COVID-19 - On the Ground

[japhy]

If only Joe hadn't spent so much time telling the rubes this was all a hoax and to do the opposite of everything the medical community recommends and to take ivermectin and to shine UV light up their asses while drinking shots of bleach. Four years spent turning 40% of the US population into a deathcult of vengeful grievance digesting zombies. What strategy works when dealing with zombies? Maybe this is why The Walking Dead was so popular. People want to believe there is a workable strategy for dealing with a zombie apocalypse.

[MICHHAWK]

this is what you get with a lame duck administration.

[Deleted User 89]

only 59% of the US is fully vaccinated as of November 23

per Newsweek, 83% of americans support masking, while only half actually wear them

then we’ve got scenes like this:

astroworld


bama vs. auburn


black friday

[Deleted User 89]

this is what you get with a lame duck administration.

i guess lame knows lame, huh?

[japhy]

only 59% of the US is fully vaccinated as of November 23

per Newsweek, 83% of americans support masking, while only half actually wear them

then we’ve got scenes like this:

astroworld


bama vs. auburn


black friday

The folks giving a whole new meaning to "live free or die". Carpe diem baby!

Has any of this been figured into Republican redistricting strategies? The quest for the Darwin Award has a definite ideological bent to it the last few years.

[jfish26]

this is what you get with a lame duck administration.

What in the fuck are you talking about. Your guy knew how dangerous this was nearly two years ago, and sat on it for political reasons. You are so keen to say that these things belong to the guy in the chair. Well, it was Trump. And he will end up having a million American lives on his hands.

[sdoyel]

It’s the vaxed fault, you know!

[sdoyel]

Literally sitting here at the pharmacy reading this shit, waiting for my Pfizer booster.

I have to do this because of you MAGA dipshits.

[twocoach]

the holidays are upon us. the delta was loosing its' luster. presto chango. omnichrome.

What are you even talking about? Presto Chango by whom? Some random scientists in South Africa? Is your conspiracy theory that scientists are deliberately changing the results of their tests to say that the Delta variant is really something different?

It has been widely discussed that this, like all other viruses, can and will mutate if given the opportunity and the failure of far too many people to behave in a manner that keeps covid in check has allowed this. Do you give even a moment's thought to your nonsense?

[PhDhawk]

this is what you get with a highly infectious RNA virus and large global population that aren't vaccinated.

[twocoach]

It’s all Trumps fault.

Not “all”, but “mostly”

About 300,000 people may still be alive if it wasn’t for the DFIC, and we may have kept the mutations to a minimum

Biden strategy not working.

Nov. 22, 2021 -- The number of COVID-19 deaths recorded so far in 2021 has surpassed the total for 2020, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.

Overall, more than 771,000 COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the U.S. during the pandemic. About 385,000 were reported in 2020, according to CDC data, and more than 386,000 have been reported this year.


The 2021 total will continue to increase in coming weeks as COVID-19 cases rise again in 30 states, according to The Hill. The national average for new daily cases has surpassed 90,000 again.

The Biden strategy is to give most people a choice as to whether or not they get vaccinated or wear masks, which is what the Freedum people wanted. The resulting deaths and increases are in part due to those (bad) choices.

If you would like to see those numbers go down either the people making bad choices will need to reverse course and make good choices (highly unlikely given the evidence to this point) or the Biden administration will need to resort to more Draconian measures and remove the choice from those people.

You wanted choice, you got it.

[MICHHAWK]

i'm fully vaxxed. i could care less what the rest do or don't do.

[Deleted User 89]

mich is like an ignorant john madden

[Deleted User 89]

Not “all”, but “mostly”

About 300,000 people may still be alive if it wasn’t for the DFIC, and we may have kept the mutations to a minimum

Biden strategy not working.

Nov. 22, 2021 -- The number of COVID-19 deaths recorded so far in 2021 has surpassed the total for 2020, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.

Overall, more than 771,000 COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the U.S. during the pandemic. About 385,000 were reported in 2020, according to CDC data, and more than 386,000 have been reported this year.


The 2021 total will continue to increase in coming weeks as COVID-19 cases rise again in 30 states, according to The Hill. The national average for new daily cases has surpassed 90,000 again.

The Biden strategy is to give most people a choice as to whether or not they get vaccinated or wear masks, which is what the Freedum people wanted. The resulting deaths and increases are in part due to those (bad) choices.

If you would like to see those numbers go down either the people making bad choices will need to reverse course and make good choices (highly unlikely given the evidence to this point) or the Biden administration will need to resort to more Draconian measures and remove the choice from those people.

You wanted choice, you got it.

except Biden was pushing mandates, and rightfully so given the proportion of selfish “patriots” we’re dealing with

[PhDhawk]

The reason we get these variants is mutation. And as much as Mich and Psych would like it to be Biden, or Fauci, or Chinese scientists mutating the strain, it is just what viruses do.

People who are not vaccinated are like growth chambers for mutations, especially the immunocompromised, they have the virus for a very long time, lots and lots of replications, each replication increasing the likelihood of a mutation. Because they don't mount a strong immune response, they don't inhibit repication and they carry the virus for a long period of time, constantly selecting for mutations that benefit the virus.

It's very likely that this mutation occurred in an unvaccinnated (75% of SA's are not vaccinated), likely immunocompromised (SA has a large HIV positive population) individual, which explains the very large number of mutations.

If this goes on unchecked like this, eventually one of these variants is going to escape immune-protection (both "natural" and vaccines). So, you should care if others get vaccinated because it matters to those who've been vaccinated.

The silver lining in all this, is that Moderna and Pfizer could role out a newer version of their mRNA vaccines in 3-6 months with a new sequence, but I'd rather not have to go through that.

[Deleted User 89]

related: i don’t think it’s coincidence that this variant, with twice the mutations of delta, popped up in Africa where the rate of vaccination is in the single digits

[ousdahl]

[Deleted User 89]

from WashPo…lol:

Republicans hamper Biden’s attempts to fight the pandemic — and then hammer him for its persistence

…At one time, there was substantial vaccine resistance among minorities. But now, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, vaccination rates among Whites, Blacks and Hispanics are almost identical. There are still sizable gaps based on education and age: Older, college-educated people are more likely to get their shots than the younger and less educated.

But the biggest gap of all is political: 90 percent of Democrats are vaccinated vs. only 61 percent of Republicans. Fourteen of the 15 states with the lowest percentages of fully vaccinated residents have Republican governors. Even masking is controversial in red states. In Miami last week, an immunocompromised Lyft driver was startled and grateful to see me wearing a mask — unlike so many of his passengers.

The result is that Republican areas have been hit harder by the pandemic in the past year than the blue states in the Northeast where it first struck. A study of county-level data finds that “new cases are now running 2.78x higher per capita in the reddest tenth of the country than the bluest tenth.”

Why would so many Republicans decide they need not get vaccinated? Because that is the message they are getting from their tribal elders. Fox News Channel, in particular, has become “covidiocy” central. It pumps out nonstop disinformation against vaccines even while enforcing a strict vaccine mandate of its own. (Employees must submit proof of vaccination or a daily negative coronavirus test to enter Fox’s offices.

Fox News and its Republican allies politicize every twist and turn of the covid saga. On Saturday, for example, the hosts of “Fox & Friends” reacted to news of omicron as if it were a Democratic hoax to justify “more lockdowns.” Pete Hegseth said, “You can count on a variant about every October, every two years,” suggesting that Democrats were inventing omicron for electoral advantage.
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.) — the former White House physician, if you can believe it — joined in the conspiracy mongering a few hours later. He tweeted: “Here comes the MEV — the Midterm Election Variant! They NEED a reason to push unsolicited nationwide mail-in ballots.” Kari Lake, a GOP candidate for governor of Arizona, chimed in: “They are going to try and sell us new ‘Variants’ for the rest of our lives if we don’t tell them to shove it.”

The rush to dismiss omicron as a hoax is demented and depressing on multiple levels. It suggests that Republicans have learned nothing from their unwillingness to take covid-19 seriously in 2020 because they thought it would hurt President Donald Trump’s reelection chances. But while Democrats benefited politically from Trump’s calamitous mishandling of the pandemic, its persistence, with its attendant supply chain woes and surging inflation, is now hurting President Biden. Thus, it is malevolent idiocy to suggest that Democrats are hyping the omicron variant for nefarious ends…

[Wiff]

And consider the losers in the economy. Somehow the winners of the lockdown lottery had more control over governments and the medical community than the losers? It was just a year and a half ago that oil prices went negative as demand went to nothing. I thought the oil companies were all in on the big fixes, but I guess not.

Conspiracy theories are for the losers. It is an excuse for their lack of ability to deal with change. They think themselves too smart and too hard working and too something for the continuation of their glide path through life to take a turn for the worse. Once it goes bad, it has to be because some greedy cabal is out there, stealing their dream. It's the only explanation they can accept. Adapting to a changing world is not in their DNA.

Consider the root word for "conservative". Conserve - To preserve with sugar. Remember the good old days, when folks was folks and everyone on TV looked like me and Andy Taylor never drew his gun and the good guys won and women stayed home and cooked dinner for everyone and everyone went to the same church on Sunday and then went home to watch Bonanza? So does Josh Hawley.

If you are sitting around pining for a society that never really existed except on TV or in small isolated towns then you are lost. Get over it bitch.

The reason big conspiracy theories don't hold water is because everyone who is in on "it", has to keep it to themselves.

That's not how humans work, we can't keep shit to ourselves.

This post is brilliant, but the bolded portion of it earns my vote for POTD.

[dolomite]

Is Biden having difficulty with establishing the unity he promised?