The Price of Incompetence
The National Center for Health Studies just issued it’s life expectancy report for 2020. Not surprisingly, life expectancy in the US fell in 2020 fueled by COVID-19 deaths. The shocking thing is how much in fell, by 1.5 years from 2019, from 78.8 to 77.3 years. 75% of those deaths were directly attributable to COVID-19. This is the largest single year drop in US life expectancy since WWII. Trump’s incompetence, repeated all over the country by Trump Mini Me governors, caused millions of unnecessary infections and hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths. The US has 4% of global population, but over 20% of COVID infections and deaths.
There’s simply no excuse for it, but the predictable result of the election of incompetents to high office. Electing Donald Trump to the presidency was the single largest mistake made by voters in our entire history, and we have paid for it in treasure and deaths; even worse, we will continue to pay for this bumbling for generations to come.
And 75mil people voted for him. Its like 40% of this country Is retarded.
1The 1918 influenza pandemic lowered the life expectancy rate in the US by a full ten years. We;re not there yet, but thanks to a callous disinformation campaign on right wing media, Covid isn’t done with us yet. If the immortal young keep procrastinating and right wingers keep proving their individuality and independence from the mean ole gummint, we might yet catch up to that dismal statistic.
We’re just lucky that so far, it’s not quite as efficient a killer as the 1918 influenza was, no thanks to the colossal bungling of that last administration.
2El Jefe, if you’re in the mood to smack down the felony stupid among us, shall we update the US Constitution for Dummies with the Quack-a-Nons latest rendition? The US Constitution for Qcumbers. Let’s begin with “The Articles”
1. The freedumb of speech and how to promote lies
2. My gun rights beat your ‘life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness’
The irony among the antivaxxers, maskholes and gun humpers is such that their nosebleeds should be fatal.
3My mother’s generation all knew someone who had polio. Consequently, I had every vaccination as it became available. Soon, everyone will know someone who died or is living with the long term effects of COVID, and then I wonder if these crazed anti-vaxxers will still oppose it.
4Grandma Ada, they will still oppose it. Well, they still oppose heliocentrism, so its no big leap for them. Frankly, there has never been a genuine discussion in this ciountry over “duty of care”. I spent a lot of time in Canada when I was growing up. I had family there. Dutyof care is part of the thinking and the language. For the anti-vaxxers, here is something to think about: so you didn’t have your kid vaccinated for one damn thing and you also rejected any form of COVID-19. According to the thinking in this country, that is your right. No one will hold you down and jab you. But your kid can’t enter any school unless there is proof of vaccination. That’s because the school system ha a duty of care to the rest of the kids who are vaccinated. They could pick up any germ he is carrying and transit it to anyone else, especially another anti-vaxxer’s kid they meet int he playground. Yeah. When you think about this, its all of that old “I’ve got mine (my rights) and too hell with whatever you get, its yours.’ this country has a good record for vaccinations of all kinds. The bad reactions turned out to be down t the medium the vaccine was resting in. And an even smaller knot of people had a very unique immune system reaction that lay in their DNA. I’ve had MMR immunization, polio, flu, you name it. And I am highly allergic and have had to deal with asthma etc. etc. over time. And I care about the next guy. I don’t want him to get hurt so I even drive safely. And “rights” will not save you or your kid when something as mean as COVID hits you. ‘Nuff said.
5I’m wondering when health insurance companies and life insurance companies are going to start refusing to cover folks who won’t get vaccinated.
6Get deathly sick really quick on Route 66
nelson riddle orchestra
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcZ1k4d02KA
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This State’s Fair is set to be a cesspool of COVID
and the UnVaxxed Jul. 21, 2021 4:57AM ET
article:
7https://www.thedailybeast.com/ozark-empire-fair-in-springfield-missouri-will-unite-covid-and-the-unvaccinated?ref=home
It is the overemphasis on individuality. That this not only the stain on our country in general, but also the stain directly from the Reagan administration forward. We can preach until we are blue in the face, but when you have a narcissistic culture your words will fall on deaf ears.
It would be irresponsible to say that 75 million Americans are narcissists. There are all kinds of reasons why that many people stupidly voted for that tub of goo. Some just never could bring themselves to vote for a Democrat. Some people probably bought the Q nonsense and thought he was honestly fighting for them. History will remember this time harshly.
8Let’s look at fads in education and structural mistakes in our society. It’s not so hard to do, is it? Some think/feel so.
9We’ve raised three generations of children to think the concept of God is both obvious and specific. I wonder what that does to rational, evidence based thinking? It makes Trumpies and anti-vaxxers. It tarnishes rationality and secular thought. They’re teaching hatred of rationality. Deep emotion.
We’ve told children when they are young that every damn one of them is so special and can do no wrong. Spare the rod, spoil the child. Grade inflation, and now they think reality revolves around them. I’m waiting for the kids who “identify” as a different race, age, nationality…
Warpster @2, Your closing sentence about COVID19 not being as virulent as the 1918 Spanish Flu virus is extremely misleading, inadvertently I’m sure.
FYI:
The earliest COVID-19 variants had “R0, Reproduction number” values [an index of it’s lethality and transmissibility] merely comparable to Influenza virii variants, including the 1918 SpFlu.
The flus have R0 values from 1 to 2.
The COVID-19/SARS virus started off with about the same R0 number.
However, the brand new COVID19 is rapidly mutating!
Each successive virulent variant has significantly raised it’s R0, the Delta has an R0 of 6 or7, the upcoming Lambda’s R0 is 8-9+!
This should scare the livin shit outta everybody!!!
It’s effing complicated, dozens of variants:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variants_of_SARS-CoV-2
.
Mark Sumner at DKos should have y’all crappin yer shorts :
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/7/21/2041074/-The-Delta-variant-doesn-t-give-a-flying-if-you-re-tired-of-hearing-about-COVID-19
“When the original strain of COVID-19 rolled through the area around Wuhan, it had an R0 value just a little worse than that of seasonal flu.
That rate of transmission, paired with a rate of serious outcome two orders of magnitude greater than flu, was enough to sound every alarm that this was a serious disease. A couple of months later, the version of the virus that rolled through Italy and France, then took up residence as the primary variant in the United States, had a reproductive rate that was about 25% higher.
That variant was swept aside in the fall by the Alpha variant, which was a full two times more contagious than the original version and formed the bulk of cases during the massive spike of cases that occurred around the start of the year. Now alpha has been dislodged by the delta variant. Best estimates put its R0 at numbers from 5.7 to 8.0.
Now the lambda variant is making gains in South America and appears to be displacing delta in some areas. That almost certainly means that this variant has a higher R0 value. And not only is lambda almost certainly more contagious, it contains a specific change in the spike protein that could make it much more evasive of both vaccines and the immunity generated following previous SARS-CoV-2 infections. It’s particularly concerning that Chile saw a huge wave of cases in May and June that appear to be connected to the growing dominance of lambda, in spite of one of the world’s highest vaccination rates.
How high can the R0 number go? We don’t know. What’s clear is that COVID-19 is still making large jumps. “
10FYI-
Basic reproduction number:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number
“In epidemiology, the basic reproduction number, or basic reproductive number … [24] of an infection is the expected number of cases directly generated by one case in a population where all individuals are susceptible to infection.[19] The definition assumes that no other individuals are infected or immunized (naturally or through vaccination). “
11Heard some on the CBS evening news today that hadn’t occurred to me before. The reporter was in Louisiana where the rise in cases is stratospheric. One unvaccinated man speaking from his hospital bed while recovering from Covid said he was definitely going to get the shot, no matter what anyone else said. Also admitted he previously got most of his info on the vaccine from FB. The next unvaccinated guy, also speaking from his hospital bed while recovering from Covid, said he absolutely would not be getting vaccinated because the vaccines are too new and aren’t officially approved. The reporter added that, according to the no shot guy’s doctor, he hadn’t objected to the experimental unapproved drug treatment that had saved his life.
Never thought of that before. People who won’t get a vaccine supposedly because it’s not approved but eagerly hover up whatever experimental (and costly) treatment to save their sorry *** lives. Stupid and inconsistent but not surprising.
12Along the lines of yet another baby boomer (of which I’m one at 70.9)-
MSNBC host cuts off CPAC’s Matt Schlapp after he says we don’t need vaccines to stop the ‘Chinese corona’ – Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/matt-schlapp-vaccine-therapeutics/
Also reminds me of what Nick Carraway said about an idiot with a gun. Schlapp is an idiot with a mouth- one you just want to schlapp.
13Jefe, you referred to Trump’s incompetence. To my mind, a better word is malevolence. For all the things he is, Trump isn’t totally stupid. He knew at every step that what he was doing about COVID wasn’t what America needed him to do. He made that clear during his interview with Bob Woodward.
He is competent. Competent at criminality, competent at money-grubbing, competent at saying F-U at the people he allegedly led. I used to think that, instead of prison, I’d prefer to see him living the rest of his life under an overpass panhandling passing motorists for handouts. I no longer think so, as he wouldn’t last long at that. I would now prefer to see him living many years in Supermax with a most objectionable cellmate.
14Thus endeth the lesson…
State Rep. Bill Kidd joked that he didn’t get a vaccine because he’s a Republican — now he has COVID ~ ProPublica July 22, 2021
full article:
15https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/anti-vaccination-republican/