Heap o' Links Sat Jun 19, 2021

A 6-year-old Goldendoodle named Harley jumped into a lake outside his Virginia home to save a baby deer from drowning.

Great pictures, great story.

I was pretty depressed because my daughter was at her mom's house and I wasn't going to get to see her.

A nice older woman walked up to me and asked if I was a father, even though I had long, straggly hair and a scruffy beard and was wearing a t-shirt and shorts and some sandals and kinda looked a lot out of place.

I said I was, but that I wouldn't get to see my daughter because of the custody arrangement. She said "Your daughter loves you and wishes she was with you right now" and then she walked out into the lobby and got a brown paper sack that had a Moonpie and an RC Cola in it and told me happy Father's Day. Completely changed my mood and I have been going to that church ever since.

Little pebbles make big ripples, given time and space.

Find COVID-19 case data for any state and county.

Re: reports of myocarditis following mRNA vaccine, a causal link has not been established. This article in the WaEx lays out the two sides of the discussion pretty well.

There have been 275 reported cases of symptomatic myocarditis out of approx. 12 million individuals in the 16 to 24 year age group (0.000023 04 -.0023%). Historically myocarditis is an infrequent to rare disease, but by no means unheard of. The true incidence of myocarditis in the general population is not really known, because a large number of cases have either mild or no symptoms, and never seek medical evaluation.

Historically, the leading cause os myocarditis is the family of enteroviruses, in particular coxsackie virus, These viruses are more frequent during warm weather months (i.e. now).

So is this reported surge due to myocarditis actually caused by the vaccine? Or is it the result of amplification due to hyper-vigilance (surveillance bias) and not really a surge at all? IOW, are we finding more cases because we are looking for them and merely uncovering the underlying baseline occurrence in the general population?

Texas residents say the temperature on their ‘smart’ web-connected thermostats was changed without their permission after the state’s electricity operators had warned of another round of power shortages amid a heat wave.

The thermostats were raised to 78 degrees without their knowledge – sometimes even as families slept in the middle of the night.