Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

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

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

T R E 4 5 O N

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

The words do not have to be perfect.

No one could have predicted…

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Friday / Saturday, July 16-17

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Friday / Saturday, July 16-17

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Bad headline — don’t let it scare you:

…. The target action date does not mean the approval will not happen before January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock said on Twitter. (https://bit.ly/36Ixfkm)

“Quite to the contrary, the review of this BLA (biologics license application) has been ongoing, is among the highest priorities of the agency, and the agency intends to complete the review far in advance of the PDUFA goal date.”…

Pfizer/BioNTech finished submitting their application for a full U.S. approval in May and the agency will review the data under its “priority review” pathway.

The FDA in May expanded the emergency use of the two-shot vaccine to children 12 through 15 years of age.

The companies said on Friday they intend to submit an application to support approval of the vaccine in this age group once the required data is available six months after the second dose…

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Who else remembers toxic shock syndrome, from the 1980s?

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Reader Interactions

51Comments

  2. 2.

    Cermet

    For those that think Covid-19 is only as bad as the flu don’t seem to realize that the ‘common’ flu kills tens of thousands (just in the US), takes weeks to get over, and generally causes ugly secondary bacteria infections that often occur in the lungs or nasal passages for most people that get it.
    Yet tens of millions do get a flu vaccination even though the vaccine generally has a very poor track record (lucky if it has an efficiency over 50% but never really above 60%.)
    Finally, a plot line in a novel where people refuse a live saving drug just for political reasons would never fly in any publishing company’s review yet here we are, living it!

  3. 3.

    RSA

    “It is telling that we spent billions of dollars on developing vaccines, but much less on thinking about how to make sure people are willing to use them,” Tucker said.

    “The original Biden-Harris Transition COVID task force lacked any misinformation experts. It is high time to get social scientists who study human behavior and misinformation more centrally involved in the government’s response to COVID.”

    I think most of our government’s professional expertise in persuasion targets our enemies rather than our own citizens. It would be difficult, politically, to make the switch, even if it has to do with misinformation.

    “Would you like to know more?”

  4. 4.

    Baud

    @Cermet:

    If the idiots refusing vaccines weren’t primary white conservatives, Hollywood would be mocking them left and right.

  5. 5.

    lowtechcyclist

    “It is telling that we spent billions of dollars on developing vaccines, but much less on thinking about how to make sure people are willing to use them.”

    My simple proposal: temporarily revoke all broadcast and cable TV licenses of any broadcast/cable outlets that are spreading vaccine misinformation, until this crisis is OVER.

    Yeah, I know: under what authority? That is the problem. It used to be a basic requirement of an FCC broadcast license that the licensee had to serve the public interest, and such misinformation is blatantly incompatible with the public interest. I don’t know if that still applies; my days of familiarity with FCC regulation are 40 years in the past, and I really don’t know how the 1996 telecom act changed things.

    And sadly, this requirement never applied to cable. As best as I can tell, there aren’t now and never were any legal mechanisms available to prevent someone with a cable channel from spreading harmful lies, as long as they don’t libel a particular person or corporation.

  6. 6.

    Ruckus

    I live in LA county.

    I haven’t stopped wearing a mask when around people. And at the stores I use I’d say at least 50% never stopped. But the other 50% have and I’m just hoping that they don’t be complete assholes and go back to wearing them. I’m not holding my breath but I am still wearing a mask. Some stores, like Target have been pretty strong on mask wearing when it was mandated, I’ll bet they start again, well today.

  7. 7.

    Emmyelle

    I love how Very Serious Conservatives are working so hard to make it our fault that the Death Cult that they birthed and fed is acting like a Death Cult.

  8. 8.

    NorthLeft12

    Great report as always Annie.

    In Ontario we have moved to step 3 in our reopening. There are still many restrictions on businesses and our province wide mask mandate is still in effect. This relaxation is supported by our current status in both Covid-19 cases and vaccinations. Still vaccinating over 1% of the population every day.

    Tomorrow I am going back home to help my brother and sister and my father’s wife to plan his internment in August. He died of congestive heart failure in early June. In the hospital, alone and isolated because all the hospitals were locked down and not allowing visitors. No visitors at all, no matter their vaccination status or recent test results. He was very much afraid and lonely.

    We can’t let this happen again.

  10. 10.

    Suzanne

    Ross the Douche is trying so, so hard to make his terrible supporters feel less terrible.

  11. 11.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    I had to borrow a car from my folks yesterday (they have three; made no point to rent).  When I turned on the radio, it was set to the local hard right talk station –  I think owned by Sinclair.  When I returned it, I spent a couple of hours with my mom and dad yesterday afternoon at lunchtime. When I went in the house, of course, Fox News was on. As we spoke, I had one eye on the TV – programming consisted of Hunter Biden, some Texas border wall bullshit and a lot of whining about calling antivax material “misinformation” that should be deleted from social media. Dad gets tired quick and has lost a couple more pounds, so he went into the next room and, interestingly, immediately reverted to his previous welcome form of flipping between horse races, baseball games and TMC movies. His weirdness (besides some cognitive issues) is highly correlated to mom’s penchant for shitty RW programming.

  12. 12.

    Matt McIrvin

    I don’t see a lot of liberal sneering at low-income and/or black and Hispanic vaccine-resistant people. There’s a fair bit of empathy for their reasons for mistrusting institutions, or being confused by the options for getting the shots, or being unwilling to miss work from a few days of side effects.

    But… I recent saw a survey of the reasons people gave for not being vaccinated, and they broke it down by race and political affiliation. I was struck by the large number of whites and the large number of Republicans who gave, as a primary reason they weren’t vaccinated, “just don’t want to”. Not fear or mistrust, not apprehension over needles for side effects, but something more like “you can’t make me”.

    It’s hard to empathize with that. And the worst of all–the targets for weapons-grade ire–are Republican politicians and TV pundits sowing fear and denial of the vaccine. They know better, or should know better. They have no excuse and they’re killing people. Am I suppose to reserve any sympathy whatsoever for Tucker Carlson? The man is clearly vaccinated and he’s telling other people not to get it. He’s a monster.

  13. 13.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @RSA: It would inevitably be called the “Dept of Propaganda” and demonized by certain people no matter what.

  14. 14.

    YY_Sima Qian

    On 7/16 China reported 2 new domestic confirmed & 0 new domestic asymptomatic cases.

    Yunnan Province reported 2 new domestic confirmed cases (1 moderate & 1 mild, both Chinese nationals), 1 each at Ruili & Longchuan County, Dehong Prefecture. Both were found via mass screening. There currently are 68 domestic confirmed & 1 domestic asymptomatic cases. Longchuan County has been placed under lock down. 1 community at Ruili remains at High Risk.

    Nanjing in Jiangsu Province did not report any new domestic positive cases, there is 1 domestic confirmed case there.

    Imported Cases

    On 7/16, China reported 28 new imported confirmed cases, 20 imported asymptomatic cases:

    • Kunming in Yunnan Province – 7 confirmed cases, 6 Chinese & 1 Burmese nationals returning from Myanmar; 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from Sri Lanka
    • Yunnan Province (locations not specified) – 4 confirmed cases, all Chinese nationals returning from Myanmar via land border crossing
    • Changsha in Hunan Province – 5 confirmed (all previously asymptomatic) & 2 asymptomatic cases, no information released 
    • Xiamen in Fujian Province – 4 confirmed cases (2 previously asymptomatic), 3 Taiwanese residents coming from Taiwan & 1 Chinese national returning from Malaysia
    • Fuzhou in Fujian Province – 2 asymptomatic cases, both Chinese nationals returning from Japan
    • Shanghai Municipality – 3 confirmed cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Brazil (via Switzerland), Nigeria (via Frankfurt), & the Ukraine (via Frankfurt)
    • Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province – 2 confirmed cases (both previously asymptomatic); 2 asymptomatic cases, both coming from the US
    • Xi’an in Shaanxi Province – 2 confirmed cases (previously asymptomatic),
    • Guangzhou in Guangdong Province – 1 confirmed case, a Chinese national returning from Bangladesh; 4 asymptomatic cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar & the DRC
    • Zhongshan in Guangdong Province – 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from Chad, off a flight that landed at Guangzhou
    • Chengdu in Sichuan Province – 5 asymptomatic cases, all Chinese nationals returning from Myanmar
    • Wuhan in Hubei Province – 2 asymptomatic cases, both Chinese nationals returning from Afghanistan
    • Tianjin Municipality – 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from Niger (via Paris CdG)
    • Beijing Municipality – 1 asymptomatic case, no information released

    Overall in China, 28 confirmed cases recovered, 18 asymptomatic cases were released from isolation & 9 were reclassified as confirmed cases, and 632 individuals were released from quarantine. Currently, there are 538 active confirmed cases in the country (469 imported), 12 in serious condition (9 imported), 444 asymptomatic cases (439 imported), 0 suspect cases. 7,197 traced contacts are currently under centralized quarantine.

    As of 7/16, 1,437.623M vaccine doses have been injected in Mainland China, an increase of 11.276M doses in the past 24 hrs.

    On 7/17, Hong Kong reported 3 new positive cases, all imported (1 each from Namibia, fully vaccinated in Apr. w/ Pfizer-BioNTech, Cyprus, fully vaccinated in Apr. w/ Sputnik V, & Ghana).

  15. 15.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Ruckus:

    I still keep a mask with me in case someone wants me to use it, but given the numbers of the belligerently unvaccinated in the area where my home is, I’m fatalistic about it. It’s going to rage through them, I can’t stop it, and it’s going to mutate. Best case scenario is if it targets belligerently unvaccinated douches and douchettes, and either bankrupts or kills them.

    I get pleasure over the thought of camo-clad chin mullets drawling out some whines about how meemaw, peepaw and others done got killt by that there virus….

  16. 16.

    New Deal democrat

    Today’s news:

    1. Florida, which only reports once a week now (because the virus is “over,” right?), did so yesterday. And cases nearly doubled just in one week, to just over 30 per 100,000 daily. Florida is now in 2nd place right behind Arkansas, but has surged ahead of Missouri.

    2. The 4th of July, collectively, was a superspreader event. It is the date after which, even in the heavily vaccinated States of the Northeast, cases immediately began to rise.

    3. For the first time since March 2020, we have uncontrolled exponential spread. The differences are that over 50% of the population is vaccinated, including 80% of seniors. On the other hand, “delta” is apparently much worse for younger people, who are the least vaccinated age demographic. The blue States won’t need to do much beyond reinstituting mandatory masking and social distancing indoors. The red States need to do more, but won’t do anything. So the exponential spread will continue.

    4. So we will have a macabre behavioral experiment, as cases and deaths mount, so see when – or if – GOPers finally panic enough on their own to take the simple action that has been available to them for nearly 6 months.

  17. 17.

    Kristine

    Thanks for the link to the J&J paper. I had heard anecdotally that response grew over time. Good to see it has some staying power as well.

  18. 18.

    Sloane Ranger

    Friday in the UK we had 51,870 new cases. This is an increase of 34.9% in the rolling 7-day average. New cases by nation,

    England – 47,360 (up 2837)

    Northern Ireland – 1380 (up 297)

    Scotland – 2047 (down 39)

    Wales – 1083 (up 222).

    Deaths – There were 49 deaths within 28 days of a positive test yesterday. This is an increase of 57.4% in the rolling 7-day average. 42 deaths were in England, 5 in Scotland and 2 in Wales.

    Testing – Thursday, 15 July, 1,177,716 tests were administered. This was a decrease in the rolling 7-day average of 1.8%. The PCR testing capacity reported by labs on that date was 644,403.

    Hospitalisations – There were 3964 people in hospital and 551 on ventilators as of Thursday 15 July. The rolling 7-day average for hospital admissions as of 12 July was up by 43.4%.

    Vaccinations – As of 15 July, 46,159,145 people had received the 1st shot of a vaccine and 35,543,321 had had both. This means that 87.6% of all adults in the UK have had 1 shot and 67.5% were fully vaccinated.

    General – I am worried about Monday when all restrictions are lifted in England but I also know that more and more people are ignoring the restrictions and those who are tasked with trying to “police” them, from shops to bus drivers are increasingly shrugging their shoulders and doing nothing. Among people I’ve spoken to, there is widespread belief that COVID will be with us for the foreseeable future and we will just have to learn to live with it. To be fair, the governments in the UK are in a Catch 22 position. Keep restrictions in place, no matter how minor they are and people will complain and might not vote for them next time. Remove the restrictions and, if hospitalisations, deaths and even nastier variants emerge, people will complain and might not vote for them next time. I think Boris et al are betting that the high vaccination rate will blunt the effect of the increase in case numbers and keep hospitalisations and deaths down to numbers that don’t cause a political backlash.

  19. 19.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s Director-General of Health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah reports 12,528 new Covid-19 cases today in his media statement, for a cumulative reported total of 905,851 cases. He also reports 138 new deaths today, for a cumulative total of 6,866 deaths — 0.76% of the cumulative reported total, 0.87% of resolved cases.

    There are currently 119,814 active and contagious cases; 908 are in ICU, 425 of them intubated. Meanwhile, 6,629 more patients have recovered, for a cumulative total of 779,171 patients recovered – 86.02% of the cumulative reported total.

    28 new clusters were reported today, for a cumulative total of 3,233 clusters. 906 clusters are currently active; 2,327 clusters are now inactive.

    12,509 new cases today are local infections. Selangor reports 4,981 local cases: 70 in clusters, 2,876 close-contact screenings, and 2,035 other screenings. Kuala Lumpur reports 1,725 local cases: 579 in clusters, 647 close-contact screenings, and 499 other screenings. Negeri Sembilan reports 1,280 cases: 282 in clusters, 581 close-contact screenings, and 417 other screenings.

    Kedah reports 701 cases: 79 in clusters, 455 close-contact screenings, and 167 other screenings.

    Sabah reports 647 cases: 287 in clusters, 220 close-contact screenings, and 140 other screenings. Johor reports 625 cases: 325 in clusters, 213 close-contact screenings, and 87 other screenings.

    Melaka reports 569 cases: 303 in clusters, 142 close-contact screenings, and 124 other screenings.
    Perak reports 428 cases: 152 in clusters, 100 close-contact screenings, and 176 other screenings.

    Penang reports 396 cases: 172 in clusters, 135 close-contact screenings, and 89 other screenings. Sarawak reports 388 cases: 57 in clusters, 271 close-contact screenings, and 60 other screenings. Pahang reports 317 cases: 81 in clusters, 195 close-contact screenings, and 41 other screenings.

    Kelantan reports 211 cases: 131 in clusters, 54 close-contact screenings, and 26 other screenings.

    Terengganu reports 177 cases: 84 in clusters, 75 close-contact screenings, and 18 other screenings.

    Putrajaya reports 41 cases: 26 close-contact screenings and 15 other screenings. Labuan reports 22 cases: four in clusters, six close-contact screenings, and 12 other screenings. Perlis reports one case, a close-contact screening.

    19 new cases today are imported: 15 in Kuala Lumpur and four in Selangor.

    The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 406,763 doses of vaccine on 16th July: 276,905 first doses and 129,858 second doses (including to me). As of yesterday, the cumulative total is 13,514,479 doses administered: 9,226,004 first doses and 4,288,475 second doses.

  22. 22.

    New Deal democrat

    @charon: Heh! FL, AR, and MO are in a real-world version of the finals in the “upper class twit of the year” sketch.

    And at this point I just want them to get it over with asap.

  23. 23.

    Matt McIrvin

    @New Deal democrat:

    The 4th of July, collectively, was a superspreader event. It is the date after which, even in the heavily vaccinated States of the Northeast, cases immediately began to rise.

    I’ve been looking at MA’s numbers very closely and I think the turning point was actually about June 25th. I don’t think the main trigger was the 4th of July so much as it was Delta becoming the dominant variant.

    The blue States won’t need to do much beyond reinstituting mandatory masking and social distancing indoors.

    I don’t think it’s going to happen even in most of the blue states. At this point, a lot of vaccinated liberals have the attitude “let it rip, it’ll be the sniffles for me and if a bunch of Republicans die, fuck ’em.” I’m not sure they’re entirely thinking it through. It’s a pretty dire situation for immunocompromised people and parents of children under 12. And it’ll kill a lot of the people who are vaccine-hesitant for more understandable reasons.

  24. 24.

    debbie

    Ohio’s daily rate is back up to more than 500. Just a couple of weeks ago, it was down to around 100. A lost opportunity to get past this.

  25. 25.

    New Deal democrat

    @Matt McIrvin: Apparently Delta has a shorter incubation time, so cases could start up quickly after infection.

    Both LA county in CA, and Clark County (Las Vegas) in NV reinstated mask requirements yesterday. I think a 2nd CA county did as well. I expect that more counties and states will follow. Obviously we’ll see.

  27. 27.

    Splitting Image

    @lowtechcyclist:

    And sadly, this requirement never applied to cable. As best as I can tell, there aren’t now and never were any legal mechanisms available to prevent someone with a cable channel from spreading harmful lies, as long as they don’t libel a particular person or corporation.

    Just wanted to point out that Fox News has libelled a particular person or corporation by claiming specific companies’ voting machines were rigged to support Biden. They retracted the lie as soon as they were sued for it, but in a manner of speaking, it is hopeful to realize that they are getting careless.

  28. 28.

    Ten Bears

    Occurs to me that there are indeed two types these day’s: those vaccinated against the Trump-Flu, whose bodies have been tricked, trained, taught to recognize spiked viri as a threat and manufacture the anti-bodies to combat them ~ something every other animal in the animal kingdom can do but apparently humans, the crown of creation, cannot, our bodies need to be taught: recognize all manner of spiked viri: flus, common colds, malaria, HIV as a threat and generate the anti-bodies necessary to combat them ~ and those who are not. Think of it as an evolutionary iteration.

    It’s a ones and zeros thing, and as ever, I am laughing at the white-trash’s “superiority”

  29. 29.

    Robert Sneddon

    Scotland — 2,317 new cases of COVID-19 and four deaths reported. Test positivity rate is 8.6%. 49 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19, that’s up one from yesterday but again with the caveat that any deaths yesterday are likely to be of people who were occupying intensive care beds.

    There were 21,000 vaccinations carried out in Scotland yesterday, the New Normal number, again with one-third first dose and two-thirds second dose. That makes 66.4% of 18+ adults in Scotland fully vaccinated and 89% with at least the first dose. This keeps Scotland on target to first-dose more than 90% of all adults by the end of July.

    The central Glasgow vaccination superhub at the Hydro on Finnieston Quay is closing to make way for the UN’s COP26 climate change conference that’s scheduled to take place there in October. There’s been a move towards more spread-out community vaccination operations, mobile centres on converted buses and the like so the loss of that single large facility is probably not going to have much of an effect on the overall vaccination program given the consistently lower numbers of vaccinations being carried out at the moment.

  30. 30.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: THEY! WILL! BE! RESPECTED! as they stomp their feet and scream like a 1-year-old who needs a nap. They really do have the most fragile feelings, don’t they, especially for people who proudly wore “fuck your feelings” shirts. “I won’t get vaccinated because you hurt my feelings” is childish and dumb.

  31. 31.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ten Bears:

    something every other animal in the animal kingdom can do but apparently humans, the crown of creation, cannot, our bodies need to be taught

    I don’t think we’re any worse at this than other species are. Coronaviruses are ultimately zoonotic after all.

  32. 32.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Yeah, same with our fine moderate Republican governor here in Maryland. Fortunately he’s term-limited, but unfortunately we’ve got another year and a half before his sorry ass is out the door.

  33. 33.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: If they did try to reinstate a mask mandate here in the heart of the worst outbreak, only vaccinated people would wear them, and the nutters would scream like you cut their arm off. It would be useless and counterproductive, as crazy as that sounds. They literally are willing to risk death to show we aren’t the boss of them.

    I talked to our old karaoke DJ last night. She can’t get the shot yet because she got blood clots from having Covid; they want her off blood thinners before she gets vaccinated. Yet another reason to be fed up with the anti-vaxx idiots.

  34. 34.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Splitting Image: ​
     

    Just wanted to point out that Fox News has libelled a particular person or corporation by claiming specific companies’ voting machines were rigged to support Biden. They retracted the lie as soon as they were sued for it, but in a manner of speaking, it is hopeful to realize that they are getting careless.

    The problem is, situations where their spreading of dangerous lies defames a particular entity is going to generally be the exception, not the rule.

    Maybe if the makers of the Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J vaccines joined together in a suit and effectively said, “OK, these lies are unquestionably about one or more of us, and are defaming all of us, so try to get out of that,” maybe that would work from a legal standpoint. But IANAL, so that’s way out of my bailiwick.

  35. 35.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2: My heart really goes out to the people who can’t get the shots, or on whom they don’t work well for some reason. They never asked for this.

    In my state, minors still need parental consent to get vaccinated, and some kids my daughter knows are being obstructed by antivaxxer parents. But she’s managed to persuade two of her friends to get shots.

  36. 36.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    Dear Dr. Woodcock:  I know you are a fundamentally honest person, but you don’t understand the optics of the vaccine refuseniks and the requirements of employers to mandate vaccination. It IS NOT helpful to say full FDA approval won’t happen until January.  I know from May to January is fast track as my spouse worked under you, but please just say that getting Pfizer to full approval is the top priority for the FDA and that you are working as fast and as accurately as the FDA can.  Otherwise you are giving these assholes ammunition for their delusions that the vaccine isn’t fully safe and untested.

  37. 37.

    Brachiator

    @Matt McIrvin:

    But… I recent saw a survey of the reasons people gave for not being vaccinated, and they broke it down by race and political affiliation. I was struck by the large number of whites and the large number of Republicans who gave, as a primary reason they weren’t vaccinated, “just don’t want to”. Not fear or mistrust, not apprehension over needles for side effects, but something more like “you can’t make me”.

    Yeah. This unfortunately makes a lot of sense. There was always an undercurrent of this steadily pushed by conservative politicians. Now in both the US and the UK it manifests itself as the idea that wearing masks or getting the vaccine is purely a matter of personal responsibility. And if dopes don’t want it, nobody can force them to do otherwise.

  38. 38.

    Ian R

    Meanwhile, Amazon has decided that covid is over in the US, and is rolling back all the policy changes they made for the pandemic. So fuck their 1.3 million US employees, I guess.

  39. 39.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    I get pleasure over the thought of camo-clad chin mullets drawling out some whines about how meemaw, peepaw and others done got killt by that there virus….

    We already know how this works from all the previous COVID waves. A lot of them simply deny that these people died of COVID, even if the state says they did (which is itself by no means guaranteed). Most of the victims who die are quite old and have other medical conditions, so there’s always that excuse to reach for. “They didn’t die of COVID, they died WITH COVID.” Many of the deaths are recorded as heart disease, diabetes or stroke, since COVID attacks the circulatory system. You can see this in the excess-death counts–in some states there are large numbers of these deaths that ebb and flow precisely with COVID death rates.

    In the extreme cases, you have the people who go to their graves insisting that the respiratory-circulatory disease that is killing them is not COVID.

  40. 40.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brachiator: If the people who are touting “personal responsibility” really meant it, they’d be exhorting individuals to get vaccinated voluntarily, as an exercise of personal responsibility. Prove you don’t need to be coerced because you’re a responsible adult. But they seem to intend the opposite.

  41. 41.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ian R: This is the same pattern that’s driven me nuts since the first wave of heavily touted “reopenings” over a YEAR ago: declining case rates give everyone a sense of relief, institutions and governments put themselves on a rigid timetable to lift the restrictions everyone hates, and then they stick to that timetable come hell or high water, even as new infection waves upend the situation. I’d call it the Charlie Baker formula but he’s far from the worst example.

  42. 42.

    Citizen Alan

    @RSA:  Can you imagine how Fox News would scream if the Biden admin did include misinformation experts in their covid programs?!?

  43. 43.

    Ian R

    @Matt McIrvin: The funny thing is that they’re lifting the rules that everyone likes. (e.g. getting rid of the extra break rooms that they put in to allow social distancing, so now 2/3 of employees’ break time will be wasted walking to and from the one break room in the giant warehouse)

  45. 45.

    Bill Arnold

    @Ten Bears:

    something every other animal in the animal kingdom can do but apparently humans, the crown of creation, cannot, our bodies need to be taught:

    This is false. Humans are little different than other animals in this regard. (Better but still imperfect population hygiene being one difference.) There are plenty of pandemics that rip through animal populations. Recent, in my area, West Nile wiped out most crows. A few decades ago, a rabies pandemic imported from the south (I”m in NYS) wiped out like 90 percent of raccoons. Plant pathogens routinely wipe out or destroy most of native species,. Our pets are vaccinated against several diseases (and cats are pretty close to their wild cousins).
    Not sure where you’re getting your priors from, but please supplement them.

  46. 46.

    sab

    @NorthLeft12: I am so sorry about your father. My husband had a close childhood friend die of heart issues alone in the hospital this past winter, pre-vaccine.

  47. 47.

    The Pale Scot

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I recent saw a survey of the reasons people gave for not being vaccinated, and they broke it down by race and political affiliation

    Do you remember where? This could be useful dealing with dead enders

  48. 48.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    It’s both true that a lot of vaccine resistance is indistinguishable from own-the-libs negative partisanship and also true that many ppl sneering at vaccine resistance seem to have no understanding of what it’s like to be let down by the medical system or medical consensus.

    So Ross  Doughat is claiming  vaccine resistance is anti-science basically and would be happening even if the GOP was pushing for it hard.

  49. 49.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Baud: Our supposed “sneering” really is worse than death to right wingers.

    My take on Ross claim is the Right Wingers are outraged the medical community refuses to lie to support the Right’s political claims.

  50. 50.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Ten Bears: China is having a pork shortage because of some pig illness that devastating pig farming. Factory Farming is only possible because of the massive use of antibiotics on the animals.

  51. 51.

    NorthLeft12

    @sab: Thanks. My Dad was eighty-nine and very hard of hearing. Speaking with him on the phone was extremely difficult.

    They did not allow his wife or family to visit him until they determined that he was end of life. My brother and sister were fifteen minutes away when he passed away.

    I am still pissed at the hospital and the staff for this.

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