That's how the system was originally designed. Go live in the state that has policies you prefer.

But the slow dismantling of the Republic as more and more power was claimed by the central government - and enabled by the SCOTUS - has caused broken the "50 laboratories" of social progress, leaving everyone fighting the Federal government for the right to impose their ideology on every state, and citizen.

Well why not? Trade is intimately tied to foreign policy, and congress ceded that authority, along with the power to levy tariffs, to the executive branch back in the 1930's, and presidents have unilaterally made these types of decisions ever since. Between that and the Trade Act of 1974, the president has authority under the law to enforce trade agreements and ban imports from China. Just because TikTok is a digital import doesn't make it any different under the law.

Congress can make changes to those provisions if it has the desire and the will. But for now, Trump is within the law to ban Chinese apps from US soil.

... and American companies helped them build that Chinese Firewall. Most of them are still looking to profit off of Chinese consumers, and will continue to bow to ChiCom policy to get it.

AXS sent me an email today about the "postponed" (no new date) Primus concert I bought tickets for. No refund option, no plans for refunds for moved events, and no dates for when the concert might happen.

Yea, at this point, they seem worse than Ticket Bastard, probably going to get away with it because they're smaller and not getting the bad press Ticket Bastard is dealing with.

Ticket Bastard is the greediest middle-man monopoly I've ever seen. They can go away tomorrow and there will be lots of other ways, overnight, that tickets to events can be bought and sold.

Please die, Ticket Bastard, please die. I, for one, will be demanding immediate cash refunds for all of the tickets I have bought from them in order to hasten their demise.

As soon as they let me, that is........

Got my email today about the "postponed" Primus concert. New date? Nope, TBD. Refund? No information available.

Yea, I feel like I'm getting screwed. I could really use that money right now. I shouldn't be denied it due to the Ticket Bastard's business model.

Good. Since that's the goal, let's get the CO2 up to about 1000 ppm, warm it up 2-4 degrees, and plants and animals and humans will thrive!

Atmospheric density.

Where you see problems, some of us see progress and opportunity.

Trump is an insufferable narcissist. But that was the kind of personality needed to stop the destruction and sell-out of the US. So it's working.

If I close my eyes and pretend, all I see are delicious dicks. mmmmm

Actually, the US planted the corruption in Ukraine. What did you think they were doing with all that "aid" money? Helping the Ukrainian people??? LOL!

We're not. In fact, I've heard that even though it's an RNA virus, it actually has a mechanism to correct transcription errors! It's quite a complex little bugger. And large! Probably as large as a virus could be. The guy in that article lost me though, when he started say "think of a game of telephone." BZZZZAT!

I kind of wondered that too - I didn't see it as a big deal, some cultures have some really eclectic culinary tastes, after all. But sanitation is obviously an issue, stories of illnesses coming out of there are frequent. Makes sense. Bats are really dirty creatures, and carry all kinds of pathogens. Other animals can, too. And I don't eat wild-caught bottom-feeder fish for the same reason.

But then someone sent me a video, posted as a marketing video, from one of the wet market shops, which depicted a dog tied up by all 4 legs and suspended over a fire where he was being roasted alive. Yes, it had audio too. Very hard to watch. How someone could actually DO that (there was laughter in the background) is hard to understand.

So now I'm really pissed at China (again) for allowing that kind of abuse to go on. They need to shut that shit down!

We don't know enough yet, but could this become another one of those "childhood illnesses" - like chicken pox? Back in the day, kids didn't get vaccines for that. Often parents would intentionally take their kids for a visit to homes with kids that had the chicken pox, so they could catch it too, get through it easily with mild symptoms, and be immune from then on.

My parents never did that, and when my son got chicken pox when I was in my 30's, so did I, and it was terrible. It was far worse than my son's case, with legions all over. When it developed in my mouth, there was a danger it could swell up my throat and kill me from suffocation.

So it's not like COVID-19 is unique in how it affects different age groups.

COVID-19, though, is an RNA virus, so it might mutate rather quickly, making it resistant to both vaccines and antibodies over time. Imagine if it evolves like influenza. Vaccines would have to target various strains of the virus, with targets missed each season, or it may be impossible to create an effective vaccine as it is for the common cold.

There has also been speculation (and a couple of draft papers, which is all we have at this point) that treatment of serious cases is completely wrong. The evidence for this is the large percentage of intubated patients that die on the ventilator. Far higher in COVID-19 patients than the typical survival rate for pneumonia. Patients are intubated when their blood oxygen level falls too low as a treatment for assumed ARDS. But some doctors say what is happening is more like hypoxia (think altitude sickness). The theory is that COVID-19 is directly interfering with hemoglobin molecules in the lungs, and stripping it of its iron ions. It's not a mechanical problem, which is what the ventilator is trying to treat - it's a chemistry problem. Some doctors are suggesting trying blood transfusions as part of the treatment for serious cases - to supplement the red blood cells that have been damaged with some with functional hemoglobin.

This also explains why we are seeing some success using drugs to treat malaria. Malaria is not a virus - it's a plasmodium. So why would these drugs work on a virus? If the virus is attacking the function of hemoglobin, similar to the way malaria feeds off the oxygen in red blood cells, it makes a kind of sense.

Lots to learn. Everybody practice distancing and stay safe. The experts will figure this thing out.