Mallard

Going for a triple... For the comments that Isreal has the highest % vaccinated yet has a massive outbreak...that's only if you count the % of the population that is eligible for the vaccine. Remember when I wrote a few posts ago that population vaccination percentages aren't evenly distributed across age groups and demographics? Well, Isreal has a very young population, and over 25% of their population is ineligible for the shot. Secondly, they got vaccinated very quickly, and 90% of those vaccinated received their 2nd dose over 5 months ago. Does this point to waning immunity? Some people want to say that's why we need a booster, based off antibodies present in blood tests (some even say it's not surprising that we would need one because typically we all would have gotten our 2nd shot a lot longer after the first, but we chose speed over efficacy). Other studies say not so fast, antibodies always wane over time, but are looking at bone marrow to understand whether there's some memory and our immune system will mount a response regardless. Don't take this as scientists flip flopping on issues either. Recommendations are made based on data, data is gathered through studies that take time, and those studies can be run in different ways, and results must be peer reviewed. Science is hard. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

My favorite are the people who say that natural immunity is better than vaccinated immunity, so they are taking Vitamin C, D, and going out without masks to "exercise their immune system" in order to prepare for the infection. Yes, this is real shit from real people in my community that are actively protesting masks in schools and the vaccine in general. Yea, but someone's brother's sisters friend said on the internet that everyone they know who got the vaccine got COVID and died, so that's totally proof that the government is falsifying all the data in order to CONTROL everyone into getting the vax. Totally New World Order shit. For reals. Tucker told me so. ...I really need to stop reading the comments on my local community Facebook pages. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

I'm not offended by this, I actually agree with it 100%. Had my dad not gotten sick in Oct, he would have had his first dose of the vaccine in Jan and been fully vaccinated in Feb. It's ~3 months. If he got COVID ~3 months later I believe he would still be alive. Get vaccinated. The hospitals likely see some potential liability for having an unvaccinated staff member infecting the people they care for. If your business revolves around serving people who are immuno compromised or vulnerable to infection, I believe you do have a responsibility to get vaccinated. I wouldn't say that extra 20% is "lining the pockets" of the hospitals. When treating COVID patients they go through a lot more PPE than they used to, and costs of PPE as well as O2 hasn't remained stagnant. I would like more evidence that hospitals are making massive profits from this then an anecdote. There are lots of articles about these excess deaths and how COVID deaths are likely undercounted. It's not that 600k people OD'd on meth, died in a car accident, or committed suicide. The evidence points to COVID being undercounted. You're insinuating here (whether on purpose or not) that COVID was falsely listed as a cause of death for a large number of people and for frivolous reasons, but an emergency response report is not a death certificate. Again, there are not hundreds of thousands of people that died from some random accident that got counted as a COVID death. The evidence points the other way; that COVID deaths are severely undercounted. There are not large numbers of people being counted as a COVID death when they were killed by some other random event, like a car accident, or a piano falling from the sky. But this is where people try to cast doubt at the numbers of dead. Let's say you get COVID and you end up in the hospital. Your condition deteriorates and you need oxygen due to COVID pneumonia, eventually get intubated. Your blood pressure is also fluctuating and now you're on meds to try to stabilize this. Your kidney function decreases and you require dialysis. Then you get sepsis, or a number of many other complications that typically result. Organs start shutting down, blood pressure is harder to maintain. They stop the blood pressure meds and you die. What killed you? Was it sepsis? Renal failure? Heart failure? Etc? None of these would have happened if not for the COVID infection. COVID is one of several things listed on the death certificate, but without the COVID infection none of the rest would have happened. However, people on the internet will try to tell you that it should only be counted as a COVID death if COVID is the ONLY thing listed on the death certificate, and equate sepsis/kidney failure/etc with someone who was in a car accident while COVID positive and claim COVID didn't kill you. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

My dad was in good health, worked out 3 days a week, got COVID and died. It's not just diabetic fatties that have a hard time with it. While I don't think Biden should have gone ahead with the mandate right now (politically), I think private industry was already on the path to take care of this through insurance surcharges (same as they already do smoking) and job-specific mandates. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

Ah, yes, the argument that "only vaccinated people get sick." I'm seeing this all over my community Facebook comments, and they either ignore the hospitalization statistics or claim they're being falsified. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

The mortality rate is around 2%, not 0.017%, and that is using death statistics that are believed to be severely undercounted. And yes, the mortality rate does vary by age group, but you're not 99.999% likely to survive. The post/meme the originated statistics like this is fake news. As said many times before, just looking at survival also doesn't account for all the long term effects many survivors have (a larger group than the 2% that die). Yes, some people have little to no symptoms, while others can't walk to their mailbox 6 months later. Keep in mind on vaccination statistics that the distribution of vaccinations across age groups and demographics are not uniform. The lower age groups have done a possible poor job getting vaccinated, and children aren't even eligible yet. Then there's the added problem of beds full of COVID patients causing people with other conditions to get turned away and die. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/09/13/1036593269/coronavirus-alabama-43-icus-at-capacity-ray-demonia

Not sure what others have said, but I brought up the deal negotiated by Trump for a few reasons: - I have Trump supporting friends on Facebook saying that Biden is negotiating with terrorists (the Taliban) about the terms of our evacuation and that Trump would never have done this. They went so far as to call the Taliban "Biden’s boys." - Those same friends also say Trump had a perfect plan for withdrawing from Afghanistan while keeping the peace. - Withdrawing from Afganistan was not a partisan issue. - Trump's deal was negotiated directly with the Taliban, without involving the Afgan government we put in place. - Trump's deal with the Taliban also released 5000 Taliban prisoners. (Art of the Deal, right?) - Trump's deal had a public withdrawal date of May 1. There are people saying that Biden is at fault for publicly telling the Taliban what day we were leaving, and again that this would never have happened under Trump, but Trump also had a date set. - Trump's deal already had a significant draw down of US troops in the country, going from 17,000 down to 2500 by the time Biden took office. IMO, with the restrictions Trump put on the visa process, and a timeline of May 1 for withdrawal I don't see how it would have been possible for him to evacuate 100,000+ people. Those allies were going to be left there. It was going to be just like Syria; a US military withdrawal and fuck all those left behind that stood with us. And now Trump advocating for us to go back in there, saying we should never have left is complete political BS. He's always playing both sides of the coin. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

Even Trump knew it (he was saying it at rallies back in March/April). However, from the interviews that were even happening back in early Aug, the US thought it would take 6 to 9 months for the Taliban to take the entire country. This is why I said above that everyone understood and accepted this would happen, and the Taliban would get ahold of US equipment in the process, it was just the timetable that was wrong. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

Actually, he's done the exact opposite. He's said multiple times that the buck stops with him, that it was his decision and he takes full responsibility. Trump never took the blame for anything. If the problem is the way in which we left, what would you have done differently? Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88n3bv/no-the-taliban-did-not-just-hang-an-interpreter-from-a-us-helicopter It seems the answer might be "no." Also, this shows and talks about how almost everything at the Kabul airport was decommissioned: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42204/taliban-show-off-captured-aircraft-and-other-spoils-after-taking-over-kabuls-airport Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

I honestly want to see a full investigation before I make that determination. I want to know exactly what was and wasn't done properly and why. I want to know what Americans were left there and why. We need to remember that as part of the Doha Agreement the Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban, US troops had already been down down significantly in the country. There were only 2500 US troops in Afghanistan when Biden took office. On Aug 1 there were around 650 left. Between the 12th and 16th of August Biden deployed an additional 7000 troops back to Afghanistan. Trump had publicly set a withdrawal date of May this year, Biden pushed it to September 11, then August 31. One of the reasons there was trouble with getting our allies out was a crippled visa system that was dismantled under Trump. They could not process the volume of requests coming in, even before the mess of the last 2 weeks. Biden did remove those hurdles in order to quickly get people out of there. Over 100,000 (I think the number is over 117k) people have been airlifted out of Afghanistan, which makes it one of the largest operations (if not the largest) in history. With Trump's withdrawl date in May, the crippled visa system, and the drawdown of troops, I just don't believe anyone when they say that Trump had some grand plan to get everyone out and Biden dropped the ball on something he had set in motion. All of our allies would have been left in Afghanistan, just like Syria. There were casualties, but to use your words, Biden put warheads on foreheads and there's no telling how many civilians would have been killed if that vehicle had made it to the airport. It is bad that the Taliban now has a lot of our equipment, but it seems like that outcome had already been predicted, just not so fast. Luckily some things were decommissioned at the Kabul airport before we left. We gave the Afganistan army a bunch of equipment to fight the war, we trained them for 20 years, and they surrendered the country in 2 weeks. Yes, an airstrike to destroy helicopters and such would be nice, but it's clear from Trump's peace agreement with the Taliban that we don't consider ourselves at war with them. We agreed to leave to country, provided the Taliban didn't harbor al-Qaeda, and that agreement was made between the US (Trunp administration) and the Taliban, without the Afgan government that we put in place. I want to see congressional investigations worse than any Benghazi commission so all the facts can be out in the open. However, with all of the stuff I listed above, I'm having a hard time putting this all on Biden. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

No, but this would have happened in May instead of August. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

Yeah, I hate hearing stories like this where a lot of the frustration stems from a shitty dealer and botched service, but I understand it. I took a job at GM working on UltraCruise, so staying in the same general field (AD). Probably not much else I can say besides that lol. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

[emoji17] Had zero problems with my '18 Durango so far with 76k miles on it. <fingers crossed> But might have to get something from GM as I rack up the miles (now that I switched jobs). Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

Got any decent $9k C5's that aren't convertibles? Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

I get that Afghanistan is a shit show right now, but pulling out was not a partisan policy. Trump started the process, wanted to be out in May, said he knew the government would collapse without the US support, chastised Biden for extending to Sept, but now the Republicans are scrubbing every web site mention of Afghanistan policy that they have. It's a constant shit show around me though...there is still a Trump rally every Sat and Sun on the street corner, and up north near my cabin there's Trump propaganda everywhere. It's like it's still in the middle of the campaign. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

Nice! At times I do miss my Sky and I just switched jobs to work at GM, so I feel like I should pick up something like this again... Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

Those fires are with the Bolt, not the Volt. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

Yeah, I had a first gen Volt too...added about a dollar a day to my electric bill charging from 0 mi every weekday and multiple charges during weekends due to many short trips. I think your dad got hit harder from his buddies charging there too. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

Sunday and Monday it was very hazy up here. Even visibility looking across our lake or down the highway was reduced. Camera phones don't do it justice though. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

Unplugged Performance has one at Pikes Peak with Randy Probst behind the wheel. If he doesn't stuff it, it looks like they'll do well. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

I have a Sylvan Tri-toon with a 115 on it for putzing to the sandbars and pulling the kids in a tube. It actually moves pretty good for being a big, heavy tank. Have a couple of kayaks too, but I end up with a kid on my lap and towing the other, so I don't do that too much. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

I would expect this to be quicker than any of their ICE-powered models, at least in the higher trim levels. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

I agree that it shouldn't have ever been political, but the reality today is that everything is translated into us vs them politics. I have no problems wearing a mask in order to do things that are 'normal,' and I never understood the loud opposition. It doesn't bother me one bit, and my kids don't care either, and that included a trip to Disney World in August where we had to wear them all day long. IMO, I would have rather seen a more phased approach to returning everything to 'normal.' I think the bandaid has been ripped off too fast when my state (MI) was just in the midst of a crisis only ~2 weeks ago and we don't understand enough about what's going on in India (where lots of people who previously had COVID and recovered are getting sick again, but with worse symptoms). Also, it still seems like it's unknown whether a vaccinated person can pass the virus to someone else, and that does concern me with my kids. Their odds are better than mine with this virus, but a friend of theirs just had MIS-C following asymptomatic COVID and almost died several times over the course of a week. Because of these unknowns I'm going to continue to wear a mask until we know more and I see what happens to numbers in the US. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

Almost a copy cat of the RAM 1000/FIAT Toro sold in Mexico/South America. Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk