Report from the pit

Promises, undeliverable

So, I stopped by the local VIP Tire shop for an oil change today because my road trip pretty much exhausted the shelf life of what’s in there now. No soap

As I was coming in, two would-be customers were walking out: “good luck, one of them said, “there’s no one back there”. I went in anyway and prowled around, finally finding a harassed employee changing tires. “There’s just two of us” he sighed, “but we might be able to get to you tomorrow.” Off I went.

The owner of this franchise has a problem: either raise the hourly rate of his unskilled labor (and the kids assigned to oil changes are always the least skilled — hell, even I changed my junkers’ oil when I was a teenager) and raise his prices to compensate, or lose customers, like the three of us who walked out today.

That’s a Hobson’s choice; he’ll have to do something to wean our couch-dozers from their diet of government cheese, but multiplied by businesses all across the country, the inflation outlook doesn’t seem promising.

IMPORTANT CORRECTION: FWIW’s New Mexico Grammarian points out that our VIP owner, unlike a customer of Thomas Hobson, does in fact have a choice: while those who would hire a horse from Hobson’s stable were faced with a “take it or leave it” proposition, our unfortunate oil changer has two choices, though equally unpalatable, and should more properly be described as “on the horns of a dilemma”. I might also have said “between Scylla and Charybdis”, but either way, Mr. Hobson shouldn’t have been dragged into the discussion. Your editor deeply regrets the error.

There's nothing so impressive as a prescient retailer

How did they know?

Clutching her pearls, Kampallawalla Dingdong flees to Saigon, while Dugout Joe’s handlers have insisted he stay in the White House basement after his address to the nation today

King Street project advances

1141 King Street has sold for $2.850 million, on an original ask of $4.5. The new owners have already applied for a preliminary site plan review that would see six houses, a community horse barn and, of course, a one-acre solar panel field, insufficient to heat or cool the 10,000 sq. ft. homes or the new owners’ Tesla collections, but probably enough to keep the children’s iPhones topped off. Symbolism is everythng.

Will the press still give him credit for just showing up?

er, ah ….

Dugout Joe is scheduled to emerge from his bunker today and give a “press conference”. If it’s a real one, with actual, unscripted questions from persons self-identifying as reporters, it will be only the second time he’s submitted to the unpleasant experience, and at that, the first one included crib sheets and pre-selected questioners.

Biden’s first performance back in March was abysmal, but the Mainstream press mostly gave him a pass for not actually peeing in his pants or upchucking his pudding. Judging from the tenor of various tweets and excerpts of reports I’ve seen this week, it’s possible that this time more will be expected, or at least demanded.

The world awaits with bated breath.

UPDATE: Strike that. Corn Pop’s friend will give a “speech” at 1:00, then flee back to his Delaware basement to recover from his exertions.

Even the Russinans are having fun at Dugout Joe's expense; collaborating with Kampalla? Hillary?

Only one of these men has cause to smile

Holden has supplied this video from the Russian disinformation site, RT. (And check out the comments, all posted, doubtless, from Moscow, but intended for world consumption.)

WHO knew? Everyone except the worst hysterics at the CDC and the WHO, from the beginning

(Not exactly the same, but too good a picture to let fade into obscurity)

It turns out, those plastic COVID barriers were making things worse, not better

HOT AIR: “They were elementary and homemade at first before becoming commercialized and mass-produced, but plastic dividers became as commonplace during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic as the paper masks that now litter city streets.

“Put up with the aim of blocking droplets from the noses and mouths of the COVID-infected among us, they became a sort of virtue signal for businesses to show that they cared about the safety of their customers and employees. Plastic dividers popped up to separate Uber drivers from their passengers, supermarket cashiers from customers, students from teachers, and virtually every place there used to be unimpeded face-to-face interactions.

“Now that we've had more than a year of life peering through plastic at our fellow citizens, the science is starting to catch up with the craze and it turns out those measures may have actually increased the chances of people contracting the Wuhan coronavirus.

“As The New York Times recently reported, "scientists who study aerosols, air flow and ventilation say that much of the time, the barriers don't help and probably give people a false sense of security. And sometimes the barries can make things worse."

“How is that possible, you may ask, that one of the most prevalent forms of COVID theater aimed at preventing the spread of COVID was actually doing more harm than good? The Times explains:

Under normal conditions in stores, classrooms and offices, exhaled breath particles disperse, carried by air currents and, depending on the ventilation system, are replaced by fresh air roughly every 15 to 30 minutes. But erecting plastic barriers can change air flow in a room, disrupt normal ventilation and create "dead zones," where viral aerosol particles can build up and become highly concentrated.

“The New York Times admits that in some situations, such as a person sneezing or coughing, a plastic barrier can prevent large droplets from making direct contact with another person. But because the Wuhan coronavirus "spreads largely through unseen aerosol particles" barriers typically trap such aerosols until they're so concentrated they end up spreading beyond the clear walls aimed at keeping them in.

“And there are studies to back up the theory that our supposedly impenetrable plastic walls did more harm than good, as The New York Times reports:

A study published in June and led by researchers from Johns Hopkins, for example, showed that desk screens in classrooms were associated with an increased risk of coronavirus infection. In a Massachusetts school district, researchers found that plexiglass dividers with side walls in the main office were impeding air flow. A study looking at schools in Georgia found that desk barriers had little effect on the spread of the coronavirus compared with ventilation improvements and masking.

Before the pandemic, a study published in 2014 found that office cubicle dividers were among the factors that may have contributed to disease transmission during a tuberculosis outbreak in Australia.

British researchers have conducted modeling studies simulating what happens when a person on one side of a barrier — like a customer in a store — exhales particles while speaking or coughing under various ventilation conditions. The screen is more effective when the person coughs, because the larger particles have greater momentum and hit the barrier. But when a person speaks, the screen doesn’t trap the exhaled particles — which just float around it. While the store clerk may avoid an immediate and direct hit, the particles are still in the room, posing a risk to the clerk and others who may inhale the contaminated air.

no. just … no.

A year ago,* Forbes ran an article debunking face shields and plexiglass barriers, and NY Magazine reported on this same ineffectiveness back in March, citing studies dating back to the start of the panic, but shields — and surface disinfecting — continue. A good crisis is too good to waste.

It is, of course, obvious that sitting with your head penned inside a three-sided box all day is not conducive to learning or communicating. The desktop partitions (often referred to as “sneeze guards”) that are the primary form of barrier used in schools come in a variety of shapes, materials, and sizes. The best, and most expensive, are made of hard clear plastic and have no metal or colored-plastic seams or borders that obstruct views. The worst are made of cardboard and flimsy plastic, somewhat akin to thick cellophane, with opaque borders running across the top and vertically between the front and side panels. With these barriers, it’s as if every student were stuck in an obstructed-view seat at a Broadway show; often, they have to crane their necks just to see the board or teacher. Students also report that with the partitions around their heads, they at many times can’t hear their teachers or each other, so they end up speaking louder (which emits more particles from their lungs) or lean outside the barriers to hear or be heard — which, of course, defeats their purpose.

Of the half dozen experts I interviewed for this article, not one could name a study or datum that suggests desktop shields in schools offer any substantial safety advantage, and all said that any benefits would be especially unlikely to be felt when other mitigation measures are already in place.

*As did FWIW, as we did again this past June: “COVID Theatre”.

Hmm — links aren’t working, damn it; try the search feature, using “plexiglass”. Or here’s a quote from an article I cited, dating back to the Vice Presidential debate in October, 2020:

"Those plexiglass barriers are really only going to be effective if the vice president or Kamala Harris are spitting at each other," Boston University epidemiologist Ellie Murray explained to the Times. "Those are really just splatter shields." Linsey Marr, a scientist at Virginia Tech whose expertise is in airborne transmission, actually laughed out loud when she saw the stage's set up, explaining that the barriers "are even smaller and less adequate than I imagined."

Joseph Allen, a ventilation expert at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told the Times that it's not just about the danger to Pence, Harris, and the moderator: "My biggest concern," he said, "is that millions of people will be getting the message that this is what an effective set of controls looks like." 

It occurs to me that Mr. Diplomacy has brought Mao's Vietnam-era canard back in vogue

Of course, down in the bunker, Dugout Joe’s having trouble grasping the concept

Biden said it, I believe it, that settles it

america’s back

Following up on yesterdays post on this subject

let’s give it a shot

Doctors increasingly turning to treating COVID patients early, before they’re hospitalized

Antibody drugs from Regeneron, Eli Lilly and others remained largely unused for months, but have now been adopted to fight the latest surge of COVID-19brought on by the Indian 'Delta' variant in an effort to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed.    

Regeneron Pharmaceutical Inc, predicts that as early as June, less than five percent of high-risk patients were receiving treatment, chief executive Leonard Schlieffer told The Wall Street Journal in an interview. However, in the last few weeks, that number has increased to 30 percent. …

Doctors are increasingly turning to antibody drugs in a bid to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed by a surge of COVID-19 patients. ….

The adoption of these drugs is also increasing due to greater public awareness and a looser grip on who can qualify for them under the FDA's emergency-use authorizations. 

Monoclonal antibodies are molecules produced in a lab that imitate the immune system's antibodies that fight viruses and bacteria like the new Delta variant. 

For the sickest patients, there aren't many alternatives as effective as Regeneron's drug, Vicki Brownewell, chief nursing officer at Houston Methodist West Hospital in Texas, told The Journal.

Antibody drugs, if quickly provided after infection, are a way to lower the number of hospitalizations for COVID-19, she said. 

'Once a patient is hospitalized with Covid there's very little we can do except support them. There are no magic-bullet drugs that work,' Brownewell told the newspaper.

The FDA authorized the first antibody drugs from Regeneron and Eli Lilly & Co.= in November 2020 for people whose health were likely to develop severe cases. 

Former President Donald Trump credited Regeneron for coming up with the first drug last October, but most doctors were slow to use the treatments until now.

Some hospitals struggled with the supply of the drugs as it required patients to go to get infusions or a series of shots before being closely watched for an hour for possible allergic reactions. 

Others have been hesitant at reassigning their strained employees from treating ill-health patients to providing drugs to patients with mild cases. 

Regeneron's Dr Schleifer said the drugs weren't being given out due to a lack of support from public-health leaders, such as the National Institutes of Health, which didn't recommend them until early this year. 

'Without the voice of the NIH endorsing these in a major way, the word just didn't get out there,' he said. …

A Eli Lilly spokeswoman said the interruption is still in effect and that the company is developing a new antibody drug designed to fight most variants of the coronavirus. 

Other pharmaceuticals, such as Vir Biotechnology Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline PLC, have released antibody drugs in May, which have been approved by the FDA. 

However, the federal government has yet to purchase them.

I drove by this place for decades, but never got inside, alas

436 Stanwich Lane, up by the Merritt, has sold for $800,000 (ask of $899)

The listing offers an interesting history:

Remarks: Calling all Architects and Contractors, Time to Create Something New, opportunity to rebuild, reuse, or repurpose the elements that speak to you the most! Originally the carriage house from a 365 acre Londerry estate steeped in Greenwich history. This diamond in the rough on 4 glorious acres was once a renowned architect's pride and joy. A refuge from NYC in the 50's and 60's began a lifelong dream to create something wonderful for his family to enjoy. Some of the mid century modern details and original beams from the carriage house still exist. A private estate and nature lovers paradise on coveted Stanwich Road with plenty of room to make new improvements or create a whole new modern version of your dream home. Property Sold ''AS IS'' and Subject to Probate Approval.