Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let me file that under fuck it.

You cannot shame the shameless.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

People are weird.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday/Friday, April 8-9

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday/Friday, April 8-9

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  2. 2.

    rikyrah

    I need someone to explain what the PHUCK is happening in Michigan ???

     

    But, I don’t disagree. We need to get more Vaccine there

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The Johnson & Johnson microchip comes with a free U2 song that you can’t delete.

    So that’s where that annoying earworm came from! I’ll get you for this Bill Gates.

  4. 4.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s Director-General of Heath Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah reports 1,854 new Covid-19 cases today in his media statement, for a cumulative reported total of 357,607 cases. He also reports five new deaths today, for a cumulative total of 1,313 deaths — 0.37% of the cumulative reported total, 0.38% of resolved cases.

    There are currently 14,805 active and contagious cases; 169 are in ICU, 79 of them intubated. Meanwhile, 1,247 patients recovered and were discharged, for a cumulative total of 341,489 patients recovered – 95.49% of the cumulative reported total.

    Seven new clusters were reported today: Sungai Kluang Satu in Penang; Jalan Ismail Sultan in Johor; Batu Lima Jalan Sibuga and Sim-Sim in Sabah; Taman Bukit Pantai in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor; and Sungai Gemuan and Disso in Sarawak.

    Sungai Gemuan, Disso and Sim-Sim are community clusters. The rest are workplace clusters.

    1,834 new cases today are local infections. Sarawak reports a whopping 554 local cases: 95 in older clusters, 29 in Sungai Gemuan and Disso clusters, 293 close-contact screenings, and 137 other screenings. Selangor is next, reporting 401 local cases: 101 in existing clusters, 228 close-contact screenings, and 72 other screenings.

    Well down in third place is Penang, reporting 176 cases: 29 in older clusters, 24 in Sungai Kluang Satu cluster, 29 close-contact screenings, and 94 other screenings. Kelantan reports 143 cases: 42 in existing clusters, 78 close-contact screenings, and 23 other screenings. Sabah reports 139 cases: 56 in older clusters, 15 in Sim-Sim and Batu Lima Jalan Sibuga clusters, 49 close-contact screenings, and 19 other screenings. Kuala Lumpur reports 120 local cases: 19 in Taman Bukit Pantai cluster, 65 close-contact screenings, and 36 other screenings. Johor reports 102 local cases: 22 in older clusters, 23 in Jalan Ismail Sultan cluster, 39 close-contact screenings, and 18 other screenings.

    Negeri Sembilan reports 40 cases: 19 in existing clusters, 17 close-contact screenings, and four other screenings. Kedah also report 40 cases: four in existing clusters, 22 close-contact screenings, and 14 other screenings. Melaka reports 33 local cases: 17 in existing clusters, eight close-contact screenings, and eight other screenings. Perak reports 29 cases: five in older clusters, one in Sungai Kluang Satu cluster, 13 close-contact screenings, and 10 other screenings. Terengganu also reports 29 cases: eight in existing clusters, 19 close-contact screenings, and two other screenings.

    Pahang reports 19 cases: 12 in existing clusters, four close-contact screenings, and three other screenings. Putrajaya reports six cases: five close-contact screenings, and one other screening. And Labuan reports three cases: two in existing clusters, and one other screening.

    Perlis reports no new cases today.

    20 new cases today are imported: 15 in Kuala Lumpur; two in Selangor; and one each in Johor, Melaka, and Sarawak.

    The deaths reported today are a 35-year-old woman in Sabah with asthma and obesity; a 42-year-old man in Sarawak with diabetes and hypertension; a 69-year-old woman in Sarawak, DOA with hypertension and dyslipidaemia; a 32-year-old non-Malaysian man in Kuala Lumpur with low immunity; and a 43-year-old non-Malaysian man in Sarawak, DOA with no co-morbidities listed.

  5. 5.

    BruceFromOhio

    The Johnson & Johnson microchip comes with a free U2 song that you can’t delete.

    Mine skips in the middle.

    Reading through all of these, it’s saddening and infuriating that after all this time and deaths, people are abandoning the basics – masking, social distancing – things that have been proven as effective deterrents against spread. Seeing pics of a relatives’ crowded Easter church ceremony not far from East Lansing shows a lot more people are likely going to die in Michigan because they’ve abandoned the basics. The fourth wave is underway.

  7. 7.

    dmsilev

    @rikyrah: As I understand it, the dominated-by-rural-Republicans legislature stripped the Governor of much of her emergency powers, limiting the measures that she can impose to try to put a lid on things. Add in complete disregard for any personal protective behavior (masking, distancing, etc.), and there you go.

  8. 8.

    Ohio Mom

    Whew! A lot of us were worried about you, Anne Laurie, when we didn’t see you at your usual time. Hope you were taking a well-deserved moment for yourself, and it wasn’t anything else.

    Now I can get going on the rest of my day — this daily Covid post is as much a part of my morning routine as the newspaper and coffee.

  9. 9.

    Elizabelle

    Reposting, since we now have a COVID thread:

    Jackals:  I am preparing a letter to a friend who is vaccine-averse, for not particularly good reasons.  I think she may lose her job if she continues that stance, because she’s in the healthcare field and expected to see patients.

    SO:  do you remember the article about separating out normal occurrences and not blaming them on COVID?  Might have been from the The Atlantic; how X number of people are going to drop dead or have some type of health situation, and it is not caused by the vaccine, although the patient may be suspecting correlation?

    Any articles on people who really should not take this vaccine?  What if patient has had a bad reaction (up to anaphylactic shock) to a previous vaccine?

    The weird thing here is I know this particular person has been willing to take previous vaccines, as a condition of employment, and she has sounded amenable to taking the COVID one if it allowed her to travel for a vacation … (priorities, priorities)

    This person is mid-60s, with bad allergies and asthma.  Any articles that would be persuasive are welcome.

    My suspicion is that she’s not actually allergic to the COVID vaccine, but she’s going to expect that she is, since she’s given to catastrophizing. World class, there.

  10. 10.

    NotMax

    FYI.

    Army scientists are testing whether their new COVID-19 vaccine candidate, which entered human trials this week, can serve as a universal booster shot for all other available coronavirus vaccines.
    [snip]
    The Walter Reed vaccine — called SpFN — may boost the duration and breadth of immune responses in combination with other vaccines, which are made using different technologies, Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of Walter Reed’s Emerging Infectious Diseases Branch, said in an interview with McClatchy on Thursday.

    “This is something that we actually started planning before the whole field started looking at this, but the rest of the field of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development is now coming to look at these issues as well,” Modjarrad said, using the technical term for the novel coronavirus.
    [snip]
    After months of studying their vaccine candidate in different animals, Walter Reed scientists began their clinical trial in humans on Tuesday. Four volunteer participants were injected with the vaccine in the first two days. After initial observation of these individuals, the first phase of the trial will expand to 72 people, and initial results are expected mid-summer.

    Modjarrad’s team designed SpFN to be a highly adaptable vaccine that can address multiple variants of the pandemic coronavirus in a single shot, and potentially provide protection against past and future coronaviruses. Source

  12. 12.

    Anne Laurie

    @rikyrah: Blame FYWP — I thought I was finished around 5:30am, and it decided to log me out & not let me back in.

    WaterGirl, may her shadow never grow less, put this post up as soon as she got my (frantic idiot) message… but as it turns out, the last half-dozen tweets I’d included didn’t get saved, AFAICT.

    Better luck ‘tomorrow’ (tonight), I hope!

  13. 13.

    Roger Moore

    @BruceFromOhio: 
    The thing that gets me is that the bad news elsewhere makes it hard to enjoy the good news we’re still getting. Here in California, the cases are low and slowly dropping, but I’m still worried that reopening is going too quickly and we’re going to see a spike like the one in Michigan any time now. Intellectually, I don’t think we are- our official reopening is pretty modest, and plenty of businesses still aren’t going as fast as they’re allowed- but a year of disasters is making it hard to see anything good, even when it’s staring me right in the face.

  14. 14.

    Barbara

    Falwell is completely full of shit. Restaurants are open in Virginia at around half capacity and at this point many that are waiting to open for in person dining are doing so until workers get vaccinated. Ditto with churches.

  15. 15.

    Anne Laurie

    @dmsilev: As I understand it, the dominated-by-rural-Republicans legislature stripped the Governor of much of her emergency powers, limiting the measures that she can impose to try to put a lid on things. Add in complete disregard for any personal protective behavior (masking, distancing, etc.), and there you go.

    Yup, that’s pretty much my understanding.  We left MI 25+ years ago, but most of my dearest friends still live there.  Having a lady Governor (Whitmer) and a gay, lady Attorney General “in charge” gave the GOP Christianists and business-looters who’ve taken over the state machinery the *perfect* excuse for playing a version of SCIENCE IS NOT THE BOSS OF US that would not be amiss in a Confederate stronghold.

    That’s why I doubt sending more vaccines would really help much, at this point.  The places that need the help most (like the Thumb region) would treat it like Jade Helm or Ruby Ridge, if the evil gubmint FEMA forces showed up.  Pessimist that I am, I’m afraid the sane Michiganders are just gonna have to wait until the revanchists either die, or get bored & move on to the next GQP ‘conspiracy’…

  16. 16.

    Elizabelle

    Sharing two links, responses to my questions about dealing with the vaccine-averse, from astute jackals on previous thread:

    Soprano2, WaPost, yesterday:
    Vaccine conversations can be messy. Here’s how to talk about the shots.
    And Ken found exactly the article I was remembering:

    Ken:  Derek Lowe’s “In the Pipeline” blog has had a lot of covid posts.  “Get Ready for False Side Effects” was, IIRC, cited in the comments here, so might be the one you’re thinking of.

    We’re talking about treating very, very large populations, which means that you’re going to see the usual run of mortality and morbidity that you see across large samples. Specifically, if you take 10 million people and just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms, in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That’s how many people die and get sick anyway.

  17. 17.

    Anyway

    @rikyrah:

    Good morning. Seen a few announcements about mobile vaccination clinics in PA – seem to be targeted towards elderly in group homes, people without adequate transportation, other isolated individuals … know that was one of your concerns. This was at a county level – don’t know if other states are doing this.

  18. 18.

    Cameron

    Tomorrow will be exactly two weeks since my second Pfizer shot.  Will celebrate by…..well, by doing nothing different.  Unless something radical happens, I’m going to continue wearing a mask until at least the end of summer.

  19. 19.

    Taken4Granite

    I’m due to get my first dose this morning, at a site within walking distance of my house. The sponsor sent out a message pointing out that it’s not too late to get vaccination appointments for today.

    It’s probably the Moderna vaccine, since I am informed that I will schedule my appointment for the second dose when I get the first dose, and they are scheduling appointments in four weeks. But I won’t know for sure until I get there.

  21. 21.

    Another Scott

    @Elizabelle: I’ve seen several articles about the “normal” weird side effects expected in any large vaccine roll-out.  Here are a couple:

    STATNews:

    As Covid-19 vaccines go into broad use, some rare side effects of vaccination will almost certainly emerge, like the reports of small numbers of people developing anaphylaxis. But so will medical events whose timing just comes down to random chance — and the potential ripple effects of those reports already have experts concerned.

    Every single day, people die unexpectedly. They have strokes and heart attacks and seizures. On an average day, 110 people in this country may develop Bell’s palsy, a temporary facial paralysis, and another 274 will develop Guillain-Barré syndrome, a form of paralysis that usually resolves over time. The trigger for these medical events often isn’t known. But when they happen shortly after someone gets a vaccine — especially a new one — well, conclusions will be drawn.

    “It is logical for people to say: That person had something done to them and something bad happened in the hours or days after that,” said Art Reingold, chair of the division of epidemiology and biostatistics at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. “And if it was you or your family member, you would be inconvincible that that wasn’t true.”

    Except, of course, it often isn’t. Heart attacks occur most commonly in the morning, yet we don’t blame breakfast for causing them. A heart attack on the morning after a Covid-19 vaccine, though? That might be another matter.

    […]

    Another with similar comments is here.

    HTH!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  24. 24.

    Nicole

    I got my 2nd Pfizer yesterday. Feeling kind of oogy today, but so far not quite as oogy as I did after the first shot.  I had Covid in late December, so I heard that the first shot for the Covid recovered can be like the 2nd shot for those who didn’t have Covid. But could find no info on how the 2nd shot goes. Anecdotally, not too terrible.

    Also, I continue to be grateful for these daily posts. It’s the same comfort I once got from Cuomo’s briefings, with the added security of no creep factor. ? May your shadow also never grow less, Anne Laurie!

  26. 26.

    Elizabelle

    @Nicole:   Glad to hear you’ve had your second vacc, and it’s not going too badly.  (Rather well, actually.)

  28. 28.

    Laura Too

    I want to add thanks to Anne Laurie for your tireless efforts. I checked in as usual and when there was no Covid post I worried something happened to you. Glad it was just a glitch the wonderful Watergirl could fix. I rely on this to start my day as well.

  29. 29.

    YY_Sima Qian

    On 4/8 China reported 8 new domestic confirmed & 0 new domestic asymptomatic cases, all in Yunnan Province. There are currently 84 domestic confirmed & 25 domestic asymptomatic cases in the Province.

    • Ruili in Dehong Prefecture reported 8 new domestic confirmed cases (7 moderate & 1 mild). There are currently 84 domestic confirmed & 24 domestic asymptomatic cases there. Of the newly detected domestic confirmed cases, 7 are Chinese nationals & 1 is a Thai national. All new positive cases were found from the 2nd round of mass screening no. 3 communities remain at High Risk. 3 residential compounds, 1 factory & 2 villages remain at Medium Risk.
    • Gengma County in Lincang City did not report any new positive cases. There is 1 domestic asymptomatic case there.

    Imported Cases

    On 4/8 China reported 13 new imported confirmed cases, 12 imported asymptomatic cases, 1 imported suspect case:

    • Guangzhou in Guangdong Province – 4 confirmed cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from the DRC (via Nairobi), the Philippines, Cambodia & Myanmar; 3 asymptomatic cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Malaysia, the Philippines & Oman
    • Shanghai Municipality – 3 confirmed cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Cambodia, Hong Kong & Russia; 1 suspect case, no information released
    • Xi’an in Shaanxi Province – 2 confirmed & 4 asymptomatic cases, all Chinese nationals returning from Pakistan, off a flight diverted from Beijing 
    • Beijing Municipality – 1 confirmed case, a Greek national coming from Greece
    • Taiyuan in Shanxi Province – 1 confirmed case, coming from Poland, off a flight diverted from Beijing
    • Xiamen in Fujian Province – 1 confirmed case, a Chinese national returning from the Philippines 
    • Changsha in Hunan Province – 1 confirmed case (previously asymptomatic), no information released 
    • Nanjing in Jiangsu Province – 3 asymptomatic cases, no information released
    • Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province – 1 asymptomatic case, coming from Indonesia
    • Shenyang in Liaoning Province – a Chinese national returning from the US (via Seoul-Inchon)

     

    Overall in China, 5 confirmed cases recovered, 9 asymptomatic cases were released from isolation & 1 was reclassified as confirmed case, and 466 individuals were released from quarantine. Currently, there are 279 active confirmed cases in the country (194 imported), 3 in critical/serious condition (2 imported), 293 asymptomatic cases (268 imported), 1 suspect cases (all imported). 7,364 traced contacts are currently under centralized quarantine.

    As of 4/8, 155.15M vaccine doses have been injected in Mainland China, an increase of 6.079M doses in the past 24 hrs.

    On 4/9, Hong Kong reported 14 new cases, 12 imported & 2 domestic (1 of whom does not hav source of infection identified).

  31. 31.

    smith

    @Elizabelle:  Unfortunately, there is also the problem of mass hysteria, which is probably what this was. Things like fainting spells are easily contagious among a group of nervous people. Given how much humans pride ourselves on our thinking ability, we are actually pathetically emotional animals.

  33. 33.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    In my Maryland County — Montgomery — the County Executive has done a great job despite the actions of the GOP Governor Hogan  (who prioritized vaccines and vaccine sites in his favored GOP counties, opened up way too soon, is allowing Dr. Redfield of the Trump CDC to act as his COVID advisor).  MoCo’s COVID numbers have remained constant and low despite serious increases elsewhere in the state.  And yet, people are acting as if the crisis is over —  I went for a walk yesterday and passed 20 people without a mask.  I get my 2nd shot of Pfizer in 10 days which cannot come a moment too soon.

  35. 35.

    Nicole

    @Elizabelle: Thank you! I and my husband went to a clinic for the 1st one and scheduled the 2nd one for the 12th there, but after the first shot knocked us both down we figured it was better to stagger the 2nd doses (we have a 10-year-old and child care was a struggle the day after the 1st shot). Yesterday was 3 weeks since the first shot and the red county 90 minutes south of us had plenty of available slots at the drive-through station. I googled, found out the two shots are identical and figured no harm in going someplace else for #2 as long as it was the same brand of shot. And indeed, it was no issue.

    Drive-through was super easy, but I missed soaking in everyone’s joy in the observation room after. Joy- the one highly contagious thing that it’s good to catch!

  36. 36.

    YY_Sima Qian

    The Laurie Garrett tweet on Chinese vaccines seems to be about overly excited. Brazil is running a trial of the SinoVac vaccine on 40K HCWs at Manaus, and the preliminary data so far indicate ~ 50% efficacy against symptomatic inflection of the P.1 variant 2 weeks after the 1st dose. Of course, HCWs at Manaus might have been so hard hit in the two massive waves that for most of them the 1st vaccine shot is functionally the 2nd booster.

     

    In any case, the hospitalization rate among the elderly Chileans is still plummeting even through the current wave. Hospitalization has been driven by the middle aged and the young during the current wave. So, the SinoVac vaccines seems to be working as intended.

    As for the UAE administering a 3rd shot of the SinoPharm vaccine to people who did not develop sufficient antibody response to the 1st 2 shots, I recall the percentage is fairly small, well < 10%.

    As for Chinese vaccine diplomacy, it is winning by default, as the US and the EU have ceded the field so far, and will likely continue to do so for months more. Yes, the Chinese inactivated live virus vaccines do not have the extraordinarily high efficacies of the mRNA ones, but they remain highly effective against hospitalization. For countries that face choice of decent weapons against COVID-19 now, or great weapons 6 – 12 months from now (maybe), the choice is obvious. Not sure how much mileage China will actually get from the vaccine diplomacy, since the vast majority of vaccines it has exported are sold under commercial contracts, and not donated as aid, but countries will remember that when the push came to shove the US and the EU thought of only themselves, but the Global South knew that already.

    I think everyone understands that rapid vaccination is the last and only way out for the US and the EU, given the failed pandemic response, but is the case for most of the world , too. If COVID-19 is still running wild here, China would not be exporting significant quantities of vaccines, either, However, with how quickly vaccination is being done in the US, would allowing Moderna and Pfizer to export (not even government donations) 10M doses to select Latin American countries over the past couple of months, so they can start protecting their HCWs, really affect the course of the pandemic in the US? In desperate times, a little help goes a long way toward shore up American soft power.

  37. 37.

    Sloane Ranger

    Thursday in the UK we had 3030 new cases. This is a decrease of 37.3% in the rolling 7-day average. New cases by nation,

    England – 2486 (up @180)

    Northern Ireland – 98 (up 10)

    Scotland – 364 (up @80)

    Wales – 82 (no change).

    Deaths – There were 53 deaths within 28 days of a positive test yesterday. This is a reduction of 32.5% in the rolling 7-day average. New deaths by nation, England – 44, Northern Ireland – 2, Scotland – 1 and Wales – 6. During the week ending Friday, 26 March, 799 people had COVID mentioned on their Death Certificate as a cause of death.

    Testing – A total of 1,034,088 tests were conducted on Wednesday, 7 April. This is a 27.1% reduction in the rolling 7-day average.

    Hospitalisations – On Tuesday, 6 April there were 3124 people in hospital. On Wednesday, 7 April there were 440 people on ventilators. The rolling 7-day average for hospital admissions is down 26.1%.

    Vaccinations – As of 7 April, a total of 31,807,124 people had received the 1st shot of a vaccine and 6,091,905 had had both. This means that, as of this date, 60.4% of the UK adult population has received 1 shot and 11.6% were fully vaccinated.

  38. 38.

    satby

    @Anne Laurie: You’ve summed it up well. Michigan is only a blue state mainly on the strength of Detroit and *some* university towns, but is militia, sovereign citizen territory everywhere else. I’m waiting for Darwin to take a few key players out, and even then it won’t make a dent in some of the idiocy.

  39. 39.

    Bill Arnold

    @Elizabelle:
    Hard to tell from your description, but I’ll assume that she’s not a Trump voter, so arguments about relative risks might stick. COVID-19 messes up the lungs of a lot of people including those with asymptomatic cases, and blood clots caused by COVID-19 can cause subtle damage, and the neurological effects are still not fully understood. Since the disease is only a 1.4 years old, it is unclear how long these effects will last and in what percentage of patients they will persist, but they could be lifelong for many, and that life could be shorter. Of note: the 1918 flu had long term effects, and Nazis targeted such infirm people. [1] The current Party of Selfishness could very easily go down that path.

    The 15 minute wait with epipens handy reduces the death-from-allergic-reaction risk to essentially zero, and the risk of death/complications/morbidity from COVID-19 is orders of magnitude higher.

    If she is a Trump voter, then perhaps ask how she would feel about the vaccine if Trump had won the election and been inaugurated. I’m pretty sure that a high percentage of Republican vaccine-refusers would be enthusiastic vaccine promoters in that alternative universe.

    [1] Long thread, with links to some papers loosely supporting the argument:

    Today’s covid denialists are tomorrow’s openly eugenicist “these disabled people are a drain on society”
    Literally. 13 years after the Spanish flu, the very first people the nazis targeted were disabled people.

    What caused a lot of those disabilities, you think?

    — Anosognosiogenesis (@pookleblinky) November 29, 2020

  41. 41.

    Elizabelle

    @Bill Arnold:   Thank you for that.  Former Republican, who woke up enough to be a “both sides” totebagging type, but credit to her for that.  Contract professional with the military, so she is rightwing-adjacent with some of the personalities there (and is probably seeing propaganda, some of which she may not recognize as such, even as she filters the more obvious junk out).

    I think she is mostly very anxious.

    Will look at your thread.  Thank you!!

  43. 43.

    JeanneT

    Michigan resident here.  Every week I watch a little video put up by our Kent County director of public health.  Some weeks I feel that he’s almost shaking with grief and frustration as he reports the case data and urges people to ‘stay heroic’ and mask, distance, vaccinate.

    This week he noted the race that’s on between getting people the vaccinations and cases of Covid spreading like wildfire through the region in people under 65.  He reported a 14% positive testing rate, which is crazy – and at the same time, local clinics vaccinated 52,000 people last week. 159 people are hospitalized with Covid, 46 of them in ICU.  Two weeks ago only 69 Covid patients were hospitalized.  The average # of new cases this week is 333 per day.

    26.9% of the county population is fully vaccinated, and another 17% have received their first dose.

    I do have to say that here in my neighborhood in the city of Grand Rapids proper, most people I see out and about are still masking.  But if that were true throughout the county, surely our positivity rates wouldn’t be so bad!

  44. 44.

    rikyrah

    @Elizabelle:

     

    This person is mid-60s, with bad allergies and asthma.  Any articles that would be persuasive are welcome.

     

    Makes her a walking underlying condition.

    For  Black Jesus sake!!

  45. 45.

    rikyrah

    @Anyway:

     

    I love this. This should be done all around the country. Definitely targeting our rural folks, and those who are without transportation and have difficulty getting around in our cities.

  46. 46.

    ellenr

    @rikyrah:   It’s concentrated in the Thumb area – militia and t-land.   Vaccine refusers. There’s another cluster in Detroit, which would be poverty and also distrust.  And it’s being spread by high school indoor sports events.

    Also, it’s the B117 variant, which is more infectious, more serious, and hits people in younger age groups.

    Valuable weekly covid updates from Dr Osterholm in Minnesota.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBkNsHWHlAo

    Really helpful  The UK B 117 variant has hit the US badly.

  47. 47.

    rikyrah

    @Bill Arnold:

     

    If she is a Trump voter, then perhaps ask how she would feel about the vaccine if Trump had won the election and been inaugurated.

     

    Ask her about how she feels that Dolt45 got vaccinated IN SECRET.

  48. 48.

    Elizabelle

    @rikyrah:   I know, rikyrah.  I know.  That is what drives me absolutely fucking nuts.  Were I her, I would have thrown my body as close to the front of the line as possible, and invested in my own damn epipen.  It is madness.

    She was working from home, due to her underlying health concerns (which her colleagues at work resented), and has been informed by strict letter that she must return to the office in early May.

    If she pulls the “I am too fragile to be vaccinated” shit, I will not be surprised to hear her contract will end early.  And, she has run herself out of time to be fully vaccinated by her return.  WTG, health professional.

    Fear and catastrophic thinking is a terrible thing.

  51. 51.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Cheryl from Maryland:

     And yet, people are acting as if the crisis is over —  I went for a walk yesterday and passed 20 people without a mask.

    That’s how people are in my neighborhood in northern Calvert County, but I don’t see the problem with that.  Most of the time you’re out walking on a residential street, you’re nowhere close to other people.

    IME, when people out walking around here stop and talk to one another, they’re standing a fair distance apart: more like ten or 12 feet apart than six, plenty of room in between for nasty viruses to be dispersed by even the smallest air currents.

    Now at the local shopping center, you might occasionally see someone get out of their car without their mask, but they’re pulling it out of their pocket, and have it on their face before they hit the sidewalk.

    I really can’t remember when or if I’ve seen someone maskless in a store since the pandemic hit.

  52. 52.

    glc

    Wondering about this one: https://www.axios.com/america-coronavirus-vaccines-republicans-rural-states-34755cbf-384e-4539-bb45-68a775581f6f.html

    “America may be close to hitting a vaccine wall”

    Hard to make much of the summary, clicking through takes to something a bit more informative:

    “Surgo Ventures Projects U.S. COVID-19 Vaccination Rates will Plateau in Late April—”

    https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f7671d12c27e40b67ce4400/t/606f2bd5b26d9f4c3e4f1826/1617898454642/Final+Press+Release-Surgo+Ventures+Gen+Pop+Followup+Survey.pdf

    I notice the headline of the press release contradicts its content: headline says “plateau”, content describes a peak (consistent with a brief plateau I suppose but it’s not a model of clarity). It assumes attitudes do not evolve, which is fair enough if you just want to make  a baseline projection for the sake of comparison.

     

     

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