Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

We are aware of all internet traditions.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

You cannot shame the shameless.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Can’t Make This Stuff Up/UPDATED with Biden Vaccine Townhall Live Feed

Can’t Make This Stuff Up/UPDATED with Biden Vaccine Townhall Live Feed

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Or, wait, that’s exactly what they do.

The conspiracy—which comes in several shapes and sizes—more or less says the vaccinated will “shed” certain proteins onto the unvaccinated who will then suffer adverse effects. The main worry is the “shedding” will cause irregular menstruation, infertility, and miscarriages. The entirely baseless idea is a key cog in a larger conspiracy that COVID-19 was a ploy to depopulate the world, and the vaccine is what will cull the masses.

Experts say the conspiracy is born from a fundamental misunderstanding of how vaccines work. It has been widely debunked and you can read about it here, here, and here, among other places.  

Anti-vax influencers are instructing their fellow anti-vaxxers as well as anti-maskers (at this point the two communities overlap to a huge degree) that one of the best ways to defend themselves from this blight is to co-opt…social distancing, the very strategy they have long decried.

Sherri Tenpenny, an anti-vaxxer who was found to be key in spreading COVID-19 conspiracy theories, suggested on a recent anti-vax livestream that you may have to “stay away from somebody who’s had these shots…forever.”

Me, pretty much the entire time I was travelling through NE:

May be an image of 7 people and text that says 'every second i'm out in public'

I’ll have happier posts later this week…promise. (I think the ducks missed me while I was away)

Updated to include the live feed of Biden/O’Donnel/Town Hall – as always you can rewind to the beginning

Reader Interactions

98Comments

  1. 1.

    mrmoshpotato

    Can we share our idiots with other countries? We seem to be hogging idiocy in the US.

  2. 2.

    J R in WV

    So now I hear the Anti-Vaxxers are going to mask up and keep their distance to avoid Vaccinated people shedding whatever their crazed conspiracy theories tell them vaccinated people will shed on them… This is good crazy, as that’s what we would want un-vaccinated people to do right off.

    But still really, really!! crazy.

    Best wishes to the ducks~!!~

    ETA: Stay away from vaccinated people — forever!!! No, No, worse than death — not.

  3. 3.

    chopper

    with every new, crazier-than-the-last idea, these people are like homer simpson having the crayon pushed further and further into his brain.

  4. 4.

    chopper

    suggested on a recent anti-vax livestream that you may have to “stay away from somebody who’s had these shots…forever.”

    oh no, please not that. please, crazy assholes, don’t stay as far from me as possible, i’d hate that

  5. 5.

    Ken

    Genius. Sheer genius.  Like ju-jitsu, turning the momentum of their headlong rush into lunacy against them.

  6. 6.

    sdhays

    @J R in WV: Yeah, this is crazy, but for once it’s actually crazy in a constructive direction – they may not get vaccinated, but they’ll finally take action to limit the pandemic. That’s a win.

    It’s going to be a battle between how crazy they are and how totally lazy they are. Unfortunately, in this instance, I think lazy is going to win, but I’d love to be wrong.

  7. 7.

    Mike in NC

    Schitt’s Creek was an amazing series. We hated it to end.

    Now we love For All Mankind on Apple TV.

  8. 8.

    Raoul Paste

    Masking to avoid the vaccinated people?     It really sounds like a SNL skit

  9. 9.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    Thanks for the promise of posts about the duckteens. I miss them (and Gabe)!

  10. 10.

    Barbara

    It was always going to be something. Anti-vaxxers, fundamentally, are devoted to the idea that in spite of their mediocre and uninteresting existence, they are not sheeple. Doesn’t matter if the positions they take over the course of the pandemic are incoherent, ascientific or just plain deranged. All that matters is that they aren’t sheeple and they are going in the opposite direction from the rest of us.​

  15. 15.

    dmsilev

    That “shedding” nonsense was the excuse used by that lunatic private school in Miami  that told its teachers _not_ to get vaccinated.

  18. 18.

    Jay

    The logical next step given the anti-vax and anti mask Conspiracy Theories so far,

    – masks don’t protect you, the stuff just blows through,

    – colloidal silver infused masks “might” work,

    – but the shedded particles will still infect you through bare skin and clothes,

    is that they create bubbles, never go out in public, never send their kids to school, never go into a workplace, ever,

    create their own communities, isolated from the rest of society,

    Works for me.

  19. 19.

    TaMara (HFG)

    I do have a cute Bixby/Gabe story. I took the dogs with me and for whatever reason, yesterday Bixby and Gabe spent a good 30 minutes with Gabe rubbing up against Bixby and Bixby nosing him. They’d do it for a few minutes, stop and then start up again. I guess they missed each other.

    I’ve never seen that before – mostly Gabe just sleeps on both dogs. LOL

  21. 21.

    satby

    @chopper: oh no, please not that. please, crazy assholes, don’t stay as far from me as possible, i’d hate that

    You beat me to it! Actually getting little shivers of joy at the thought of all the asshole redneck Dumpers at the farmers market FINALLY putting masks on their slack-jawed, dumbshit faces.  Yeah,I may have some resentment after 18 months of their bullshit.

  24. 24.

    Poe Larity

    Reverse psychology works on everyone with a 7 year old mentality.

    SHED UP, PEOPLE!

  25. 25.

    bcw

    I don’t think masking will be enough to protect these guys from our shedding. I think the only thing that will work is for them to put a plastic bag over their heads and tape tightly around their necks.  Just trying to protect them you know.    That said, how the hell does a osteopathic physician keep her medical license while spewing this kind of garbage?

     

    Actually an Oregon doctor got his license suspended for mask refusal:  https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article247648010.html

  28. 28.

    Poe Larity

    If shedders contaminate the voting booths, won’t anti-vaxxers need mail-in voting?

    This is where Mad Max floors the accelerator.

    (can someone photoshop Mel’s hair onto Joe?)

  29. 29.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @chopper:

    with every new, crazier-than-the-last idea, these people are like homer simpson having the crayon pushed further and further into his brain.

    LOL

    and they’re chanting I AM SARMT! all the way

  31. 31.

    Elizabelle

    Dr. Vivek Murthy is an outstandingly clear communicator.

    Naturally, Wussolini fired him.  We are so lucky to have Dr. Murthy back in the Biden administration.

  32. 32.

    jl

    @bcw: Huh, really weird. In some situations, clinical staff wearing masks has been SOP for a long time. During flu season, when around immunocompromised patients, if a TB exposure was in the clinic and staff were being tested for exposure. I don’t know what else… maybe some BJ medical commenters can weigh in. Was this guy being irresponsible way back then, too?

    Or was he sane about masks until it became some dumbshit bogus political symbol?

  33. 33.

    Jay

    @TaMara (HFG):

    Capra, Lil’ Bit and even Mellow, ( who is not, asshole), would greet Casey and Digger when they came back from a walk by leg rubbing and nose bumps.

    Packs are often weird once they form.

  34. 34.

    FlyingToaster

    So, at ~4:30pm the Commonwealth announced that there would be vaccines available for the 12-15 cohort beginning tomorrow.

    Sometime after 9 the vaccine scheduler went live.

    First I checked Walgreens, but all the local appointments were full.

    Then I went to the state site, and filled in my zip and WarriorTeen’s age.  And lo and behold, they have an appointment at 8:30 Friday morning, down the hill from their godlessparents.  Heh.

    I strongly suspect about half of the middle school are going to get shots this weekend.

  35. 35.

    dexwood

    Hmm… Shedding… Dandruff… Anti-vaxxers could end up in hazmat suits. I hope.

  37. 37.

    Elizabelle

    @Jay:   From your link, The Onion article.

    “What we’re hoping Americans understand is that every shot they receive for the coronavirus not only protects them, but also ensures that an impoverished man or woman in another country will be that much further away from getting their own protection,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, describing the nationwide campaign of TV spots, magazine ads, and billboards depicting a broadly smiling American receiving their shot contrasted against a openly weeping person from India or Kenya. “We’ve found that many Americans might not get a vaccine for their family or community, but they absolutely will if it means, say, a Paraguayan man has to watch his Covid-ravaged grandfather expire from an acute respiratory illness. … “

    A campaign like that might actually work with Tucker’s audience. America First!, for those Bill Gates microchip vaccines we don’t even want to take. Keep it out of a foreigner’s arm.

  38. 38.

    jl

    @Poe Larity: “If shedders contaminate the voting booths, won’t anti-vaxxers need mail-in voting? ”

    At first I thought that the crazies were worried about us vaccinated zombies shedding Gates microsoft chips that would get automatically implanted when they drifted up their noses or something.

    But it’s the vaccine? The mRNA vaccines are so delicate that they are torn apart before they get out of the body. The RNA falls apart rapidly right inside the cell after it finishes its run through the little protein factories. I guess it needs to be, the cells need to make a lot of protein and if mRNA were stable, after awhile all the old mRNA that had done its job, and was wandering  around the cells completely useless, would clog up everything. The little lipid bubbles are torn up and I think pissed out after a day or two.

    But some science person as welcome to correct me if I’m wrong

    Edit: and the other vaccines, I think, are just variations on existing models that have been around for years.

  39. 39.

    debbie

    This is certainly cheerful news. I’m fine if the idiots stay far away from me forever.

  40. 40.

    Benw

    You know what would really piss off vaccinated people? Getting the vaccine!

    Think about it! They think they’re soooo superior with their “immunity” and “not dying,” but if you get the shot, they’re not even special anymore.

    Let’s get everyone vaccinated to own the libs!

    Also, star belly Sneetches are the best kind of Sneetches

  41. 41.

    jl

    @debbie: It is, we shouldn’t make too much fun and let them in on the secret. They are finally helping out. Broken clocks correct twice a day type of thing.

    People still need to wear masks indoors for another month or two in places like LA and SF and Seattle, even though vaccinated more than almost anyplace in the US. Still too much disease running around for high risk people who can’t get vaccinated for medical reasons.

    In some places where a lot of people won’t get any of the vaccines, masking inside is needed for maybe another year, since it will take that long for the circulating disease to die down. That is assuming eventually enough people get vaccinated in those places to prevent it from becoming officially endemic, which we can and should avoid, but some places are going to be so stupid that they won’t get that job done.

  42. 42.

    Kay

    Skanda Amarnath ( Neoliberal Sellout )
    @IrvingSwisher
    ICYMI: the disincentive explanation for the April drop-off in payroll gains fails to fit the sectoral data. If a $300 weekly supplement was having that effect, we should see it more visibly in low-wage sectors, but we don’t. Mid- & high-wage sectors account for bulk of slowdown

    Lazy low wage moochers theory might need updating.

  44. 44.

    Jeffro

    @Jay: I predict 99% vaccination rates after this info gets out ???

    may as well tell the anti-vaxxers that the guy in the cardboard box next to them doesn’t have a vaccine or a needle to jab it in his arm

  47. 47.

    Elizabelle

    Peter Baker (yes, of FTF NY Times) is such a fucking bullshitter.  Acting like the GOP leadership might cooperate more with Biden, but for their fear of ticking TFG off.  Also that TFG is a useful foil for the Democrats.

    Gaslighter.  Smug-ass gaslighter.

  49. 49.

    West of the Rockies

    Will a vaccinated person purposefully cough on the unvaccinated in a weird reversal of behavior from a few months ago?

  52. 52.

    Poe Larity

    @jl: You’re trying to rationalize the inanity.

    Typhoid Pfizer / Moderna need to be in their hearts and minds.

  54. 54.

    LadySuzy

    @TaMara (HFG): President Biden also said it when he departed Delaware for the Inauguration. It’s in his heart: he really thinks Beau should be in his place.

    Yes Beau had tremendous potential. Intelligence, heart, integrity. His dying young is an absolute tragedy.

    But President Joe Biden is too humble. His vast experience and the patience, the calm that comes with it, are now making him the perfect man for these times.

  55. 55.

    Neldob

    Those bonkers bungholes sure hate Fauci. I listened to a bit of hate radio, took a break, came back and they were still mocking and deriding him. I couldn’t quite get the gist of their complaints.

  56. 56.

    Amir Khalid

    Is that guy in the vaccine-shedding video for realz, or is he just trolling Covid-19 deniers?
    I’m spending a very quiet, catless Eid just chilling with a Strat. I miss my girl.

  59. 59.

    JoyceH

    I just realized – the next level will be these clowns making disruptive scenes in stores demanding that everybody mask up, to protect them from the vaccinated.

  60. 60.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    god help us, are we in for another generational ride on the Bush Family Oedipal Loop-De-Loop?

    George P. Bush @georgepbush · 5h
    Republicans deserve leadership that represents the views of their constituents, not their own personal vendettas. We need leaders in Congress that stand up for conservative Republican ideology, and Liz Cheney is not that leader.

    To avenge my daddy for getting pantsed in front the whole country (and get revenge on Uncle George for stealing his presidency)I must kneel before the man who pantsed my daddy in front of the whole country.

  63. 63.

    MomSense

    I’m seriously tempted to have some tshirts made that say something like “Beware I’m shedding”

  66. 66.

    Another Scott

    Oil crisis in United States proves wisdom of Marshal Kim Jong-Un and his peaceful Atomic Energy Programme.

    — DPRK News Service (@DPRK_News) May 13, 2021

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  67. 67.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Another Scott: I wonder how much idiots were paying to fill up bags and Rubbermaid containers with gasoline.

    ETA – and when do we hear about the first tub-of-gas-caused house fire?

  68. 68.

    Another Scott

    Eh, it’s just a crack. What’s the big deal?

    NPR:

    Traffic on and below a major bridge over the Mississippi River near Memphis could be halted for several days or longer, causing significant disruptions to motorists and shipping, officials said on Wednesday.

    Authorities in Arkansas and Tennessee, along with the U.S. Coast Guard, indefinitely stopped all traffic related to the Hernando de Soto Bridge on Interstate 40 after inspectors discovered a crack in the steel structure on Tuesday and Tennessee officials say repairs could take some time.

    The bridge connects Memphis, Tenn., to West Memphis, Ark., and is a crucial waterway for barges transporting crops to export markets. Crews have begun emergency repairs.

    Inspectors discovered the major fracture in a steel beam on the bottom truss that is crucial to the integrity of the bridge. Officials said it was found during a routine inspection.

    […]

    Ah, I see the problem. We need to cut the budget for bridge inspectors – Pronto!!

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  76. 76.

    CaseyL

    I would be ecstatic to wear a “Caution! I’m VACCINATED and SHEDDING!” except that I don’t generally encounter people that stupid, and I’m not about to try extending my circle of acquaintances to include a few.

    The Town Hall was terrific. Sad to say, President Biden is whistling past the graveyard when it comes to getting any GQP votes for any of his programs.

    And Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett is *amazing* – I’d like to see her speak in public a lot more.

  79. 79.

    Splitting Image

    Experts say the conspiracy is born from a fundamental misunderstanding of how vaccines work. It has been widely debunked and you can read about it here, here, and here, among other places.  

    The experts are wrong if they think that. This conspiracy is born from classic DARVO. Deny. Accuse. Reverse Victim and Offender.

    Standard logic would conclude that COVID cannot have been both a hoax and a Chinese bioweapon. But both theories work very nicely together when your goal is to deny the actual problem, throw the blame on someone else, and make yourself out to be the victim. COVID-deniers never cared whether it was the Chinese government or the US government oppressing them. As long as everybody knew that their little selves were the victims here.

    Now the vaccines seem to be getting things under control and what have we got? Denying the reality, accusing someone of wrongdoing, and making themselves out to be the victims again. As predictable as the rain in April.

  81. 81.

    Interstadial

    @Poe Larity: 

    Mail-in voting is out for these folks. Many postal workers and election workers have been vaccinated, so the contamination is on and in all election materials. The only way to be safe is to immediately drop these dangerous items in the garbage can and never, ever vote.

  82. 82.

    Mary G

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: The OC is down to 1.0% positive and only 1.8 new cases a day per 100,000 people, so we qualify for the yellow level! We still have protesters, who made a scene at the county supervisors’ meeting, with the usual unintelligible arguments, this time about vaccine passports being the same as the Nazis’ yellow stars and FREEDUMB to not wear a mask at Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. Disneyland has already banned a couple of people, because they are selling masks with characters on them like hotcakes, and want to stay in the yellow level because they can let in 50% of normal pre-pandemic customer levels instead of the 25% we’ve been at in the orange. C.R.E.A.M!

  85. 85.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @chopper: 

    No shit, really… it would be ummm… horrible! Yes, horrible for them to get too close to me and my ah, shedding. Right. Yup, it would be really really bad and they should do me, I mean themselves a solid and stay safe by staying away from me.

  88. 88.

    Sloane Ranger

    Step 1, convince these idiots that they have to wear masks and socially isolate themselves from vaccinated people for the rest of their lives.

    Step 2, sell them essential oils, vitamin supplements guaranteed to protect them against the dangers posed by vaccinated people and bingo, guaranteed loyal customer base for the rest of their lives!

    Or, for the more ambitious, real estate scam involving buying properties in their special private, for the unvaccinated only, development where they will be safe.

    It’s a winner.

  89. 89.

    Raven

    I’m off to the boat for a long awaited off shore trip. I’m interested in what the mask situation will be. Ten people in Florida I’m thinking I’m glad I’m vaccinated!

  91. 91.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: ​
     

    That’s some low energy.

    The party of Dump is never going to vote for a POC. The idiot media spent years anointing Nikki Haley and the latest 2024 gop poll has her at a measly 6%. Who could have known.

    And they’re never going to vote for another Bush, as they blame Dubya for Obama’s election.

  93. 93.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Amir Khalid: It’s impossible to separate ironic mockery from the actual crazy anymore. Because the crazy has become so exaggerated.

  95. 95.

    Chris Johnson

    Please don’t go make up ‘I’M SHEDDING’ T-shirts.

    It’s really obvious that the purpose of this is just to make crazed terrorists wingnuts start SHOOTING the ‘threats’ that apparently surround them. Anything, anything about the logic of what are vaccines, what are masks, what is shedding, is totally irrelevant.

    This is totally about trying to make the domestic terrorists (a) not necessarily all die off from COVID, and (b) give them another excuse to start shooting. That’s 100% all there is to see here. Bonus points for contriving a way to keep the domestic terrorists from all keeling over from COVID, but even that ain’t gonna work too well because all that will happen is the wingnuts/terrorists will mask themselves up when around their ‘enemies’, and pointedly avoid doing so around… each other. So it’s not gonna save them, much.

  96. 96.

    Karen

    I’m ecstatic if the anti-vaxxers stay away from me. My brain hurts from the Vice article.

  98. 98.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Calouste: …conspiracy theories are a way for stupid people to feel smart.

    I wouldn’t be that harsh. Once you climb past the basic biochemical needs levels on the Maslovian pyramid, most people want two things out of life: significance and control. Simply put, they want their life to matter and they want the ability to affect the world around them.

    An effective conspiracy theory tells its adherents that (1) they matter because they’re in on the “secret history” the sane world laughs at and (2) they understand enough of that “secret history” to act meaningfully on the information.

    Communism was famously called “the God that failed” post-WW2., but in Century 21 its role has been taken by Science. Many, many people simultaneously enjoy and applaud the technological advances (Internet, cell phones, weather prediction, space exploration, etc.) but understand little about the scientific advances they’re based on. I think it’s understandable for people without deep scientific training – and many with it – to not really understand those foundations.

    And that’s completely understandable; Ever since 1900, when Max Planck hypothesized the quantization of energy, scientific  developments have become more and more counterintuitive to anyone not immersed in the applicable fields[1]. In realms much larger or smaller, much hotter or colder, much longer or shorter than we are accustomed to deal with in our daily lives, very little makes “common sense.”

    This is an object lesson in Clarke’s Third Law [2] – for nearly everyone without advanced scientific training, the technology they use every day (and the science it is derived from) might as well be magic. Totally understandable, but it leads to gross misunderstanding of how science works, how fast (or slow) it works[3], how many guesses and partial truths and outright mistakes it tosses out along the way, how much valid data is required to sort those out.

    Scientists are magicians; they’re supposed to know how everything works, and produce whatever’s needed right away with a wave of a wand and a shazaam! If they can’t fix everything right away, they’re stalling; if they make guesses that turn out to be wrong, they’re lying – they are black magicians, doing things for their own benefit or on the orders of the evil people they are beholden to for their money and power and prestige.

    And of course for many of the uninformed, scientist-magicians come into direct conflict with that other system of magical thinking in the far-right corner of a big tent labeled Religion. They don’t need no steenkin’ masks or “socialist distancing” or vaccines – God, Who always answers their prayers[4], will spare them and theirs if they are faithful, and if not, well, that’s part of His[5] divine plan and is not to be questioned, didn’t you hear my preacher say so?

    Ah well…

    [1] E.g., Niels Bohr once said If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet – and as one of the founders of the discipline he frackin’ well ought to have known.

    [2] “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

    [3] E.g., the initial paradoxical (not to say preposterous) results of the Michelson-Morley experiment were observed in the early 1880s – and were not satisfactorily explained until 1905, by Einstein’s “special relativity.”

    [4] Cf. the well known “God will save me ” trope.

    [5] Always seems to be a He, dunnit?

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