Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

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

You cannot shame the shameless.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Bark louder, little dog.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

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

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

The lights are all blinking red.

Giving up is unforgivable.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / Excellent Link: ‘The Future Of The COVID Vaccine Push’

Excellent Link: ‘The Future Of The COVID Vaccine Push’

by | 216 Comments

This post is in: ,

Dave Roth is a genius, within his particular field:

Everyone who has held a job knows how it feels to be subject to the dim caprice of a grandiose and arbitrary boss, and to be captive to backward and deeply entrenched cultures, and to try and fail to get comfortable on the knife-edge of precariousness that is the inherent and defining condition of contemporary working life. NFL players have to negotiate all of that on television while also risking vast bodily harm and getting yelled at/about by strangers, but give or take all that, the dynamic tension holding it in place is the same as it is anywhere, everywhere else. The discrete tasks that make up different jobs are different, but the broader thing—doing something other than what you’d rather be doing, generally alongside other people, in exchange for money—applies too.

What makes it all work, when and where it does work, is not just a commitment to working toward a shared goal among the people doing the thing in question, but a tacit commitment to some small, subsidiary interpersonal understandings. At workplaces that work, this expresses itself through a tacit kind of sublimation, not just in terms of a new and more humble understanding of the relative importance of individual prerogatives relative to the broader collective pursuit, but also by accepting an unspoken suite of obligations to the people around you. It’s pragmatic, mostly, but there’s still some grace in it. Practically speaking, it is harder for a collective to reach its shared goal if everyone is not pulling in the same direction; the more ennobling part is how that understanding tends to manifest through big and little acts of helpfulness and support and assistance. Those actions reflect and honor, in a way that those broader goals would and necessarily could not, the fact that everyone involved is a person. It is a practical fact that people tend to pull most effectively in the desired direction if they feel supported and valued by the people around them, but also and more importantly that is just what people deserve…

If you and I were talking about this, we might call this sort of caring something like “social responsibility,” or just “not needlessly making things harder for everyone else because you for some reason wanted to.” When football coaches talk about this kind of thing, as they do, the branding tends more towards Bill Belichick’s typically pithy and appropriately joyless “do your job.” Earlier this week, Michael Irvin—one of the great individual performers of his NFL generation and a core figure in a Dallas Cowboys dynasty that proved a team could be cohesive and high-functioning in this one essentially collective way while being floridly pathological in every other one—found another way to express it. Irvin was talking about the Cowboys, which is part of his job as an opinionated and occasionally mysteriously sweaty NFL commentator, and more specifically was addressing the fact that the Cowboys are not one of the 13 NFL teams to have hit the league’s COVID-19 vaccination threshold, and not terribly close to becoming one.

Here is what Irvin told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram‘s Clarence E. Hill Jr.:

It should upset them. Dude, you’re not thinking right. I don’t give a damn. Nothing else can be more important. You’re not going to get this [winning a Super Bowl] easily. And not being one of the [vaccinated teams] says there’s other things to a great number of people on this team that are more important than winning championships and that makes me worried.

…“If you’re not one of the [vaccinated] teams are you really thinking about winning a championship?”…

… [W]hile this is unmistakably a conservative argument for vaccination—how can you say you are serious about excelling at work and avoiding distractions and destroying your rivals if you won’t protect yourself against the virus with a vaccine?—it is also the first such argument for vaccination that we’ve seen in earnest, even all these months into the push…

Reader Interactions

216Comments

  1. 1.

    NotMax

    Asking anew.

    Curious how any of your area’s COVID PSAs stack up against this local one which runs a lot on the TV and streaming services with ads here. Hope they don’t also have production values straight out of 1959 (not to mention hope of people who can, y’know, act).

    ;)

  3. 3.

    Baud

    The only person on this subway car not wearing a mask is reading Ayn Rand

    The FountainDickhead

  6. 6.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Long NYT Mag  piece on the recently vaxxed

    In Florida, a clinic in Sarasota County was quiet, a brightly lit waiting area full of mostly empty chairs. Several people wandered in, often no more than one or two in an hour. Lately, they are vaccinating fewer than 30 people there a day.

    Eric Topol @EricTopol19h
    Don’t get numb about Delta’s impact —Nearly 70,000 US cases today —Sharp increases in hospitalizations —Florida trends for both very concerning —The epicenter—Arkansas & Louisiana—leading case rise per capita, heading to 50/100K, and hospitalizations Similar to UK pattern

    Remember “How Ron DeSantis Won Covid”

  8. 8.

    Ken

    @NotMax: Murder on the Flushing Express, a rip-off homage to Christie’s classic where the subway police try to figure out which of the 27 other passengers stabbed the guy 27 times.

    Or if you want to stick with Rand, I’ve heard that AS has a scene where hundred die in a train crash, but they all really, really deserved it because they were parasites.

  9. 9.

    trollhattan

    @NotMax:

    Can’t answer because I don’t watch our local stations. Whatever they’re doing it’s not working.

    Vaccinations 49.1%
    Hospitalizations 141
    ICU cases 32
    Deaths 4
    Month ago those last three values were far lower, appearing to be headed for extinction. Most cases now delta variation.

  11. 11.

    NotMax

    @trollhattan

    Don’t watch the traditional local stations either but the one I linked airs multiple times per hour on MSNBC and shows up on stream-with-ads services. Saw it again several times just yesterday while catching up on Superman and Lois on the free with ads CW streaming.

  12. 12.

    Ohio Mom

    That is the best description of the work world I have ever read, and this was particularly painful to be reminded of: “…to try and fail to get comfortable on the knife-edge of precariousness that is the inherent and defining condition of contemporary working life.”

    What horrible memories that triggers.

  13. 13.

    billcinsd

    how can you say you are serious about excelling at work and avoiding distractions and destroying your rivals

     

    But, but, but won’t giving your rivals Covid help destroy them?

  14. 14.

    Mike in NC

    Started to read “I Alone Can Fix It” this morning and am about halfway through already. It’s like reading a horror novel, but in this case what’s scary to recall is Trump’s sheer stupidity and mendacity. Bring on the January 6 hearings already!

  15. 15.

    Ohio Mom

    Not Max:

    I can’t comment on local PSAs, not having a TV these days, but I found the one you linked to utterly charming in its guilenessless. Or maybe because I identify with the old lady.

  16. 16.

    Ken

    @billcinsd: But, but, but won’t giving your rivals Covid help destroy them?

    You have to (1) have COVID and (2) get within six feet of your rivals to do that. The NFL has taken the position that if (1) occurs, (2) will not, and the game will be recorded as a loss for your team.

    (I’m not sure what happens if both teams have positive tests. Double loss in the record books?  We may see a Super Bowl being played between two 1-16 teams.)

  17. 17.

    burnspbesq

    I read somewhere the other day someone asserting that if Nick Saban came out forthrightly in favor of vaccination, 90 percent of Alabamians would be vaxed by Monday.

    I think the opposite would happen. There would be calls for his head. These people are beyond hope.

  18. 18.

    dmsilev

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: In a similar vein, from the LA Times,

    Why haven’t you been vaccinated? With COVID-19 raging, people explain what took so long

    TL, DR: Not everyone who hasn’t gotten the shot is a MAGAidiot.

    Guillermo Cozar waited months to get his vaccine because, he reasoned, he’d already had COVID last fall and didn’t think he would get sick again. When he showed up at a more-than-a-century-old house of worship in Pico-Union to finally get the shot, there was no more waiting to be done.

    “I feel calmer now that I finally got the vaccine,” the 45-year-old said. “I need to protect myself and everyone else.”

    Around 10 a.m., Marco Figueroa had completed five deliveries for work when he saw the sign he’d been waiting for: “Vacuna de COVID gratis.” Free COVID vaccine.

    His sister and brother got vaccinated in May, but the 42-year-old wanted to avoid taking a day off of work.

    “Luego, luego,” he would tell his siblings when they asked when he’d go. “Later, later.”

    When he spotted the poster board affixed to a utility pole, he decided to give up his lunch hour to get vaccinated. His co-worker parked their work truck in a loading zone on 12th Street and waited as Figueroa headed to the blue tents where two registered nurses were giving vaccines.

    As Figueroa waited the 10 minutes for workers to prep the Pfizer vaccine, he gripped the sides of the black folding chair where he sat. Not because he was scared, he said, but because he was worried about falling behind on the deliveries he had left.

    A handful of people who showed up at the clinic, like Cozar, cited the fact that they had gotten COVID during the last surge and felt they had immunity.

    Castellon-Lopez said it’s something that’s come up in webinars she’s done with community organizations. She’s also heard from Latinos who worry that the vaccine is too new, who initially worried about the cost and who brought up disinformation around the vaccine.

    Santamaria said none of her children have been vaccinated, calling it a “roulette.” Her 13-year-old granddaughter showed the family a video filled with misinformation about women becoming infertile after getting vaccinated.

    “Now I’m going to motivate my daughters,” Santamaria said

  19. 19.

    burnspbesq

    On the other hand, if Charles Barkley were to come out against vaccination, Bama people might get it just to piss him off (ICYF, Barkley went to Auburn).

    Hmmm … a plan takes shape?

  20. 20.

    realbtl

    I’m in Montana’s hot spot county, ~200 cases out of 700 total.

    My co. vax rate low 30s, Biden vote low 30s.  Missoula co (university town) vax rate 61% Biden vote 62%.

    I sense a trend here.

  21. 21.

    Martin

    I wonder if there’s a market for someone to fire employees that refuse to get vaccinated. Because I’d sign up for that.

  23. 23.

    Tony Jay

    The only person on this subway car not wearing a mask is reading Ayn Rand

    Along these lines, the UK’s pathetically over-compensating ‘Health (of corporate profits) Secretary’, Sajid Javid, the only Sontaran with a head small enough to fully buy into Ayn Rand’s verbose drivel, is apparently getting kerb-stomped on social media for declaring that he’s recovered so effortlessly from his ever so convenient dose of Covid that the rest of the country needs take heart from his inspirational example and stop ‘cowering’ from this pesky virus.

    Given that every single non-Governmental health expert is saying that’s going to lead to tens of thousands of deaths, maybe he should shove his copy of The Fountainhead up his bleached rectum and go back to the world of disaster banking where people are paid to nod respectfully when dickheads like him try to sound macho.

    Prick.

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    @Martin

    Realizing it’s not just a cosmetic but an economic decision, in that it could be interpreted as a detriment to future syndication, I do wish more popular culture programming featured masked people.

  25. 25.

    Woodrow/asim

    @Tony Jay: the only Sontaran with a head small enough to fully buy into Ayn Rand’s verbose drivel

    Bonus for the Doctor Who reference!

  26. 26.

    dr. bloor

    @Ken:

    We may see a Super Bowl being played between two 1-16 teams.

    Not likely–the same organizations that know how to win consistently will apply the same principles to this issue.  I saw somewhere that the two teams below 50% vax rate were Indianapolis and the Washington Football Team, which is all you need to know.

  28. 28.

    Another Scott

    @NotMax: Hehe.

    I don’t think I’ve seen an extended local vaccination PSA like that here in NoVA.  The ones I recall seeing were just a few seconds of a screen of text (maybe with an announcer – I always mute commercials).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  29. 29.

    Ken

    @realbtl:My co. vax rate low 30s, Biden vote low 30s.  Missoula co (university town) vax rate 61% Biden vote 62%. I  sense a trend here.

    Can’t find it immediately, but there was a recent analysis of county-level data, and Trump% vs. unvaccinated% has a correlation of something like 0.7, which is remarkably high.

  30. 30.

    Tony Jay

    @Woodrow/asim:

    @eddie blake:

    Have you ever noticed that Johnson looks like a Slitheen in a partially deflated human skin?

    There’s definitely something off about all of them. Explains why they defunded U.N.I.T. in the austerity budget.

  31. 31.

    Geminid

    I hear Dave Roth a couple times a week when I listen to local radio in the afternoon. I believe he is syndicated by CBS news. Roth is good at what he does: gentle persuasion.

  32. 32.

    Shalimar

    @burnspbesq:  For one thing, Alabama is split roughly 60/40 between Alabama and Auburn fans, so there is nothing football-related that could possibly unite 90% of the state.  Beyond that, I imagine there would be an increase in vaccinations if Saban recorded a PSA, but it wouldn’t be dramatic and there would be larger numbers who held it against him forever.

  34. 34.

    Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)

    @burnspbesq: l’m afraid at this point you’re probably correct. He’s done PSAs for getting vaxxed, and… you can see how it’s going. Governor Meemaw ranting about the umvaxxed aside, she won’t allow for vaccine passports and walked away from the mask mandate. She caved when it mattered, and is merely doing performance art now.

    Then again, she’s undergoing cancer treatment; perhaps she’s actually mad.

  36. 36.

    Soprano2

    I’m so much angrier about this after seeing my mom this afternoon. She’s sick with something, of that I’m certain, but rather than go to the ER she needs to wait until Monday to see if her doctor can see her. Hell, with the way the ER’s are here if she went there it might be Monday before she saw a doctor anyway! All because these MAGA MORONS won’t get vaccinated! If I have to I’ll take her to urgent care, but I’d rather she see her own doctor. She has extreme fatigue, and isn’t hungry at all. She also has a dry cough and chest congestion with hoarseness. She said she’s never had anything like it, but her Covid test was negative so it’s something else.

  37. 37.

    MomSense

    @Soprano2:

    I had to take my mom to the ER a little over a month ago and they ended up admitting her for a few days.  She needed surgery.  Fortunately it was before Delta. The room she was in was in a ward that had been converted into a Covid ward with these big negative pressure units in each room.  She spent a lot of time talking to the nurses about what it had been like for them and they had all been through hell.  I’m furious at how selfish the anti-vaxxers are.  They don’t care a bit what they put health care workers through or how it will affect people who need medical care.

  38. 38.

    Brachiator

    @dmsilev:

    A handful of people who showed up at the clinic, like Cozar, cited the fact that they had gotten COVID during the last surge and felt they had immunity.

    Castellon-Lopez said it’s something that’s come up in webinars she’s done with community organizations. She’s also heard from Latinos who worry that the vaccine is too new, who initially worried about the cost and who brought up disinformation around the vaccine.

    Too much has been made of the political aspect of vaccine resistance. Anti vaxxers all tend to believe the same nonsense.

    An ER doctor interviewed by a Los Angeles talk radio host said he thinks that about a third of people might be hard core vaccine resisters no matter what.

    I recently watched a CNN clip where a man in the hospital recovering from Covid vehemently told his doctor that he would never get the vaccine.

    You can never get through to these people.

  40. 40.

    Elliott

    @dr. bloor: chiefs are over 90 percent and they will be above 95 percent before the season begins because personnel decisions will be biased towards the vaccinated. No sympathy in the coaching staff – 100 percent vaccinated.

  42. 42.

    Kent

    @burnspbesq: I read somewhere the other day someone asserting that if Nick Saban came out forthrightly in favor of vaccination, 90 percent of Alabamians would be vaxed by Monday.

    I think the opposite would happen. There would be calls for his head. These people are beyond hope.

    Honestly, why the fuck hasn’t he already done this

    EDIT…I see he already has.  But these folks are beyond reaching apparently.

  44. 44.

    Kent

    @dr. bloor:Not likely–the same organizations that know how to win consistently will apply the same principles to this issue.  I saw somewhere that the two teams below 50% vax rate were Indianapolis and the Washington Football Team, which is all you need to know.

    My Seahawks are well over 90% so feeling a little smug here.

  45. 45.

    Kay

     Her 13-year-old granddaughter showed the family a video filled with misinformation about women becoming infertile after getting vaccinated.

    I hear this more than any other single conspiracy theory and not just women – they think it makes men infertile too. I thought about whether there was a way to convince them but I realize I’m sick of talking to them about it at all so if there is a way I’m probably not a messenger. I’m out of patience. I had an older man and his grown son in the office Friday and they started in on the masks and I just held up my hand- I cannot listen to the anti-mask whining anymore.
    This county currently has the second highest infection rate in the state, so it’s working out great.

  46. 46.

    Brachiator

     

    @debbie:

    Natural selection

    There is some evolutionary advantage to being an idiot sometimes, which is why there is a persistence of stupidity among humans.

  48. 48.

    Steeplejack

    @NotMax:

    I haven’t seen any local COVID PSAs, probably because of my viewing habits. That one you posted is pretty awful, so I guess I’m glad?

  49. 49.

    Another Scott

    @Kay:

    Repost from a morning thread:

    LONG COVID THREAD:

    The people running the BBC Horizon "Great British Intelligence Test" challenge on over 80,000 people took the opportunity to see if they could detect any differences by whether people had had covid or not…

    — Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) July 23, 2021

    Well worth a click-over, but tl;dr – Covid can damage your thinking ability even if you don’t have “long Covid”.

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00324-2/fulltext is the original paper.

    Yeah, it’s really smart to risk brain damage from a new-to-humans virus because of politics.

    Grr…

    Good luck.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  51. 51.

    Cameron

    Checking headlines at MSN I see that Rand Paul still claims Dr. Fauci is lying about his support or lack thereof for gain of function research. Gee, who to believe….

  52. 52.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Mike in NC:

    Started to read “I Alone Can Fix It” this morning and am about halfway through already. It’s like reading a horror novel, but in this case what’s scary to recall is Trump’s sheer stupidity and mendacity. Bring on the January 6 hearings already! 

    Yeah.  Fucking horror story but it’s reality!

  53. 53.

    debbie

    Just looked at the Johns Hopkins map for the first time in a while. We’re number one in cases and in deaths. Sigh.

  56. 56.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Another Scott: Thank you for this.  I assumed that there’d be bad things, given all that we read about symptoms and the massive clotting, strokes, etc.  But it’s reassuring (in a way) to learn that, yeah, best to avoid *ever* getting the damn bug.

  57. 57.

    Jackie

    @Kay: One would think that one of the long term side effects of HAVING Covid can cause male ED would scare men into getting vaccinated…??‍♀️

  58. 58.

    Steeplejack

    @burnspbesq:

    Hey, Tommy Tuberville got vaccinated!

    Getting the vaccine is safe, effective, and free. I got mine. And let me tell you, it’s worth it.

    Vaccines have slowed the rate of hospitalization and death down dramatically—and we want to keep it that way.

    Doesn’t actually tell anyone else to do it, but, hey, baby steps.

  59. 59.

    JMG

    Patriots let an assistant coach go for not getting the vaccine, although they came up with a Belichickian mumbo-jumbo phrase to describe it. I’d be surprised if their vaccination rate isn’t well over 90 percent.

  60. 60.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @JMG: Vikings, too

    Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1 7h
    Minnesota Vikings offensive line coach Rick Dennison is no longer employed by the team after refusing to be vaccinated against COVID.

  64. 64.

    The Thin Black Duke

    My mother died two weeks ago. Heart attack. She caught Covid months ago, but “recovered”. Every one of these stupid motherfuckers can hurry up and die, I don’t care.

  72. 72.

    CaseyL

    If your sense of ethics is such that seeing a couple classrooms full of little kids getting submachine gunned to death didn’t make you support some form of gun control, then the prospect of more Americans dying of Covid because you refuse to get vaxxed/wear a mask won’t make any impression at all.  “They died so I could have FREEDUMB.”

    These are people very comfortable with other people dying for their convenience.

  75. 75.

    The Thin Black Duke

    It’s so fucking stupid. Why in hell are their fucking feelings so goddamned important? Why does everybody else have to bend the fucking knee?

  77. 77.

    Jay

    THREAD:As news stories drop about COVID+ pandemic deniers & anti-vaxxers ranting defiantly from ICU beds, let's review what fraud research suggests abt the responsibility we should attribute to them for their condition & the ms they send.

    Are they victims we should pity? 1/x pic.twitter.com/jrmo6zQ7BL— Brooke Harrington (@EBHarrington) July 22, 2021

    Interesting thread,…..

  78. 78.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Chetan Murthy: in my day, we used to say, don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time (no… don’t do it)

    nowadays, the youths would say, he fucked around and found out

    Should the phrase “Iced Earth guitarist” mean something to me?

  81. 81.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Jay: it’s a very worthwhile thread, but as a commenter over at LG&M noted (and Joy Reid mentioned on Colbert’s show), these aren’t merely marks partaking in a con: they’re cult members.   When a high-ranking cult member utters heresy, the typical result is *not* that marks get “cooled”: the typical result is that that member is excommunicated or *worse*.

    It’s a cult.  And bit-by-bit, it’s becoming a death cult.  [I’m trying to be as generous as I can be.]

  84. 84.

    Bill Arnold

    @Chetan Murthy:
    There are a few other recent concerning studies.
    One, summarized, antibodies that attack neurons found in the cerebral spinal fluid of COVID-19 patients (and not in controls) in a very small study.
    Divergent and self-reactive immune responses in the CNS of COVID-19 patients with neurological symptoms (May 18, 2021)

    In contrast, at 1:10 dilution, COVID-19 CSF produced immunoreactive staining of specific anatomic regions, including cortical neurons (n = 4), the olfactory bulb (n = 3), the\
    thalamus (n = 3), the CA3 field of the hippocampus (n = 3), the cerebellum (n = 3), the brain stem (n = 4), and cerebral vasculature (n = 2)

    and brain shrinkage found in COVID-19 patients in a mid-sized UK biobank study:
    Alarming COVID study indicates long-term loss of gray matter and other brain tissue (Michael Greenwood, Jun 18 2021

    The actual preprint:
    Brain imaging before and after COVID-19 in UK Biobank (June 15, 2021)
    Here, we studied the effects of the disease in the brain using multimodal data from 782 participants from the UK Biobank COVID-19 re-imaging study, with 394 participants having tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection between their two scans. We used structural and functional brain scans from before and after infection, to compare longitudinal brain changes between these 394 COVID-19 patients and 388 controls who were matched for age, sex, ethnicity and interval between scans.

    See also
    Is Covid’s Impact on the Brain as Alarming as It Sounds? – Even mild cases can cause significant brain changes, research shows, making “living with Covid” a risky and dangerous strategy. (Sam Fazeli, June 24, 2021)

  86. 86.

    The Thin Black Duke

    Thanks, folks. I was at my mother’s house in New York the past few days, packing up stuff. I got to see my sister, niece and nephew who came up from Virginia to help. How many times is this scene playing out across the country, y’know?

  92. 92.

    sab

    @The Thin Black Duke: Everywhere. Quiet wrenching pain.

    ETA : one of my college roomates died this year of early onset alzheimers. Her last year she spent sort of alone in nursing home because her husband of 40 years wasn’t allowed to visit.

    A friend of the both of us  died of Covid alone in hospital

    ETA I hate being angry all the time but with antivax people I cannot help myself.  Enraged.

  93. 93.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Community theater I was involved in in the late 70s was working with Jackie Mason to try to mount a production of “Fiddler on the Roof”, with Mason as Tevye.

    It never came about, which is probably just as well.

  96. 96.

    Bill Arnold

    @Chetan Murthy:

    .And bit-by-bit, it’s becoming a death cult.

    Death Cult: A fringe religious group that glorifies or is obsessed with death.
    Nope. It’s a cult that demands the mass killing of random people, and promises personal prosperity and/or political gain in return.
    (‘Stochastic Murder Cult” would work too, but requires more explanation. Also, stochastic murder for personal gain is traditionally legal; tobacco corporations, the Sackler family.)

  101. 101.

    Doug R

    @Kent: Yeah, last year the Seahawks had ZERO actual Covid cases, so I’m pretty confident they’ll do fine this year.

  103. 103.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Imagine this was an epidemic of people sticking their dicks in light sockets. Electrical grids are fried. Dick-born electrical fires kill thousands. Hospitals at capacity from penis burns. Businesses shut down. And everyone’s like “Please, don’t talk down to the socket fuckers.”

    I’d add, “You said mean things to me to I HAD to put my dick in a light socket.” or even “It was YOU who put your dick in the light socket. I am not in the hospital for a burnt dick” to this. These people are some really, really stupid and childish people.

  104. 104.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Bill Arnold: Heh, I’m good with either moniker.  I think it’s like “treason”/”sedition” : to a layperson, it’s all the same thing.

  106. 106.

    Ohio Mom

    The Thin Black Duke:

    My deepest sympathy. Losing one’s mom is a category by itself. Definitely one of those dividing lines in life.

    Take good care of yourself as you adjust to this new reality.

  107. 107.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    If anyone asks me how I am I’m going to say “are you trying to violate HIPAA, or what?” That’s personal, private information. Under penalty of law.

  114. 114.

    Kay

    @sab:

    It’s weird, though, isn’t it? That they settled on infertility. I haven’t heard the vaccine-delivered chip theory which is a little disappointing. I’d have follow up questions on that.

    Remember when there was a section of Obamacare that had to do with a number series on implanted medical devices to track lots if they malfunction and they pulled the paragraph out and thought it meant implanting a tracking number in everyone? So this is a recurring fear.

  119. 119.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    She’s a traveling certified nursing assistant at area nursing homes and chose to skip the vaccine.
    Her fiance and her children, ages 12 and 13, are also unvaccinated. “I don’t consider myself an anti-vaxxer,” she told ProPublica, bristling that some might see her as reckless or ill-informed.
    Instead, she said her decision was carefully considered. It never made sense to her, she said, that the virus seemed to strike randomly, with some residents getting sick while others did not. She said she is not convinced the vaccine would change the odds.
    She’s also concerned after hearing that the vaccine could interfere with fertility — a contention that has been deemed false by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. It all leads her to believe more research is needed into the vaccines’ long-term effects.
    “This is just a personal choice and I feel it should be a free choice,” she said. “I think it’s been forced on us way too much.”

    she hasn’t had it, but it’s being forced on her
    bristling that some might see her as reckless or ill-informed.
    she really wouldn’t like to hear what how I see her, then, the fucking moron
    I heard on a podcast that 90% of US seniors have been vaccinated, so this woman is most likely to infect, or be infected by, her own family

  123. 123.

    Jay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    TFG’s “fans” are a cult, agreed,

    but not everyone who’s in denial about the vaccine, is in that cult. Many have been conned with scams, fearmongering and deliberate misinformation.

    Some might be salvageable.

  124. 124.

    The Pale Scot

    @Tony Jay:

    Have you ever noticed that Johnson looks like a Slitheen in a partially deflated human skin?

    Oh Dog, Frost especially, looks just like the general in the taking the Uk gov caper

  125. 125.

    Ohio Mom

    Yup, surprised to hear Jackie Mason died because I had no reason to think he was still around.

    Reading his obituary, I see that he started out as a rabbi. All who would have been his congregants were lucky he abandoned that career.

  132. 132.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Heavy Metal Guitarist-Turned-Capitol Rioter Has Feces Thrown at Him in Jail 

    I wonder when he went off the deep end.

    Gettysburg 1863 is still a great song.

  137. 137.

    sab

    Ohio Mom: Autistic grandchild is finally going to summer school, two years late. You were right about them needing school. She is two years behind, but absolutely loving it and thriving.

    My amazing city school district has a catch-up class for autistic kids. Yay Akron.

    ETA Nobody loves summer school. But she does.

  139. 139.

    The Pale Scot

    @Soprano2:

    a dry cough and chest congestion with hoarseness.

    You didn’t mention that yesterday. Tests can be wrong, it depends on the quality of the lab’s work, The people working there are under a strain.

    If the usual hospital you use is stressed. Maybe you can do what I’ve done helping my cousin with his bi polar elderly mom. When she’s unstable we have picked her up and taken her to most exclusive hospital in the area ER instead of the usual mediocre place she goes to. I wear a suit, stick my jaw out and use a WASP accent :). They can’t turn her away and up she goes to flight deck for 48 hours. Drive out to a ritzy suburb, Fed law requires they can’t turn her away. Get another test from someplace else. Work system, not the nurses, bring them a box of donuts, never hurts.

  141. 141.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: The idea that vaccines are really designed to make you infertile is common in Third World countries. They think white people are secretly trying to make their kids infertile so that their people will become extinct. So I’m not surprised that showed up about the Covid vaccines too.

  144. 144.

    Amir Khalid

    I don’t know why, but I would love to see Dave Roth tweet at someone: “Go ahead and jump!”

  145. 145.

    Nicole

    @Soprano2: See if her doctor will do a Covid test on Monday anyway.  I had 4 negative tests, right before, during, and right after being sick and didn’t test positive until 17 days after I first showed symptoms (and was feeling fine again).  My case was freakishly unusual, and most likely your mom is indeed negative for Covid (there are some regular respiratory viruses going around right now, too), but it can’t hurt for her to test again.  Keep us posted on how she’s doing?

  148. 148.

    Jay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    yeah, saw that study, however that 35% might be persuadable, but as the mark thread pointed out, they need to be pursuaded by some of the conmen and women recanting and people in their reinforcing groups recanting.

    That President Joe Biden got the shot, won’t have any impact, that everybody and their dog at Faux News did, some on day one, will have more impact.

    As we saw a little while ago, once it became clear that being fully vaxxed to participate in many societal activities from employment to travel, many of the fence sitters changed their minds.

  149. 149.

    The Pale Scot

    If they’re not vaccinated and they go to a hospital, roll them into a storage area, sedate them, tell them they’re in Dog’s hands.

    And completely fuck up their coding so they’re not covered by insurance.

    Yesterday a twitter was going around about a speech Macron made, apparently it was misinterpreted, it a shame it wasn’t

    “I no longer have any intention of sacrificing my life, my time, my freedom and the adolescence of my daughters, as well as their right to study properly, for those who refuse to be vaccinated. This time you stay at home, not us,

  150. 150.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Jay: Your last para: eh?  Nothing like that has happened in the US.  In France, yeah.

    I’m unconvinced by the “mark” thread.  It seems to me they’re cultists, and unless the leaders of the cult *en masse* change course, I don’t see them for turnin’.  And that means not just Faux Noize, but also ONAN and the other one.  And TFG.  And he ain’t gonna change.

  151. 151.

    Kay

    @sab:

    They do think everyone is trying to hurt them though. Many people are. Understandably.

    My youngest used to talk about his enemies. “My enemies”. Like there were hundreds. He was 7.

  153. 153.

    sab

    @Kay: But then he grew up.

    ETA My cats are having a stand-off now. The old neutered streetwise big guy v the tiny new un-neutered guy. 15 pounds v 6 pounds. 6 pounds has testosterone poisoning. Should be interesting.

    ETA Pitbull just jumped in. She wants the attention I am giving the cats. Yikes!

  154. 154.

    Soprano2

    @The Pale Scot: I forgot about it. Unfortunately, we only have two ER’S here, and both are so slammed with Covid patients that the wait is 12-24 hrs, plus you have to sit in a waiting room with people who have Covid. I wish I could do what you suggest, but it’s not an alternative here, being that I’m in the middle of one of the worst Covid outbreaks in the U.S. right now. If we did have such a thing, it would be full of the rich Covid patients.

  156. 156.

    Soprano2

    @Nicole: I will. I need to ask her if she knows what kind of test they did. If she thinks they swabbed her brain,  that’s the PCR test that I had.  That’s so weird that you were negative until you were over it. This had got to be the weirdest disease ever known to us.

  157. 157.

    Soprano2

    @sab: I think it’s still a commonly believed thing among people who are anti-vaxx, they may believe it for different reasons.

  159. 159.

    Ohio Mom

    Sab:

    That is smart of your school district. They will get their students with autism acclimated to school in plenty of time for the new year. I hope your granddaughter continues to like school, even after the first official day when things ramp up and the building gets crowded. I am sure her teachers will be doing lots of prep for that.

    When Ohio Son was done with preschool and about to start kindergarten in a different building, his teacher of record (his special ed teacher, as opposed to the classroom teacher) arranged for us to meet with her and tour the school a week before school was to start.

    During the tour, Ohio Son grew frantic, finally falling on the floor, sobbing. He managed to cry out, “Where are the children?”

    What a weird school, he must have been thinking. So much like his preschool building but an absolute ghost town. Was he to attend all by himself?

    So much for that attempt to help him with that transition.

  161. 161.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    Blue Aardvark is inconsolable over Jackie Mason’s passing

  163. 163.

    Brachiator

    @NotMax:

    Presumably the obits include some mention of the brouhaha involving Mason and Ed Sullivan.

    I used to watch comedians like Mason and Allen King on the Sullivan show. Learned to appreciate different approaches to humor, timing, etc from these guys.

    Even though I never much followed any forms of celebrity gossip, I heard about the Sullivan controversy and Mason.

    He got cranky and politically unpleasant in his later years, but still may he rest in peace.

     

    ETA. My single mom used to work nights and I was a latchkey kid who watched a lot of tv unsupervised. Later on I used to say that my babysitters included a lot of Jewish comedians. And Ernie Kovacs, who I immediately recognized as a comedy genius.

  164. 164.

    Jay

    @Soprano2:

    here, at the ER, possible Covid patients go right, everybody else goes left. Possible Covid cases are isolated from the rest of the hospital and staff, Covid cases are isolated even further.

  165. 165.

    sab

    @Ohio Mom: I read your comments intently. I remember that story. We don’t get much guidance. Parent stories are golden to us.

    ETA How old is Ohio son. I am guessing about 20?

  168. 168.

    Ohio Mom

    Soprano 2:

    Did you try calling the after-hours number for your mom’s PCP? Maybe the on-call doctor will have an idea or can call in a prescription of some kind. Can’t hurt.

    Not Max:

    Out of morbid curiousity, I did a little googling. The Ed Sullivan episode was the least of Mason’s, how shall I put this, rude behaviors. But for some reason, he was a total chick magnet, carrying on affairs while in an open marriage into his eighties. That is a mystery to me, I always found him repulsive.

  172. 172.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @Ohio Mom: ​
      Easy explanation, I believe it was the poet Mark Knopfler who observed, “money for nothing and the chicks for free”.

  174. 174.

    The Pale Scot

    @NotMax:

    the whole thing’s good.

    Reagan “he rides away on a horse ha ha ha, solution? He doesn’t know there’s a problem.

  177. 177.

    Citizen Alan

    @Yutsano: One of the more contemptible things Chris Chibnall did was announce in Whitaker’s first Holiday special that UNIT had been shut down in Britain due to Brexit. No respect for the legacy that’s been given to him.

  178. 178.

    Ohio Mom

    Sab:
    I am turning into an old lady, telling the same stories over and over!

    Did I already suggest looking into parent support groups through your local autism society? Maybe they are Zooming them during Covid Other families can be very useful for help in finding resources.

    And did I suggest looking up your area State Support Team? (Looks like Akron is SST 8: https://www.sst8.org/ParentsandFamilies.aspx). They are a state agency that provides help with special ed issues. They gave me great advice when I was having a spat with the jr. high, and I learned a lot about special ed laws and rights through their periodic parent workshops.

  180. 180.

    sab

    @Ohio Mom: That story has been on my mind for years. I kept telling my step-daughter “Ohio Mom says she needs to be in school!”

    Thank you so much for the more info.

  182. 182.

    SFAW

    @Tony Jay:

    the only Sontaran with a head small enough to fully buy into Ayn Rand’s verbose drivel

    “Prepare to be annihilated by COVID! May I take your coat?”

  186. 186.

    Soprano2

    @Jay: Well, I’ve heard from ER nurses here that sometimes they have to put possible Covid patients in the regular waiting room because they run out of room in the Covid waiting room. It’s unbelievable here right now, they’re seeing triple the normal amount of patients, plus who knows how many people are there for other things but have Covid and don’t know it. She’s vaccinated, but she also 87, so I’m trying to keep her away from there unless it’s absolutely necessary.

  187. 187.

    Brachiator

    @Citizen Alan:

    One of the more contemptible things Chris Chibnall did was announce in Whitaker’s first Holiday special that UNIT had been shut down in Britain due to Brexit. No respect for the legacy that’s been given to him.

    I don’t know. I kinda like the “f*ck you” to BREXIT and BREXIT supporters. Very much in the spirit of Who.

  188. 188.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Soprano2:

    She’s vaccinated, but she also 87, so I’m trying to keep her away from there unless it’s absolutely necessary.

    Good for you, and for her!  Um …. I don’t know what sort of test she had, but maybe it’s worth looking around for other tests that can be taken at home [so no need to expose her to possible infections] ?  I’m so sorry to hear that you and she have to go thru this.  By now, we should have been returning to normal so that your mom, and everybody else, could be dealing with all the deferred medical care of 1.5yr.  Ugh.

  192. 192.

    Steeplejack

    @sab:

    Is the six-pounder the former basement dweller who came with the pitbull? If so, at least he’s getting involved in the family!

  195. 195.

    Jay

    @Soprano2:

    given the way things are being handled there, best be safe.

    here, patients are prescreened by the staff outside the ER entrance. Temp, pulse oxy, rapid PCR, questions.

    When I had my concussion, I was a “contactless” delivery to the ER, just like a pizza.

  196. 196.

    NotMax

    @Soprano2

    First impression based on what you’ve described is bronchitis.

    Which is nothing to sneeze at, but sure as shootin’ ain’t COVID.

  197. 197.

    sab

    @Steeplejack: Same guy. He is doing great. Upstairs, with the family. Trying to move in on sacred turf (my bedroom, where my special cat hangs out.)

  198. 198.

    Steeplejack

    @sab:

    Why do I have the feeling that he is ignoring your husband, the alleged cat whisperer? ? (Uncharitable, I know, but that’s where my mind went.)

  199. 199.

    sab

    @Steeplejack: My husbamd is terrified of him. It is hilarious. He is just a tiny scared little cat (with claws.) My husband thinks he is a monster. I think he is a tiny scared cat. Of course I am making more progress with him. We will all end up a happy family together. It will just take time. I am amazed at our progress so far. Husband was scritching him this morning.

  200. 200.

    Steeplejack

    @sab:

    Sounds like it’s heading in a good direction. Congratulations. And good on you for taking in the unexpected strays. It sounded a little, uh, unpromising at the start.

  201. 201.

    sab

    @Steeplejack: Yeah. I am used to taking in dogs. Cats are a whole new world. They start out so very stressed. I am amazed how much they calm down.

  202. 202.

    Yutsano

    I’m going Olympic sportsball here. Damn if the games aren’t sucking me in with stories like these. Such an amazing athletic feat and proof that sometimes the little guy can beat Goliath.

  204. 204.

    Soprano2

    @Jay: I think they’re doing the best they can, but they’re overwhelmed.  I’m sure they screen, but I also know that I and my husband never had a fever when we had Covid. I’m sure everyone west’s a face mask, but sitting with people for hours in a waiting room…..not the best situation.

  205. 205.

    Anne Laurie

    @Kay: It’s weird, though, isn’t it? That they settled on infertility.

    It’s the terror of the Great Replacement, the fear of ‘our culture’ being swamped by the fertile dark-skinned hordes, under the direction of George Soros.

  206. 206.

    Jay

    @Soprano2:

    yeah, not with Delta out there.

    there is “screening” and then screening. When I had my concussion, I had 3 rapid PCR tests performed. The ambulance crew did the first, really liked my mask protocols.

    Second, was a the hand off, where they wanted me to change out my mask for the generic surgical. (Mask shortage still). I said nope, I’ll double mask, put on a fresh on of my masks, but I’m not swapping a 3 layer, M116 filter mask used in Covid ward air filters, for something with bare minimum protection. They asked me how often I changed my mask to a “new” one. I pointed out, every two hours. Washed every day, new filters for every mask. They said, okay.

    3rd round of testing at the admittance desk.

  207. 207.

    Citizen Alan

    @Brachiator: I dunno. Under Chibnall, the Doctor has literally faced a surrogate Donald Trump (Chris Noth’s Jack Robertson character) and both times, she allowed him to walk away free and clear. I have issues with Chibnall’s politics.  (The low point was when the show did a satire about Amazon that came down squarely in support of Amazon’s employment practices. Just appalling.)

  210. 210.

    Chris Johnson

    @Anne Laurie:

    Infertility as leverage is very much ‘Great Replacement’ terror. Sometimes you can see where the puppet strings go. Russia’s been pushing people to freak out about ‘replacement’ of whites for ages and ages. They know full well they can work that angle, as they put a lot of effort into putting it there.

    Jimmy Dore was on Tucker Carlson, ranting about how the left needs to primary AOC. To some extent the sabotage is increasingly out in the open. All this is orchestrated though it’s run on a very loose leash. Guys like Dore and Trump are not trusted with as much agency as guys like Carlson, but they’re all working for Putin towards indistinguishable ends.

Comments are closed.