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I was going to give a monthly covid update for Ontario but it's not interesting. Suffice to say it's going well. It continues to transition to endemicity. That's not an alarm -- it's not endemic yet because it is still *improving*. When it finally stops improving we'll be there.

@aiecon23 @simon_faire @beowulf888 @dummybrainy @MichaelSFuhrer @j74205 @JPWeiland Mathematically it can fall exponentially forever. But if we assume: * a non-zero minimum for spread to be sustained * the virus isn't going extinct Then it must level off at some point. So the question is when? I think late 2026 we won't do better. But I'm happy to be wrong.

@vickersty @simon_faire @beowulf888 @dummybrainy @MichaelSFuhrer @j74205 @JPWeiland We're in uncharted territory. The summer waves in previous were all driven by fast growing variant appearing earlier than Jan/Feb. Without one, I'm not sure if we will even have a summer wave -- or a winter wave for that matter. We will see.

It seems the CDC Covid Data Tracker has been replaced this week with an unholy useless mess. We'll see if any of this data is extractable or not... or it might just be time to hang this up.

@Alphonsetweet5 @Acyn Well that's a relief. Dr. Jesus thinks he's gonna be ok.

@Acyn “He’s got serious cancer, he’s gonna be okay I think” 😂

Trump: I met a wonderful woman—a grandmother driving doordash to help support her husband's cancer treatment. He's got serious cancer. She delivered McDonald's to the Oval Office. To be honest, it was a little tacky.

Some people say you can't make art with AI but this pelican doesn't care what you think.

@dummybrainy @MichaelSFuhrer @aiecon23 @beowulf888 @simon_faire @j74205 @JPWeiland Verily (USA) is down in the 30s now. It has never been that low since national stats were available (before mid-2022 it was just the West region).

@MichaelSFuhrer @aiecon23 @beowulf888 @vickersty @simon_faire @j74205 @JPWeiland Go look at Netherlands too. They’re almost at zero. This is truly endemic COVID here.

@atrupar Sometimes the truth is unpatriotic. Maybe stop being a mindless patriot.

Hegseth: "A note to the American media. I just can't help but notice the endless stream of garbage, the relentlessly negative coverage you cannot resist peddling despite the historic and important success of this effort and the success of our troops. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on. It's incredibly unpatriotic."

Did Poilievre mean "badly educated" or "poorly educated"? He's wrong either way, but these are not the same thing.

@aiecon23 @simon_faire @beowulf888 @dummybrainy @MichaelSFuhrer @j74205 @JPWeiland Fair question; it's a guess. Here's how I'm loosely modelling it based on last year. Red is 2025; Blue is 2026. I don't think we'll do much better than that even if we don't get a wave in July-Sept.

@vickersty @simon_faire @beowulf888 @dummybrainy @MichaelSFuhrer @j74205 @JPWeiland Why June but not later? There are no significant variants lurking in the background.

@JamesTate121 How would potash tariffs pressure Canada? Who thought that would work? We've no shortage of it, we can sell it to pretty much anyone, and it doesn't make up very much of our GDP. It's not a high-value asset. It's just something you need and we have.

What was meant to be a show of force has spiraled into a full-blown agricultural disaster. T.r.u.m.p’s latest potash tariffs were designed to pressure Canada, but instead they detonated inside America’s own farming heartland. In an emergency meeting at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a senior Trump adviser reportedly admitted the unthinkable: the policy had backfired so badly that American farmers may not survive the growing season. Canada wasted no time. As the world’s largest potash supplier, Ottawa redirected exports to Asia and Europe within days, locking in billion-dollar contracts and tightening its grip on the global fertilizer market. One Canadian official mocked the situation bluntly, saying that if the U.S. doesn’t want Canadian potash, the rest of the world gladly will. On the ground in Iowa, the consequences turned personal. A U.S. farmer broke down during a live interview, explaining that without Canadian potash, crops simply cannot be grown at scale. The result is stark: Canada posts record profits and cements its status as the undisputed “fertilizer king,” while the United States loses control of a critical supply chain at the worst possible moment of the planting season. Analysts are already calling this the worst trade failure of Trump’s year — a pressure tactic that ended up crushing the very people it claimed to defend.

Well I know why Trump's confused. We all looked at that picture and muttered "Jesus Christ".

Whenever someone posts a video skit online there's always weirdos in the comments saying it's "fake" or "staged". Like a whole section of the internet forgot that fiction is a thing?

@beowulf888 @simon_faire @dummybrainy @MichaelSFuhrer @aiecon23 @j74205 @JPWeiland Honestly I'm not sure. They used to get some from GISAID but they had a kerfuffle, and the volume has significantly reduced since. I'd be surprised if week 12 holds up at 6% when it gets 300ish more samples in for that week though. Early data is very unreliable.

@vickersty @simon_faire @dummybrainy @MichaelSFuhrer @aiecon23 @j74205 @JPWeiland I assume they're utilizing the same surveillance data as the CDC, aren't they? Except the CDC likes to plug it into a Nowcast, which frequently over- or underestimates the real percentages. Still, the vast looming threat of BA.3.2 doesn't seem to be either vast or looming. ;-)

@beowulf888 @simon_faire @dummybrainy @MichaelSFuhrer @aiecon23 @j74205 @JPWeiland That 6.3% is 1 out of 16 samples in week 12. So grain of salt and all that. At the moment I wouldn't put much faith in the last 6 weeks on cov-spectrum.

@simon_faire @dummybrainy @vickersty @MichaelSFuhrer @aiecon23 @j74205 @JPWeiland Not mentioned. The RE.x variants are its descendants.

@simon_faire @beowulf888 @dummybrainy @MichaelSFuhrer @aiecon23 @j74205 @JPWeiland They're showing 0.26 this week so that's a record if it holds. I think it'll bottom out around 0.15-0.18 in June.

@beowulf888 @vickersty @dummybrainy @MichaelSFuhrer @aiecon23 @j74205 @JPWeiland Lowest on my records was 0.31 Today it's reached 0.30 - toot toot. Except next week, today's will likely go up at least 0.01 There are a couple of upward pressures ahead. Maybe a small bump post Easter. BA.3.2 is drawing more attention. Seems to be slow and low in most countries

@AwesomeNewsom THEY DIDN'T EVEN TARIFF THE PENGUINS. LOSERS!

NATO IS NEVER THERE WHEN WE NEED THEM. TRUMP WANTED TO STEAL GREENLAND, DID NATO HELP? NO! TRUMP WANTED TO WIPE OUT AN ENTIRE CIVILIZATION, DID NATO HELP? NO! TRUMP DECLARED WAR ON BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, DID NATO HELP? NO! IF NATO DOESN'T PAY ITS SHARE FOR THE BALLROOM, IT'S OVER.

@naomirwolf The light source is the Sun which is behind the camera to the right. Earth is to the right. It is both day and night on Earth. Only the left half of this image is the far side. You can see the Grimaldi basin near the center; from Earth it is visible on the western limb.

‘Call me ill-informed, I was an English major, but - what is the light source here?’ I reposted my question. Lots of people are having a good laugh, and you are welcome to, but I am not ashamed to ask very basic questions about fields not my own, of other people online; and I prefer to have human conversations with knowledgeable people rather than ask AI or Google websites as a first resort. I put this question badly in haste I concede but I meant: please explain where the astronauts are in space in relation to this image, where is the sun in relation to this image, where is the earth in relation to this image, what time of day or night it is on earth in relation to this image, and what is the relationship of our day or night on earth to this light on the far side of the moon. Curiosity isn’t always well put and wasn’t in this case but I think it’s always a useful quality.

@RepJohnRose More importantly, you should also be calling for his impeachment. It's shameful that you're not.

Almost every Democrat in Washington is calling for the impeachment of President Trump today, and they're in the minority. Now just imagine if they take the majority. If that's not a wake-up call for Republicans to get back to work, fully fund DHS, and pass the SAVE America Act -- frankly, I don't know what is.

Ok so now they have two weeks to get their shit together and get this asshole out of office. Get on it.

Have to wonder if Trump is really planning on nuking Iran or just using that to bait a riot or assassination attempt.

Mark Carney needs to expel US Ambassador @petehoekstra. Now.

Everyone's talking about Trump ordering a nuclear strike on Iran. I don't know if that'll happen what do I know. But...what if he does, and it fails? I don't know what tech Iran has but they've consistently underestimated. Then the world turns on the USA for nothing.