low’ in adult men.By day 3 of hospitalization, their average testosterone levels dropped even further -- to only 19 ng/dL.

2 minutes ago, Stebo said:

A fog advisory is still a necessary thing because of travel though. Making it a generic traveler's advisory or no advisory at all is a bad move.

I'm in favor of bringing back the Travel Advisory. Fog is definitely worthy of an advisory. The advisory system was fine in my opinion, but a travel advisory seems to be a good compromise.

Kind of weird that mods tolerate insults like that.

Damn, that was halarious... I remember being fat. Those were the days.

1 hour ago, WaryWarren said:

And yet you still live in Howell, Michigan.

Just bought a new house 2 weeks ago, I move in July 15th. Where should I be living?

On 3/4/2021 at 5:13 PM, buckeye said:

Back in the day they didn't have winter weather advisories, instead it was called a traveler's advisory (which I think made more sense).    Most advisories are issued as a result of the effect on travel anyways.   If you're not really going anywhere, 1-3 or 2-4 inches of snow isn't going to make much of a difference in your life.

And that's a thread right there. Weather warnings should be for conditions that could impact life when not in a vehicle. Fog.....has anyone ever died from fog when not in a vehicle?

I have to play video games with a good headset to experience thunderstorms. The real ones ended 10 to 15 years ago around here.

23 hours ago, A-L-E-K said:

you can live in the suburbs (some) without a lawn

Lawns are just a placeholder for something else, it shouldn't be the focal point of your property/house. 

Places that don't have enough water to sustain it without burdening the surrounding environment should just put in astro turf or gravel. 

16 hours ago, dan11295 said:

Obesity is one factor affecting mortality rates. Suggesting it is the "the" primary factor is a bit disingenuous. Average population age, amount of mitigation done, compliance of population wrt following health measures, health care capacity, availability of critical supplies (esp. oxygen), how Isolated a location is are all factors. Also while excess mortality is not available for many countries, for those that report is, it is a much better estimate than the official reported deaths. We know certain countries (e.g. Mexico, Russia) are significantly under reporting.

 

 

Age, Obesity and overall health....

This is a comorbidity, there was never a reason for EVERYONE to quarantine when the situation could have been handled on a self-quarantine basis.

I rarely get the flu vaccine, I'll probably pass on this one too. There's basically a higher chance I get hit by lightning than die from this.

I turned into a fitness nut 3 years ago and I'm going to ride that wave from here on out. I'm not completely ruling out the vaccine, but it's not high on my list.

PS: Made a lot of money off of the quarantine, so this isn't some sort of butt-hurt assessment of it. I made out from COVID-19.

2 hours ago, winterwx21 said:

We don't know if it was the case with James, but overall it's very sad how many people died during this pandemic because they were Trump supporters. All the people that refused to wear masks when the virus was at its peak because of Trump's attitude about masks. Really a shame.

I would say that American obesity was 10X the factor in deaths than the president.

The top death per 100,000 countries are mostly top 10 most obese.

This matters.

13 minutes ago, mattb65 said:

Stopping transmission of the virus stops the mutations and reduces the chance for an escape variant. The vaccines stop transmission, this has been conclusively proven in the real world. You dont need to drag your knuckles here, human ingenuity has given us the tools to win this fight. 

Globally we're at 35 million vaccinations per day,  we're 9 months away from 75% immunized globally.

I agree life comes with risk but it's just plain stupidity to purposely increase risk when you have an easy way to mitigate the risk. 

My buddy James from New England caught covid a few weeks ago, he was 31 years old, he suffered overwhelming multi organ failure and died. He didn't have to die. 

100+ years and we're still battling the Spanish Flu.

How many mutations do we have of COVID already? I'm not telling people to avoid the vaccine, I'm pro-science.... but, thinking we're going to globally eradicate covid and its variants isn't realistic.

37 minutes ago, Malacka11 said:

While viruses generally tend to evolve to be less severe in order to increase their virulence, that doesn't really matter in this situation because the concern is that the virus will mutate to overcome the vaccinations we've created against it, which would make it more lethal and would disrupt the flow of things yet again. 

There's nothing stopping mutations and new variants, just have to accept that life comes with risk. My best bud just got Covid last week. Stuffy nose and a sinus headache that lasted 3 days. 

1 hour ago, nwohweather said:

Actually this is very correct. The 1918 flu was actually a new strain of bird flu that aided by WW1 flew across the globe. After it's big hit similar to Covid, it experienced "antigenic drift" which mutated it into a more mild bug. Because this was such a dominant virus it became "the flu" that we know about today, just a milder variant. However when that virus mixes with another one in an animal, it turns into another pandemic. That's what happened with the Swine Flu in 2009.

I highly recommend everyone to read Michael Lewis's (Moneyball, The Big Short) book "The Premonition: A Pandemic Story" as it's an absolutely fascinating read

But my comment received 3 weenie dogs yo!

Some people really dig the lockdowns. Imagine wanting that.... yikes.

On 6/1/2021 at 11:10 AM, TimB84 said:

You’re right, my daily life is back to normal at this point. I’m going places without a mask, I can visit my parents without worrying about killing them, and I can take small vacations to other states when I want to without worrying about getting covid. Other people’s ignorance on the matter affects me in two ways I can think of: 

1. Because a lot of people won’t get vaccinated, covid in America isn’t gone yet to the point where other countries aren’t skittish about letting Americans in, so we’re stigmatized whether we’re vaccinated or not and I can’t yet enjoy travel to the extent that I could before the pandemic.

2. There’s still the risk that if we let covid keep spreading, a strain will develop that is resistant toward the vaccines. Others in this thread have said this may happen anyway in other countries (India in particular, where covid is running rampant), and spread here, but of course it isn’t out of the realm of possibility anywhere covid exists.

Edit: Maybe issue #1 is a personal issue of me being impatient and issue #2 is an issue of me being anxious, or maybe I’m trying to find someone to blame when it isn’t warranted, but maybe these concerns are justified.

Wait another 2 months and most of these issues will be long over with.

The Spanish flu is still around in the form of a variant..... Covid is never going away. Who cares...

6 minutes ago, Scorpion said:

I’m not getting some experimental vaccine for a mild flu.

That's essentially all it is.

Anyhow....vaccines are legit ways to irradiate human pathogens, but this is pretty much as dangerous as any seasonal flu.

2 hours ago, Scorpion said:

People under 40 that get serious issues with this are either overweight or have birth defects, flu would probably be just as bad on them.

Probably. I personally don't know anyone who developed more than a stuffy nose for a couple days. 

2 hours ago, HIPPYVALLEY said:

Yeah, anybody who has the technology to visit from another galaxy could probably also have wiped us out pretty pretty quickly if they wanted to.

Told this to many people. The technology gap between where we are and where an interstellar capable civilization is --- Grand Canyon sized gap.

They would probably snatch a few humans off the surface, engineer a bio-weapon able to wipe us out. Sit back for a few months and then you have a perfect human free planet to take over with no resistance at all. Zero alien casualties. 

What was the fatality rate in those 5 states for each demographic....compared to the 5 most restrictive blue states?

White & black per capita death rate in comparison.

21 minutes ago, TimB84 said:

Hence the reason it’s spent so much time at the top of the page. Most boring spring in history for almost the entire country.

Winter 20-21 was pretty much crap too. 

All mask requirements in Michigan end July 1st.

4 hours ago, purduewx80 said:

This is literally discriminatory thinking. You sound like a terrible boss for people who aren’t like you. 
 

https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-infection-by-race/expert-answers/faq-20488802

Vaccines are free and highly encouraged by the government. I'm not forcing anyone into an unavoidable situation.

1 minute ago, WhitinsvilleWX said:

The routine testing of healthy people needs to end. 

 I wonder what percentage of people make up the largest percentage of those being tested. Like hypochondriacs.