quixoft

Honestly I don't think it's about the masks when it comes to the whole goverment plot conspiracy theories. I think it's more a "you give them an inch they take a mile" type deal that people are afraid of and if you're any sort of student of history, you'll know that government overreach is far from the exception, it's the norm when left unchecked. People don't trust government and in my opinion they shouldn't. We should always be aware of and examine what our lawmakers and government are up to because it's very possible that one day you'll look up and realize many of your freedoms are gone and you'll wonder when that happened. No one thinks our government is going to up and turn into a Stalin-esque dictatorship overnight. People are more worried about the death of liberty and freedom from a 1000 paper cuts. Sure, forcing masks is something very tiny that everyone should be fine with. But if we're okay with having masks force upon us, then what's next? How far can we be pushed? Let's try forcing everyone regardless of age to wear a helmet on bikes no matter what. No big deal, right? It's for your own safety. Hey we already took away your 30 round magazines in many states, you don't need that. But now that you're used to that, let's remove all semi autos and only allow bolt action or single shot rifles. It's for your own safety. Let's stop allowing liquor companies to make liquor over 80 proof or ban liquor outright. No one really needs alcohol that strong. It's for your own safety. Now that we banned liquor and saw a huge decrease in alcohol health related issues and drunk driving, let's get rid of wine too. It's too strong and it's for your own safety. Let's put cameras in everyone's house like China so when you call 911 they can see and assess the situation. No one will abuse that and it's for your own safety. We've seen an increase in injuries related to mountain biking that increases medical costs and takes away medical resources from other people practicing safer forms of exercise. People don't really need to be riding through rugged terrain with obstacles/jumps/drops so let's ban offroad biking. It's for your own safety. Yes, I'm just making this shit up as I go and it sounds ridiculous but if you don't think there are people in government who would like to limit our freedoms by a substantial amount, then I have some ocean front property to sell you in Arizona. It goes for both sides as well. Gun control for the left and abortion for the right are two excellent instances where goverment wants to limit personal freedom in the guise of saving lives. The best way to counteract these people is to be aware of what your reps are doing, be knowledgable and vote their ass out of office when they fuck around.

They won't actually give you a life span because they can't. This is the literature though on lifespan. So while I'm sure there is eventually wear an tear, it seems minimal after 10 million movement cycles in a lab env. I had it done in 2017 and my doctor had folks at the with 10 years of experience with the implants and no issues. I'm sure I can expect some arthritis when I get older but I would expect that anyway. Before being implanted in people, Mobi-C was tested in a lab. One industry standard test looked at implant wear. The wear test measured Mobi-C’s medical grade polyethylene insert for changes to size and weight after movement. To mimic the natural motion of the neck, the test used the combined movements of: Side bending (lateral bend). Forward-to-back bending (flexion-extension). Turning left-to-right (rotation). Every Mobi-C tested in the lab completed 10 million movement cycles, all demonstrating low wear rates. During this testing there were: No mechanical failures. No significant damage to the polyethylene insert or the metal plates. No major biomechanical issues. Mobi-C was then implanted and studied in patients. The testing data and two years of patient clinical data were reviewed by the FDA as part of the Mobi-C approval process in the U.S. Zimmer Biomet cannot predict the Mobi-C life expectancy for each patient. However, Mobi-C has been implanted over 70,000 times, in the U.S. since 2006 and in Europe since 2004.

Yeah, I was lucky as there was a question on whether or not insurance would cover it or not. Luckily they did so I was only out of pocket my $300 deductible as he was in my network. Otherwise the bill would have been $30K which honestly I would have paid if I had to. Well worth it. I actually didn't have any post op support needed. There was no pain, just a bit of stiffness and soreness for a couple weeks. The worst part was a sore throat for a couple days as he went through the front of my neck. No brace, no PT, nothing. He said just take it easy for 6 weeks and then live your life.

Yep. They hold up well too. I've gotten checked pretty hard quite a few times on the ice since the surgery with my head snapping in all kinds of different directions with zero issues.

Would you be opposed to cutting all speed limits in half in order to reduce traffic deaths? Or do the advantages of high speed transport outweigh the cost of traffic deaths?

I actually wash my hands BEFORE I use the restroom. I know where my pecker has been but my hands have touched all kinds of crap throughout the day and I ain't getting the clap because I shook hands with a meth head earlier and then touched my wang while peeing. Then I wash them again after even though the only thing I touched was my wang which is still clean because it's been my clean underwear since I showered in the morning.

Oh I totally get it. I just find it sad we only tend to care about others when we ourselves are scared. No one is really scared of the flu so we don't even think twice about tens of thousands of people dying from it every year or what small steps we could easily take(masks) to possibly help those folks. It's only when an unknown could possibly adversely affect us or our loved ones that we suddenly "care" about others when in reality it's our own selfishness in trying to save ourselves and our loved oned by forcing others to comply. When we get used to COVID it will go back to the same.

So I have some experience with this. TLDR go get looked at by Randall Dryer at Central Texas Spine Institute. I had two collapsed discs in my neck(C5-C6/C6-C7) from 30 years of contact sports and general dumbassery. Got to point that the nerves were compressed so bad that both arms were numb, severe pain between neck and shoulder like you, and weakness. Got to the point that I couldn't hold my hockey stick in my hand and had to quit playing. Went to two doctors and both wanted to do a two level fusion after PT and steroid injections failed to help. That would have been a year long recovery, loss of range of motion, and more pressure on the discs above and below so future surgery was likely. I was 39 years old at the time and luckily a friend referred me to Dryer for a third opinion. He said absolutely do not do a fusion and that I was a perfect candidate for Mobi-C implants which are basically fake discs. He did the surgery and I was back on the ice playing hockey 6 weeks post surgery and back to 100% after about 3 months post op. It's been three years now and it's like it never happened. No pain, no weakness, no numbness or tingling and no loss of range of motion. The best decision I ever made was getting that third opinion. Now I can also say I'm a cyborg as this is my neck now with the fake discs. There is a little plastic like ball in between each plate that you can't see on the xray that allows for full range of motion. Technology is great!

Completely agree with you and I wear my mask everywhere. I question why people are so up in arms about it now when it clearly works and could have saved many lives during regular flu seasons. My guess is that since a bad flu year ONLY kills 60,000, we didn't care because that's just not enough people dying to inconvenience us.

lol! Sadly, there is some truth to your statement.

I agree with this but why do we all of sudden care just now? The flu survival rate is ALMOST 100% and tens of thousands die every year in the US from the flu but we've never taken these actions during flu seasons. Why didn't we shut down the economy or force masks when flu deaths hit 60,000 in a bad year like 2017-18? Surely we could have saved many of those loved ones if we forced stay at home orders and masks, right? All we had to do is sacrifice some comfort, good looks, and jobs. Why didn't we do it? I've looked back through the threads and I've never seen any of you arguing for masks, distancing or saving others back in the 2017-18 flu where the CDC estimates 61,000 deaths. Was 60,000 deaths just not enough for y'all to care about or change your habits? Do we only care when deaths pass 100K? /sarcasm Personally, I'm fine with 37,873 deaths. But once we hit 37,874, I demand shut downs and masks. What are y'alls numbers? /sarcasm

I'm in for torn ligaments in the wrist after tossing myself over the bars.

lol. Same. I smacked my shoulder on a tree on Peddlers Pass trying to hang off like I was at the race track. Old habits. I'm slowly getting there but I still have to think "push the bike underneath me".

TLDR version. You want some weight on the front wheel to keep traction. Much better to lose rear traction than front while turning. So get that weight at minimum over the bottom bracket(center of gravity) or even better a bit forward. I have some experience with motorcycle road racing and it's totally different from MTB so I'm not sure how much will translate except weighting the front wheel. You want traction on that front wheel so you don't want it light. It's much easier to lose grip on the front if all your weight is on the back and once that happens, you have little to zero steering control and you're most likely going to low side if it happens mid turn although the really good riders can ride it out. The rear wheel is different. It's perfectly fine to lose grip and slide the rear wheel as you can control it with throttle and steering(because your front end still has grip). In fact, if your rear wheel starts spinning and sliding, you want to keep on the gas to keep it spinning. Otherwise you have good chance to high side if you're out of sorts when it regains grip. In a turn while road racing, you basically want to "kiss the inside mirror"(or where the mirror would be if your race bike had one). That means you are hanging off the bike to the inside of the turn and getting your weight forward. The goal of hanging off the bike is to change the center of gravity and keep the bike more vertical to increase the contact patch(and grip) of the tire. In short, you can take turns faster. In my case, when I'm in tight turn on the track, my head is nearly over my inside handle bar and basically only my outside thigh is on the seat. I put my weight on the outside peg so I have more flexibility on the inside leg but I know guys that weight the inside peg as well so that seems to be personal preference. This isn't my best form but you can see my body position is off the bike to the inside in a leaning forward position to keep the front wheel weighted for grip into the turn. Dirt bikes are completely different but I'm no expert there. I rode them as a kid but had no instruction or racing experience. However from what I remember they are more similar to MTB in that instead of hanging off the bike, you push the bike underneath you in turns to get the side knobbies gripping the dirt. I struggle on the MTB still because I want to hang off to the inside in turns. I also nearly always clip my pedals on the ground because I'm so used to accelerating out of a turn once I've hit the apex. So I start pedaling at the apex and of course clip a pedal on the ground because I have the bike leaned underneath me. Old habits die hard. In short, you want weight on the front to maintain grip and control.

The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Those limeys from across the pond might have some breakthroughs in treatment. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ith-severe-covid-19-trial-shows-idUSKBN23N1VP https://www.businessinsider.com/dex...k-death-coronavirus-ventilator-patient-2020-6

As a side note, while we definitely have our issues in America, it's still a place people want to be. I mentioned earlier about my Chinese coworkers. One of my teammates(we are software engineers) emigrated from China when he was 18. He busted his ass and learned English in his late teens because he wanted to fit in and didn't want to be an immigrant who native Americans couldn't understand. His English is better than mine. He's still self conscience when he misses a slang reference or local idiom. Through all this COVID, protests, racism, angry politics, etc he just loves America. For the protests, he was actually giddy about it and said something to the effect of "The Chinese government is a far far worse oppressor than anything Americans have ever experienced. These people protesting would be suppressed in China very violently. I'm so happy to be in a place now where I can actually protest something important to me. America is still the golden land for many of us from certain countries and I don't think Americans actually realize they are doing much better than most of the world. Even the poor Americans get support here. You don't want to be poor in China. Poor people in China and their children are de facto slaves." I'm paraphrasing that because I obviously can't remember verbatim. I actually laughed about his comment that "even poor Americans get support" considering our wealth divide and homeless issues but when he discussed being poor in China in depth I got a whole new perspective on what being poor really is. Many of my Indian coworkers on visas have the same feelings. So while America can definitely do better as whole and clearly we have work to do in order to improve our country, we are still a shining light for a whole lot of people that have it much worse than us. Perspective matters a lot. After writing that I feel like I need to put this gif here now...

I play ice hockey and a whole lot of my friends are Canadians either with dual citizenship or on work visas. We've had many conversations about this and they are just as dysfunctional as we are. We just don't hear about it because we have our own issues all over the news. They have a long history of racism and oppression of the First Nations people, Quebec demands secession every so often and hates every non French Canadian and would love to put tariffs on goods running down the St Lawrence through Montreal. Alberta(politics similar to Texas) hates BC(politics similar to Cali) and vice versa. There is a huge issue with those two and oil pipelines. BC and Alberta were actually in a trade war with each other over expansion of oil pipelines. BC is limiting oil so Alberta stopped importing BC wine. The Canadian government is stepping in and is taking over the pipeline now. State owned energy always works, right? *cough*Venezuela*cough*. But Alberta also has a secessionist movement because they are a rich province(due to oil) which subsidize other provinces social issues like Quebec and the maritime provinces. Now with the national government taking over the pipeline stuff that will intensify. I have two teammates from Winnepeg and Edmonton, two from Toronto, and one from Montreal. They all argue with each other about the same stupid shit we do. One thing they all agree on, they all hate Trudeau. The US will always be dysfunctional simply because we are a very heterogenous country demographically. We have so many diverse races, religions, cultures, etc and there will always be some friction there. The countries people like to point out as succeeding in health care/politics/culture/whatever are almost always very homogenous when it comes to race/religion/culture and they also have very small populations. A heterogenous country of 330 million will always have more issues than a homogenous country of 15 million.

You are correct, deaths are a lagging indicator. But see the moving average death chart in my post above. The rate just isn't climbing right now and that's after 7 weeks of opening up, 6 weeks after Cinco, 3.5 weeks after Memorial Day, and 2.5 weeks after massive protests across the country(and in Travis County). I'm sure it will start increasing again but I don't believe it will be a huge spike. Where are you getting your data? I like those charts and would like to dig in more. Always good to have more data sources.

*edit* Not trying to be an asshole here or anything so if I come across that way, it's not my intent and I apologize. Tone doesn't come across well on message boards and I've already edited a few things that I wrote poorly. I'm only trying to work through this thing like everyone else with as much data as possible. *edit* You can't take one data point like Travis County and say everything is a disaster and we screwed up. That's not how stats works. I could just as easily give you the example of Presidio County with its 2 confirmed cases and 0 deaths and say we have absolutely zero issues with COVID at all. But that's just as bad as you only using Travis County. There will be data points with higher rates and there will be data points with lower rates and each of those data points will have their own slope trend. Anyone can cherry pick a single data point like you have with Travis County and make some claim that fits their agenda but again, that's not how statistics work. Taking all data points, including the downward trends in NY, NJ, and PA shows the curve has been flattened. Hospitals are not even close to capacity right now and we've accomplished the flattening of the statistical curve of the nation as a whole. Are there a few hot spots popping up with positive slopes? Yes. Are there spots where infection was high but now have a negative slope? Yes. Are there spots where the infection is essentially zero? Yes. I don't see another shutdown happening unless hospitals start to get overwhelmed which never happened in the first place outside of NYC. As for shutting down and reopening, I would much rather work and get paid for 30 days and then be off for 30 back and forth so at least I get paid half the time. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck and I guarantee they would rather work half time rather than not at all. Although with the extended unemployment benefits and stimulus that changes things bit. Of course that's a whole other can of worms that I won't even get into. Now could we have completely eradicated the virus if we had an oppressive government like China willing to completely forget about basic human rights and run a police state? Possibly. But I'd rather die of COVID right now that live under a government like that. I have first hand takes from many Chinese immigrants with whom I work and they have horror stories from their families back in China of what the CCP has done to "lock down" and eliminate the virus. Yet even with a police state and an oppressive regime, they still haven't succeeded. We are too free of a country to be able to lock things down like that whether you like it or not. It's just not who we are as Americans and what China can do will not work here. We would see mass revolt. You think the Floyd protests were bad? What do you think would happen if we suddenly had a CCP like police force locking things down for EVERYONE? So I guess we'll just buckle up and wait two weeks when the shit hits the fan, right? But you know what? I've been told to buckle up and just wait two weeks for 3 months now. I waited two weeks after the chicken littles screamed about kids on spring break causing the deaths of millions, then it was two weeks after everyone got together over Easter weekend when we would see massive deaths, then it was two weeks after Cinco de Mayo, then it was two weeks after Memorial Day weekend, then two weeks after the protests started. The wait two weeks people have said that so many times over the past few months that "wait two weeks" is a running joke on the internet now. I still see a flat curve that is actually slightly decreasing in deaths per day in Texas. It's been 3.5 weeks since Memorial Day weekend and 2.5 weeks since the protests started. We opened up 7 weeks ago. There has been no massive spike on average for Texas. It is very possible the curve will tick back up a bit but I would be utterly shocked if we see massive increase in the death rate.

Wasn't that the entire point of the lockdown? Flatten the curve to avoid overburdening hospitals? Isn't a plateau exactly what we want? We always knew that we couldn't stop it outright, just slow it down while a vaccine is worked on. A plateau means we succeeded in that purpose.

Some info a friend compiled... US cases are staying in a 20K to 25K per day range. It is interesting that greater testing frequency has not led to an increase in cases nationally. We know the initial hotspots were in the northeast. New York (white), Pennsylvania (blue) and New Jersey (orange) have flattened the curve on cases. Recent press has been focused on cases increasing in Florida (white), Texas (Blue), and Arizona (orange). I wish we had reliable, standardized data on hospitalizations, but we don't. It is an important leading indicator, and more useful to monitor to isolate away the effect of testing frequency. I have mentioned previously that Texas' "spike" in hospitalizations is minuscule compared to outbreaks in other hotspots. Below shows per capita of Texas hospitalizations vs. New York. Texas is nowhere near a crisis level on COVID hospitalizations. It would have to increase by multiples to get to concerning levels. But what about deaths, which is ultimately the most important metric? The trend in deaths is quite encouraging. Below are deaths in US. Back in April, deaths exceeded 2000 per day, but are now below 1,000 and falling. New York (orange), New Jersey (white) and Pennsylvania (blue) thankfully flattened the death curve. The trend in deaths has been remarkably stable in Florida (purple), Texas (yellow) and Arizona (blue). And these numbers per day are quite small (in the dozens, literally, per state). These three "hot spots" currently account for about 100 deaths per day, combined. I think this suggests there has been improvement in the trend on COVID-19's mortality in the US that we all should be excited to see. Treatment has been enhanced as we've learned more about the virus, improving patient outcomes. Hospitals are not overwhelmed which allows better care. I also think we are more intelligent about risk mitigation and how to best protect/isolate the most at risk people, which may help skew the hospitalizations away from the very old/vulnerable. Yes, death is a lagging indicator on COVID. It will be important to watch the data on deaths in Texas, Florida and Arizona for the next few weeks to see if they hold stable or decline, given the rising cases.

Duck. You're about to get murdered for that thought process.

I actually watched that last night and it's what inspired me to just go for it this morning.

Thanks for the video! I've always wanted to do drops and have sort of pretended by just rolling down some steep 4ish feet drops that aren't really drops. I watched the videos above last night and decided to just go for it. Went out to Christ Church this morning and after riding the trails pulled out the GoPro and got some video of my first attempts at real drops. Don't think I did too bad for my first session. Some felt pretty smooth, others not so much. Any tips are appreciated!