What people want is not 'bad news' or 'good news'; they want interesting news. In some fields (@Congau mentioned sports where there is at least 50% good news.) Science and technology reporting often involves interesting--therefore 'good'--news. Art, drama, film, and book reviews often involve interesting 'good' news: the art, play, film, or book were interesting, good, and worthwhile. Business news is quite often good news, and even when stocks fall, short sellers are happy.

Whether "good news" or "bad news" dominated depends on the source of your news. Local news stations tend to follow the "if it bleeds it leads" formula. The PBS News Hour doesn't use that approach. Neither do "leading" newspapers like the NYT, WSJ, and so on.

9/11 was, of course, very bad news. But the destruction of the World Trade Center twin towers was also absolutely fascinating. It provided interesting news for a long time. Bad news might be the same as good news.

An axiom is that the stock market is driven by fear and greed. It's a repulsion/attraction trap. On the one hand, investors FEAR losing money in the market, but they are driven by GREED to stay in the market. As it happens, there are usually reciprocal responses to fear and greed. My fear fits your greed. I might think Apple Corp. is going to start losing money, but you are pretty sure that they will soon unveil a new product which will result in their continued growth. I want to sell Apple, you want to buy Apple.

Another axiom is "buy low/sell high". A good share of the sales sending the stock market down are still profitable for those who bought the stock LOW a while ago, and are (from their point of view) selling high.

Of course, that won't be true for a lot of people. A good share of the sales sending the stock market down are people who bought high and are bailing out as fast as they can. There is apparently a huge flight to cash, with all sorts of assets (gold, stocks, etc.) being liquidated.

A plunging stock market is an opportunity for those with piles of cash to acquire assets that will, in the long run, PROBABLY appreciate. Some investors can afford to wait years for their bets to pay off. When their cheaply acquired stocks have appreciated a lot, they will sell at a profit -- maybe in the next big crash a decade (or less) down the line.

Another axiom: what goes up must come down.

global travel — boethius

SARS (Severe acute respiratory syndrome) is a good example. SARS (another corona virus) jumped from animals to humans and first appeared in China in 2002, then showed up in several distant places. SARS has a very high fatality rate (15%, and 55% for elderly patients).

"The flu" doesn't really describe a particular disease, but each year it's a different strain. — Hanover

True enough: "The flu" (as the term is used) may be any of several unrelated infections -- like a rhinovirus, a norovirus, or a bacterial disease. "Stomach flu" has nothing to do with influenza. "Influenza (A, B, and C) is a specific virus with specific genetic components. Type A infects both birds and swine, which is how it gets reorganized into its yearly version of fresh hell. Type A is the cause of epidemics and pandemics. Types B and C are usually not as serious.

Then there is "diplomatic influenza", where one is conveniently indisposed to go to work, attend a boring meeting, or a dull party.

Something very infectious, like the flu, basically does infect close to 100% of people, just not in any given year as a large portion of the population still has immunity. But eventually, nearly everyone gets the flu at least once. — boethius

It's probably the case that eventually everybody will be infected by one of the various strains of influenza A (and may or may not experience a significant result) but don't you have to factor in vaccinations? Even though only 40% (+ or -) of adults get vaccinated for influenza each year, that is still many millions of people who won't get, and thus won't transmit, the influenza virus.

So is society itself a sort of ideology — schopenhauer1

In a very real sense, society is itself an ideology--the ideology of settled, state-centered society.

I haven't actually read the book, the principle was summarized for me. Against The Grain, by James C. Scott posits that 10 or 12 thousand years ago sedentary agriculture was not an attractive option for successful hunter/gatherers. Rather, hunter/gatherers were coaxed, seduced, or coerced into agriculture by proto-state actors who wanted to harness the energy of people--their capacity to work and to reproduce--for purposes of accumulating power.

Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also discusses the “barbarians” who long evaded state control, as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject peoples. (from the publisher's summary)

I don't know whether this theory is valid, or not. I wouldn't rule it invalid out of hand. But hunter/gathers avoided sedentarian life for maybe a hundred thousand years. Had they wanted to settle down, surely they could have figured out how. The first states were city-states in the Middle East, generally ruled by a strong-man. The city state was pretty much dependent on its surrounding agricultural hinterland. No grain, no city-state; no city state, no strong-man.

Agriculture wasn't the beginning of society, of course. The hunter-gatherers were/are as much society as the Upper East Siders of Manhattan. But the kind of society which came to dominate much of the world was settled, urban-rural, agriculture-based states.

Looks like reality to me. 2 weeks ago, Minnesota had 1, then two cases. Then 3, then 5, then 11, then 18, now... 35. At first all of the cases were travel related. Now 3 cases of community transmission have shown up. This is exactly what one would expect to happen.

Granted, the number of cases has increased as a result of increased surveillance testing -- which is the whole point of surveillance testing, to detect otherwise invisible transmission.

Hanover may be dismissive because the numbers are quite small in most US states, BUT all epidemics and pandemics start out with small numbers. The 1918 influenza epidemic didn't begin with 100,000 cases; it began with a very small number. Same for Covid-19 in Huwei, same for SARS, same for MERS, same for Ebola, same for... most readily communicable diseases.

Hanover is overlooking an important point: US (and many developed countries') hospitals do not have lots of reserved empty beds and critical care equipment, like respirators, nor reserves of doctors, skilled nurses and allied professions. 50 critical care cases might well swamp a metropolitan areas critical care resources, because most of those ICU beds are already in use. Why don't they have more resources? Because they can no longer afford to maintain these reserves. Consolidation, closure of obsolete hospitals (too old to rehabilitate) closure of small financially precarious hospitals, etc. left us with fewer, but financially stable, hospitals operating at close to full capacity. THEREFORE

it is essential to do what we can do to "flatten the curve" of new cases. That's what social distancing (something I've been doing for a decade, at least), voluntary self-storage, and so on is for: keeping as many people as possible out of harms way.

Oh, I got it right away, alright, but I felt compelled to mention that the much honored Reagan was losing his mind while he was president. So did you. We're on the same track, just trying to one up the other. You probably won this round.

My prediction is that no one here will die or lose a close family member to the virus. — Hanover

I don't know, of course, but the epidemic could be worse than we think it will be. It depends on how much community transmission occurs -- disease spread locally from person to person, rather than people showing up sick who had been in Milan or Wuhan. We don't have experience with this virus, and so... could be that next fall will be the beginning of the major calamity, rather than right now. Who knows?

The thing is, people who get sick with Covid-19 can get very, very sick, and end up with permanently damaged lungs if they are able to survive. The range of sickness for those who don't get very very sick can still include pneumonia.

it's just I'm tired of being a slave to it. — Hanover

You should have a bidet.

If you don't delay the spread of this, your healthcare system will be completely overwhelmed — RogueAI

That's absolutely the case. Most cities in the world (or the USA) do not have many empty hospital beds just waiting to be filled by people sick with covid-19. They also don't have a cadre of surplus staff just waiting to be called in for emergencies. They are operating at something not too far below capacity. A surge of infectious disease cases will swamp hospital systems, at least initially. People who are sick, but not requiring hospitalization, can self-isolate themselves at home -- at least for a while (assuming there are services available to deliver food or medicine, should they run out.

Nursing homes are, for sure, a weak link in the system. The residents are highly vulnerable, can't leave, and need daily care

Reagan died of Alzheimers.

I hope Biden selects a younger, healthier, more functional Vice President. I hope the vast majority of voters will hold their nose and vote for the unappealing Joe.

I voted for Bernie in the Primary. It was a pleasure. That's the first vote in a long time that I was happy to cast, no reservations -- other than Bernie's age. And other than all the barriers that would lay in the way of Bernie accomplishing anything. Biden is too old too, and less substantial than Sanders.

. Could have early stage dementia. Sort of like Reagan.

One of the reasons that returns are slow is that there are many mail-in absentee or early vote ballots. It always takes time to sort, open, and record. BTW, what "state run media" were you referencing? National Public Radio? Public Television? They are not state-run.

What is happening in America is that "the public", or "the people" have become alienated from their role of active citizens. The political establishment is quite happy to have disaffected citizens, because for the most part disaffected citizens won't be too annoying to officialdom. This trend of decreasing public involvement in politics (like by voting) has been dealing for quite some time -- not just in the last few years.

Peak-political involvement may have been more than 100 years ago (I'm relying on a lecture on political involvement I heard a while ago.). Yes, political alienation is a problem. The cure can't come from the political establishment. It has to come from The People, or it won't happen.

Hey, a ship full of old faggots like myself would be QUITE BOOOORING.

A friend went on a gay cruise, and said it was like being locked up in a gay bar for a month. I might be in the right age group, but I don't have the requisite gregariousness, nor the budget. Nor the appetite for daily drinking and wallowing around the buffet.

I mean, what's the point? You get on a boat; most of the time there is nothing to see outside but water, sky, and a horizon. Maybe a much smaller ship on the Inland Waterway between Vancouver and Juneau, with the chance to look at bears and whales would be OK. or a riverboat cruise in Europe. Or maybe paddling a canoe around Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis--more my speed.

Well, most of "us" aren't catching and eating bats, it's mostly "them", but...

Ebola, Marburg (both hemorrhagic fevers), HIV, Zika virus, SARS, MERS, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease), and the corona virus are examples of recent animal-human disease transfers. (in the midwest a wasting disease has infected a lot of the deer population. As far as I know, there hasn't been a deer-human disease transfer, but hunters are getting the carcasses tested (state mandated) before they eat them.)

Influenza is another disease from animals, with a complicated bird/hog/human cycle. (Viral genes get rearranged in birds and hogs, then to us.) Every year there is a chance for the most dangerous genetic arrangement to show up (like the 1918 version).

The "wet" (or live) trade in wild animals for food is pretty bad idea. A lot of the problem is rooted in bats, which have very tolerant immune systems. They are able to carry all sorts of novel viruses and bacteria in their blood without getting sick. Bats interact with other animals, sucking blood, and dropping germ laden feces around, contaminating other animals. Then we catch and sell the bats and other animals, and periodically get sick with ebola or corona virus and worse.

Far less than 1%.

However, it might be a good idea to not buy stock in Princess Cruises. Surely viral slime has corroded their luxury brand.

Luxury cruises sound like a colossal bore, anyway.

Marx's comment. in A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, "Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." doesn't translate to media.

Most newspapers are written at a reading level well above the 6th grade (like 9th or 10th grade level) and the reading level of the media consumer will vary from functionally illiterate to college level reading skills. So, film, games, radio, and television can appeal to the broadest audience because that medium is aural and visual. The New York Times, on the other hand, is text-based, and is written at a higher reading level.

People gravitate to the media that meets their needs and matches their abilities. So what?

It's a mistake to take the content of American television, radio, magazines, and so forth too seriously. Why? Because the content is mere bait. The important messages in most media are the advertisements. Television is on the air to sell products, not to uplift anyone (save for PBS/NPR). Commercial media practices are pretty much the same round the world. (And PBS/NPR equivalents also operate similarly.)

Death and violence statistics are quite alarming in Eastern Asia/ Atheist Communist countries. That's a good question though, I can grab some statistics for you if you'd like. — 3017amen

Pass along any handy stats you might have. But various Abrahamic regimes (Christian and Moslem, mostly) have had very discouraging violence and death stats at times. Just take the United States which performed near extinction on native people, carried about by at least nominal Christians. The murder rate in various parts of the USA (some urban cores, southeastern and parts of western US) have some of the highest rates of individual violence in the world. Granted, we aren't an officially religious country.

"People unaffiliated with organized religion, atheists and agnostics also report anger toward God either in the past, or anger focused on a hypothetical image - that is, what they imagined God might be like - said lead study author Julie Exline, Case Western Reserve University psychologist. — 3017amen

I have heard some younger (and older) atheists fulminating about stupid 'sky gods' and superstitious believers, etc. Some of them do seem to carry a heavy cross of anger, resentment, disappointment, and so on. I'm not sure what it is, exactly, they are angry about. Some of them have (they report) never had much religious experience, so why the intensity of feeling? I can see why someone who had a harsh form of religion shoved down their throat would be pissed off about it once they escaped. But a lot of atheists were never captive, so had no need to escape.

One thing: I think being an angry atheist can be a stance that some people adopt. It's another way of being a social deviant--staking out a not-too-crowded defendable territory. In this god-soaked social milieu, declaring "there is no god" or "God is dead" is a pretty easy way to achieve meaningful social deviance. (It beats joint a violent gang, for instance.).

And there are refugees from religion. I've met an awful lot of former Jehovah's Witnesses. There are versions of Baptist, Catholic, Islamic, belief and so on that some atheists have happily escaped from and now declare it the case of their disbelief. It was a bad experience for them.

I just noticed it here on this forum here lately... . — 3017amen

Atheists that show up on this forum tend to be a peevish lot, stewing in all sorts of bile and bilge.

For what purpose would a will be needed in heaven? IF, as has been suggested, being in the presence of God is like (LIKE, mind you, not the same thing.) an unending, and perpetually great orgasm. It just feels great to be in heaven. What need of a will in hell? For that matter, if determinism gets you through life in one piece, what need of free will here?

Milton proposed that Lucifer (bearer of light) rebelled; "better to rule in hell than serve in heaven". But Lucifer was never a mortal, and Milton isn't canonical scripture. Lucifer was a native heavenly being. Mortals are not.

Heaven is a nice idea; I don't believe in it. I don't believe in hell either. And I don't think we have complete free will here. We have instances where we can, perhaps, freely choose something. A lot of the time we don't have much choice.

Would the same apply to viruses and DNA? — StarsFromMemory

If one were to posit consciousness to both human beings and viruses, one would have to explain by what means molecules making up the virus (or DNA) could process consciousness. It's difficult enough to explain how humans process consciousness, and we have about 3 pounds of brain matter to do it. Conscious toasters?

If we go up the ladder of complexity a ways, to honey bees, we find that scout bees (the ones who go out looking for batches of flowers, come back, and report to the hive) engage in what might possibly be a private mental experience. I read that scout bees sometimes perform their dance at night when their audience is not paying attention. When bees swarm, scouts go out and look for potential hive locations and return. Then they perform a dance which communicates information

More scouts return to the swarm and do their own dances. Gradually, some of the scouts become convinced by others, and switch their choreography to match. Once every scout agrees, the swarm flies off to its new home. — New York Times, 3/2/2020

The caucusing scouts have to have some sort of mental process to evaluate the information they are exchanging.

If you want to believe that rocks have a fragment of consciousness, go ahead. But IF you want to convince me that rocks and mountains, trees and forests, etc. are inhabited by some sort of 'knowing' you'll have to come up with a mechanism for how this could be the case. (Maybe there is such a mechanism; trees, for instance, do communicate with other trees; they don't discuss Hegel, obviously, but they do send out relevant chemical messages.)

I don't know whether all, most, some, or a few atheists are "angry" -- or if they are, what they are angry about. Any data from anywhere supporting the idea that atheists are angry?

Some people define themselves through social deviance. So, some guys are gay, and it's just part of who they are; they don't make a major production out of being gay. Or queer, or whatever the fuck. Some people are communists, neo-nazis, vegans, radical environmentalists, and all sorts of other political positions that might be a kind of 'deviance'. Some people combine social deviance with a set of resentments. People who do that re likely to present as angry gays, angry communists, angry vegans, and so on and so forth.

Angry social deviants are likely to combine anger with their deviance. So, angry gays, angry incels, angry atheists, angry what-have-you.

There are atheists who maintain a fairly high level of resentment toward society, and they will present as angry atheists. There are strong religious believers who also maintain a set of resentments, who will come off as angry -- angry Roman Catholic, maybe. Or angry Moslems.

All sorts of people have reasons to be resentful.

Yes on both counts; I'm on the mend, and the surgery didn't involve the vocal cords. The tonsil and lymph nodes were the sites of the malignancy, and the pathology report showed no cancerous cells in any of the margins. A 'robotic' system was used to remove the internal tissue (the "Davinci surgical robot") which is entirely under the control of the surgeon, and then the external surgery (removing lymphatic tissue) was the traditional knife and fork method. It took about 4 hours. Radiation is not necessary, ditto for chemo--for the future, as far as they can tell, but no guarantees.

The advantage of the high tech machine is that the various devices that are on the ends of the robot's digits are illuminated and include camera pick up, so the surgeon actually has a much better view of the internal surgical field than would otherwise be available.

Is this a positive medical development, or simply an expensive frill, which adds unnecessarily to the cost of medical care? I'm not in a position to say. The surgeon said he could do the surgery without the robot, but that the outcomes were better with it. Makes sense to me. The robot is steadier, doesn't get tired, can be finely 'tuned' by a computer assist (which is needed in brain surgery using a robotic device), and so on.

I had a fantasy of the surgical robot getting loose and stalking humans in the hospital hallways, over-powering them, and forcing its favorite surgical procedures on them.

Medicaid is pretty generous — frank

But everyone is not on Medicaid. For one, it's administered by the states, and some states have meagre funding, others are much better funded. Compare New York with Mississippi. Plus, insurance costs a lot of money when you are on your own (as far as coverage is concerned) or are in a small employee group.

"Lifestyle" is a significant obstacle. The "fried fish belt" of the southeast US feeds too much fat and too much fire-grilled red meat into the population resulting in higher rates of cancer and obesity. Add to that too much smoking, drinking, obesity, high blood pressure, etc., and it's no wonder they don't live as long as people in Hawaii and Minnesota. Good medical care for lifestyle diseases (smoking, drinking, obesity, drugs, etc.) can only accomplish so much, For one thing, the patient has to present a willing subject for improvement, diagnosis, and timely treatment, which tends not to happen with chronically unhealthy people.

Then too, some people who should and do know better and are otherwise healthy harbor 'superstitions' about their health. They don't get timely inoculations for their children or don't follow instructions for taking antibiotics. They don't like to go to the doctor, preferring quakopractors who adjust their backs. They give out reasonably good advice to other people ("see the doctor about that") but then don't do the same thing for themselves.

I had throat cancer surgery a few weeks ago, the long-term consequence of smoking, drinking, and sex (it was HPV linked -- which kind of cancer happens to be more curable). I did reform around 30 years ago, but the long term consequences finally came due (at 73). I turned myself over to a surgeon early on, and presumably have good prospects. But still, in my youth I smoked and drank too much.

Like the fried fish belters not regretting tasty fried catfish, I don't regret the nights in the bars and the many, many partners I had -- but, nonetheless, lifestyle choices affect my health.

@Benkei mentioned insurance; I've spent a small fortune on insurance at times when I wasn't otherwise covered, and so haven't neglected chronic medical problems like glaucoma, which if neglected will lead to blindness. Medicare and the part B supplement costs about 15% of my monthly fixed income. Not everyone is able to do that. I was lucky to have enough cash on hand when I needed to cough up the sometimes absurd premiums (like a cobra payment of $1200 a month for a year) -- so far, anyway.

Capitalism is one of the two roots of our health problem (lifestyle is the other one). Attached to American Health Care, like a big ugly glioblastoma on the brain, is the parasitical profit-making health insurance and intermediary administration companies. Americans have been brainwashed by the capitalists into fearing single-payer insurance (aka, medicare for all).

You could, no doubt, tutor me in both the gross and fine points of predestination. I've never liked its theology very much.

St. Augustine wrote about predestination. Following Augustine, Luther adopted the idea, and Calvin followed Luther. (At least, that's the way I understand the doctrine came about.)

It apparently was the case that the idea of God decreeing who would be saved and who would be damned for all time, was unacceptable. So, God grants grace to those who desire to be saved so that they can fulfill the demands of faith.

It isn't at all clear to me why, in the general Christian conception of God, God would choose to damn a large number of people an eternity before they were even born. Or, conversely, why God would choose to save a large number of people an eternity before they were even born. I find it a decidedly distasteful doctrine.

Negation and affirmation are opposites. What's so difficult about that? They aren't the same thing.

Good work tracking down appointments.

Adam Cohen, in his new book SUPREME INEQUALITY, points out that elderly conservative judges have been a bit more strategic in resigning during Republican presidencies. I"m taking his word for it. But take Ginzburg: I'm happy with her being on the court, but she may well not make it through a second Trump term.

Nixon sabotaged Johnson's Abe Fortas appointment with a smear campaign which led to his resignation from the court. The loss of Fortas (liberal) and the gain of Burger (conservative) tipped the court from liberal (under Warren) to conservative, under Berger and subsequent chief-justice appointments.

As far as I can tell, Wayfarer's argument is that America has moved so far right over the last few decades, that they don't want this. I tend to disagree, and would point out that most people under 40 don't seem to have an automatic problem because the word "socialism" was mentioned — ZhouBoTong

There is a discontinuity in the extent to which the small ruling class has moved rightward and the extent to which the masses of ordinary people have moved rightward.

Rank and file are more liberal than the ruling class. Naturally they we are more liberal; they we have far less to lose from economic democratization, and far more to gain.

Your solution had not occurred to me, but it would help the problem of the court becoming unbalanced politically, as it is now. It would also help if we had better quality presidents and better quality congresses, in the same way that if money grew on trees, all our budgets would be balanced.

being easy for the Right to manipulate for their interests — Wayfarer

And this is of course a huge problem which, even without global warming to worry about, will saddle the next generations of citizens with problems.

Running winning candidates isn't enough (though that is necessary). Several basic reforms are needed:

One, the members of the Supreme Court need to be rotated more often -- which means ending life-time appointments. Fixed terms would solve part of the problem. The court IS POLITICAL. It has to be knocked off its pseudo-august pedestal.

Two, eliminate the Electoral College. I realize it has a point, but direct election by the citizenry works for all the other elected positions.

Three, we need a genuine working class party -- not slightly more and slightly less conservative parties serving the interest of the ruling class.

Four, campaign financing must be socialized. Having someone with $30-40 billion dollars financing his own campaign (Bloomberg) and others scrounging for pocket change is obviously a crooked game. The conservative court laid down Citizens United for a ruling class reason. Citizens United needs to be undone.

We need to repair the gross economic inequalities which prevail in the United States. (Other countries will have to deal with their inequalities.). This means taxing wealth at a high rate. Maybe it should be enshrined in the constitution, so it can't be changed easily. The wealthy stayed wealthy even during periods of high taxation.

I'd love to see Sanders win but that I just don't think it's on the cards. — Wayfarer

Indeed. I don't see sufficient electoral college majorities voting for a democratic socialist -- any kind of politician who would wear the tag of socialist of any stripe, really. I'm Pro Sanders. But even if he were elected (which isn't an impossibility), without a solid democratic majority in both the House and Senate, he will be unable to pass so much as the time of day.

The Republican refusal to consider Judge Garland for the SCOTUS wasn't directed at Barack Obama; it was directed toward fixing a long-term conservative majority--which they have achieved. (Supreme Inequality by Cohen traces the determined 50 year shift away from the much more humane Warren Court (which came to an end early in the Nixon presidency with the appointment of the conservative Burger) to a pro-property, pro-business, anti-poor, anti civil rights expansion, etc. court. If Sanders gets elected, the Republicans will do their damndest to make sure the court stays conservative.

It's essential that Trump be defeated, and I don't see anyone in a position to do better than Sanders.

I'm going to vote for the kind of president I believe we should have; if The People vote otherwise, so much the worse.

Sure. Not all of them, but some, for sure. there are even a few quite aged naive spoiled brats. Like the POTUS.

2) did they get the facts right. — Gregory

There are two histories to consider here:

a) whatever it was that actually happened
b) the account of what is believed to have happened

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (whoever they actually were -- we don't know), and Paul wrote down what they thought had happened. They, and others, wrote down, repeated from an oral record, or made up as liturgy a body of material which the early church edited into the New Testament book.

The account of what is believed to have happened is a reliable record. We can trust it. Some other group didn't come along 400 years (say, like in 700 AD) and rewrite it.

We have no record of what actually happened. No secretary or historian was following Jesus and the Twelve around Israel, taking notes, making sketches, conducting interviews, or arranging independent medical exams of the healed and resuscitated dead. Paul never met Jesus (he did meet Peter and another Disciple or two, and reportedly they did not spend their time together discussing the weather.).

The closest we can come to what actually happened is the record of what some people thought HAD HAPPENED quite a few years prior to their writing (or their birth, for that matter). We can be confident that the New Testament is an accurate and true record of what some people 1800 years ago thought to be the case.

Believe it or not? This is where the commitment to believe comes in. One can decide to believe that the New Testament is not only a record of what some people thought happened, but that it is an accurate record of what actually did happen. The gap has to be leaped over through the will to believe.

I am willing to conditionally believe that the New Testament probably has some sort of connection to aspects of the life of someone named Jesus, who was probably put to death, probably by crucifixion after his activities became intolerable to the establishment. Did he raise Lazarus from the dead? Don't know; Lazarus' body had already begun to rot, so... it seems extremely problematic.

If you want to believe in miracles (however you define them) then do so -- but for events termed "miraculous", I do not think there are any "facts" to be had. What are the facts about the miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes? Some girls reported seeing the BVM. That's about it for facts.

No beer, no life. True. Civilization began with the brewing arts. Some go further and claim civilization began with distillation. Like Noel Coward who declared, "to make a perfect martini, fill a glass with gin and wave it in the general direction of Italy".

Oh... how a virus just loves warm and moist — Mayor of Simpleton

Hope all is going well with you, MOS.

Live viruses, being obligate intracellular parasites, are always moist -- maybe not always warm. They don't do well outside of cells. Some naked viruses are durable, most aren't.

As for masks, the masks that hospitals here hand out are accordion-folded paper with maybe some other fiber mixed in to add a bit of strength. Once they get wet (like when outside in the cold, with lots of condensation inside the mask) the paper starts to fall apart.

The blue molded 3M masks which I used to use when running in the winter, don't get soggy, but they are also somewhat stiff, so they don't fit around the mouth quite as snugly, unless one is careful about putting them on. Not having a beard helps.

There are multi-layered masks available which range in price over dimes apiece, and of course nobody is going to hand those out quite so freely. I would guess the 4-layered masks probably offer some substantial protection both ways.

Then there are the heavy duty masks.

In the end, though, respiratory viruses are hard to hide from. One can't always wear a mask (practically, anyway) and unless one is observing hospital-grade infection control procedures, sooner or later airborne disease will find a way into one's inner sanctum, and one will just have to deal with it.