Tracker

Truth is that Edmonton and BC and nearly Calgary teams were train wrecks, so the Riders really backed into the playoffs.

If you use a pre-season game as better criteria than a real-game outing, sure.

McGuire has not shown himself to be more than a decent third-down-one-yard-plunge guy. Should not be difficult to find better, and Streveler was.

FWIW: The Freep today called the Bombers to win a third straight Grey Cup. Sounds good to me,

The GOP, for the most part have decided that they do not have to pretend to care about democracy, corruption or appearing racist. They believe they have gamed the system to the point where they can be elected without being concerned about gaining the most votes or being prosecuted. Trump is a shining example of this.

LOVED Wallace and Grommit from the first film on.

Donald Trump calls for racial violence: White supremacists are listening, but the media laughs Most notably, during his Arizona speech Trump encouraged racist violence against Black and brown people. This is not an exaggeration. These were his actual words: The left is now rationing lifesaving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating — just, denigrating — white people to determine who lives and who dies. If you're white you don't get the vaccine, or if you're white you don't get therapeutics. It's unbelievable to think this. And nobody wants this. Black people don't want it, white people don't want it, nobody wants it. ... In New York state, if you're white, you have to go to the back of the line to get medical health — think of it, if you're white you go right to the back of the line. ... This race-based medicine is not only anti-American, it's government tyranny in the truest sense of the word. White supremacists and other racial authoritarians and fascists listen closely to Trump's words, and take them seriously. This is literally a life and death matter. Donald Trump calls for racial violence: White supremacists are listening, but the media laughs | Salon.com

The pandemic’s true death toll: millions more than official counts Last year’s Day of the Dead marked a grim milestone. On 1 November, the global death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic passed 5 million, official data suggested. It has now reached 5.5 million. But that figure is a significant underestimate. Records of excess mortality — a metric that involves comparing all deaths recorded with those expected to occur — show many more people than this have died in the pandemic. Working out how many more is a complex research challenge. It is not as simple as just counting up each country’s excess mortality figures. Some official data in this regard are flawed, scientists have found. And more than 100 countries do not collect reliable statistics on expected or actual deaths at all, or do not release them in a timely manner. Demographers, data scientists and public-health experts are striving to narrow the uncertainties for a global estimate of pandemic deaths. These efforts, from both academics and journalists, use methods ranging from satellite images of cemeteries to door-to-door surveys and machine-learning computer models that try to extrapolate global estimates from available data. Among these models, the World Health Organization (WHO) is still working on its first global estimate, but the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, Washington, offers daily updates of its own modelled results, as well as projections of how quickly the global toll might rise. And one of the highest-profile attempts to model a global estimate has come from the news media. The Economist magazine in London has used a machine-learning approach to produce an estimate of 12 million to 22 million excess deaths — or between 2 and 4 times the pandemic’s official toll so far. The pandemic’s true death toll: millions more than official counts (nature.com)

Anti-Vax Folk Singer Got COVID on Purpose. Now She’s Dead. The Czech songstress Hana Horka needed to get the virus to have a health pass to perform in venues so she deliberately caught it from her vaccinated husband and son. Hana Horka, a popular anti-vax folk singer in the Czech Republic could no longer perform with her popular band Asonance—the oldest folk band in the country—amid new restrictions requiring vaccination or proof of recovery from COVID-19 to enter concert halls and performance venues. So when her vaxxed up husband and son caught the virus, she decided it was her chance to get a health pass without rolling up her sleeve for a jab. The 57-year-old quickly became infected and seemed to be on the road to recovery, her son Jan Rek told Czech public radio station iRozhlas.cz. Then on Sunday morning as she got up to go for a walk she was stricken with back pain. Ten minutes later she was dead after choking to death. “She decided to continue to live normally with us and preferred to catch the disease than to get vaccinated,” Rek said after his mother’s death Sunday. Two days before she died the singer posted on social media that she made it through the worst of the virus. “I survived... It was intense,” she wrote. “So now there will be the theatre, sauna, a concert... and an urgent trip to the sea.” Her son said that the strong anti-vax movement in parts of Europe was to blame. There have been reports of COVID parties in Italy, Austria, and across Germany where new restrictions have punished the unvaccinated. About 63 percent of the population is fully vaccinated in the Czech Republic, and those who aren’t have protested the country’s new restrictions meant to take the burden off the public healthcare system. The singer’s son said the movement had blood on their hands. Czech Folk Singer Hana Horka Got COVID-19 on Purpose—Now She’s Dead (thedailybeast.com)

The Republican Party's new insidious invention: Election police Republicans have been committing election fraud right out in the open since 1964 and covering it up by yelling about “voter fraud.” Remember the hours-long lines to vote we’ve seen on TV ever since the 60s in minority neighborhoods? Those are no accident: they’re part of a larger election fraud program the GOP has used to suppress the vote for sixty years now. This election year Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is raising the stakes: he’s planning to put together a force of “election police” under his personal command to travel the state intimidating voters while pretending to look for “voter fraud.” As The Washington Post reports: DeSantis is asking the GOP-controlled legislature to allocate nearly $6 million to hire 52 people to ‘investigate, detect, apprehend, and arrest anyone for an alleged violation’ of election laws. They would be stationed at unspecified ‘field offices throughout the state’ and act on tips from ‘government officials or any other person.’ Meanwhile, the GOP in Texas is quietly recruiting 10,000 white volunteers “courageous” enough to go into Black and Hispanic polling places and confront people trying to vote. As Jessica Corbett reported for Common Dreams: Common Cause Texas on Thursday shared a leaked video of a Harris County GOP official discussing plans to ‘build an army’ of 10,000 election workers and poll watchers, including some who ‘will have the confidence and courage’ to go into Black and Brown communities to address alleged voter fraud that analyses show does not actually exist. The Republican Party's new insidious invention: Election police - Alternet.org

Ron DeSantis Opens Antibody Centers That Are Useless Against Omicron. The Florida governor is flogging monoclonals that experts say are no match for Omicron. If Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis were a responsible leader dedicated to the well-being of his constituents, he would have made clear that the Regeneron monoclonal antibody being administered at his five new treatment sites is all but useless in the current COVID-19 surge. But DeSantis is DeSantis, and therefore his own top priority. He is happy to offer false hope in the middle of a pandemic—as his state breaks infection records week after week—if he believes it is to his political advantage. Last month, DeSantis held a press conference outside Ocala Medical Center with a sign reading “Early Treatment Saves Lives” and touted monoclonal antibodies as the answer to the COVID crisis. His surgeon general, Joe Ladapo, described vaccines, masks, and testing as a “trifecta” of “lunacy.” Omicron had already begun to spread in Florida and elsewhere, so quickly that it was soon responsible for the overwhelming majority of new cases. The federal government stopped distributing two of the three mjaor monoclonal antibody treatments—Regeneron and Bamlanivimab—on the grounds they were ineffective against the new variants. The third treatment, Sotrovimab, remains in such short supply it is reserved for only the most vulnerable people. DeSantis accused the Biden administration of falling victim to “hysteria.” Lapado made public a letter he wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra saying, “The federal government is is actively preventing the effective distribution of antibody treatments in the U.S.” Never mind that it was because the treatments themselves are ineffective. On Jan. 3, DeSantis tweeted a video of himself standing with the “Early Treatment Saves Lives” sign outside at Broward Health. “Instead of keeping a stranglehold on monoclonal antibodies, the federal government must release its stockpiles to states who want them and allow states to purchase these medications directly,” he said. On Jan. 4, he posted a video of himself with the well-traveled sign in Jacksonville. “Governor DeSantis is in Jacksonville ready to open a monoclonal antibody treatment site IF the federal government would provide the supply Florida needs,” he declared. On Jan. 5, he insisted, “With Omicron, there’s not enough evidence to say that Regeneron and the bamlanivimab work. There’s not enough evidence to say if it’s going to be as effective or more against Delta, we just don’t know.” In fact, there was already considerable evidence to the contrary. Prominent medical experts were reaching a consensus that Regeneron and Bamlanivimab do not work against Omicron. “It’s equivalent to giving them a placebo,” Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of Infectious Disease at University of Alabama Medicine, told the Daily Beast. “We just assume there’s not going to be any benefit to using them.” But on Jan. 7, the Biden administration caved. DeSantis reported that Florida had secured 15,000 doses of Regeneron. He announced that they would be distributed at five new sites. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Opens Monoclonal Antibody Centers That Are Useless Against Omicron (thedailybeast.com) Trump’s Favorite ‘Demon Sperm’ Doc Now Suggests Praying the COVID Vax Away Stella Immanuel, the eccentric “demon sperm” doctor who was embraced and defended by ex-president Donald Trump for her evidence-free claims about curing COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine, is back with another outlandish claim. This time, at a right-wing gathering over the weekend, Immanuel theorized that one can pray away the effects of the COVID-19 vaccination. “Every time we have prayed for people that have taken the vaccine because it is Luciferian,” she said at megachurch pastor Clay Clark’s ReAwaken America Tour stop in Arizona. “And the mention of the name of Jesus, every knee bows.” Immanuel further floated the idea of prayer reversing the effects of a vaccine merely with the utterance of Jesus’ name. “Each time we pray for people that have taken the vax, something, there is a reaction. A needle poke, the hands start shaking, and we cast this stuff out of people,” the Houston-based pediatrician added, while implying that the vaccine is the “devil” which one “must come at” with “the name of Jesus.” Trump’s Favorite ‘Demon Sperm’ Doc Now Suggests Praying the COVID Vax Away (thedailybeast.com)

Florida suspends top health official after he encouraged staff to get vaccinated. “I have a hard time understanding how we can be in public health and not practice it," Dr. Raul Pino wrote to staff A top Florida Department of Health official was suspended after he encouraged his staff to get vaccinated. The development, first reported by local ABC News affiliate WFTV, centers on Dr. Raul Pino, director of the Florida Department of Health in Orange County. On January 4, Pino reportedly wrote an email to members of his staff expressing frustration around their apparent unwillingness to be immunized against COVID-19. Out of the agency's 568 staffers, Pino wrote, 219 had gotten two vaccine doses while only 77 had received a booster shot. "I am sorry but in the absence of reasonable and real reasons it is irresponsible not to be vaccinated," Pino said in his email, adding: "I have a hard time understanding how we can be in public health and not practice it." Florida Department of Health press secretary Jeremy Redfern told the Associated Press that the agency is now conducting a probe "to determine if any laws were broken" as a result of the email. In Florida, local public health offices, like Pino's, are centrally run by the state Department of Health. Florida suspends top health official after he encouraged staff to get vaccinated | Salon.com

Oath Keeper returned to Capitol on Jan. 7 for “recon” as group plotted weeks of battle: prosecutors. Group stockpiled weapons, ammunition and 30 days of supplies at a nearby hotel with an eye on Biden inauguration A member of the Oath Keepers returned to the Capitol a day after the deadly Jan. 6 riot for "recon" as the group, which had stocked up a cache of weapons and ammunition, plotted to battle authorities for weeks, prosecutors said in a court filing. Ed Vallejo, a 63-year-old Arizona man who was one of 11 Oath Keepers charged last week with seditious conspiracy and other crimes for their alleged efforts to use a campaign of violence to prevent President Biden from taking office, messaged his alleged co-conspirators after the Jan. 6 riot was dispersed to declare "we'll be back at 6 am to do it again," according to prosecutors. He returned to the Capitol on Jan. 7 and told others he was "waiting for orders from [Oath Keeper founder] Stewart Rhodes," who was also indicted last week. "We are going to probe their defense line right now 6 am they should let us in. We'll see," Vallejo said in a Signal message to other members, according to the court filing. Vallejo's team continued to reach out to Rhodes for "next steps" after the riot as other members "continued to make plans to stop the presidential power transfer, amass additional weaponry and tactical gear, and prepare themselves to deploy their arms, if necessary, to stop the inauguration of a new president," prosecutors said. Oath Keeper returned to Capitol on Jan. 7 for “recon” as group plotted weeks of battle: prosecutors | Salon.com

Okaaayy....sic'em Mr. Walters.

That's part of the lousy writing. The missions always take a distant second place to who is swapping bodily fluids with whom. And that is only a small example of the crappy and lazy writing and directing. I am about ready to swear it off.

Of all the recent Star Trek spin-offs, Discovery is currently the worst, The captain, who is supposed to lead, is emoting all over the place (although this season she is not crying in every episode) and the writing is just terrible.

Death by a thousand small cuts. The racists do not think they can bring back blatant Jim Crow legislation, so they are chipping away at any and all actions that offer equality and dignity to non-white people. A strong parallel to how the GOP is rigging the elections to come.

They were obviously expecting that pictures of the UC party would give them VIP access.

Verizon, AT&T Delay 5G Rollout Near Airports After Warning Of ‘Catastrophic Disruption’ Major telecommunications companies Verizon and AT&T delayed the rollout of their 5G technology near certain airports after a letter from the heads of major U.S. airlines warned of “catastrophic disruption” to travel. Verizon said in a statement Tuesday that it would go forward with its planned Wednesday launch of the 5G Ultra Wideband network, but “voluntarily decided to limit” its implementation around airports. AT&T similarly said it would “temporarily defer turning on a limited number of towers around certain airport runways.” The company took aim at the Federal Aviation Administration, saying it was “frustrated by the FAA’s inability … to safely deploy 5G technology without disrupting aviation services.” In a letter to the FAA and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Monday, the CEOs of major U.S. airlines — including American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways and United Airlines — called for “immediate action to address 5G interference with [the] national aviation system.” Airline heads warned of potential “catastrophic disruption” to air travel and shipping if 5G were to be deployed around airports, asking that the technology not be implemented within 2 miles of airport runways. “Unless our major hubs are cleared to fly, the vast majority of the traveling and shipping public will essentially be grounded,” the airlines warned. Verizon, AT&T Delay 5G Rollout Near Airports After Warning Of ‘Catastrophic Disruption’ | HuffPost Latest News

This New Tool Predicts COVID Survival From a Blood Sample As the Omicron variant rages across the U.S. and the rest of the globe, we’re seeing hospitals everywhere maxing out their capacity to treat critically ill COVID-19 patients—not all of whom have an obvious risk factor. In the ICU, it’s often difficult to determine who might survive and beat the infection, and who might end up succumbing to the disease. That could change very soon thanks to a new AI tool that can predict the survival outcome of severe cases of COVID weeks in advance—all from a single blood sample. The new model, described in a peer-reviewed paper published in PLOS Digital Health on Tuesday, could help doctors make more informed treatment plans for COVID patients during initial hospitalization, to minimize the odds of mortality and improve patient care down the road. “The clinical picture of COVID-19 is exceptionally diverse, ranging from asymptomatic infection to very severe disease and death,” Florian Kurth, a clinical researcher at Charity-University Medicine in Berlin and a lead author of the new study, said in a statement. “For physicians, it is difficult to estimate the individual risk for a patient of deterioration and/or death from COVID-19.” The new AI model “can fairly well predict the probability that an individual patient will die or survive COVID-19.” The new study can be split into two parts. First, the researchers studied hundreds of blood samples from 50 critically ill COVID patients treated in Germany and Austria, to learn how the levels of 321 different proteins changed over the course of infection. All patients were in intensive care, requiring ventilation and additional organ replacement therapy. Fifteen patients died and 35 survived. The researchers learned that there were 14 proteins that were most strongly associated with either COVID survival or death, and that these protein levels were altered early by the disease. The most important were proteins involved in blood coagulation and antibody function. In the second part, the new AI model was built and trained to make prognoses of COVID patients based on the levels of these 14 proteins in a single blood sample. Kurth and his colleagues tested this model on samples from a new cohort of 24 critically ill patients. Of that cohort, 19 patients survived and five died—and the model was able to accurately predict the outcomes for all but one of these patients. These prognoses were “far better” than ones used in current clinical care risk assessments, said Kurth. The current study is based on an extremely small sample size, so the authors want to run the model through much wider testing to prove it could be a valuable predictor of COVID-19 outcomes in real-world hospital settings. AI Machine Learning Tool Predicts COVID-19 Survival From Blood Sample From Critically Ill Patients (thedailybeast.com)

Bread and circuses, bread and circuses.

My sympathy and anger is reserved for the dependent children and adults in the care of these idiots. On CBC news last night, there was an article about a world-class immunologists who had been convinced to come to Canada to help out with the pandemic. Since her arrival was announced in Ottawa a few months ago, she has been the target of ugly insults and veiled threats. Just sad.

It has been announced that the Matrix sequel will loose about $100,000,000. Ouch.

Observing war games in Redford, New York - 1939

I should think that Mr. Bighill (sounds like he ought to be living in Bag's End) is enthused about all the offensive and special teams talent being re-signed. Every minute the offence is on the field is a minute he is not out there running after gazelles or trying to not get trampled by elephants.