Always grateful for people who say the quiet part out loud. https://t.co/LxM7lxnFa0
— Maryn McKenna (@marynmck) April 22, 2020
Purity of essence! — Dr. Strangelove would be proud. Professional conspiracy-watcher Anna Merlan, for Vice:
… “I eat the right food,” one demonstrator told Global News. “I take vitamins, I drink the right water, vitamin D, vitamin C, it’s been proven already. So we have everything that we need—we don’t need a vaccine.”
The president has been vocally encouraging of these protests, and of unproven cures like hydroxychloroquine, and it’s not hard to understand why. Part of it is doubtless ideological: Dating back to the 1960s, the right has simply not believed in the value of public or collective action. More of it, though, is a political sleight of hand, meant to turn the total failure of the Trump administration to meaningfully address a public health emergency killing thousands of people every day into a solvable problem. The work of manufacturing and distributing masks and tests and setting up a regime of contact tracing is difficult and risks failure. Denying that doing so is even necessary, and that the crisis can be easily solved by Vitamin C and individual initiative, though, makes government action unnecessary. That we can go back to work as soon as we decide we want to without any meaningful consequence is a grotesque lie—but it’s a lie Trump and his hopes for a second term will benefit from.
The belief that it’s in everyone’s best interest to stay home for now relies on a fundamental acceptance of the concept of public health, the simple premise that one person’s choices can impact whether another person gets sick, and that community responses to disease are necessary. The coronavirus truthers, quite simply, dismiss the idea that their choices impact your life. As one social-distancing critic put it in a widely-shared Facebook post: “If you want to stay home, stay home. If you want to wear a mask, wear a mask. If you want to avoid large crowds, avoid large crowds. I am not required to descend into poverty for you. I am not required to abstain from human contact for you. I am not required to shop alone, without my kids, for you.”
That sentiment is not particularly surprising. Many of the people leaping on the COVID-19 skepticism bandwagon are longtime anti-vaccine personalities and advocates for “medical freedom,” two groups so closely aligned that their Venn Diagram looks more like a circle.
“For the usual suspects who show up or assist with the typical ‘medical freedom’ protests we saw last year, they were often headlined by anti-vax celebrities like Del Bigtree, Andrew Wakefield, or Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” Tara C. Smith told VICE. She’s a professor at Kent State University, as well as an epidemiologist, and an expert on zoonotic infectious diseases. “While ‘medical freedom’ may be the rallying cry, the root of their protests are against vaccination.” …
“We don’t need a vaccine,” proclaimed Dr. Judy Mikovits, a controversial former chronic fatigue researcher who now frequently makes anti-vaccine claims, in an April 15 YouTube video with more than 80,000 views. “All you have to do is have a healthy immune system.” (Mikovits has also been involved in the “Fire Fauci” campaign, claiming he sabotaged her research into a purported mouse virus that she says is the true cause of cancer.)
These campaigners frequently reject the idea that there’s anything society can do, collectively, to slow the spread of any disease. In the same video, Mikovits rejected the notion of wearing a mask, since, she claimed, the coronavirus is actually secretly caused by a bad strain of flu shot that was circulating between 2013 and 2015. Masks will help “activate” the virus and reinfect a mask-wearer over and over, she claimed…
In the end, the focus on Vitamin C, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, healthy eating and virtuous living seems to be less of a health decision and more of a political one, inevitably joined as it is by the cries that the economy must reopen and businesses can’t be made to suffer any more than they already have. The ultra-conservative site the Daily Wire, for instance, ran a long piece recently touting the views of a “veteran scholar of epidemiology” named Dr. Knut Wittkowski, who’s argued that social distancing won’t allow society to build herd immunity. “It’s very important to keep the schools open and kids mingling to spread the virus to get herd immunity as fast as possible,” Wittkowski is quoted as saying. “And then the elderly people, who should be separated, and the nursing homes should be closed during that time, can come back and meet their children and grandchildren after about 4 weeks when the virus has been exterminated.” (Rockefeller University, where Wittkowski was previously employed as a biostatistician, released a statement saying that his views “ do not represent the views of The Rockefeller University, its leadership, or its faculty.”)
In the meantime, the clamorous caravan of anti-vaxxers, right-wingers, and all-purpose health opportunists continues on. Anti-lockdown protests are planned in more states, serving as an unholy blend between a rejection of public health and a campaign rally to reelect the president.This government’s interests are being served by those who reject the idea of government—which is doubtless why Trump is encouraging protests, and why his allies outside government have been organizing them. Among the consequences are probably that some people will learn firsthand exactly why it doesn’t matter whether or not you belief in the concept of public health…
I know I should have, but as this mess was ramping up I didn’t predict the “It’s my constitutional right to spread a killer disease” faction emerging. pic.twitter.com/YDPAfjdqhq
— Schooley (@Rschooley) April 23, 2020
Oh, look, convicted felon and GOP star Dinesh D’Souza has found his new grift!
Gonna have an entire industry of covid19 truthers on the right for the next 30 years. https://t.co/EN1GPLbofO
— AdotSad (@AdotSad) April 21, 2020
schrodingers_cat
It never occurs to the morons that they could be the “weak”.
Ten Bears
If she’s so tough, sincere, why is she wearing a mask?
Major Major Major Major
When (dog willing) this turns out to kill less than, say, 150k americans, we will be dealing with “we blew up the economy for THE FLU??” idiots for… roughly the rest of my life, at which point it will be established mythology forever.
Yutsano
@Ten Bears: Sshhh…I’ve been told if we point out their hypocrisy they get even more upset and truly go Galt. And then where would you be? Checkmate libtard!
SiubhanDuinne
Dinesh D’Stupid.
trollhattan
Can I just say that while it’s great to have the house wide open on a breezy 85-degree day, without taking fistfuls of antihistamines the fact that everything within 100 miles is blooming would have me convinced I’m getting the ‘rona (as the kids call it).
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne: You forgot Convicted Felon Dinesh D’Stupid. Never forget that epitaph.
Uncle Cosmo
O/t, but I am having all sorts of problems with Twitter images today – in at least a half-dozen instances, when I click on the links in a BJ thread, I get solid blocks of color on Twitter, and when I click on those, I get a message that “There was an error loading this image.” Anyone else having this problem?
Dorothy A. Winsor
The virus doesn’t care that they eat healthy.
dmsilev
@Major Major Major Major: Has Trump memory-holed his statement that the casualty total will be less than sixty thousand people? Because, based on current trends, we’re going to pass that mark in about a week, maybe less. Assuming that we have the same sort of long slow decrease in fatalities that Italy and Spain are seeing, best guess is 80-90,000. For this wave.
Ksmiami
@Dorothy A. Winsor: exactly – there was a fox woman for whom Coronavirus was a lie- perhaps she’ll die
Another Scott
I got curious about that “Sacrifice the Weak” picture. A quick search gave me the oldest (quick) story as being from RawStory a couple of days ago that had a link to a local Fox TV report. It looks like they changed the video of the report – you can see the poster partially obscured, but not at all prominent nor fully shown.
It’s like even they realize that it’s too inflammatory.
Since she was wearing a mask, I kinda wonder if it was snark…
Dunno.
Cheers,
Scott.
waspuppet
The last time I was unemployed I realized that conservatism isn’t about finding the answers to problems to improve your life; it’s about creating an explanation for not finding those answers and not improving your life.
Ohio Mom
I’m finding watching the science evolve fascinating, but I suppose at least some of these fools take all the uncertainty and changing models as proof that none of it means anything.
I know crackpots have always been with us but I don’t think they used to get this much media attention, in the days before twenty-four hour news. I guess that observation marks me as an old.
Meanwhile, I have a tooth that aches in the same way I remember the one that needed a root canal did.
Achrachno
Anti-vaxers are so tiresome to deal with, and D’Souza is worse. Idiots on parade.
Achrachno
@Dorothy A. Winsor: You don’t think viruses want to be well-nourished too?
Another Scott
@waspuppet: Nice!
I mean, Horrible!!
But a nice summation.
Well done.
Cheers,
Scott.
West of the Rockies
@Uncle Cosmo:
No such problem. I’m running Chrome on an Android, for whatever that means.
Amir Khalid
@Yutsano:
Epithet.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
The Party of Death
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@waspuppet: absolutely this
Elizabelle
Not picking on you, personally, but why say this kind of shit? Do you think Nancy Pelosi lets stuff like that live in her head?
The idiots we will always have with us. Why magnify or — because we’re all so smart here — congratulate ourselves on anticipating and broadcasting their message before we even get there?
I really liked the Lunch with Andrew thread, because he’s a great example of someone who takes falsehoods head on, and without a lot of cynicism and excess verbiage.
The previous thread about deficit whining, and this one about scientific moron whining: why let this live in our heads?
Only experience is likely to change some of these types’ tune. Like the woman — who is masked (LOL) — whingeing about “the weak.” She may be in for a surprise.
Ella in New Mexico
I had a dear friend who I’ve known since the 90’s when we worked together in the family violence field who went off the deep end a few years ago until I, sadly, had to cut her off. She has a Master’s degree in counseling, but over the years has gone through a lot of personal losses and abrupt life changes, and ended up living in a commune type setting in a rural area of Hawaii, teaching yoga, meditation and non-violent conflict resolution in some sort of “Coop Elementary School”.
She already had a few pre-existing “crunchy granola hippy” tendencies to believe in relatively harmless, but scientifically unsupported things like GMO’s give you cancer and ear candling removing toxins from your body. But he started forwarding me links to sites and articles with topics such as “Safe Places to Shelter During the Coming Planet Nibiru Catastrophe” and multitudes of anti-vaccine propaganda. Chem Trails were poisoning us. She believed in all kinds of quack “natural alternative” remedies for medical problems like coffee enemas and Essiac tea to prevent cancer and that all we need is “a healthy diet and spiritual peace” and we’ll get no diseases (although she ate some pretty unhealthy, weird stuff so I don’t know how she though she was going to survive).
Then it was the whole Pizza Gate and associated conspiracy of a world-wide pedophile ring run by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I had to confront and counter her on the facts of this stuff several times, but it was as if the smart, sensible and pretty normal woman I had been friends with from years ago had developed some kind of delusional disorder in which every left wing or “alternative” conspiracy theory was becoming her world, and she simply could not be moved.
I haven’t heard from her in years, but I’m sure she’s in with the “Q Anon” crowd, and no doubt, in with the people described above in this article. As a super lefty, she’d definitely NOT be in with the gun toters, though, (she used to shame me for owing one) which is actually a relief.
Kent
These people wanted a world without vaccines?
Guess what. They are living in a world without just ONE vaccine.
But OK, let’s add small pox, measles, and polio to the death toll.
Martin
I had a long conversation with my mom regarding this and climate change, noting that they were both global collective action problems that culturally we were completely unequipped to deal with. She didn’t understand what a collective action problem was, so I walked her through it and some lightbulbs went off.
To be clear, a collective action problem is one that can only be solved if everyone acts against their self-interests. Now, defining ‘self-interest’ is complicated. A lot of us can genuinely say that we don’t want anyone to contract this, but are you stocking up on toilet paper, causing others to have to spend more time running around to find some, increasing their exposure, thereby increasing the likelihood you will get it, albeit very indirectly. But it’s the very indirect nature of this which makes it so hard to solve. Yes, we need to Australia to use less coal for us in America to see climate benefits. How do we do that?
The reason these problems are difficult to solve is that there is no party to blame and shift responsibility to. You can blame Exxon all you want for the climate crisis, but you’re the one buying the gas. They’re only selling it because you’re buying it. Government can be an important factor in solving these by being clever with policy to shift people’s self-interest, and there will always be those that cut against that – both ways. I’m willing to spend money to lower my carbon footprint even though I won’t benefit economically from it. There will always be people that will spend money to pollute.
Public health is a collective action concept. We all get vaccinated so that the kids with leukemia who can’t will still be protected. But faith in public institutions is key to these things working. WWII brought about a lot of collective action volunteerism because there was immense faith in the government that this was a necessary war and that these personal sacrifices were necessary for the betterment of all. Corporate america has lost that faith from the public so we all question motivations to reopen the economy, because we don’t trust them. And we don’t trust the feds – Republicans because that’s their brand, and Democrats because Trump and his corrupt administration.
If we can do this, and restore faith in institutional action – right now from mostly blue state governors, then it primes the public to accept similar measures for climate change. if we can’t, then we’re going to repeat this same cycle with climate change.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@schrodingers_cat: Nope.
Elizabelle
An update on a wingnut who has no tune to change, since he is now six feet under.
The coronavirus denier on Facebook who was Marion, Ohio’s first known COVID death? John McDaniel, third generation of an industrial tooling company?
His family could not even livestream his funeral because they heard from so many detractors. Cannot say whether they did the driveby wake in the country club parking lot, as planned.
McDaniel’s widow, in the letter announcing his service would not be livestreamed: (reporting from the WaPost and the Marion Star):
Yeah, well, who knows about that? But Sean Hannity changed his tune way too late for the late Mr. McDaniel. Who was lucky enough to be born wealthy, and to live in a state with a responsive governor, and will be remembered by most of us for something other than his business acumen.
SFAW
@waspuppet:
And here I was thinking that they actively try to harm you — if you’re not the “right kind” of person. Of course, the definition of “right kind” changes, not unlike Cleek’s Law. Not saying I disagree with you, just that I need to consider your thesis a little more closely.
satby
Well, my idiot neighbors just undid my weeks of isolation by letting their dog loose, it ran across the road to me (it’s a pup) and they came and got him, let him loose, he ran back…x3. No attempt at social distancing, and these neighbors have everyone and their brother over. On top of it all, the third time the guy headed over to get his dog, he was brandishing a belt to hit the dog with. I put the dog on a long leash tie-out, gave it to the jerk, and told him that the dog was ready to be neutered so contact me after the lock down, but he should keep him tied or on a leash. If I get sick I got it from them.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Of course, it might have been wishful thinking on Yutsano’s part.
matt
Is it fair yet to say that these people put earning a buck above human life?
Elizabelle
@Another Scott:
That’s a good point. Infiltrating their protests, and you look like one of them, but …
Sm*t Cl*de
“Controversial” is a nice way of saying “caught frauding and drummed out of science”. Mikovits rebranded herself as a “heretic” and antivax martyr because she wants to go on grifting and she knows that only the antivaxxers are stupid enough to take her on board.
Ten Bears
Would Nibiru to come around, there will be no place to shelter.
[chuckling like Jabba the Hutt]
West of the Rockies
@Martin:
Nice to see you here again. I haven’t encountered your nym in days
Are you still doing data dumps? Is California still looking at least sound?
Elizabelle
@satby: I wish you could secretly rehome the dog. It could get hit by a car. And the belt … not a lucky puppy.
West of the Rockies
This thread just confirms for me my belief that about 33% of our American brethren are irretrievably ignorant/stupid. I wish the Hannitys of the world could be neutered.
satby
Dude, I don’t know how old your mom is, but the last world wide example was WWII, and if she’s older than me she wouldn’t have needed to be “walked through it”. Jeez.
Achrachno
@satby: We all hope you don’t, and that dogs are not common transmitters of this stuff.
Achrachno
@satby: I think many/most people are unaware of collective action issues.
satby
@Achrachno: I wasn’t worried about the dog. The people, who just got back from multiple stores, don’t go along with social isolation, and repeatedly came up way too close to me were the problem. But I also couldn’t let a puppy get beaten with a belt because the idiot owners don’t understand how to keep him out of a busy street.
satby
@Elizabelle: I’ll be looking for chances to do so, don’t worry.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Martin: THIS. We’ve had conversations with my husband’s mother, who is 96 and in lockdown in her retirement condo (no one can leave their apartment; all food, mail, etc. is delivered). She asked why this is happening, and we remind her that when she was a child, she was at risk of dying from polio, the flu, pneumonia, measles, mumps, etc. and that one of her aunts almost died in the 1940s except for sulfa drugs. She remembers when she was a healthy young girl that there were polio scares and measles scares that required quarantines, so this is just the same. She sees that 60 years of vaccines and antibiotics have changed the game completely so people have forgotten. When she was a girl, there were community quarantines for swimming to prevent polio and other public health initiatives. It’s amazing how 60 years of protection has caused people to dismiss collective public health initiatives and that we need to extend collectivity to defeat other issues.
Elizabelle
@satby: Yea!
satby
@Achrachno: I think you’re incorrect.
Now, whether the people who are aware feel the urgency to do something is a different discussion.
J R in WV
.When ‘rona “truther” says:
When turd says “I am not required to abstain from human contact for you,” they will find that they are, indeed actually required to do as instructed in a health crisis.
Typhoid Mary Mallon actually was taken into custody, because she was an asymptomatic spreader of Typhoid to many who came into contact with her. She worked as a cook but ” …she was twice forcibly quarantined by authorities, and died after a total of nearly three decades in isolation….at the Riverside Hospital”
So these health-care doubters are liable to be prosecuted for hindering quarantine measures, or any other measures deemed necessary to prevent the spread of a sometimes fatal disease.
Typhoid Mary didn’t believe in germs, didn’t believe in washing her hands, didn’t care that she was infecting people everywhere she worked as a cook. In the end, health authorities didn’t care what she believed, they put her away to stop her from spreading a virulent disease.
These stupid people willing to risk their lives to hinder the work of health authorities need to be rounded up and put in jail until the whole epidemic is over. When a vaccine is available, they must be inoculated until they are immune to the virus. If it takes a squad of Marines to hold them down to receive the inoculation, I’m OK with that, as long as the Marines have gloves, gowns, and masks.
Their right to remain stupid exists, until it endangers the public health, at which point their rights are overwhelmed by the needs of the community~!!~
I’m pretty sure that quarantine laws are still on the books, and can be enforced against these evil stupid people as needed. An old, closed nursing home would do, if prison space isn’t available. Sooner rather than later, in this case — these folks are dangerous ~!!~
Ella in New Mexico
@Elizabelle: I read that this morning and had so many conflicting feelings in response.
She did say a lot that indicates she gets her husband’s initial beliefs (and hers) were wrong. But I noticed in the wife’s quote she referred to “the invisible enemy” and to the strong response by “our National and State” government which indicted to me she’s still clinging to their mutually shared MAGA delusions and still supports Trump, but is also having to jive that with the fact Trump and his RW media cheering section contributed to her husband’s death.
May her awakening progress.
Elizabelle
@Cheryl from Maryland: Didn’t someone here mention asking his/her parents why so many of the baby pictures were taken in the back yard?
You are so right about people not appreciating what prior generations — or even their own — have done — or even won by fighting — for them. Selective memory. To some extent, it may be a ridiculous type of arrogance, of believing the self to be stronger and more in charge of fate.
Virus may not care.
tokyokie
@Amir Khalid:
APRIL 23, 2020 AT 5:52 PM
@Yutsano:
Warum nicht beide?
gogiggs
I’d like to measure D’Souza’s height by standing on his toes. Just gimme a couple tries to really plant my feet.
Kattails
@waspuppet: @Martin: Both of your comments spelled out issues, wrapped them up in pretty paper and tied them neatly with a bow. Nicely done. And literally millions of people could not or would not comprehend them anyway.
I have a neighbor I used to get along with. My own property is landlocked & there’s a ROW between hers and another right-winger, both of these by the way are relative incomers. Her husband keeps dumping cars and pickups on the back property. She can’t see them, she of the perfect house; but I get to drive by them every day. I remember her saying “I don’t see why we can’t do what we want on our own property”. BECAUSE IT’S NOT FUCKING INVISIBLE you idiot. (the whole neighborhood got together to fix up the house when she first moved in, it was decrepit.) But I dare not say anything because of the right of way. This is the attitude. Last election the other Trumpie tied their campaign sign to the shared street sign, which is of course illegal, so I called it in. But had I done that…. grrrrrr.
In completely different news, I had some leftover tea in a mason jar in the fridge. I also had some leftover coffee in another jar. Drank some. Next day had more leftover coffee or was it tea? Put it in the jar. Whichever, it was the wrong jar, and let me say that those flavor profiles really do not blend happily at all. (why all the leftovers? Maybe because starting the adult beverages a bit earlier in the day?)
Elizabelle
@Ella in New Mexico: What’s this “invisible enemy” business?
Like Nancy Pelosi’s ice cream habit, have missed that one.
Ella in New Mexico
@Sm*t Cl*de:
Yeah, she was heavily featured as a “virus expert” in an anti-China video entitled “[Exclusive Report] The First Documentary Movie on Tracking Down the Origin of CCP Virus(Coronavirus)” done by “Epoch Times” and being circulated by Righties on the web. In it she’s purporting some crap support for the “theory” that the SARS-2 is “absolutely a laboratory made virus, there’s no way it could have the structure it has if it came from nature”.
My poor brother forwarded it to me to see if I though it had any merit after a distant cousin of ours in Florida forwarded it to him. Poor because I ripped him a new one debunking it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMJ0EmMfb3U&feature=youtu.be
Eljai
The protestors remind me of the tea party dweebs who were against the Affordable Care Act. That’s probably because they’re the same people. Their argument back then was “why should I have to pay for other sick people?”, oblivious to the idea that they could ever get sick or injured and not have a million dollars lying around to pay the hospital. Sociopaths.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
Yes. Trump can memory hole a statement while he’s making it.
Ella in New Mexico
@Elizabelle: Trump’s phrase for the Corona Virus lately on Twitter
Roger Moore
@waspuppet:
Exactly this. Conservatism is by its nature about keeping things the way they are or have been, not about trying to improve things. This is why conservatism is so sterile intellectually: it’s about rationalizing a preordained outcome rather than following a set of premises to their logical conclusion. The justification is always shifting but the final conclusion is always the same.
bemused
Dr Scammer is 56, not far from being considered a senior citizen. Funny how these people never seem to think they could be culled from the herd. All it takes is aging, a serious illness or accident and voila, they’re one of the expendables.
Martin
@satby: I mean, she knows what shared sacrifice means. But most people don’t know when a problem requires that to be solved and when it doesn’t. I’d argue most of the most adamant climate change advocates don’t quite get that either.
Most problems are the fault of some party – a govt. policy, a corporation or industry, etc. But these aren’t. Everyone owns these.
In the case of WWII – you could blame Germany and Japan. You could argue this was all their fault and if the US pulls together in opposition to them, this will end.
It doesn’t help to blame China for climate change – it only serves to give Americans an excuse to not do anything. There’s no adversary here, and if you tend toward zero-sum thinking, than something needs to be taken from party B in order for party A to come out ahead. WWII took from Japan and Germany. There were reparations, there was land, there was geopolitical influence – the US emerged from the war with more than we entered with.
There is no such calculation here. I mean, there can be but it’s more abstract. China will gain ground on the US economically and politically. They are also gaining ground on both WRT climate change. But there are no tangible ‘wins’ to be taken for the zero-sum thinkers to understand why they need to sacrifice.
And these problems benefit from telling the public they are different from other kinds of problems. We approached the economic fallout of Covid as a winner/loser problem, and in the end it will be seen as a massive and unfair and unproductive transference of wealth. Some EU countries just hit pause on the economy. Turn off rent-seeking forms of revenue – loans, rents, etc. cut everyones expenses back to consumables (which are low) and backfill wages for those that need it. And then you have a form of control over unpausing and maintaining that collective response.
ParisMarie
@Achrachno: I’m so worn out from them. Just read that Christina Cuomo has been bathing in bleach “to combat the radiation and metals in her system” as sherecovers from Covid-19. NO, JUST NO.
Roger Moore
@Achrachno:
I think a lot of people have dealt with collective action problems and thus have a visceral grasp of the concept in that specific case, but that doesn’t mean they grasp the big picture that they are an important general category. Presenting them with the terminology and showing how lots of different things work the same way can be very enlightening.
Roger Moore
@Ella in New Mexico:
You had me at “Epoch Times”. They’re closely associated with Falun Gong and have a deep antipathy for the Chinese government because of its persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. They also apparently have some kind of religious view that Trump will bring about the end times in which the Chinese Communist Party will be sent to hell.
bemused
@Ella in New Mexico:
He didn’t google her to find out if she was legit or a grifter?
WaterGirl
@satby: I hope you went in the house, took a shower, washed your hair.
And don’t forget to swallow the UV light. Trump’s awesome idea????
Eljai
I can’t watch the daily propaganda briefings, but now trump is suggesting leeches to cure the virus. Not really. It’s much worse than that:
Jay
@Elizabelle:
Dolt 45 has started referring to “The Invisible Enemy” during the 2 hour Campaign Appearances/Rants/Hate Hour that pass for Covid19 News Confrences,
it’s unclear if he is referring to Covid, Democrats, Science or Brown People,……
Calouste
@Jay: All of them, Katie.
Sm*t Cl*de
The draft for this century’s Global War (against the Invisible Enemy) only demands that the draftees socialise less. Even that is too onerous and all the special snowflakes have developed bone spurs.
bluefoot
This whole idea that if you’re healthy you can’t catch a disease is really insidious. Yes, there are high-risk groups for COVID-19, but that’s high-risk of death or hspitalization – not if you’re in a low risk group you won’t get infected or you won’t have severe disease. People don’t seem to understand the difference between statistics (group-level correlations) and individual experience. Plus, we *still* don’t know enough to know why some people have mild symptoms and some people have severe symptoms or die.
These anti-social distancing and and anti-vaccine people make me insane. They’re basically saying their desires are more important than other people’s lives. That’s sociopathy, right there. Have any of them ever seen someone die from organ failure or inability to get oxygen? I have. And that’s what they want – for people to die horribly so they can get a f*cking haircut.
They also don’t seem to understand that if we could do proper disease surveillance, find a way to for everyone to be able to stay home, and get essential people have all the protection they need, then this would be very temporary. Weeks, not months.
If only the goddamned idiots would only infect themselves and not avail themselves of the public services they constantly deride.
dww44
@Major Major Major Major: Re the death count and projection, from the looks at the rapid rise we are experiencing, I believe we are gonna blow right thru that 620000 projection from a week or so ago. Or, has it been changed again?
AWOL
@Ten Bears: Why do you believe that “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was written in unison by Jews and Christian Zionists?
You’re a shameless anti-Semite. You have no right to express what is rational or not, as you are not rational.
Your attitude toward Jews is as odious as the values of Trump supporters.
chrome agnomen
@West of the Rockies: you misspelled neutralized
mrmoshpotato
Oh for fucks sake! Dying of COVID-19 because you’re a truther moron (and to own the libs).
Also, GROSS OUT WARNING!
How long are Dinesh DeFelon’s toes? Like octopus legs?
MoCA Ace
Wait a second… I’m pretty sure Knut Wittkowski is the little round guy in Monsters Inc. Try again MAGAT.
mrmoshpotato
@Dorothy A. Winsor: COVID-19, honey badger, it don’t give a fuck.
Brachiator
@Eljai:
Paying for other sick people is pretty much the definition of health insurance, whether public or private.
ETA. I guess Trump is speaking. I skipped it. The radio news is reporting that Trump has been speaking in pseudoscience. Summer will kill the virus forever and ever?
Stevie
It’s about performing white purity. These folks believe that there’s just no way that their precious white bodies could possibly need the same healthcare as minorities, heretics or poor people. And they especially don’t need any healthcare that’s performed by women, minorities, Jewish people or LGBTQ people. And you just know that the healthcare industry is full of those people! They, the fine, upstanding, pure, white Americans are above all of that. they are smart enough to know what their bodies need and how to take care of themselves.
Stevie
@bluefoot: I think that nothing would make them happier than to have the power to make people die serving them. What do you think all of the Confederate flags are all about?
Achrachno
@Eljai: “The disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. It gets in the lungs”
You first, Donnie.
Sm*t Cl*de
@Eljai:
Grifters like Mercola have been pimping hydrogen-peroxide nebulizers as a cure for COVID. Breath in hair-bleach aerosol, no problem! Could be that Trump heard of Mercola’s advertisements. Or is this a dog-whistle to the MMS Bleach-drinking cultists? (they overlap a lot with his Q-anon followers)
Rudi
@MoCA Ace: Rocky U issued a statement about the nutjob. Not a professor, just a statistician.
https://www.rockefeller.edu/news/27872-rockefeller-university-releases-statement-concerning-dr-knut-wittkowski/
Ladyraxterinok
@Cheryl from Maryland:
I remember the community swimming quarantines against polio.
And the wing in a local hospital for iron lungs.
And how no one let their kids outside from about 11am to 5pm or so on hot summer days since many though it was being outside in the heat that brought on polio. (40s-50s) I still freak out a bit when I see kids out playing on hot summer days.
catclub
But if you want to get an abortion, no way.
catclub
@ParisMarie: well, I guess there is still the ‘what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” theory.
WaterGirl
@Rudi: FYI, that kind of formatting consistently gets a comment automatically thrown into spam by WordPress.
Just Chuck
I’d appreciate it however if you fucking died for me before you kill anyone. Actually I don’t care if it’s for me or not. We’re finally at the point where stupidity can be directly fatal. Unfortunately it’ll also kill a bunch of others who didn’t deserve it.
Ladyraxterinok
@Elizabelle:
Didn’t see that question. Why were pictures taken there?
bluefoot
@Stevie:
I know. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that once the info came out that minority communities were harder hit than white people by COVID-19, these sociopaths decided that it was a-okay to lift stay-at-home orders. But bloody hell, I guess part of me still expects that the sheer magnitude of human suffering would make a dent on these people….Though considering the reactions to Black Lives Matter, and the sheer glee some people took in watching American soldiers torture and kill people in our various wars, I shouldn’t be surprised. (The fact that Asian slurs are back out in the open as a result of COVID-19 is such a tell.) White supremacy then, white supremacy now, white supremacy forever, I guess. Even if they take down the entire country in service of that ideology.
It’s like HIV all over again. I remember when it was the “H disease” – homosexuals, Haitians and hemophiliacs. And the idea that if you caught HIV, it was your own fault and you deserved it. It’s so vile.
Elizabelle
@Ladyraxterinok: The jackal’s parents were protecting child from polio. Afraid to go to common use spaces. So: backyard.
Just Chuck
@bluefoot:
FTFY. No really, I’ve never seen such a deep well of hatred for one’s own country as I have from the right. Everything they don’t personally approve of and control is evil, wrong, wicked, and the country is always going down the tubes for it. As always, their flag-waving is rank hypocrisy: they proclaim to love America, but they hate the vast majority of Americans.
It’s why I don’t think greed is the motivating factor for most Republicans anymore: I think their true guiding philosophy is “Everyone who is not like me must suffer”.
The Pale Scot
@Eljai:
Sounds to me like he’s advocating huffing Lysol.
Give it what, 72 hours for the first casualties to appear..
bluefoot
@Just Chuck:
I was just telling my sister that I’ve been surprised at the magnitude of hatred this entire situation has engendered in me. These people are so, so vile. No amount of human suffering matters to them at all, as long as they can wank to their own self-importance. Bodies have literally been piling up, and they *don’t care*.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Dorothy A. Winsor: More to the point; they are healthy because they occasionally eat an orange. This is pure Danny Kruger – being is shape means you do a 8 hour day of physical labor, not going to the gym an hour a week. It’s like those meat packing plants were the workers who throws slides of beef all day are the ones who just get ill and the management who sits on their ass that does the dying.
Let us note Boris Johnson, who is held to be indecent shape for a political leader still doesn’t have the energy to do most of his job.
Shana
Good lord, can we just round up all these idiots, isolate them somewhere with plenty of food and leave them there? Come back in a year and see if any of them are left? Pretty please?
Kilgore Trout
@Achrachno: What makes D’Souza so tiresome is the combination of maxed out levels of idiocy and smugness.
The Moar You Know
The common denominator in all recent human stupidity: amplification of said stupidity by the internet.
Looking for a solution? Start with that.
MisterForkbeard
@bluefoot: I have a fairly liberal relative who is obeying the shutdown but also fairly apoplectic in terms of needing to re-open the economy in some recognizable form. She wants an acknowledgment that we can’t keep the economy like this for months, and that it’s causing untold damage to people’s livelihood, careers, emotional health and so on. She talks about “years of your life wasted” once the economy destroys all you gained/stored.
I went around with her a few times on this before I remembered that she’d invested most of her wealth to start her own business in a luxury item, which is probably suffering horribly from this situation.
So she’s talking about her own loss, here. And you could say it’s selfish, but it’s also understandable: She’s watching a business she’s worked on for 4-5 years using capital she built from the previous 10 years, and it’s dying. And others are like this too.
I’ve revised my opinion on this a little in light of that experience. Many of these people are just massively stupid and entitled. But there are real concerns about the damage we’re seeing, and we can’t completely ameliorate it with government spending even if we had a government willing to spend for the public good. She’s rightfully concerned about another Depression starting.
The real villain is Trump, who’s forcing people into this kind of decision and awful calculus. But I get why some people are really angry over all this. :(
Felanius Kootea
@MisterForkbeard: It’s sad that other countries were able to understand this and give their citizens a steady income for the shut down period (not just a one-time payment). It’s sad that this isn’t even part of the discussion in the US, after the initial embrace of Yang’s UBI proposal. The more sick and dead people there are, though, the fewer potential clients for her business. And with the new news about blood clotting problems in survivors of COVID-19, we don’t know what complications those who recover will have over time.
We have to buy time for either a successful clinical trial of an anti-viral that reduces lethality or a COVID-19 vaccine. I hope that the RNA vaccines that Bill Gates is excited about end up working but we just don’t know yet and science can be agonizingly slow for those who are watching their lives crumble. Life is sometimes very unfair.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Look, Trump was in the briefing talking about how the virus might be cured by injecting the patient with UV light. The man is a dumb ass, his followers are dumb asseses and that’s all that are too it. This is an act like Boris Johnson.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@Shana: I’m with you. As far as I’m concerned these fucks have forfeited their right to live among us.
hedgehog +2 so incoherent
Sab
@Ella in New Mexico: My RWNJ brother was just tellimg me this comspiracy theory tonight. He believes it. I womdered where he got it. Wow.
randy khan
@Roger Moore:
And we’re just under 50k tonight.
Bill Arnold
@bluefoot:
In my area (mid-Hudson NY), where about 2% have tested and been reported positive, and therefor about 10 percent are or have been positive (as suggested by today’s antibody test random sampling), an un-vetted unmasked person near me is threatening me with death. In a stand your ground state, this could get interesting.
Amir Khalid
@tokyokie:
Warum nicht die beide?
Brachiator
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I have to pinch myself and do a double take. I cannot believe that a president of the United States is uttering such gibberish.
Makes me almost nostalgic for the days when a religious nutcase president might say that we just have to trust in the Baby Jebus. Almost.
Just One More Canuck
@gogiggs: will you wear golf cleats? Skates?
Searcher
If we’re going to recapitulate the beginning of the 20th century in my lifetime, I hope we at least get some new physics out of it before we have to fight the Nazis again.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
So, is Messiah the Messiah or the Beast?
There seems to be an increase in angry conspiracy theories of various kinds as a reaction to the lockdown. And some of this stuff seems to be orchestrated by right wing groups, including the usual gang of plutocrats.
Anger and insanity is also like a contagion, which is why I think we see some of the old standard racism and anti-semitism popping up again. It is sad how predictable some of these goons are.
Some of these people, the plutocrats, are as nutty as Trump. Others seem to think that they are safely isolated from the worse impact of the pandemic.
You’re seeing this idiocy overseas as well. The 1922 Committee, the more right wing branch of the UK Conservative Party, is also hot to open up their economy and will readily sacrifice the poor.
JustRuss
No it isn’t. It’s not rocket science. It’s logistics on a large scale, but our country is very good at that, at least we used to be. Yes, it takes lots of work and resources, but there’s no reason we couldn’t do it. If we had reasonably competent, or even sane, leaders.
laura
Cheryl Rofer shouting out the ICP!11! Who’ve not been everyone’s cuppa tea, but staunch defenders of the 1st Amendment/Right to Assemble/Freedom of Association and now foregoing the gathering in order to save lives and protect the public welfare. That’s a sweet capper on a long hard day. So thanks to your Cheryl and thanks to Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope too.