The truth you knew
NPR had a cute little infographic that showed vaccination rates by state. Click on the link and let me know if you see any discernable patterns. I could dance around the data and try to tell you all kinds of interesting facts, but I think we all know what’s going on here.
Except this story continues to evolve. Doctors and other medical professionals are exhausted. As a teacher, I see increased numbers but I don’t deal with the immediacy of it. They do. They see not only the increased numbers of unvaccinated people coming into the hospitals, but they also see the people with real medical emergencies being turned away.
However, some hospitals are fighting back. At least that’s the plan. It will be interesting to see if that kind of policy will work. For those that don’t want to click on the link, essentially some hospitals want to deny ICU beds to people that are unvaccinated. They will get care, but they will get care somewhere else in the hospital. Maybe it will be in the hall. Maybe it will be in the basement. For too many it will likely be in the morgue.
The former president held one of his rallies in Alabama and was roundly booed when he suggested his audience get the vaccine. You have to wonder if he felt like Dr. Frankenstein after letting the monster out to play. It’s become a perfect storm of idiocy and bombastic jackasses rolled up in one package.
Meanwhile, the misinformation piles up. I’ve heard some real doozies in the past few days. I’ve heard the vaccine is experimental. This is in spite of the fact that FDA gave complete approval to the Pfizer version on Monday. I heard that the vaccine killed one lady’s two friends within three days. You could utter the words “post hoc ergo propter hoc” but I’m afraid that most people just assume you are having a sneezing fit.
I’ve heard that it has the same rates as the flu. This usually follows the announcements that this person never gets the flu shot and they have never been sick. So, they trust God to keep them safe. We’ve heard all of these and more. The next thing you hear is about that person taking up a hospital bed.
I’d like to yell and scream, but I’m just too tired. I’d like to fill this space with caps locked profanity, but it wouldn’t do any good. The best thing that can happen is for all of the vaccines to get final approval and for the government to mandate vaccinations. Sure, some would refuse in a kind of Thelma and Louise blaze of glory, but we would get up to the levels necessary for herd immunity.
Some would blather on about this and that, but it’s time to just pat them on the head and give them the shot. The alternative is for all of us to end up like the town of Iraan. That’s the problem here. Even the vaccinated and masked clearly aren’t safe. That’s why lifting our hands and letting Darwin take care of it won’t work. They need to be brought kicking and screaming if we have to. The time for tolerating fools is long gone.
Another alternative is to require all unvaccinated folks to shelter at home until the pandemic is over. Jobs will require jabs. Those of us who’ve had ours are allowed to go about our daily business (masked, of course).
1Save your energy. Let the gene pool improve dramatically. As we used to say. When someone moves from Texas to Florida it improves the level of IQ in both states.
2To slightly misquote Darwin, survival of the smartest.
3My husband was just diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. I cannot be with him because someone at the hospital has tested positive. He is confused and alone.I will NEVER forgive these unvaccinated people.
4The former president held one of his rallies in Alabama and was roundly booed when he suggested his audience get the vaccine.
He was probably put out a bit but not distressed. He was obviously testing the statement. Had he gotten an applause with the line he would have proceeded on a rabid pro-vax campaign that would set the media storyline that he was the one that saved America from the pandemic. And that nobody listened to Biden to get the vaccine until he stepped in and fixed things for the senile bumbling successor.
It didn’t work for that so he will go back to another line. You won’t hear it out of him again. There is one thing and one thing only that Trump pays close attention to and that is his CURRENT ratings in the media cycle. He will say and do anything to get those ratings up. It doesn’t have to be logical, make sense, or have anything to do with facts. With him, it is the ratings.
5“… but I’m just too tired.”
We appreciate your pain and frustration, Nick. Things should have become simpler once the vaccines were available. Yet we see what is happening which is neither simple or fair. There’s a third “covid variant” – extreme exhaustion induced by the anti-vaxxer maskholes gumming up the works for those of us who are vaccinated, wear masks and social distance. Dealing with the covidiots is similar to a nightmare sequel to “The Myth of Sisyphus.”
6It is amazing that folks would rather get all worked up, scream at rallys and endanger others instead of getting a FREE vaccine and wearing a cheap mask. This disease and vaccine have been totally politicized by the Old Pretender and his enablers.
7It may be time to let Darwinian principles be applied in select resource constrained pools. An example, no need to vaccinate. But if you get ill, you and your dependents foot the entire medical bill without subsidy from government (e.g., any benefits -including Medicare- that are paid to you are suspended pending completion of clearance on ALL medical costs associated with your disease treatment and it’s complications and cost of internment).
It’s a Republican kind of response. Your freedom has a quantifiable cost so you should be happy to pay the bill.
And, if you can be pin pointed as the source of others becoming infected through negligence or malice, you get to pay their direct costs.
Let Freedum reign. Masking and other advice to mitigate the spread can then be cast as $ saving opportunities for the individual. The choice is yours.
8“… a perfect storm of idiocy and bombastic jackasses…”
Trump is probably fine with that Nick. If he read your comment he’d probably gloat:
“Did you hear what people are saying? That I created a perfect combination. Perfect!”
9This is one of the best cartoons ever [if only they would ALL end up in the dumpster]. Don’t see the creator’s signature but they’re a cynical genius.
Please post this cartoon image up on WMDBS:
https://images.dailykos.com/images/979952/large/MorgueMAGAhats.jpg
10amyj @4, anger? Words fail us to respond with the compassion both you and your husband deserve. BTW fwiw, anger can be healthy, may yours give you the strength you need.
11I hardly know how to respond to that amyi. I’m so sorry you’re in this situation. You and your husband will be in my prayers.
12Delta announced that insurance premiums for the unvaccinated increase by $200 monthly and employees also have to test weekly.
Punitive financial penalties will save lives.
13I work for GM. Production was laid off in late March of last year. Maintenance was allowed to work, but you could take the layoff as well. We returned to work in late May, masked up.
About two months ago the union and GM management allowed us to quit masking unless you hadn’t had the vaccine. That didn’t last. There was an outbreak on the other side of the plant and during contact tracing they found at least three COVIDIOTS. I masked up the day I heard the story getting derisive looks from some coworkers. GM followed suit three days later. I’m tired of the fools trying their damnedest to clean the shallow end of the gene pool.
14The proposal about triage based on vaccination status has gotten walked back: https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2021/08/dallas-hospitals-did-not-agree-to-triage-based-on-vaccination-status/
I’ll look forward to the discussion of Delta Airline’s policy of having unvaccinated employees pay more and have fewer benefits. I’ve read several places that the approach is off the table. For example, last week in MarketWatch, they wrote:
“Health insurers are a different story. A slew of state and federal regulations in the last three decades have heavily restricted their ability to use health factors in issuing or pricing polices. In 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act began prohibiting the use of health status in any group health insurance policy. And the Affordable Care Act, passed in 2014, prevents insurers from pricing plans according to health – with one exception: smoking status.”
Anyone know how Delta is getting around the ACA limit?
15There is no bottom to the depths that these fanatics will sink.
Y’all had goddamned well better fully awaken to the true nature of the enemies we all face.
You see the Afghan Taliban and their behaviors.
Face it, we have an American Taliban [and Talibangelicals], their malevolence and ignorance is worse, because they are far more powerful. They must be defeated in the next few election cycles, or the Afghani bloodbath will happen here.
Some of it has already begun, see below.
This latest asinine move by Abbutt violates hundreds of years of emergency public health measures, and also the Texas Emergency Powers Act.
Gov. Greg Abbott bans mandates on COVID-19 vaccines regardless of whether they have full FDA approval:
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/25/texas-covid-19-vaccine-mandates-ban-greg-abbott/
“…Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday announced an executive order banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates regardless of a vaccine’s approval status with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
He also said he was adding the issue to the agenda for the current special session of the Texas Legislature.
The order comes two days after the FDA granted full approval to the Pfizer vaccine. That raised questions about the fate of a previous Abbott order that prohibited vaccine mandates, but only for those under emergency authorization.
Abbott’s latest order is simple, saying “no governmental entity can compel any individual to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.”… “
16This is not exact, but I believe that over 100,000 more US citizens have died from covid than the deaths of us troops in WW2, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2 years. The sacrifices made during those terrible wars are so much more than what is needed to fight and beat covid and the delta variant. It boggles the mind that these “patriots” are fighting against simple steps to win the covid war. We’d have lost WW2 with that attitude. I honestly have no compassion for the anti vaxxers and anti maskers that get sick and die except for the innocent people they take down with them. ZERO
17Steve from Beaverton @16, Way more than 100K over.
Iirc, combat deaths,
WWII had ~410K, Korea ~25K, Vietnam ~54K, I&A ~4400 each.
COVID 19 official count is ~700,000, actual count 1.2-1.8 million.
Just had to look it up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war#Wars_ranked_by_U.S._combat_deaths
WWII ~300K
Korea ~34K
Vietnam ~48K
Iraqi ~4400
Afghanistan ~1800
Total = ~390K combat deaths
Less than HALF the two year COVID-19 US official death count.
Total all USA military action deaths [combat+other], from the Revolutionary War onward = 1,354,664+.
Less than the –actual– COVID19 death toll, but the ‘official number’ while less is getting close:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war#Overview
But these are all just ‘a hoax’…
18Unfortunately, it is impossible to know how bad it would have been had the pandemic been handled correctly from the jump. If life were a choose your own adventure book we could go back to the beginning, make different choices, and see what would have resulted. People often make estimates the other direction. Like when ebola and H1N1 hit during the Obama years, they could say that if we did nothing we would have lost X number of people. I just don’t know how we do that in reverse.
19Nick – I don’t know, but my spousal unit and I stayed home, haven’t eaten out, always mask up, didn’t visit with our kids, and were vaccinated as soon as a slot opened up for our age group. We’ve been healthy. (I’m lucky to have been able to work via Zoom, as exhausting as that is.)
Meanwhile, the dad in Dripping Springs, Texas, who stripped down to his skivvies at a school board meeting to make the point “We follow certain rules for a very good reason,” is my Internet Hero of the Day.
20Good morning Texas!
It’s only a cartoon, but the second lead character in it is not only a Qcumber, but he represents your QOP elected officials, too, especially A-Butt your gub.
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d1WieYMsICM/YSZ3eq2vxfI/AAAAAAACPP8/Vq-nFiSybAcnVuUFjqoZb5JMpFya5k08QCLcBGAsYHQ/s720/2%2Bed%2Bhall.jpg
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