“Facts don’t care about your feelings” turned out to be a feat of world-historic projection, masking an epidemic of crybabying and apologetics so vast that it now threatens to take down the American republic. https://t.co/mm2AnNYA9V
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) July 16, 2021
Please be SUPER POLITE and DEFERENTIAL to the dumber-than-shit toddlers who are helping to sustain a pandemic. THEY DESERVE RESPECT. https://t.co/XBJGpVPKYt
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) July 16, 2021
There is no evidence that hesitancy is tracking across some broad class of people who have been “let down“ by medicine, and plenty of evidence that there is an obvious partisan divide. I guess Occam’s razor isn’t a thing anymore. https://t.co/WZ3j20U9Wb
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 17, 2021
A couple of the Worst People in Media (and that’s a high bar to clear) decided to publish ‘You Liberals Made Us (Not) Do It’ essays this week. And from the response, looks like us Sane People are quickly losing patience with that argument…
what’s going on here is a sneaky awareness of who’s gonna be responsible for another bloody covid wave & all the preventable unvaccinated deaths. It’s a preemptive attempt to shift blame from the willful unvaccinated to the mean libs who made the unvaccinated refuse to get a shot https://t.co/z7cSdV3mMp
— kilgore trout, terminal hiccups patient (@KT_So_It_Goes) July 16, 2021
The vaccine being rejected along explicit party lines is not Democrats fault for refusing to grovel and beg for Republicans to take it. You being a fucking idiot and an asshole is not other people's concern.
— Syndicalist Weedle Collective (@Weedledouble) July 16, 2021
You can’t build a silo of misinformation and grievance and then beg the people outside your silo to change the minds of the people inside.
— Centrist ??Madness (@CentristMadness) July 17, 2021
Seriously, if we on the left stopped trying to persuade these oppositional fuckwits, they’d lose the trigger for the compulsive refusal.
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) July 17, 2021
I’d be able to take these “the elite liberal media is doing harm by ridiculing vaccine-skeptical middle America” takes more seriously if they could also muster some anger for the the elite conservatives literally killing vaccine-skeptical middle Americans with misinformation.
— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) July 17, 2021
So who’s showing more contempt for and doing more harm to vaccine skeptics — the people who ridicule them, or the people who willfully enable them, causing who knows how many to die unnecessarily, because they’re too opportunistic, selfish, or cowardly to tell them they’re wrong?
— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) July 17, 2021
Extracts from an excellent thread:
Bullshit.
I have family members all the way up the Fox News Facebook misinformation hole, and they didn’t get vaccinated because they felt respected; they got vaccinated because their children told them they wouldn’t get to see their grandchildren until they got vaccinated. https://t.co/3Wjftw7gDV
— A.R. Moxon (@JuliusGoat) July 17, 2021
People don’t tend to change their worldviews from a place of comfort.
When selfish assholes decide to behave like selfish assholes, the problem isn’t that others aren’t coddling their feelings enough.
Selfish assholes aren’t everyone else’s job to fix…
—
Truth is, vaccine resistors are behaving this way because their feelings ARE being respected.Malicious media entities created self-feeding networks that reassure selfish assholes they can be selfish assholes and still be respected.…
—
The way you make a selfish asshole stop being a selfish asshole is well known.You draw a clear boundary and then you enforce that boundary. You tell them that their bullshit won’t be tolerated, and then you don’t tolerate their bullshit.
I think we all know that, actually.
—
Selfish assholes say they don’t care what other people think. This is a lie.They don’t care about other people’s LIVES. They are *obsessed* with what other people think about *them.*
Which is why they always talk about being disrespected.
As we see…
—
We’ll see real change affected when we stop being so concerned about whether we’ve changed the minds of selfish assholes.We shouldn’t care about changing their minds. They are responsible for their minds. We should want it to not be easy for them to act like selfish assholes.
Of course suggesting that people like Tucker stop lying to their viewers/supporters about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines for yocks would imply that Republicans have some kind of agency or moral responsibility, and the NRO certainly can't go *there*
— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) July 16, 2021
But, duh LIBS!…
someone smarter than me once observed that you can’t reason a person out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into https://t.co/sKuWLwPASC
— kilgore trout, terminal hiccups patient (@KT_So_It_Goes) July 16, 2021
listen to me: you are not a hostage to these people’s feelings. they are not gonna get a shot if you buy them ice cream & wash their car while reading to them from a medical journal, and they are not gonna get a shot if you are a dick to them. they just want power to shift blame
— kilgore trout, terminal hiccups patient (@KT_So_It_Goes) July 16, 2021
I believe that a New York living conservative pundit is genuine in saying their biggest issue is how annoying they find their neighbors and their twitter feed. But that is not the experience of people in Missouri who are being misinformed about the vaccine from Facebook/fox/etc.
— Tim Miller (@Timodc) July 17, 2021
I don't think they're trying to move elite opinion. I think they're trying to mitigate an increasing likelihood of political fallout from an obvious partisan divide, and arguing that partisan-driven hesitancy is really just the fault of callous elites not making better arguments.
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 17, 2021
*oprah there-you-have-it dot gif* pic.twitter.com/5ekOw0DntO
— kilgore trout, terminal hiccups patient (@KT_So_It_Goes) July 16, 2021
raven
Fuck em
Elizabelle
@raven: Absolutely.
I hope that all this performative stupidity will end up taking down a lot of the rightwing media outlets. People are dying because they are listening to that shit.
And it is wrong that a profit-seeking company (Facebook, in particular, and Fox, etc., as always) has so much power in propagating active disinformation.
We need to regulate this stuff. It is getting hundreds of thousands of people killed.
MobiusKlein
It’s going to be the same around climate change mitigation. The S.A. party will say the liberals were mean, that’s why they didn’t do anything to halt or slow CO2 emissions.
It’s always somebody else’s fault.
NotMax
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
- Søren Kierkegaard
.
germy
It’s Biden’s fault, of course.
FelonyGovt
I’m definitely seeing increasing anger and lack of tolerance from us vaccinated Americans at the willfully unvaccinated.
Geo Wilcox
If anyone feels let down by the medical profession it is me. All 4 of my daughter’s grandparents were either killed or severely harmed by the medical field. From misdiagnosed heart disease to wrongly prescribed medication to unnecessary surgery to a hospital acquired MRSA that turned deadly, I am the poster child for being pissed off at the medical field.
I was first in line to get my vaccine because I am not stupid.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: and of course, that’s Dr Senator Cassidy
First, do no harm….
jnfr
I’m to this point myself, of shrugging and saying “Okay, there’ll be fewer Trump voters still alive. Cool.”
I do feel immense sympathy for the healthcare workers being forced back into the COVID wards though. And I worry for those who can’t be vaxxed for other reasons.
Ella in New Mexico
I want to create a giant flashing light display of all the above posts and stick it in the parking lot of every Walmart in America, right next to the Deep Fried Korn Dogs and Shave Ice Tent outside their front doors.
That way they won’t be able to not see it, those lines are long
zhena gogolia
@germy:
I guess he’s using up his brownie points for his wonderfully terse statement on the second impeachment.
debbie
This coddling has to stop. It wouldn’t work anyway. It would just feed their smug sense of being in charge.
MattF
Just for reference, here’s the county-level graph of vaccination vs. Trumpyness.
JaneE
I can understand someone looking at a vaccine that was approved because Trump said to approve it with suspicion. I was that person, but I looked at what was released about the vaccines and trials and looked for doctors with experience and what they said about the data. I didn’t drop everything to get the first dose, but when they said your husband is eligible we made an appointment convenient for our schedule about a week later. Same for when I came up, just delayed for a case of shingles, not hesitancy.
Some people at aerobics were talking up the side effects of getting shingles from the shots (someone they knew had) and blood clots for one of the vaccines. Generally sounded like they were discouraging without saying it explicitly. I mentioned that Covid also caused blood clots and asked about the relative risk. Turns out they weren’t really saying don’t get vaccinated, but that was the tone of their remarks.
Kristine
And once again, the Party of Personal Responsibility refuses to take any.
Snarki, child of Loki
Are these the same “mean libs” that HELD A GUN TO THEIR HEADS in 2016 and forced, forced, I say, them to vote for Trump in the GOP primaries?
Damn “mean libs” should have pulled the trigger. That’s one shot the MAGAts should definitely get.
Sure Lurkalot
I don’t know how you do it day after day, Anne Laurie, weave threads into whole cloth.
My hairdresser is a woo anti-vaxxer. She believes her commitment to her yoga practice and diet are enough to stave off disease and if everyone was as “personally responsible” about themselves as she is, she wouldn’t have been inconvenienced by a pandemic. Vaccines are poison says the grandmother of 3 and a business owner requiring physical proximity to loyal clients primarily over the age of 60. What is the worst thing about COVID? Shame. That people shamed her and others of similar mindset for their trust in their superior lifestyle and immune system.
She told me she did get vaxxed, hated that she did and was still angry about it. I didn’t ask her why but I hope that one of her kids told her no more grandma for you until you do.
Kent
I just got back from back-to-back family reunions. Both sides of my extended family are full of MAGAts. The Oregon clan who tend to be more libertarian-leaning along with some uber fundamentalists. So on that side of the family there is full spectrum denial, from the dipshit believers in stuff like anati-vax homeopathy to hard-core fundamentalist evangelicals. On the Pennsylvania side of they family it is all more ordinary rural white folk who are all Republican out of habit and tradition but honestly not so crazed about it.
What I have concluded after conversations with many of them, is that they want to resist vaccines because they see it as a Biden/Dem/Urban sort of thing. And that Fox News and Facebook haven’t so much CHANGED their points of view but simply confirmed them and given them ammunition to take the stances that they were already inclined to take anyway.
In other words, the partisan divide was there first, and the anti-vax bullshit just fit neatly into it for some reason that I don’t understand. Vaccines are basically like Chai Lattes or Arugula or obscure microbrew IPAs. People don’t diss those sorts of things because they actually dislike them. But rather because to do so is virtue signaling for your crowd. Being vaccine resistant serves the same purpose as sneering at a Chai Latte.
debbie
@germy:
I’d be interested in knowing what these “incredibly partisan remarks” were.
Baud
Only
Demsthe vaccinated have agency.Baud
By the way, these right wing thought pieces are doing what the right always does — project the worst of internet liberals onto the Democratic Party mainstream. Biden’s people have been nothing but gracious and tolerant to people who have not shown they deserve it.
Baud
@Kent:
I wish they would feel that way about urban tax money and other resources.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kent:
There are a bunch of details, but what it ultimately comes down to is that Republicanism is being an asshole who hates the public good. Everything else, including Trump telling his followers it’s a hoax, can be traced to it.
raven
The Los Angeles County sheriff has announced his department won’t enforce the county Department of Public Health’s reinstated indoor mask mandate as COVID-19 cases soar in the area, falsely claiming it’s “not backed by science.”
Sheriff Alex Villanueva said in a statement Friday that he “will not expend our limited resources” to enforce the new order.
Raoul Paste
When things get bad enough, people change
Brachiator
Virus don’t care. Reminds me of some dialogue from “Pulp Fiction.”
The Wolf: Jimmie, lead the way. Boys, get to work.
Vincent: A please would be nice.
The Wolf: What?
Vincent: I said a please would be nice.
The Wolf: Get it straight, gentlemen: I’m not here to say please, I’m here to tell you what to do. And if self-preservation is an instinct that you possess, you’d better do it and do it quick. If my help’s not appreciated, lots of luck, gentlemen.
Jules: No, Mr. Wolf, it ain’t like that…
Vincent: I don’t mean any disrespect, I just don’t like people barking orders at me.
The Wolf: If I’m curt with you, it’s because time is a factor here. I think fast, I talk fast, and I need you guys to act fast if you want to get out of this. So, pretty please, with sugar on top, clean the f***ing car.
raven
brendancalling
I am well past the point of civility with these goons. My understanding—both from media and my friends/family who are nurses—is that the vast majority of new patients are those who didn’t get vaccinated, and not due to a lack of availability. These people CHOSE not to get vaccinated.
I have no sympathy for them, and frankly the thought of some overworked nurses and doctors trying to save their lives is offensive to me, given that it’s a deliberate self-own. Those resources are better spent on people who got it despite taking precautions, and on people who are waiting for heart surgery, cancer care, and other difficult procedures.
These fuckers have a death wish and I am glad to see them go.
Gvg
I can understand that telling people they are idiots to their faces tends not to be persuasive however in this case I find myself unable to care. I also don’t believe their is an argument that will work. This is after years of their vicious attacks on people like me….such as women. I consider the anti abortion “arguments” to be attacking women for instance. This latest your not the boss of me deadly nonsense has just made me boiling mad.
I watched my nephew last night for my parents to have a night out with vaccinated church friends. My sister called to check on him and we talked about how angry it made us. She is a hospital doctor. When my parents picked him up, I mentioned it, and my mother replied “that was what we talked about most of the night with our friends”. A close knit liberal church that has tried to be safe the whole year with zoom sermons and later parking lot sermons. They created a safety board of retired doctors and a statistion to figure out what their rules should be for this year…but they all would like to get back to normal. My mother is normally what I consider to be too polite and see good in people, but even she is just running out of patience. I consider that to be amazing.
Brachiator
@Baud:
Right wing dopes are just making things up, including opposition to their anti vaxx delusions. And I don’t know who these Internet liberals are supposed to be.
And as you note, the Biden administration has been humane and generous. The right wing can’t stand that.
Baud
@Brachiator:
Random assholes on Twitter and Facebook. It’s not like we don’t have any.
debbie
@raven:
So much for the rule of law. //
SFAW
@Kent:
They’re the same people who sneer and look down their noses at the “elites” (they really mean “elitists,” but they’re too stupid/careless to get it right) because they’re convinced the “elites” are looking down their noses at the Real ‘Muricans.
I once thought that being “elite” meant you were performing (in whatever endeavor) at a higher level than 90-plus percent of the population, and that was something to strive for. Shows how little I knew.
Danielx
At this point, refusing to be vaccinated to own the libs is self-nomination for a Darwin Award. Self-elimination can only be to the long term improvement of the human race.
Also, fuck those guys.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@raven: I’d say Greene is nutty enough to have refused the vaccine. I’d bet money Gaetz– like the Murdochs and their best-known employees– jumped the line somehow
Baud
Can’t we compromise and inject them with the live virus?
Peale
Yeah. I read this Friday, and it’s convinced me that really we haven’t been mean enough. That whole thing about how Biden has just wasted millions of dollars to convince people just disappears the fact that a lot of us used that information to go get vaccinated. But once angain because the oxygen wasters won’t get their short, we need to pretend that the money was wasted.
So fuck it. Biden should arrest Trump and dangle him over a shark tank with a thin rope and fir every day the national jab rate falls below 1 million, Biden applies one drop of sulfuric acid to that rope. Let’s see how quickly the dosages get out to red states then
MattF
Jon Schwarz brags about destroying Trump ballots. The Constitution says it’s perfectly legal for journalists to do that.
ETA: I realize it’s a joke.
germy
@debbie:
About a year ago a police chief in my neck of the woods was saying the same thing. “You can’t expect us to go into everyone’s backyard and check to see if people are wearing masks… it’s impossible.”
Another Scott
@Baud: Yup.
Biden-Harris have this right. Calling out the monsters profiting on disinformation, and continuing trying to find ways to reach people who haven’t yet been vaccinated.
We should follow their example and not amplify the disinformation and not putting people in political boxes.
It doesn’t really matter much why people haven’t been vaccinated yet. We can’t control the politics on the other side. Anger helps the monsters more than it does us.
If that means putting Bill and Hillary in a dunking pond at the AR State Fair; or a lottery for an F-150; or free Chick-Fil-A for a family for a year; or tickets to a Taylor Swift concert; or a $100 savings bond; or whatever – Do It.
Just get them vaccinated.
Cheers,
Scott.
jimmiraybob
But that’s not the argument which is, “you must recognize my right to eat tide pods while I am simultaneously shoving tide pods down every pie hole I come into contact with.”
It’s much more irrational and malicious than “You must respect my right to harm myself.”
germy
@MattF:
He was joking to demonstrate how gullible they are, and the morons proved his point.
SFAW
@raven:
I am really fucking tired of seeing the phrase “vaccine hesitancy.” For me, it’s in the same class as “global warming questioner/skeptic”: something used because using the accurate terms would hurt the fee-fees of the RWMFs who deny or resist reality. And said denial/resistance ends up harming far more people than their worthless selves.
If refusing to get vaccinated did not increase the potential for downstream harm to millions — e.g., Epsilon/Zeta/Eta/Theta variants, with increasing probability of the current vaccines being ineffective — then I’d say “fine, don’t vacc them, let ’em die, or become long-haulers.” It bothers me that I’ve reached that state, but it’s bothering me less and less as time goes on.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
They don’t feel that way because they’ve accepted the bullshit claim that it’s cities taking advantage of rural areas, not the other way around. If you ask them, they’ll assure you they’re the ones paying for everything and the cities are leeching off them.
trollhattan
@jnfr:
And what’s up with the healthcare workers refusing to be vaccinated? Do not understand.
Ohio Mom
Geo Wilcox @7:
That’s tough, losing all four of the older generation to bad doctoring.
Like yours, my family has had its run-ins with the medical profession but we were still eager to get our shots.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: did police ever really enforce mask mandates, short of responding if some nutcase tried to make a scene at Megalo-Mart ? and even then enforcement usually landed on some poor assistant manager.
I remember early on there were lots of pictures floating around of big city police flouting mask rules, often looking at the cameras with what sure looked like a “Go ahead, say something” smirk. I think rank and file cops are probably one of the trumpiest demos out there.
jimmiraybob
The irony, and I hope I’m using that right, is that so many of those refusing vaccination are doing so because “Jesus” and don’t even believe in Darwin (evolution).
germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
https://thedaily.case.edu/study-finds-more-active-duty-police-officers-died-of-covid-19-in-2020-than-all-other-causes-combined/
The Moar You Know
The cons at my workplace – and I have to give them this, they are scared shitless of covid and not fucking around – are frantically trying to blame the libs any way that they can for the fact that 20% of our employees are not going to get vaccinated, which is going to mean that as soon as Pfizer/Moderna go off EUA, we’re going to be forced to fire every one of them and rehire billable positions in the middle of the tightest job market any of us have ever seen. Or go under.
Their Orange Lord and Savior did this to them and they know it. They just can’t admit it.
Roger Moore
@raven:
I am constantly amazed at just how bad a sheriff Villanueva has been. LASD has easily surpassed LAPD as the worst law enforcement department in the county, which I would not have believed was possible in 2018.
Ruckus
@Ella in New Mexico:
22 yrs ago I went with my then fiancé and her 5 yr old daughter to the state fair. I saw a booth with deep fried Twinkies. DEEP FRIED TWINKIES. And a line. The answer to the question, “What were they thinking?” is, not a damn thing. There is no thought process possible that in any way thinks Twinkies is a food product, let alone deep fried Twinkies. BTW this was at the Ohio state fair.
scav
Other ways to own the libs and perform your superior ‘merkan freedum? Knock back a fifth of moonshine, toss your kids loose in the back of the car (none of those nanny-state seatbelts, they’re just masks for your guts), find the nearest bit of blacktop and gun it. (Preferably one with lots of your flag-humping cohorts on it so you can mutually admire your performance.) Remember all those red octagons and stacked lights are merely the visible signs of state oppression and disrespect. As are curbs and that little yellow line in the middle.
Only Commies play Russian Roulette with a single round in the chamber. Second Amendment Patriots use at least two (heh heh) and III%ers? If you’re really serious about huntin’, a semi is the only way to go.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
“Own the Libs! Prolong your voting life through vaccination!”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@raven: What Raven said
SFAW
@Ruckus:
Kay is reading this and thinking “NOW do you get why things are so fucked up here?”
Chief Oshkosh
As others have written here, fuck ’em. Ya hate ta see it, but if they are that fucking stoopid, well, not my problem. Wish we could keep ’em out of the hospitals; save those resources for the innocent.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: People who work in hospitals and in health care are people. That’s all you need to know.
Or, with more words, Ben Carson had a reputation for being an amazing surgeon (though his more famous results weren’t actually as miraculous as some would have us believe…). He was good at sawing and cutting and sewing. I wouldn’t trust anything he said about diabetes or viral infections over an expert in those fields.
Nurses know how to do nursing. They have no special insight on novel viruses and vaccines.
Just because someone has a job in a particular field doesn’t mean that their politics (and politics is driving the GQP Covid response) is sensible.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
SFAW
@Chief Oshkosh:
Although doing so would be “politically unviable,” I would like to see some hospitals turn away COVID-positive persons who refused to get vaccinated. Maybe the refuseniks could go to those Soros-funded FEMA camps?
Starfish
The reality that Doug Jones lives in does not include this website.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
A lot of this countries sheriffs believe themselves to be The Law, in their counties. Notice I said their counties. And by The Law, it is whatever they say, not the legislature or the people. They aren’t above the law, they are The Law. I’d bet good money that Villanueva is one of them.
Baud
@Starfish:
He’s referring to the Dem leadership and officials.
Kent
My wife is a doctor. Plenty of her co-workers are MAGAts. There are especially a lot of women in health care who are married to dipshit hard core MAGAt types and go along with the flow. Same thing in education. I don’t know how many female teachers I know who are married to absolute hard core rednecks and just go along with the stupidity. So they go to fundie churches, join Trump parades, live in bumfuck rural areas, and refuse to take vaccines even if they are nurses and teachers and should fucking know better.
Mike in NC
Red state governors like Abbott and DeSantis and Noem just want their constituents to die.
raven
@Ruckus: The posse comitatus (from the Latin for “power of the county”), in common law, is a group of people mobilized by the conservator of peace – typically a sheriff – to suppress lawlessness or defend the county. The posse comitatus originated in ninth-century England simultaneous with the creation of the office of sheriff. Though generally obsolete throughout the world, it remains theoretically, and sometimes practically, part of the United States legal system.
Kent
Insurance companies are going to stop paying for their bullshit. A lot of these MAGAt types are also uninsured. Or have bought into fraudulent religious-based fake insurance policies that aren’t going to cover this. So a lot of these dipshits are going to be faced with $100k hospital bills for their week-long ventilator care in the ICU and find themselves bankrupted because they refused a free vaccine. Assuming they even survive Covid, which they most likely will.
I guess on the bright side that is less money they will have to send to MAGAt causes and spend on new F250 coal rollers.
Starfish
@Kent: How did the Oregon folks do with their excessive heat and the fires last year?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@The Moar You Know: I recently talked to someone whose workplace is privately saying that if some percentage of their workers refuse to get vaccinated, firing them wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Given that they’ll probably allow some work from home, they need fewer of this particular group of workers anyway, and they’re the ones who are a pain in the butt about everything else too.
brendancalling
@SFAW: i know health care workers who would absolutely endorse this if they could.
Didnt get a vaccine when you had a chance? Good luck to you, we’re full.
debbie
@The Moar You Know:
Do they know he got his vaccine back in January?
Kent
They are all western Oregon folks like the rest of us. I don’t have any relatives who live on the east side. If you talked to them you would probably hear a lot of bullshit about how the spotted owl kept forests from being properly maintained and that if the environmentalists stopped blocking logging then we could properly manage forests to prevent so much burning. In other words, we have to cut down all the forests in order to save them.
debbie
@Ruckus:
Ah, you’d love it now. They have deep-fried butter!
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Aww, yes, yes I do. Areas of actual thought surrounded by corn fields, whose ears could actually hear and understand better than a way too big percentage of the human population. It’s like a large percentage of the population likely thought like deer, that they can do whatever they want, unfettered by things such as cars, things like cross 4 lanes of 70 mph traffic without looking or understanding danger of any type.
A Ghost to Most
Cults do what cults do. This was predictable, and predicted. Nobody wanted to hear it. Fee-fees needed protecting.
smith
A lot of this is performative art to signal tribal membership. The tell is in the fact that almost 90% of people 65+ have had at least one shot, a number that has to include a lot of old Goobers who went along with the party line in public, but sneaked off to get the shot anyway. When it gets bad enough a lot of others will follow suit.
One bit of evidence for this is what happened last winter — along about Jan 7 the infection rate, which had been steadily climbing to an astronomical level, very suddenly reversed and plunged even more quickly than it had climbed. We’d just had New Year’s, which should have boosted the rate at that time. It was still winter, so people were indoors, it was too early for vaccines to have had any real impact, and we certainly hadn’t reached herd immunity. The only explanation for that sudden drop was a change in behavior, which had to have included behavior change among a lot of loud and proud anti-mask, pro-hoax Goobers for it to have been so precipitous and widespread. I think we’ll reach a tipping point again when it gets bad enough with Delta, though of course not before a lot of preventable deaths have occurred. Basically, they’ll act when the covid 2×4 hits them hard enough upside their heads. For myself, I’m going to save my breath and let the virus do the talking.
Starfish
@raven: He is telling you that his officers are unvaccinated and that they are going to catch COVID if they are sent out to enforce the mask mandate.
Kent
Wait. I do all of those things. Does that make me a bad person? In fact, I have my sympathetic response ready to go the first time I see on Facebook that a MAGAt relative died of Covid. To which I will respond: “Well, on the bright side he/she didn’t have to suffer from any vaccine side effects so there’s that“
Ruckus
@debbie:
Once you’ve had deep fried Twinkies, you can’t go back to bland, non deep fried everything.
Geminid
@SFAW: I am not familiar with people outside of a fairly narrow circle of a dozen or so. Of these, almost everyone, including the two Republicans, has been vaccinated. The two who have not been happen to vote Democratic. One believes in vaccination enough to drive her wife and the the wife’s granddaughter 70 miles to have them vaccinated at the first opportunity. I suspect her own reluctance has to do with her history of lupus, and possibly her recent problems with the treatment a bad arm fracture. She is an alert and capable person, and probably could not be persuaded on this matter.
The other unvaccinated friend basically has no close contact with other people and has an ingrained aversion to medical care. Besides which, he is very much a procrastinator. I suspect he will be vaccinated by Labor Day, if he hasn’t been already.
The Moar You Know
@SFAW: sadly, it’s not politically unviable. It’s flat out illegal to do so. Emergency rooms have to take all who show up.
dmsilev
@Roger Moore: He’s been a performative asshole pretty much since he was elected. And has thoroughly pissed off most of the people who voted for him in 2018 (he, in retrospect completely dishonestly, ran as a ‘progressive reformer’). His term is up next year, and he’s made so many enemies in the County that I have to imagine any vaguely plausible opponent would be the odds on favorite to win.
Starfish
@SFAW: Vaccine hesitancy is a real phrase though.
People who are vaccine hesitant (most people who do not get vaccinated) can be influenced.
The hard core anti-vaxxers cannot.
Knowing that you should spend some energy on the first group and not the second is important.
Kelly
Doing your own research means finding somebody that agrees with you is standard on the R side of our political divide. My very Trumpy zip code is 44% vaccinated and seem to stalled there. Local crazy preachers and other community leaders tell them it’s a hoax, it’s the flu, your freedom matters more.
There was mention yesterday of the Trumpy folks around the Bootleg fire do not believe in climate change so climate change has nothing to do with the fire. Same around here regarding last year’s Beachie Fire. The Trumpy explanation for the fires is forest management should allow more logging. We have over 100,000 acres of examples where wilderness burned, old growth burned, well managed plantations burned. Hell even a few Christmas tree farms burned. If it’s dry it all burns. Meteorologists have data to show we’ve been in drought for 5 years steady, drought half the time for 10~15 years. Nope the fire are because the environmentalists won’t let us log.
The local plywood mill can’t hire enough people for another shift. Trumpy explanation is generous unemployment benefits. Local unemployment rate is an rather ordinary for around here 5.2%. Mill jobs are noisy, dusty, boring hard work. Lots of jobs around here that pay as well or better cleaning up and rebuilding from the fires. Outside jobs that are way less boring. Nope it’s guberment unemployment promoting laziness.
Nope nobody can measure these things, nobody knows more than my preacher or the guy that owns the hardware store.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Geminid: My son’s MIL resisted vaccination because of a hysterical fear of needles. She gave in when the neighbor across the street died of COVID. Her husband and daughter had been pressing her to do it too.
The Moar You Know
@debbie: our ownership? Oh yeah. They got theirs in February. They are not the problem here. They just want to blame anyone not named Donald Trump.
Our unvaccinated employees? I neither know nor care.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and forest raking
don’t forget you gotta rake the forest
Starfish
@Kent: I know mixed marriages where liberal women are married to these chuckle heads. One nurse was telling me how her redneck husband was making excuses about not getting the vaccine. A doctor I know caught COVID while her Trump-er husband was prancing around not believing in the disease. He made himself scarce when she caught it though.
The Moar You Know
@Dorothy A. Winsor: our industry can’t do work from home, and losing these people would be a real problem even though they are shitty human beings. Their skill sets are not easily found or replaced.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This sitting congress-critter represents the part of southern Missouri that is one of the biggest Delta hotspots
Hoodie
@Kent: We’re dealing with this in our small law practice. We have one paralegal who is refusing to get vaccinated, and I suspect it’s because her husband is a right wing nut job.
I see it even in more highly educated people. I know a patent lawyer who attended Illinois undergrad and decent 2nd tier law school, but is a hardcore religious fundamentalist wacko who, of course, is a vaccine rejectionist, too. Just goes to show that education is not a cure for everything. A lot of this is deep seated emotion and tribalism. Human beings are just not that rational.
jnfr
@trollhattan: This is not something I can explain.
CaseyL
I’m imagining Covid 19 particles anthropomorphized like the germs in ads for OTC remedies, frantically trying out new designs to get through the vaccine shield. Now there are Lambda and Theta variants, with not enough data yet to determine how contagious or lethal they may be. Good times ahead!
I’m done with the anti-vaxxers, and hope they all die. I may even do a little chuckle and dance each time one of them does die. Sympathy and respect? NFW.
scav
@Kent: Ah yes, all the Floridians (and their ilk) suddenly discovering they can’t get insurance on their condos or their health. Ah, capitalism, unfettered and free.
Dave
@raven: Is it possible to limit the Sheriff’s resources further? Seems like a rational response to someone who is a waste of taxpayer money anyway with that attitude
Baud
Via Reddit
https://i.redd.it/5iwv0ydjyyb71.jpg
RaflW
Doubt-that dares say “let down by the medical system”? The whole damn thing is basically GOP benefit design. They defend private health insurance to the hilt. And then use its gross inequities to attack Biden? Fuck off, Ross.
Starfish
@Baud:
That guy was there with the controversial takes today as well.
hueyplong
Maybe an upside is Missouri being down to 8 electoral votes after 2030.
raven
Collin Morikawa, 24, captured his second major championship on Sunday at the 149th Open, becoming the first player in men’s golf history to win in his debut at two separate major events. He also became just the eighth golfer in history to win two majors before the age of 25.
raven
@Dave: Beats me, I live in Georgia!
Ruckus
@Hoodie:
Human beings are just not that rational.
Rationality is a learned concept, like most everything else we know or believe. And rationality does not go with several types of belief systems. Extreme religion for example. Scientology works around this by presenting a system that pretends to be rational by being thorough and repetitive and not exposing one to the complete insanity till they are hooked/locked in.
Kent
With enough Covid maybe we can bend that down to 7.
Ruckus
@Raoul Paste:
People can change for the worse as well as for the better.
Jay
@Roger Moore:
They are just another LA Street Gang, but with badges.
https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history/
Kelly
@Kent: I’m in the western Cascade foothills of Marion county. You don’t have to get far from the big metro areas to have MORE LOGGING become the consensus solution to the fires. As you’ve noted before the line is urban vs rural.
r€nato
MAGAts in 2017: WE VOTED FOR TRUMP BECAUSE THE LIBS™ WERE MEAN TO US
MAGAts in 2021: WE REFUSE TO GET VACCINATED BECAUSE THE LIBS™ ARE MEAN TO US
I rarely bother debating with MAGAts IRL or online because there is never a single solitary shred of good faith behind any of their arguments.
SFAW
@brendancalling:
I’d like to see the “Fuck Off — We’re Full” t-shirts repurposed
Ruckus
@germy:
But that is actually true. There aren’t enough cops to do that.
The law depends on most people being reasonably lawful because there aren’t enough cops. The IRS depends on most people paying their taxes because they can’t check everyone. (And now they don’t have the personal and time to check the complicated returns. So if you are hiding something, you hide it in a 40 page return.)
As the country and the world become more populated it becomes even more difficult. In a small town you likely know the cops and fire fighters. In a county with 10+ million, you won’t likely know any of them. 41 states have a smaller population than LA county. And the sheriff’s ego is bigger than all of that.
Another Scott
@debbie: Nobody has gone on the record confirming that TFG was vaccinated, according to Snopes. They rate it “unproven”.
Sowing chaos is what he does, and continues to do. Just as hsi daddy Vladi wants.
Cheers,
Scott.
SFAW
@The Moar You Know:
Uh, no, it’s not. It’s illegal to refuse treatment if said refusal is based on any of various factors (race, age, sex). But hospitals refuse admittance regularly; they can do so due to lack of available resources, lack of patient’s insurance (or ability to pay), etc.
Kent
Didn’t he admit to it?
I mean the man is a compulsive liar so he word means nothing. But I thought he or the White House actually announced it.
Just Chuck
The backlash on Twitter is happening … where’s the indication that this is penetrating into real life? Where’s the politicians and syndicated columnists telling the anti-vaxxers to fuck off and die? Where are the big corporations publicly cancelling events in states ruled by anti-vaxxers?
I just don’t consider FB and Twitter to be “real” any more, nor anything else that provides a tailored reality. I know that unreality extends to damn near every medium in modern life, but social media is a standout even from that.
oldgold
“Canada didn’t have the benefit of early access to the best vaccines, as the US did. Now they’ve overtaken us in vaccination. Today’s the day that Canada exceeded the US for fully vaccinated. And 15% points ahead in 1st dose.”
The difference is Canada’s Conservative party is not brain-dead and/ or immoral.
Baud
Looks like we could use a dose of progress.
Kent
Exactly. They can’t turn people away from the ER. But the can most certainly refuse not to treat them beyond the ER. You can’t walk into a hospital and demand a free heart transplant or bone marrow transplant, for example. Or free chemo. You gotta actually pay for that shit.
Baud
@Just Chuck:
These things take months to get from Twitter to real life, at best.
SFAW
@Starfish:
So are “creation science” and “global warming skepticism.” Doesn’t mean it’s real.
[Disclaimer: I reserve “vaccine hesitancy” for persons who are immunosuppressed (and a few other medical-related reasons). But religious reasons (for example) outside of Christian Science? Sorry. People thinking it’s a hoax, or the vaccine has nanobots, or any other bullshit “reasons”? Nope, you don’t get a pass, nor are you “hesitant.”]
SFAW
@Kent:
One thing I didn’t address was the ER part, primarily because not every person enters the hospital through the ER. Based on my limited experience, I’m thinking most inpatients are admitted via non-ER avenues, but I have no data/studies to back that up.
susanna
@Peale: I like the image. So much so, it became a 5 second video created in my head!
CaseyL
@SFAW: Most people have insurance, or regular primary care doctors. But many, many people do not.
People who have no insurance and no regular doctor ignore their health problems until they absolutely cannot – and then they go to the ER.
gene108
@RaflW:
Being let down by the medical community happens. It’s like being let down by building contractors for home renovations, or car mechanics, or any other profession.
Sometimes the medical community operates under beliefs based on flawed research, such as a high carbohydrate low fat diet is the best way to prevent heart disease, that hurts millions or they do not listen to patients and ignore their issues or just screw up a medical procedure.
Medical malpractice lawsuits happen.
EDIT: I’m not sure how much this has to do with vaccine refusal, though. I don’t think there’s much of a correlation.
brendancalling
Any covid success in Canada is DESPITE the Conservatives, who are dragging down BC, Alberta, and Ontario.
Starfish
@SFAW: When I say that “vaccine hesitancy” is a real phrase, I mean that this is the term used by people who are doing public health out reach to these folks.
This is not a new term coined for fringe-y nonsense.
This type of behavior was going on before the COVID-19 vaccine.
The people who have medical reasons to reject a vaccine or wait are not people that I would categorize as “vaccine hesitant.” To me, the “vaccine hesitant” are the “My friends’ are self-righteous dumbasses, and I am confused” folks.
However, some people doing public health say that the “I don’t have a car, and my neighborhood is a pharmacy desert” folks are being lumped into the “vaccine hesitant” category. To me, this issue is one that should be blamed on states doing a bad job of getting vaccines out to places where they are needed as opposed to being blamed on individuals.
Raoul Paste
@Ruckus: No doubt, but I was thinking of the analogy where drunks have to hit rock bottom before they decide to get sober
realbtl
We had 3 no helmet motorcycle fatalities Friday in the valley (pop. ~100k) and it reminded me of the “mah freedum” BS from the 80s and 90s. Plus the no helmet FB chatter about Be Careful People- so I can make stupid choices.
Note- I rode for 60+ years.
Baud
@realbtl:
I read somewhere that about 10% of people don’t wear seat belts and they account for a high percentage of fatalities. (Can’t remember the number.)
Jay
@brendancalling:
seconded.
Mart
@Frankensteinbeck: Only thing I can figure is they are hoping for lockdowns, mask mandates, more economic chaos, and a variant that rips through us anyway – so they can go into full grievance mode about the awful Democratic policies that don’t work, and actually harm people. What’s another million excess deaths compared to winning in 22?
Another Scott
@Kent: The Snopes story is from March and is pretty well documented. He said the WH staff was going to get vaccinated at some point, but I haven’t found any indication that he was (at least not from anyone willing to go on the record).
Yeah, he’s told others to get vaccinated. But since he’s so strong and a manly-man, and nearly died of it, he may have decided not to get the vaccine. Or, he may well have gotten the vaccine in January as Acosta said, but threatened to kill anyone who said that he did.
Dunno.
FWIW.
[edited to elaborate.]
Cheers,
Scott.
SFAW
@Starfish:
Yes, I know it’s a “real phrase.” My point was/is that there’s a difference between hesitancy (as I characterized it above) and the run-of-the-mill “I ain’t gonna get vaccinated because those libs are meanies” (or any one of a number of similar sentiments. The focus — at least in the news/MSM — has been on the “outreach” efforts to get those in the second group to get the shot. My objection is using “hesitancy” to describe those in that second group; it’s a phrase used so that the pandemic-enablers don’t feel “disrespected.”
And I’d be OK with referring to them as “pandemic enablers.” Again, not throwing the immunosuppressed (and similar) into that category.
PST
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Glad she saw the light, but I’m here on a different mission. The clumsiness of “son’s MIL” highlights the need in English for a more elegant way to refer to our children’s spouses’ parents. The Yiddish “machatunim” and Spanish “consuegros” are both available. They are both nice chewy words that are fun to say. Let’s pick one and go for it.
Starfish
@SFAW: You are right. That is true.
Ked
As a 45-year-old blob, I figured that I’d get vaccination figured out at my late-March checkup, but they didn’t have much to say about it except “go talk to your pharmacy”. I’ve… not been on good terms with my normal pharmacy lately, so eventually in late May I went through the online reg process with CVS and they scheduled the first shot at the beginning of June, and the second on July 3.
Getting the first shot was very unpleasant – the pharmacy wasn’t ready, their little vaccination area was a joke, they didn’t know what they were doing with the paperwork, then they handed me a coupon for $5 off anything in the store, which the front cash register wouldn’t accept.
Fuck CVS.
Afterwards I had a minor reaction, but really that was just an unscheduled afternoon nap and I didn’t mind the mental reset.
So I went back for the second shot as scheduled, and I get to the counter and it’s “oh, we’re sorry, we spoiled all of our vaccine stock”. “Well, when can I get it?” “Dunno. You got (brand x) and this other store has it, you should be able to walk in.” I drive across town to the other CVS, and the store is open but the fucking pharmacy is completely shut down.
Fuck CVS.
The main CVS still hasn’t replenished their stock 2 weeks later, but the crosstown one let me schedule (and to be fair they were 90% more professional when I went back than the first one, also their coupon actually worked). The vaccine didn’t feel like it did anything to me for about 30 hours… and then I slept for 2.5 days with moderate flu-like symptoms at the end (though that might have been dehydration) which meant I had a crazy time this week when I got back to work.
I had no “hesitancy”. I wasn’t super enthused about taking it in December but by spring there was so much data that getting it is a no brainer. I just procrastinated because my job let me be super isolated and I knew that every part of dealing with the asinine distribution system (wtf are the insurance companies and pharmacies in the middle of this? EVERY other vaccination I’ve had in my life was delivered by my physician) was going to suck. And I was basically right.
So I’m fine with people hiding in their homes who just haven’t gotten around to getting the shot yet. A month ago I was one of you. Grocery delivery is great when done right. But if you’re walking around in public or even your workplace without it then fuck you.
Anonymous At Work
Almost 150 comments and about 20 Tweets in the article and no one thought to quote Abraham Lincoln’s Cooper Union Speech?
“what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.”
Basically, the fascist Southern faction that’s always been with us won’t stop resisting, ever. They’ll stop making a big show about it only if the intelligent (i.e. “we”) agree with them and stop offering the vaccine.
Same as it ever was.
geg6
@Kent:
This. There are three people in our enrollment services office suite who are not vaccinated. The other nine of us, including our students workers, are fully vaxxed. Of the three non-vaxxed, two of the three have husbands who are big MAGATs and, basically, won’t get a jab because the MAGAT hubbies won’t let them. I’d divorce the assholes.
They are required to continue wearing masks for now. But when the vaccines are fully approved, I expect the University will require them. Be interesting to see if they actually do it at that point.
Baud
@Anonymous At Work:
Apt!
debbie
@Another Scott:
Probably, but based on his germaphobia and his belief that he is better than the riffraff, I know he’s vaccinated.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Translated from dumbass “Doctors won’t back up our lies so we are refusing the vaccine to punish them”
Geminid
@Baud: This Spring a local tv station did a story on Albemarle County’s “Click It or Ticket” seatbelt enforcement campaign. They interviewed a police officer who said that while fewer than 10% of local drivers did not wear sealtbelts, 65% of the County’s fatalities in 2020 were not belted.
Omnes Omnibus
I don’t understand why many of you assume that having degrees or professional qualifications makes much of a difference. How many assholes did you know in high school, in undergrad, or grad school? Why would you think that getting another degree would fix the problem. For example, Pompeo was first in his class at West Point because he was reasonably book smart and did the work; he is a Trumpist asshole because he is an asshole. These are largely independent variables.
Another Scott
@Mart: Plus, they’re freaking out that cutting people off expanded unemployment payments aren’t forcing them back to work at their previous wages. They might actually have to pay people more and improve their working conditions!!11ONE We can’t have that! The MotU are seeing cash left on the table that is rightfully theirs!! Gotta get everyone back at their dead-end jobs ASAP chop chop!!
As always, the question to ask is – Cui bono? (Who benefits?) The single mom with two kids who can’t find or can’t afford childcare isn’t the one benefitting from the GQP screaming about freedom and demanding that everyone ignore the virus.
Back in the olden days, I was taught that with freedom came responsibility. “You want to stay out past 10 PM? Better stay out of trouble.” You want to run a sushi restaurant? You have to satisfy the health department and other rules. It’s a yin/yang thing. It’s the other side of the coin. The GQP wants us to think that freedom is a one-sided coin. It’s not.
[/soapbox]
Cheers,
Scott.
LongHairedWeirdo
Occam’s razor is not what most people think it is. The best example I heard of its use is one that William of Occam wouldn’t have liked: Occam’s razor would take the statement “the universe is so complex and amazing, that its creation must be the work of some wise and powerful being” and turn it into “the universe is so complex and amazing, that its creation must be really, truly, far out”. No need to infer a powerful (or, in a question begging manner, ‘wise'[1]) being having been in charge of that creation.
Interestingly, the quoted bit seems to be a correct usage – no need to assert “let down by medicine” to explain vaccine hesitancy. All that needs to be asserted is “some issue overcomes (or dare we say, ‘trumps’) the knowledge of science in general or medicine in particular.
[1] “Begging the question” is not synonymous with “raising the question”. The fallacy of begging the question is when a person makes a statement (or question) that presumes the answer to another question has already been answered. A canonical example is “have you stopped beating your wife?” which presumes that the speaker has, at least one time, beaten his (or her) wife. Or, to use the example to which this is a footnote, asserting a “wise” being was in charge of creation presumes we can define “wisdom” in this context.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Trump is vaccinated
Melanie and their spawn (probably including Tiffany but I wouldn’t bet the farm)
Rupert and Lachlan and their families are vaccinated
Tucker is vaccinated.
Frau Ingram, Judge Box-Of-Wine, Doocy and notDoocy, Bill Hemmer, Hannity, their spouses and family members who are eligible…. all vaccinated (I’ve kind of forgotten about Hannity, never thought he’d be eclipsed by Tucker Freakin’ Carlson)
The R Senate caucus with the possible exceptions of Blackburn and Squirelly Rand
Probably 90% of the House caucus (or more, there are a lot I’ve never heard of, like the gomer above rambling about KGB injection squads)
Gretchen
@JaneE: how did they think you could possibly get shingles from a covid vaccine? Totally different viruses, and the covid vaccine doesn’t even use the whole virus, just the spike protein.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: there were assholes in law school? Get out!
Hell, a group of them were public about it—they joined the Federalist Society.
SFAW
@LongHairedWeirdo:
Unfortunately, these days, it is. Similar to how “bemuse” is now used in place of “amuse.” Subaru Dianne could probably provide more examples.
debbie
@Another Scott:
Ha ha ha. Bet they never thought supply and demand would work against them!
debbie
@Gretchen:
Shingles vaccine doesn’t use the live virus anymore.
lowtechcyclist
I’ve said it before: if they don’t want the vax, let’s ship their doses to Mexico and points south, or over to Africa or India.
Per AL’s daily thread, the U.S. is currently administering 520,000 shots per day (7-day rolling avg).
We should keep enough on hand so that we can handle an increase in demand up to, say, 750,000 shots per day. Then send the rest to places that want it as well as need it.
Steeplejack
@raven:
The “limited resources” of his $3.4 billion annual budget. ?
Ruckus
@Raoul Paste:
OK. But I was not talking about junkies, people with substance abuse issues, I am talking about people’s actual thinking – or not thinking.
My congressional rep 50 yrs ago was a republican, and a member of the John Birch Society. He still believed in government, in it working for the people who paid for it, voted for it, it’s citizens. Today the political world he would belong to doesn’t want any government, because government means control of your personal life. It’s not true but we are far more populated and concentrated than we were then, we have far more reason for a government that insures that we have reasonable schools, reasonable voting, and things like no smoking and no drunk driving, masking up during an airborne pandemic because we are, at least in theory, better educated about their dangers and live in far more concentrated numbers. Thinking that individuals can do whatever the hell they desire and no one can tell me what I can and can not do, is worse now than it was 70 yrs ago because there are so many more of us. That’s the worse I was talking about. A drunk has always been a drunk, they can just do more damage now because we all live faster lives, closer together. And yes that’s worse but even staunch conservatives thought that we were all a part of the whole. Today’s conservatives think liberals should all die and the world will be a better place. That’s a lot worse.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack:
Considering that within the area of LA county, lives more than 10 million people, the square miles that he is responsible for, the cities that the department contracts for law enforcement, that actually is not an overly large budget, and may in fact be too small. All of that is aside from his stellar personality and wonderful concept of his place in humanity. (That last sentence is snark, just in case you weren’t sure.)
raven
I’m sure the worldly people here know this my my friend, hubby and kid were going to Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, and Montenegro but, when they got to the airport, her passport was set to expire in 52 days and they were not able to go. They got flight credit but lost their asses on hotels, train tix and cars.
wvng
Anne, you are the undisputed queen of Twitter compilations. Bless you for this one.
Kattails
@germy: I recently had occasion to talk with our town police chief about an ongoing issue with a neighbor. At the end I found that he was refusing vaccination because of some mental salad of “they’re too new/need more testing/not effective/you’re vaccinated so I’m protected from you and you’re protected from me”. He also spends his day wearing a bulletproof vest. In a town of 2,000 people.
He did not bother to wear a mask during the interview or let on that he wasn’t vaccinated or ask me whether I was. But he’s afraid of getting shot in a state where that is extremely unlikely. He also stated that the numbers were inflated because “they” count everyone in a household as having COVID if only one person has tested positive.
So thanks for this link, it’s going out to the selectmen.
raven
@Kattails: I think on duty cops have to wear flack jackets.
Steeplejack
@Ruckus:
Perhaps I should have said that his deputies are going to be out there anyway, so they could enforce the mask mandate while they’re waiting around to beat up or shoot someone. It’s not like they’re going to have extra “mask patrol only” deputies running up the payroll.
Just Chuck
@SFAW:
They really mean “Jews”. Well, doesn’t have to be Jews, but any group they want to scapegoat for being uppity, and historically that usually involves dragging Jews in anyway.
Kattails
@raven: Ok, I’ll stand corrected on that, it was just jarring against the rest of it, and the numbers in the article Germy linked to. More than half the on-duty police deaths last year directly due to COVID.
I’m paying this guys salary and health insurance, he’s twice as likely to die from this as all other causes combined, and did not have the professional courtesy to mask up? This is NH, we support everything via property taxes. I’m up for tattooing a red “M” on all their (resisters) foreheads so we’ll be able to identify them at a glance.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL:
Yes sir! 100%. They became lawyers.
RSA
Yes. This study has been making the rounds, which finds antimask (anti-vax) groups that seem pretty well-educated and competent in areas such as data literacy (though obviously not in scientific literacy). They’re comparable to all the self-educated climate deniers and creationists in the world.
https://news.mit.edu/2021/when-more-covid-data-doesnt-equal-more-understanding-0304
UncleEbeneezer
With all due respect to Patton Oswald, this comparison is unfair to toddlers. I teach toddlers tennis lessons and in the past 18 months I have not heard EVEN ONE complain about wearing a mask, social distancing etc. They understand it’s for everyone’s safety, it’s no big deal and they just do it. It’s adults who are throwing fits and refusing to get vaccinated.
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle: Ditto.
Reading Doubt-that’s tweet, I can’t help thinking “obviously Douthat has never been queer, Black, female or elderly, just to name a few communities that have experienced that particular situation in spades over recent decades. But then as a hetero white male under 50 he wouldn’t.”
Dan B
@Ruckus: We salvaged clear Maple flooring from a Hostess Bakery remodel. There were vats of stuff. I tasted some white stuff that was completely flavorless. It turned out to be the filling for Twinkies before sugar was added. The “sugar” came from pipes that were filled from tanker trucks. Twinkies won’t spoil..
Do Not Eat Twinkies!
boatboy_srq
@RSA: Four-plus decades of demands for “relevant course material” has resulted in entire generations trained but not educated.
seaninclt
Here’s how you fix it… pay attention and keep it secret from the rubes…
This is literally so stupid it may actually work.
SFAW
@Just Chuck:
No, not really. They mean liberals, Dems, “the other.” It’s been that way (i.e., using “elites” as a pejorative) for at least 20, and more like 30-plus years.
JoyceH
@JaneE:
I was right there with you. I was convinced the vaccine was safe by Dr. Fauci. He explained quite clearly that the approval was not rushed, that all the steps had been followed and the vaccine was created so quickly because the mRNA research had actually already been done before the pandemic. So I was all, “Alrighty, then.” Of course, I’m the girl with the Fauci prayer candle and the ‘Got My Fauci Ouchie” teeshirt.
SFAW
@seaninclt:
I’d rather see the deal structured that TFG doesn’t get any money until 95 percent of the MAGAts are fully dosed. And if they DO somehow reach that number, Biden should hire Cyber Ninjas to “audit” the number before any check is cut.
James E Powell
@LongHairedWeirdo:
Not disagreeing with you, just saying that battle was lost a while ago.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
so much for the “party of personal responsibility”
seaninclt
@SFAW: Holding the money till a vax level is reached… solid idea. Once it is, Biden should hold a presser thanking Trump for helping rebrand the Pfizer vax and selling out all his cultists for $5 a head
edit – then have the IRS audit Trump Pharma and freeze their assets pending the settlement of their tax debt.
FlyingToaster
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Up Heah in the
People’s RepublicCommonwealth of Massachusetts, if a owner/manager of a shop called 911 to get someone trespassed for not wearing a mask, that damn well happened.I watched one handcuffed asshat being hauled out of the Waltham HomeDepot kicking and screaming while the cops shouted his rights. And a senior cop talking to the manger (ice pack over eye) about having someone check the lot after closing to tow said asshat’s truck.
I watched a store manager at StarMarket in Allston yell at a woman that no mask, no entrance. He said he didn’t give a fuck about her privacy and he’d happily go inside and get her her package of Depends™ and bring out a handheld for her to pay with a credit card. Put on a mask, give him a list, leave, or he’d call the cops. He was dialing 911 while she screamed curses at him.
May 2020 was chock full of police log reports of mask refusenik arrests.
JoyceH
@James E Powell:
Argh! Can I speak up for my nails on chalkboard issue? Inferred versus implied!
“She inferred that she didn’t believe him.”
No, she IMPLIED that she didn’t believe him. Or I inferred from her words that she didn’t believe him. The speaker IMPLIES, the listener INFERS.
J R in WV
@The Moar You Know:
They also can triage the people who show up. Those who can be saved by prompt treatment will get that treatment, if possible. These are vaccinated people who won’t get sick enough to die quickly
Those who cannot be saved because there is no room at the ICU will not get that treatment. No more vents, not vaccinated, sorry Charley!
I won’t be laughing, I’ll be sad about it. But I won’t care very much, and I won’t cry about it late at night.
On the other hand, I do lie awake at night wondering about the people I love who died in spite of all they and we could do to help them. I’m old enough to have lost some great people through no fault of their own.
Just Chuck
@LongHairedWeirdo:
The “Have you stopped beating your wife?” fallacy is usually called “Complex Question” rather than “Begging the Question. Though it really is a single-statement version of the latter, just couching the assertion in a question rather than a circular inference. As for the improper usage: let it go, fellow hirsute weird one. We lost that battle long ago.
Also, Occam’s razor is “Do not multiply entities unnecessarily.” He’d hate string theory.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack:
I don’t disagree at all about sheriff V. He’s an ass, first class edition. And while I know that you are correct, I’d bet that he’s assuming that people were asking for mask patrols and it is possible that the people talking about the situation were actually asking for mask patrols. He, I’d bet, sees the world in an extremely different light than normal people do.
Freemark
@Gretchen: I think they were indicating that they had a case of shingles and were waiting for it to pass.
lowtechcyclist
@SFAW:
More like 50+. I remember Spiro Agnew spewing this crap back in 1969.
But lately, over the past half-dozen years that is, it’s meant Jews as well, and as Jews, not just as members of those other groups. TFG made America safe for anti-Semitism again.
The Pale Scot
@The Moar You Know:
And after it has been ascertained that they are not vaccinated, roll them into a wing set aside just for them. The walls should be festooned with Dump and Tucker and NRA memorabilia and Crucifixes and pictures of TV preachers. Staffed with antivax nurses wearing holsters and pistols. Treatment will be a morphine, ketamine and benzo drip.
Then step back and let Dog sort them out
Just Chuck
@UncleEbeneezer: Toddlers aren’t really capable of bad faith, and their angry spite lasts only until you hand them an ice cream cone. Toddlers are way easier to handle than Republicans.
Raoul Paste
@Ruckus: well again, I was making an analogy to junkies, not really singling them out. And you’re absolutely right, this “I can do whatever I want“ immaturity is no way to have a decent society.
You just have to wonder how far this unvaccinated pandemic is going to progress before there is a tipping point. At this point I think the pro vaccine commercials should be brutally graphic, but that’s just my emotion talking
JoyceH
@The Pale Scot:
You forgot the hydroychloroquine.
Ruckus
@Dan B:
Navy food. For about 6 weeks I was on temp duty at Long Beach Navel Station, as one of the Transit Barracks, master at arms. Which meant I checked men in and out and was in charge of keeping the peace or calling the shore patrol. We had a small office with a counter, file cabinet and refrigerator. Worked 12 hrs on, 72 hrs off. I had night duty, something like 9 or 10 pm to 9 or 10 am. We got what’s known as midnight rations or mid rats and that’s what the refrig was for. Every night the same, a plain American cheese sandwich on white bread, a Twinkie and an apple that had seen better days. The Twinkie was the best part, which is NOT saying much.
NotMax
@The Pale Scot
“To accommodate the full measure of your beliefs, we have set up a working replica of what an ER in 1776 might have been. Do you prefer black or brown leeches?”
Steeplejack
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Pro tip, via my brother (now recently retired from ophthalmology, so I’m not sure he retains any credibility ?): it is no big deal to get your doctor to prescribe a single dose of a tranquilizer to get you through a stressful situation like getting a shot.
I can’t remember the context in which this came up, but I was mildly surprised to hear it.
mrmoshpotato
Yes, Patton. Absolutely.
Matt McIrvin
There are people for whom the headline, at least, is true.
They’re mostly not Republican and certainly not anyone the National Review would want to advocate for. And they didn’t get their vaccine hesitancy from Tucker Carlson.
sab
@Dan B: I did props for acommunity theater production of Grease. I left a box of twinkies in the car on a hot summer day and the filling completely evaporated. I am amazed that they survive deep frying.
Soprano2
@Mike in NC: Early on it was mostly killing people who aren’t their voters, which is why red state governors didn’t care about it that much. Now that it’s killing their voters they care, but it’s too late – no one is listening to what they say.
Ruckus
@Raoul Paste:
Probably the entire point we are both making is that their is no rational thought or process in modern day conservatism. We really are seeing fully grown irresponsible children (like old enough to drink grown) having tantrums like a 4 or 5 yr old.
J R in WV
@Baud:
I had a very bright co-worker I was quite fond of. Her sister was in a terrible auto accident, car slid under a big tractor-trailer rig. She lived at least kin part because she was not wearing a seat-belt and was thrown/knocked/dove under the dashboard and so was not decapitated.
Of course this was many years ago when cars had space under a dashboard, which is no longer true — barely room for your feet down there now!
Anyway, D wouldn’t wear a seat-belt normally because she promised her mother she wouldn’t, because wearing a seat-belt would have killed D’s sister… Brilliant software developer and systems analyst. But…
Hope she is vaccinated!
Matt McIrvin
@smith: Sumter County, Florida is 67.9% fully vaccinated, 79.0% fully or partially vaccinated. In a state where vaccination coverage is… variable, to say the least, it’s the highest vaccination percentage of any county I can find in America. Don’t know if it’s absolutely the highest.
One guess what Sumter County, Florida consists of. (hint: it ain’t Disney World.)
zhena gogolia
BRILLIANT JL Cauvin — 21 minutes of TFG tasting Colin Kaepernick ice cream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9xXyWAnAq8
Ruckus
@NotMax:
Wouldn’t they have to pay for the leaches? Maybe in farthings…..
Geminid
@Dan B: I used to live over in the Shenandoah Valley near Stuart’s Draft, less than a mile from a Little Debbies plant. A railroad spur ran alongside it, and that’s how they received supplies. Large vacuum tubes would suck flower and sugar into the factory from 80 ton railcars. Heated lard in tank cars would be pumped in. Evidently Tuesdays were pie days, because I could always smell them baking.
I always thought that if we had a war on diabetes and I was in charge, one of the first things I’d do would be to have the place bombed. This could be done safely on a Saturday, as the owners are very strict Seventh Day Adventists and don’t even allow contractors to work there from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.
J R in WV
@raven:
I think some cops would fight you if you told them they have to wear body armor. If no one tries to make them, they will do it as a matter of course.
Hope they all get Trumpian Plague shots!
Martin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My son has a needle phobia. It can be astoundingly difficult, *however* if he is sufficiently motivated he can overcome it with a Xanax, etc. If he is not sufficiently motivated, a tranq won’t work – he’d need a complete dissociative episode to do it – like Ketamine.
You have to be really careful with a proper phobia. You can’t lead them to the outcome, just support them while they navigate that path.
UncleEbeneezer
@Just Chuck: They also can be shamed.
Central Planning
@Ruckus:
So how did they taste?
@Ruckus:
mrmoshpotato
@raven:
i hear the surface of the Sun is nice this time of giant, flaming gas ball.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Soprano2
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ugh Jason Smith is awful. The local paper had a big spread today with community leaders encouraging people to get vaccinated. I hope it does some good.
dmsilev
@seaninclt: I would only go along with that idea if, at the end, Trump got stiffed on his payment.
NotMax
@raven
Military vets have gravitated to using flack in place of flak?
Flabbergasted, I be.
;)
Ohio Mom
Ked @133:
I just saw the same thing play out at my CVS. I was there on Friday and a young woman came in and asked about a shot.
The pharmacist said they were out and suggested she go to one of two other CVS’s. I complimented her on wanting to get a shot and pointed out that there was also a Walgreens across the street and a Kroger’s nearby that give shots but of course the CVS pharmacist won’t tell you that. I hope he overheard me.
No argument here on your assessment of CVS.
NotMax
@Central Planning
Pair ’em with a deep-fried Snickers for maximal munching.
:)
Morzer
@FlyingToaster:
Ah, the Scott Brown “moderate” conservative demographic.
The Pale Scot
@JoyceH:
I meant to write it in, it slipped my mind. Tell them they’re special wink wink and it’s only being given to REAL AMERICANS
SFAW
@NotMax:
As
HedyHedley Lamarr might say: “TooJewishGerman.”Morzer
@Ruckus: I have often wondered just how much sugar the average Trumper has in their system.
Ruckus
@Central Planning:
Surly you jest. At least I hope so…..
There were a number of food items that seemed like they may not be in the best interest of….. any animal alive. I took a pass on all of them. I may not have a huge, overwhelming respect for my body, with good reason I might add, but I do have some.
Martin
I’m being swayed by arguments that lockdowns are the wrong approach. Unlike last year when we were buying time to get to a vaccine, that’s not the case now. I know they are working on boosters and better vaccine formulations, but that’s not going to address this. We can’t mask until the unvaccinated die off.
I think we have two options as a society:
Every other effort serves to delay #2, without addressing #1. And we need to have a come-to-Jesus moment from Biden on this. Pick a path, and then inform us of the path.
About 800 fully vaccinated people have died from Covid. They had serious comorbidities. So that needs to factor into the above.
The vaccine can protect most of us, but not all of us. So the focus on the vaccine needs to be to drive infections so low that it can’t reach those that are vulnerable even with the vaccine. And the only way to do that is to remove the unvaccinated from society. I don’t mean murder them, but you don’t get to get on a plane, go to a store, attend an event without proof of vaccination. Otherwise, #2 it is.
SFAW
@seaninclt:
I like the way you think.
raven
@NotMax: I was not paying much attention.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Michigan…. lotta militia-types there, it seems, but we’ll find out soon enough what’s going oETA: never mind
topclimber
@Matt McIrvin: The Villages?
Spanky
Well, another 6 hour span without a post. This can only mean we’ll get 5 in the next three hours.
Ruckus
@Morzer:
What kind of animals do you think they are?
I’m thinking absolutely the dumbest or not animals at all, some sort of other world moronic outcasts that had to leave their home planet because they had fucked it up totally. (I wonder if that would be harder or easier here?)
Bill Arnold
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I get regularly spam from that guy (not intended recipient; my gmail address is uhm easily guessed). He’s a seriously delusional MAGA type, and/or does a very good impression of one. Have stayed subscribed just to get occasional undiluted doses of MAGAtry from that perspective.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@germy: “Incredibly partisan statement” = Anything stated by a Democrat.
But it doesn’t work if it’s said by a Republican either. At this point, all that happens is those people get shouted down as being RINOs and kicked out of the bubble.
NotMax
@Ohio Mom
Several years ago when CVS took over a local chain, the most evident changes were
• changing configuration of the aisles from running the length of the store to running across the width
• raising prices between 10 and 30%
• reducing variety of merchandise by at least one-third
• banishing made in Hawaii goods to the most inaccessible locations
.
They did keep the name and signage of the local chain, however.
JoyceH
@NotMax: I like deep fried pickles. They’re dill slices, not the whole pickle, and probably amazingly bad for you, but yum.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Bill Arnold: about six months ago, I started getting email from what seemed to be a joint list shared by Ted Cruz and the Susan B Anthony group. A couple of months ago, Rand Paul. Last week: Tim Scott. I don’t know if someone’s having a little fun, or how it happened.
When I think of it, I stuff the blank forms into the postage paid envelopes and drop them in.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: As someone who works in retail, I’m happy with a masking requirement.
Matt McIrvin
Struck by the fact that I’m seeing fully-vaccinated people who got breakthrough COVID tweet about it, and what every one of them says is “this is pretty bad, I can only imagine how terrible it would be if I weren’t vaccinated–please get vaccinated!”
And then there’s always some yahoo following up with “MASKS AND VAX GAVE YOU COVID HAW HAW”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Spanky:
Patricia Kayden
“Let them die then.”
Thank you, Hoarse Whisperer.
NotMax
@JoyceH
Have mentioned in the past that there actually exists deep-fried mayonnaise.
“The entire heartland all in one bite.”
Spanky
@?BillinGlendaleCA: There’s #1.
Martin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, in absence of other things, but understand as a retail worker, unless something more substantive changes with respect to the unvaccinated, it’s just a matter of time before you and I catch it.
Matt McIrvin
@topclimber: Only one guess was needed!
Matt McIrvin
@Martin:
Oh yeah? Watch me.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
We can mask, but masks are not 100% effective, just like vaccines.
I do get your point about continuing to wear one, as many of us non idiots do, and it, along with vaccination makes it even more difficult to get covid, yet it is not impossible to get, fully vaccinated and masked.
mrmoshpotato
Boot her into the Sun, mates!
Uncle Cosmo
FFS, of course they did. That’s a good chunk of what they paid for – the reputation of the (formerly independent) local chain and the loyalty of its customers.
The single vilest maneuver in late-stage corpitalism is to buy up a smaller operation whose products have earned a stellar reputation and the loyalty of their customers … and then slowly, covertly, cheapen all its brands (raising prices, reducing sizes/quantities, substituting inferior materials, moving production to a country with a cheaper labor force, etc.) in order to suck as many $$$ as possible out of the pockets of trusting customers before they tumble to the con.
For that alone, entire boards of directors richly ;^D deserve to be taken out and shot.
Chetan Murthy
@Uncle Cosmo: This is something they *teach* in B-school. Amartya Sen has written about it.
NotMax
@Uncle Cosmo
For the longest time the local chain was the only game in town, so customer loyalty is harder to quantify.
My 94-year-old landlady, lifelong resident here, won’t shop there anymore because “their prices are too high” and “they stopped selling [insert locally made item here].”
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Uncle Cosmo: Many years ago we heard that People’s Drug, a beloved DC-area chain, was going to become a CVS. My young daughter wrote a letter to management begging them not to change the stuff we loved about People’s.
They wrote back, “don’t worry, honey, we bought them a year ago and you didn’t even know. They’ll still be the same.”
And then of course they changed the signage and all the selection and everything else went to crap.
Biff Baxter
I’m at the point where it’s screw them. The vaccine is readily and easily available. If at this point, you refuse to get it, it’s up to you to deal with the consequences of your decision. I’m lucky that all of my immediate family members, their spouses and eligible kids, have been vaccinated for some time.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Kent:
It’s the damned logging (slash piles everywhere) that feeds the fires in the first place. The piles burn longer and more intensely than the regular growth, fueling the fires. Add drought to that and it’s a perfect storm waiting to be unleashed.
Maybe we should rake our forests… ;)
rikyrah
@raven:
????????????
rikyrah
@The Moar You Know:
Why can’t they, when it goes off EUA, make it mandatory, give a firm date for vaccination and then fire them?
WV Blondie
I’d just as soon let ’em die. But I do have a suggestion in the alternative: announce the door-to-door program will concentrate solely on minorities. The RWNJs will scream about racism against whites and insist on getting shots first
rikyrah
@geg6:
Do it or get another job
I see no problem with that
rikyrah
@WV Blondie:
Have no problem with that either
glc
@LongHairedWeirdo: In English, it appears the term “begging the question” died quite a few years ago, after long and respectable service; though outside of English it’s still alive and well, and goes back more than two millennia.
A case of logicide. I’d put the date of death around 2005, when the website http://begthequestion.info/ was created in an attempt to resuscitate the victim. A sure sign of a lost cause.
Meanwhile UK journalists seem to be replacing “procrastinate” by “prevaricate,” which is a little harder to fathom.
Butter Emails
Remember when we used to joke about Obama, Hillary and Pelosi doing a public service announcement against drinking Drano and thought it was actually a joke? Good times. Good times.
brendancalling
@WV Blondie: So why would you tell them that?
Good lord, they’re killing themselves (and their vicious little progeny) to own the libs. Don’t give them an exit ramp, figure out a way to get them to do it faster and more effectively.
LadySuzy
@Kent: Do you think the Pennsylvania side of your family , those who vote Republican out of habit, will change their minds once the epidemic of the “unvaccinated” is placated on the news 24/7, which will be very soon … Maybe when people they know go to the hospital they will change their minds ?
Matt McIrvin
@LadySuzy: Stories about breakthrough infections are the counter-narrative here: as long as there’s even one breakthrough infection it’s possible to insist that it’s evidence the vaccines don’t work on Delta and everyone is lying.
Ruckus
@LadySuzy:
For many of those who refuse the vaccine, not necessarily Kent’s relatives, they have already seen a number of people die. Because the vaccine rate is low where they are. All the evidence is there, but they discount it because, no good reason, other than being stubborn and listening to people on their side of the aisle, many of whom have been vaccinated and are using them for at least the hope of political gain. Or gross stupidity, they are guilty of both. This concept seems to me to be one of the biggest political cons ever by the rethuglican party, that given the current situation they are willing to let hundreds of thousands of people die, in order to, do what, own the libs?
2liberal
@Baud:
https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/seat-belts
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus: Oh, I have no illusions that it’ll work forever.
I suspect the scientists who are talking about an endemic-COVID world are correct and the end state, at this point, is that 100% of everyone gets exposed and to some degree infected. The question is just how bad that is, and if you’re vaccinated, it’s likely to be a nasty cold. (If you’re not vaccinated, maybe you die.)
But it doesn’t mean I go down without a fight. Delaying tactics successfully got me COVID-free to the point where they developed a vaccine and I was able to get it! That was an amazing success. Maybe if I delay longer I get to the point where I get a better vaccine and the infection is even milder. If I feel it at all.
I’m not going to hunker down at home for the rest of my life. But I can do easy things.
columbusqueen
@debbie: Not to mention deep fried buckeyes & Snickers (though that’s a Scottish invention now imported stateside).
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s what I figured but do keep in mind that some of us are, at least in theory, far more likely to suffer and or die because we have some serious co-morbidities, age seems to be one and I’ve got age. (Yes I know I’m not alone in that, in the overall concept of aging, I’m only 3, no 4 – or is it 5, steps beyond teenager.) So depending on your age, general and specific health issues this pandemic can be less than fun. And of course there is the wonderful human form of moron known as conservative. Whose political game plan seems to be destroy the world so that a few can be enormously wealthy, all the while fucking over the remaining morons. Including and especially themselves. Mind boggled at the insanity.