Tractor

I was doing some work in a hospital this past Monday and overheard some nurses complaining about all the vacationers getting hurt all weekend over the 4th.

With the hype of this virus, I've been wondering if hospitalizations of some could be due to "omg I have corona I might die" vs they might make it through without the need of taking up a bed. I'm not saying its a safe virus, I'm saying maybe some liability protection is in play and some fear of death. I don't know the triage being done and I hope its very good and sensible.

When I used to wheel, after pulling someone out of a hole it was sorta required to rub salt in it by driving your rig back and forth in the same hole 💪

Locking differentials and 31" tires will make a GEO nearly unstoppable. I went off roading for years and even if you factor my 6x6 military truck into it I never spent 10k so I know what your saying. The SxS does have the advantage of being light fast fun though.

Interesting but long read I found on the use and effectiveness of face masks. This was published for dentistry in 2018 so well before anyone imagined we'd be faced with a "pandemic". https://www.oralhealthgroup.com/features/face-masks-dont-work-revealing-review/ For the TLDR; Masks aren't effective at preventing airborne particles below 1 micron. Lots of scientific data who knows if any of it is actuate however it fuels my personal confirmation bias, so yeah.

Thats an interesting idea.

Can't see those for all the SC cars and bad driving New York SUVs

I'm sorry guys, I don't mean to dump all over the thread. I've been feeling a bit better the last few weeks and for me better also means feeling feisty. Lol

I understand what your saying and under my own ideology I wouldn't trust me. I guess I have issues because I 100% do not trust anyone I'm paying to do the right thing. I'd have much less trouble trusting free advice lol. Worse part of it is, any time I've ever paid anyone for services it's always turned out bad and in their favor proving my paranoia. Kinda off topic but kinda shows why I don't trust any sources for anything. A perfect example came up this week, Tuesday I was supposed to go sign a refinance I'm getting done and the bank informs me a couple of hours before that there's some mistakes and they're going to have to start the whole process over for a simple clerical error that should have been caught months ago at the beginning of the process.

Yeah see, your sources can and are influenced by politics whether directly or indirectly IMO. I guess I have a very dim view of anything and anyone and just don't expect anyone to guide and inform me. I guide myself these days, I mean if you looked way back in threads you'd see I used to be a complete right-wing moron. Now I'm a middle of the road moron, but I do think I'm being informed much better simply by being cynical. I think you maybe believe experts when they tell you things and I simply don't. Whether its health related or the guy doing work on my car. I simply don't trust any of them unless I know them absolutely and I work on my own cars or anything else for that matter. I guess you could say, trust issues lol

About time, I can tell an ohio car here from a mile away with those stupid front plates.

I'm just playing, but seriously we have two completely different opinions on the world. I personally distrust every single thing I ever hear from any news source on both sides and any experts they might have because I've been around a while and I was a Rush Limbaugh listener for over 10 years and then NPR, BBC etc and I see the problems on both sides. I guess you could say that my political affiliation is now Independent, but I do still believe in free markets however our markets are anything but free. Our political system is completely locked down by both sides and so polarized that nothing gets done and they just play games reacting to every situation as it comes up trying to spin things to their respective favors keeping the masses in the dark and hating each other in order to maintain control. So having said that, my examples would be basically everything said about the entire corona virus situation from both sides. All crap, the truth is somewhere in the middle like always and the whole thing sucks for us all from several directions.

So the virus can be a wide spectrum from "asymptomatic" all the way to "dead in a couple weeks". This could be causing people who are symptomatic, but just having minor symptoms to get to a doctor for a test. People who are being cautious which I don't blame anyone for. This does however have the possibly unintended result in messing with the data. We don't get to know how many test positive vs how many are experiencing symptoms that matter. Personally I'm very at risk however, if I come down with any symptoms at all it would have to be extremely bad before I would ever show up at a doctors office, that's just how I am. I'd also never miss work ever for a cold and I'm self employed and don't have anyone to make me miss work. I spend nearly every day of my life pretty run down, sick and wondering when its gonna take the turn for the worse and I'm basically done, but in the mean time I'm doing what I can to work and to play.

Head under a rock much?😀

My issues with the experts and the data is that it seems the politicians are using the same data I'm getting to base decisions. I don't see anything pointing to them getting better information and likely are reacting to news.

Not necessarily, if the spread is asymptomatic for the most part then your gonna see more positives but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. That just means more testing more positives. We can all argue this day and night but the bottom line is if you don't test everyone and retest often then the data we get down to the masses is pointless in our discussions both ways.

There's no way they "thought to check that". Even if they did politicians are always stuck in the rock and hard place situation of keeping themselves looking competent and voters happy. Through that lens things get distorted and decisions get made to err on the side of "I need to look good" and the other guy needs to look bad. Happens on both sides and we are caught in the middle trying to understand things that the majority can't understand.

I can tell you they are kinda freaking out in the news about my area, Myrtle Beach but I know that free testing started at the local sports stadium a couple weeks ago so more testing, more cases and not really a reason to get excited. Things here are still pretty closed or at half capacity per new rules.

Very deep societal reasons for this. I agree with reforming the police as they currently function and have never trusted them but that might be my Irish showing. I live in the south in a predominantly black and poor neighborhood but I tell you I've never been around better neighbors anywhere even when I lived back on the family farm with 8 aunts and uncles one the same road. I don't have any answers but I'm part of the solution, we moved here by choice have professional careers and don't see people by color but by actions. I try to be a good neighbor, I check on everyone during the hurricanes, take care of my neighbors any time they need something and they take care of me.

The problem with your 1 - 2.5 million dead americans is that your not taking into account the age/risk factor/death curve which changes your estimate considerably. Yes some totally healthy people get it and die, but thats an extreme in itself and how do we know they were healthy, just because their last medical exam 5-10 years ago didn't turn up risk factors and they were of a healthy weight? Its highly probable that those individuals had underlying undetected health conditions in most of the cases such as undiagnosed sleep apnea among tons of other things that you cant or don't bother to test on a corpse. I mean if I don't go get a regular check up then I don't have anything wrong on record. I have a feeling some of the overblown estimates were due to cruise ship passengers getting it, tons of older people go on cruises especially in the winter and on a cruise ship with many people in very close proximity touching hand rails etc your gonna get near 100% infection and due to age a very high death or at least very serious condition stats. So no one could figure actual numbers in a general population using those numbers. The aircraft carrier was a very good indicator of how it would effect mostly young people with a few lifetime officers etc thrown in the mix and those numbers were very good, but again slightly off due to the much larger number of young healthy people.

I agree from day one. I don't do hindsight, and don't need to, vast majority of the time I'm right when it comes to BS in the media.

On the PPP loan program. It was a damned bait and switch anyway. The loans got issued with rules that the funds must be used within 8 weeks of issuance. I got mine in early on with the help of an awesome banker. Then just as week 8 for the majority of the applicants came up the .gov changed the rules to extend the usage period out to 24 weeks. LOL most business already had to spend the money on payroll which was what it was originally for and their money is now gone. Someone knew what they were doing.

Few people understand how big of an overreaction this was. I'm not saying all the experts where involved but the right ones where which drove the rest and then the media hype. I mean come on, who takes it this far and costs the US trillions and the world total is gonna be even more mind bogglingly huge. I still can't understand it and am left with someone must have had an agenda behind it. Whether it was political, or a way to grab some huge profit or both we'll never know. I can tell you that as a business owner I got a PPP loan which covered 10 weeks and now it's gone and the jobs still aren't back for my business and likely won't be for a few more months if we're lucky.

Most commie paragraph in this thread. /Thread

Went for a doctors appointment last Friday and they had list of mask rules before entry and one of the things that stood out to me "home made masks were not allowed". IDK I don't wear that crap, can't breath in it, and it causes so much itching etc that I touch my face way more anyway.