Aww, that’s too bad:
A Texas man who helped organize protests against pandemic restrictions is fighting for his life after being hospitalized for nearly a month with COVID-19, the San Angelo Standard-Times reported.
His wife, Jessica Wallace, wrote Wednesday on Facebook that she had a “heartbreaking update” about her husband, Caleb.
“He’s not doing good. It’s not looking in our favor,” she said. “His lungs are stiff due to the fibrosis. They called and said they’ve run out of options for him and asked if I would consent to a do not resuscitate. And it would be up to us when to stop treatments.”
“My heart just can’t. I can’t imagine my life without him.”
Caleb Wallace, a 30-year-old father of three, has been unconscious, ventilated and heavily sedated in the ICU at Shannon Medical Center in San Angelo since Aug. 8, the Standard-Times reported. His wife said on a GoFundMe page for household and medical bills that he was was intubated multiple times, had high fevers, infection and bleeding in his chest.
In July, Caleb Wallace reportedly helped organize “The Freedom Rally,” an event that billed itself as a protest against the “government being in control of our lives.” He also founded “The San Angelo Freedom Defenders,” which hosted a rally last year to “end COVID tyranny.”
Every day there’s another story about one of these fucking idiots who not only killed themselves, but probably helped kill hundreds if not thousands of others and prevented us from reaching herd immunity and damned us to an eternal endemic, and my general attitude any more is “Fuck them we’re better off without them.” If these assholes had lived they’d be spewing bullshit about something else, fighting stem cell research or calling global warming a myth or some other fucked up nonsense that would make life worse for everyone.
And I’m just over it. I worry if I am becoming hardened or an ugly person on the inside because of this, but I just can not muster any sympathy for these fuck around and find out assholes, because they are hurting so many other people. I feel the same way I do when I read about a terrorist who blew himself up making a bomb, but actually this guy above Wallace ids worse, because the terrorist really did only take himself out. How many did Wallace infect or kill with his actions? Maybe these assholes dying off is our only way out of this?
cain
I’m with you – I don’t know what to do about it – they cling to it even in their hospital beds. Their spouses keep sprouting bullshit lies after their husband or wives are dead. They fucking nuts.
I hold them in contempt but I save my empathy for their kids.
geg6
I hope for the same, Cole. I don’t like that I feel that way, but how else to react to people who are just fine with murdering and maiming others? I don’t even feel sorry for his idiot wife. If she had a brain, she’d sign that DNR the minute they offered it. I, too, am completely over these people. Completely. ETA: I’m also over these stories about these idiots. It’s just another version of Cletus safari. Fuck that noise.
seaninclt
This is a Darwin-level event for the morons in this country. You’re not alone in feeling hardened against these folks. They are straight up assholes who tend to be contrarian b/c “u cant tell me what to do commie”. Fuck em all and let the coroner sort em out.
Baud
You get used to it.
ShadeTail
I’m medical personnel (pharmacy technician). I have to interact with sick people every time I’m on the job. I’ve been at the “fuck these murderous anti-maskers and anti-vaxers to little bits, I want them all to die horribly” place for at least a year and a half at this point.
Best memory of this? Dropping this sentiment on another forum a year-ish ago, and having some holier-than-thou white liberal try to chide me about how “disappointed” she was in me, only to have me tell her in great detail how and why I gave less than a shit about her childish bullshit “disappointment”.
Scout211
So, another “crisis actor?”*
*Not meant to be
a factual statementan actual question.smith
The amazing thing to me after one of these Covid Raptures is how little of the obvious lesson penetrates the minds of the Goobers left behind. Connecting cause with effect is supposedly something humans learn to do easily while they’re still toddlers.
Danielx
Seconded.
At this point I feel the long term future of the human race can only be improved, if only slightly, by these shitheads being removed from the gene pool. Now if only he hadn’t already reproduced….
ETA: do feel bad for his wife who sounds sane.
Ella in New Mexico
I know I’m going straight to Hell for this but I keep hoping that if we kill off enough of these people we may be able to flip some states blue and finally become a sane, rational, livable first world country.
geg6
@ShadeTail:
One of my oldest and best friends is a hospital pharmacist. She has no fucks left to give at this point.
Peale
Yep. I’m in this spot.
Yay! I can’t wait to ignore the go fund me requests.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It’s brutal, it’s hard, but it’s clear that endless death is the only thing that’s going to change minds.
Seriously, what kind of freedom is having a machine do the breathing for you?
ETtheLibrarian
I have to stop myself from actively wishing ill, I can’t gin up an ounce of sympathy. While I am sure some people will drop them a few bucks, it won’t be me.
smith
@Danielx: I suspect there are knock-on effects on the kids’ reproductive fitness from growing up without the parents or grandparents they otherwise would have had. It just will take a loooooong time for the effect to show up on a population level.
dmsilev
Has he tried taking a horse dewormer?
Heidi Mom
I’ve been thinking about James Baldwin’s comment to the effect that if you look behind the hate, you’ll find fear. What are they afraid of? Needles? That they’ll look silly in a mask? That they’re as vulnerable to this big, scary thing as everyone else, so they have to convince themselves otherwise? The vaccine is free and available and they can’t point to anyone who’s died from the vaccine itself, so why not get it on the off-chance that, you know, you’re wrong? Where’s the harm? (I know this is one big rhetorical question, but it’s one I still have to ask myself.)
bbleh
Concur with sentiments in post and comments above. And if you’re worried about loss of empathy or “hardening” or some such, consider your attitude toward the medical front-line workers who have to put up with these idiots and the consequences of their idiocy all day every day, and I suspect you will find plenty of empathy.
One can say people deserve empathy as a baseline assumption. One can say that they even deserve it after some mistakes or bad behavior, because certainly nobody’s perfect. But when they have demonstrated over and over and over again that they don’t deserve it, and most likely don’t offer it in turn (I don’t hear many of them expressing anything of the sort toward said medical workers), then, well, no, they don’t deserve it.
About all I’d advise is, don’t dwell on it, don’t think about how bad they are, don’t let it turn into flaming hatred. Just write ‘em off. Go pull some weeds, or take a nap.
SiubhanDuinne
Everything you said, John (and all other commenters). Every. Word.
Not to mention, these people refuse to mask up or get vaccinated, they do their damnedest to deny others the right to get the vaccine or wear masks, and then when everything goes pear-shaped for them they have the fucking stones to ask the rest of us to pay their medical expenses.
Old Man Shadow
We can only go so far to protect really stupid people. At some point, the motherfuckers are going to wander off from the group and try to pet the strippy kitty and get themselves eaten, so fuck them.
Also, you know… life is an absurd joke, the universe is cold and uncaring, and humanity will probably be extinct in a hundred years or so nothing matters.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
also, his wife is pregnant
is it true the horse-paste-eaters are shitting themselves? seems a bit on the nose, even for the writers we’ve had the last couple of years
ETA: just as no TV report about Ashli Babbitt should omit her own nutty videos, every story on Covid today should mention this guy. Enough of the “we can’t shame these good hearted but ill-informed yeomen” shit
Catherine D.
Unfortunately, he’s already peed in the gene pool.
tinare
@Ella in New Mexico: Me too.
cain
@Scout211: That would be some crazy dog eat dog – if antivaxxers start going after the covid sufferers as crises actors.
bbleh
@Heidi Mom: they fear the unknown, the unfamiliar, the ambiguous, the uncertain, the complex, in many cases because they don’t have the information or the cognitive tools/training to deal with such things. They also fear for their social status, both as members of the in-group and among other members of the in-group: they fear becoming “out,” and they fear the embarrassment of admitting to their fellow “in” people that the Others might have a point or that they did what Others suggested or did themselves.
They seek certainty, familiarity, and belonging. And they fear things that challenge those.
Kay
I think it’s really ungrateful. The pandemic restrictions were not that bad for adults. Children probably lost the most because “childhood” is such a brief period and it can’t be recaptured.
I was grateful to get the vaccine. I was impressed they developed it so quickly.
bluehill
The unnerving thought is if they are willing to die and even sacrifice their children, what else would they be willing to do. They seem radicalized.
On the other hand, the GQP-curious are hopefully looking at what’s happening to these guys and deciding to get vaxxed. Daily vaccination rates have been trending higher even in TX so that’s a silver lining.
Maybe it will even cause them to think about where they get their info and who they vote into office. LOL! Well, at least some of they are getting a shot.
evap
I’m with you, John. My first thought when reading the story was that this guy has been taking up an ICU bed and lots of other resources since early August, and it sounds like it won’t do him any good. If his spouse would just sign the DNR order, those resource could be used to save someone, maybe someone who didn’t contribute to the problem.
captnkurt
The Herman Cain Award subreddit is full of filling schadenfreude
Booger
I’m so fucking sick of the begging ‘prayer warriors’ to help their dying partners. MAYBE THIS IS GOD’S PUNISHMENT FOR VOTING FOR TRUMP, assholes. Maybe Jeebus was the one who sent you the vaccine, like the old joke?? Maybe Satan is laughing his horny head off at you for biting so hard on his joke of horse wormer paste as a cure…
cain
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
That’s the problem – it won’t. It’s just gets added to the same mentality around prosperity theology. If God loves you, you won’t get the ‘rona.
They rather have death visit everyone and then they can add a cottage industry of hucksters, sham artists, and crooks to prey (pray?) on these people. Bonus points if it hits the immigrant and non-white population.
Poe Larity
And here I believed that Lemmings running off cliffs was a lie.
Perhap’s there is an aspect to Cleek’s Law that is evolutionary.
germy
Danielx
@SiubhanDuinne:
AND preventing others with serious conditions from getting the care they need because the inn is full up. Cancer, heart condition, car wreck? Tough rats, bubba, ain’t no beds available.
cain
@Heidi Mom:
My theory is that seeing everyone in masks is triggering and feels apocalyptic and you feel a loss of control. So fighting back by refusing is a way to get control back. With very poor results.
Yutsano
His lungs are fibrotic? He’s taking up bed space. Unplug him so the next unvaccinated idiot can try his luck on the ventilator.Odds are he’ll lose.
In other news, DeathSantis keeps losing in court.
Citizen_X
I think it’s a damn shame.
…That he’s taking up a hospital bed that could be used by an innocent person. Hurry up and croak!
Old Man Shadow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, they are. And they’re shitting out their intestinal linings.
Searcher
@Heidi Mom: That we’re all in this together, in solidarity, men and women, black and white, red state and blue.
Embir
A local hospital here in WA is being picketed for vaccine requirements. An Administrator was quoted as saying “I respect their opinion, but…”. My reaction – stop with the respect already. I DON’T respect their opinions, fracking morans..
Parfigliano
Yup fuck him and his family. I dont understand wasting valuable hospital resources on pieces of shit like this. Should have sent him home with a quart of bleach, a bluelight, horse dewormer when he showed up at the ER.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Old Man Shadow:
that sounds worse than just pooping your pants….
is that permanent? life-threatening?
dmsilev
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yes. The drug is designed to clear out parasites by, basically, liquifying the contents of the intestines and colon and flushing the worms out with the shit. So, operating as intended.
Almost Retired
My initial reaction was to correct the grammar of the wife of the Freedom Rally organizer. But then I realized that when she said “He’s not doing good,” she stated it accurately.
The Thin Black Duke
@Heidi Mom: What they’re afraid of is that those damned Liberals might be right. And if those damned Liberals are right about Covid, what else might they be right about? Climate change? Abortion? Police brutality? That’s a slippery slope that terrifies them more than death. Oh well. Keep sticking that fork into that electrical outlet, folks.
Sloegin
The toe tag on so many of these people should just be listed as “Died of natural consequences.” (Yes, I stole this from someone on Reddit.)
creature_NYC
I have not one fuck to give for these folks. Not. A. One.
dmsilev
@Sloegin: If “Fucked around. Found out.” isn’t a standard toe tag, it should be.
Kay
I can’t even imagine having schools reopening and their first thought is “okay, now let’s all go scream at the school board about masks”.
It should be 47th on the list of things to be worried about. People are trying. Let them work. They can’t run the school! No one hired them to run the schools and they’d obviously be bad at it so just go do your own job.
Patricia Kayden
Tony Gerace
@Baud: I guess I’m pretty hardened and ugly too then. Especially given the fact that I have a relative who died of covid, through no fault of his own, before the vaccines were available. Fuck these people. The impending death of this asshole is one of the few situations in the world in which one of the lowlifes suffers as a result of his own psychopathic stupidity. Usually they make other people suffer and die, and do just fine themselves. In that sense, stories like this are happy news. Yes, I’m pretty ugly.
cain
Yeah, there is at least one post that I saw on the twitter and vice.com:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7by4w/are-anti-vaxers-really-pooping-themselves-because-of-ivermectin
https://www.reddit.com/r/insanepeoplefacebook/comments/pc2p38/literally_shitting_my_pants_in_the_middle_of_a/
Tony Gerace
@The Thin Black Duke: If only there were a way for these people to die faster — like the folks in The Stand.
dmsilev
@Kay: Heck, some of them go to the schools and scream at the students. There was a story in the news yesterday about a guy in (of course) Florida who got himself arrested after making an epic ass of himself at his daughter’s school.
WaterGirl
Do we really think that neither the person who got the tattoo nor the person who gave the tattoo knows how to spell the word “regrets”?
Gin & Tonic
@Yutsano: Isn’t this more or less what Kay has been saying for a long time? Local school boards have a *great deal* of legal authority.
Tony Gerace
Jeffro
@dmsilev: I know, right?
They’re sold out of ivermectin in many places across the country. Poison control hotline calls are up 500% or something.
It’s nuts. Pooping their own pants to own the libs.
sdhays
@Kay: If we actually cared about children in this country, everything we did during this pandemic would have been around figuring out how to make schools safe. EVERYTHING would have been secondary to that.
But we can’t even do that with guns, so…
Antonius
You say “hardened and ugly inside” and I hear a soul that hungers and thirsts for justice.
Ksmiami
@geg6: we are all there now. I don’t see a way back. No mercy or forgiveness; not now, not ever.
Old Man Shadow
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t think it’s healthy, but I think your body can heal if one stops eating horse paste.
Yarrow
I went off about all this at the supermarket last week. The nice lady at the fish counter, with whom I’ve chatted several times, was wearing a mask, as were all the other employees. I asked her about it and she told me the store had started requiring them for employees again irrespective of vaccination status. Previously vaxxed employees could go without a mask. On the customer side loads of people weren’t wearing masks and I was trying and failing to dodge them and stay out of their infected airspace. It was stressful. I was wearing a mask, of course. (Never stopped. Don’t trust anyone not wearing a mask. They’re not vaccinated.)
The nice lady asked how I was doing and I just kind of lost it. I told her I was really upset with all these people not wearing masks. It wasn’t fair to the employees to have to deal with these idiots and it was awful on the customer side because we couldn’t avoid them. I then said I wished they’d all catch Covid and die already, just do it at home so they don’t take up hospital space. Her eyes were as big as saucers by the time I finished. I felt bad. I told her I didn’t mean to be unsympathetic to people but my sympathy is reserved for children who don’t qualify for the vaccine and other vulnerable people. The idiots who won’t get vaccinated and who are putting us all at risk get none of my sympathy.
I wonder if she’ll be nice to me again. I know she’s vaccinated because we’ve talked about it. She was so excited when she qualified.
Gin & Tonic
@WaterGirl: Do we really want to know why JG Cole has that photo bookmarked?
Jeffro
@cain: wearing masks is offensive to them, because their orange god downplayed both the virus and mask-wearing (remember him boldly ripping it off on the WH balcony…AFTER he’d already gotten Covid)?
Wearing masks is both a) a sign that trumpov fucked up his handling of the virus, which is NOT OK with his worshippers and b) telling white people what to do, which is NOT OK with them either.
Miss Bianca
@cain: Normally, I would pursue these links just to make sure that that the thing I was pointing and laughing at really was true, but in this case, I’m feeling a bit too nauseated to want to continue. (although the LGM thread on this theme really was comedy gold all the way down, as some other BJ commenter pointed out this morning.)
dmsilev
@Jeffro: It’s just like hydroxychloroquine. Real medicine that people need to treat real conditions, but because of the nutcases it became very difficult to source for those folks who actually needed it.
Cathie from Canada
I read a Twitter thread yesterday about how a group of so-called doctors have figured out how to monetize the pandemic by doing phone “consultations” and prescribing people the horse drug through their own pharmacy, thus earning themselves hundreds of dollars in fees and charges per customer, and the whole thing just stinks doesn’t it.
Kay
@dmsilev:
The video was interesting because there was already a security presence at the door. Four jumped on him but they were close enough to be right on him. I’d like to see the rest of it. I imagine it will come out in the criminal process and the civil lawsuit that follows.
Public schools should go zero tolerance for disruptive Republican adults in the building. Enough. They have work to do. Raise your voice you’re outta here.
germy
Just hire Levar Burton already.
Old School
@WaterGirl:
You can get one (or two) for yourself if you’d like.
Yarrow
@WaterGirl: It’s from the movie “We’re the Millers.” The guy in the picture is a character in the movie.
bluehill
@cain: I’m getting long Kimberly Clark for the impending run on Depends.
catclub
@Heidi Mom: I was thinking it is subconciously acting to make Trumps terrible numbers in 2020 look not as bad as good numbers for Biden in 2021 for total deaths. [In the world where vaccination takeup is very high and delta therefore does not take hold]
Robert Sneddon
@Old Man Shadow:
Parasites like hookworms (it’s in the name, folks) dig themselves into the lining of the gut to prevent themselves from being expelled through the gift-shop exit ^W anus. Deworming medicines cause the gut lining to slough off, carrying the parasites with it as it is excreted. Sometimes this happens in the beauty products aisle of the local Walgreens.
phdesmond
worldwide and in this country, the death rate from COVID-19 is about one percent of those infected. so it’s hard to derive more than occasional satisfaction at the come-uppance of those hoist by their own petard.
smith
@sdhays: Early in the pandemic, someone (Fauci, maybe) said we had a choice: we could either keep the bars open or keep the schools open, but we couldn’t do both. It tells you everything you need to know about how much this country values children that we chose the bars.
Chetan Murthy
@ShadeTail: Dear ShadeTail, as you can see, you’re not alone here. But speaking of your having these attitudes a year-and-a-half ago, I remember when, lo these many years, saying that TFG was a fascist, or that Stephen Miller was a Nazi, would get you polloried in the LG&M comment section, not to speak of in real life. There were chin-scratching columns written in the newspapers about how TFG couldn’t be a Fascist, b/c he was too lazy, too incompetent. And on and on. Heck, I remember when we didn’t call *it* The Dixie Swastika.
But today we do all these things, and it ain’t no thang. So I would say to you that you were just in the vanguard, and eventually people caught up with you. I remember last summer, thinking to myself that if I ever met any Branch Covidians (back then they were just anti-maskers, since vaccines had not yet emerged) I’d ask them in the most contemptuous voice possible “Why didn’t you do the decent thing and just die, miserable worm”.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jeffro:
Isn’t that how Ted Nugent got out of the draft?
brendancalling
I don’t feel bad for them specifically (and certainly not at all for people like Phil Valentine or our pal Mr.Wallace here).
I do, however, feel for the spouses and, especially, the children they leave behind. That’s who they’re “owning.” It certainly ain’t a liberal like me, I’m glad they’re dead.
NotMax
Whoa, harsh.
I celebrate the suffering of no person. It’s intrinsically repugnant to me to do so (as is expressing satisfaction thereunto). At the same time there are those whose passing I choose to not mourn. The most I can muster is something have said previously, lastly here when Limbaugh kicked the bucket.
“Any man’s death diminishes me.” So does removing a wart.
brettvk
@Ella in New Mexico: I second those emotions. What staggers me (and I’ve lived in SWMO most of my life) is how many willfully ignorant people are gonna ride their convictions right into the grave. I’m not immune to conspiracy thinking and confirmation bias myself, but I’m more interested in being alive than being right.
zhena gogolia
@Antonius:
Beautifully put.
The Pale Scot
Thoughts and prayers
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
@Yarrow:
I just assumed it was Jessica Wallace.
brettvk
@Heidi Mom: The FB ivermectin posts I’ve seen reprinted on Twitter do repeatedly assert that the covid vaccines are poison, that people are dropping dead from them and it’s being hushed up, or that the “spike protein” burrows into your DNA and poisons everyone around you. Honestly, it’s a paranoia fest over there.
brendancalling
@captnkurt:
I actually wrote a piece for Progress Pond on the HCA subreddit not even an hour ago. At first, I was enjoying the snarkfest. But it’s one sad, unnecessary death after another, ad always ends with people grieving.
These selfish fuckers are only hurting the ones who love them. Which makes me hate the selfish fuckers even more. One couple left behind four kids, two of who are only 11 and 16.
No kid deserves that.
condorcet runner-up
the only people in these situations that i feel sorry for are the kids these dipshits leave behind (and for some of these narcissistic a-holes, their helpless spouses).
as a single father of two young boys, it blows my mind that these adults who have kids value the abstract concept of their own manufactured “FREEDUMS” (which has nothing to do with actual life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) over the health of their kids. like what the fuck is wrong with these people?
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: Well, you make a good point there.
germy
Roger Moore
@Ella in New Mexico:
If we’re going to be hopeful, maybe some of their friends and relatives will figure things out without having to die. I want people in red states to look at a nearby blue state and say, “Hey, they’re doing so much better there. Maybe having a state government that cares about protecting the lives of its citizens is a good thing. I think I’m going to vote for someone who thinks that way rather than just trying to own the libs.”
Another Scott
No Ragrets? Made me look… YouTube Trailer (1:02)
(sigh)
Like it or not, these folks are going to be with us for a while. We need to do what we can to get them, and those in their unfortunate orbit, vaccinated. Something like 500k a day are still signing up for shots. Uncle Joe has it right. Punching down, as viscerally satisfying as that might be, isn’t going to help.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Old School: Oh. It’s a thing.
I had no idea.
bbleh
@WaterGirl: maybe she meant “no rug rats?”
WaterGirl
@Yarrow: Ah. See my response to Old School at #70.
Yutsano
@Miss Bianca: That LGM link is worth it just for the self pwn in the Ben Collins by the anti-vaxxer who was also an insurrectionist.
West of the Rockies
I wonder… has the percentage of truly stupid people risen in the last fifty years (because of TV, the net, Texas school boards), or have we always had 27% functional morons?
Mallard Filmore
@Danielx:
Ahhh, the eternal conflict of nature vs nurture. Humans are reprogrammable meat sacks, so maybe the kids will turn out better.
ShadeTail
@Chetan Murthy: For what it’s worth, I’ve been hating on anti-vaxers since long before Covid. Fucking measles came back because of those utterly useless wastes of skin. I’ve been certain since the start of this pandemic that they were going to be a very real problem when it came to controlling Covid, and here we are. Once anti-maskers became a thing, it was a pretty short jump to adding them onto my dispise-with-a-white-hot-rage pile.
Ella in New Mexico
@Heidi Mom:
The patients that tell me they don’t want the shot are afraid of completely made up garbage about side effects and long term damage to their bodies, and are also VERY sure that even if they get “real COVID” it’s better for them immunologically than the vaccine or, for many, wearing masks all the time.
Splitting Image
@WaterGirl:
I’m waiting to see someone with a tattoo that says “No Regrets Note Spelling”.
oldster
“I worry if I am becoming hardened or an ugly person on the inside because of this, but I just can not muster any sympathy.”
Don’t do it, John. I know how you feel, but it’s just not worth becoming the kind of person who puts a space in “cannot”.
SiubhanDuinne
Jeffro
@Old School: omg thank you, I’m getting a pack of these for me and each of my kids!
Next time Mrs. Fro goes out of town, we’ll welcome her back with a special ‘family tattoo reveal’ dinner! She won’t think it’s funny, which will be hysterical.
Bard the Grim
@Ella in New Mexico:
Your wish may come true: Dying to own the libs
Jeffro
@?BillinGlendaleCA: why I think it was…a man ahead of his time!
Chetan Murthy
I’m sure others here already know about this, and for all my memory’s worth, there have been posts about it, but thought I should mention that the reddit forum “r/nursing” is worth a peek, if only to remind us all that we don’t have so bad. Poor Goku, I can only imagine what him and his colleagues are going thru, but r/nursing sheds a little light. Whatever we thought, however bad we thought it was, it’s actually *worse* for them.
ETA: between patients and their families literally assaulting them, their own colleagues being Branch Covidians, their management overworking them and not having their backs in the face of said assaults …. it just goes on and on.
Another Scott
@Heidi Mom: They’re afraid of being shunned by their social circle.
It’s a tribal thing, and it’s very powerful.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@West of the Rockies
‘Twas eternally thus throughout history.
Heck, while not quite achieving the magic number, the Know Nothings scooped up 21.5% of the presidential election vote in the mid-19th century.
Bill Arnold
Copied from this AM’s covid-19 thread. Appropriate here too.
The “Jonestown Massacre” occurred on November 18, 1978, when more than 900 members of an American cult called the Peoples Temple died in a mass suicide-murder under the direction of their leader Jim Jones (1931-78).
The Republicans are killing more people EVERY DAY than Jim Jones killed.
dlw32
Again, if they were only killing themselves it would be sad. Because their selfishness and ignorance is killing others is why we get angry.
Also I would have sympathy if it were expensive to take the precautions like masks and vaccines.
germy
@SiubhanDuinne:
LeVar Burton said he’s watched just about every Jeopardy episode, going back to the Art Fleming days. He really wants the job.
Another Scott
@germy: Thanks for that.
I read some of his stuff in college. I should revisit it.
Cheers,
Scott.
nwerner
@phdesmond:
Study of 43,000 people in Los Angeles shows unvaxed represent 25.3% of cases, 13.1% of hospitalizations, 10.6% of ICU and 12.4% of those requiring mechanical breathing. 64% of population currently fully vaccinated, not sure what it was at time of study, which started in May and ended July 25. May also predate largest part of the onset of Delta variant. These numbers aren’t directly stated in the article but have to be extrapolated from the data provided.
Reuters article here.
Edited to correct the stats because i neglected to include the ICU
Roger Moore
@Kay:
There’s at least some evidence the people screaming about masks are part of a big astroturf campaign. That may not be everyone, but it is not at 100% organic anti-mask movement.
Benw
Man I get older, but Axl Rose just stays the same.
trollhattan
@Embir:
It’s like having professional astronomers picket the Catholic Church demanding they reinstate the earth-centric solar system, “the way He designed it.”
germy
@Another Scott:
Amazing that his “Souls of Black Folk” was published in 1903! The year of the Wright brothers’ flight. Still readable today.
Another Scott
@Old Man Shadow: Worth a shot!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Woodrow/asim
A Black Planet, to quote Public Enemy.
Or, more generally, that the country will change, and that the status quo is going away. Conservatism was and is meant as a Wall against that change — and thus any change is filterered thru that worldview, and opens easily and happily to movements like White Supremacy, Anti-Abortion and Transphobia, among many points of modern Progressive movements.
That’s why anti-masking resonates — it’s a change that’s easy to teach them to reject. That’s why anti-vaxx hits so hard — it plays into the same desires as the long-standing Conservatism goal to roll back the New Deal and all other 20th century “innovations” that get int eh way of “true freedom”. And it’s why the Lt. Gov. of the Great State of Texas could glibly lie and say we Black folx are “the problem” for vaccinations — a dog whistle for those continuing to avoid vaccinations, and aligning to literally centuries of ongoing indoctrination to blame us Blacks…
…indoctrination we just happen to all, now, see on Fox News and elsewhere, these days. Yay Internet?
It’s important to note that the people protesting now come from the same people who, in my Dad’s lifetime, eagerly lynched and beat Black folx over the most basic of rights. Jim Crow is in living memory, and it’s a memory many people secretly cherish and ache to replicate — esp. as they remix it into mythology, like they did for the Lost Cause.
So, yeah,
Chetan Murthy
@nwerner: wait, you meant “vaxed”, not “unvaxed”, right?
Percysowner
This is what makes me madMan dies waiting for ICU bed, family says
Bolding is mine.
bluefoot
@Catherine D.:
This is an excellent turn of phrase and I will be stealing it forthwith.
Jeffro
@Benw: Um what? (is Axl in the news today?)
Related, ever-so-slightly: Pearl Jam’s TEN came out 30 years ago today. If anyone needs me, I’ll be over in my rocking chair…rocking. out. Get it? Get… (sigh)
mr perfect
@Heidi Mom: the fear of admitting they were wrong.
nwerner
@Chetan Murthy:
Correct. Multitasking and overcaffeinated. Apologies.
Yutsano
The news is coming fast. So much so that I didn’t see our beloved *spits* Supreme Court overturned the eviction ban yesterday. So now along with Covid we get a fun bout of displaced people. WHEE!!!
satby
@Chetan Murthy: 40 years ago in nursing school we were trained NOT to wear our stethoscope draped around our necks (the way you see every fake doctor or nurse on tv wearing them) because it’s common and too easy to be throttled by an out of control patient. Assaults on health care workers, management that doesn’t have their backs, short-staffing are all long term problems and why there’s a perpetual nursing shortage.
BTW: Goku works in a grocery store. He hasn’t taken his boards to be licensed as of his last comment on the subject.
nwerner
@Chetan Murthy: There is also a 3.3% partial vaxxed segment that muddies the stats because they don’t have the outcomes stats broken out for that contingent. Haven’t looked at the actual source study yet but that small segment could nudge the stats up or down a little bit.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
Wouldn’t suprise me. Some of the “CRT” panic people were definitely astroturf. It all came out of one hastily organized Virginia political group and two of the five leaders were national conservative activists. Koch funding.
Mallard Filmore
@NotMax:
I have found that the realization that “You can’t save everyone.” is satisfying enough.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: Heck, I would *love* it if they made LeVar Burton the new Jeopardy host!
He’s been on my mind, coincidentally, as I’ve been watching re-runs of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Papa Boyle
John I sympathize with your mood. I feel it too. Hourly. But I just can’t agree.
If there’s an infinite supply of hospital beds and hospital staff to take care of these world historic morons while they’re dying horribly and slowly, then get back to me and see if my mind is changed.
But for now these willful idiots are taking up beds from people who are doing their level best to survive, such as this sweet kid:
https://www.abc57.com/news/michiana-boy-with-cancer-not-admitted-to-hospital-right-away
Matt McIrvin
@Heidi Mom:
For many it’s ostracism and loss of group identity. Thanks to Internet cranks and Fox News and Trump, It’s been established that not taking COVID seriously is part of being the type of person they are, part of being the right kind of citizen. Getting vaccinated makes them one of those people.
Just Chuck
@WaterGirl: Pretty sure most people know it’s a photoshop job. We’re not morans.
Ken
Coming in Spring 2022… Marvel’s “The Punisher: Third Time’s the Charm”.
Jeffro
@Kay: yeah…that sure disappeared off of the national consciousness pretty quickly, didn’t it? More screaming and then more silence than when we had CARAVANNZ!!1! on our border.
Internal polling must not have looked too good, is my guess.
Mike in NC
Not 5 minutes ago I read that the governor of Connecticut was at a meeting about safely reopening schools when a bunch of anti-mask anti-vaccine nitwits showed up to boo him and call him a criminal.
geg6
@Cathie from Canada:
Some doctor in (where else?) Tallahassee, Florida got suspended from his hospital for writing up false health opt-out letters so parents wouldn’t have to have their kids wear masks in school. He was charging $50 a pop. It’s like the parents are putting out cheap ass contracts on their kids’ lives.
I hate these people so much.
Chetan Murthy
@nwerner: No matter: your work to explicate the data in a manner that informs is appreciated in any case. Knowing the proportions of the vaxxed in the various populations (general, hosp, icu, vent) is useful, esp. since it’s LA. Here in SF, I continue to wait patiently for all those numbers (and cases) to drop down to June’s level, so I can resume my life.
Anybody seen the news that they’re going to make the booster available 5mos after your seccond shot? September for me! Huzzah!
Cermet
While certainly glad they get into debt, and even suffer – I still don’t wish death upon them. A lesson learned is more valuable than just their family learning; as to those on their death beds and saying they’d still not vax, well, can’t cure some people’s stupid.
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
He’d be great!
Cermet
Most of these people would be alive if not for the intentional efforts of the fox (so-called) news channels; those bastards are murdering their own viewers just for profit. That’s a group that if someone blew them all up, and I was on the jury, I’d find them innocent for justified homicide.
CaseyL
I’m with everyone here: neither ragrets nor regrets at these wastes of protoplasm getting deathly ill and dying.
Also like everyone here, I am very angry they’re taking up hospital space that should go to more deserving people. I don’t see why hospitals can’t set up tent wards in their parking lots for these cases, most especially the ones who are all “God will help me!” Let God help you in your own damn house, mkay? Surely God can find you there, right?
And I am downright gleeful that these worthless mofos are shitting out their own intestinal lining.
Brant
@smith: Some of us DO, and some of us apparently DON’T.
sdhays
@germy: That’s some monstrousness right there. So she “doesn’t subscribe” to the idea that babies who can’t survive birth without intervention should die “from an evolutionary perspective”, but “some people” do, and she felt it necessary to make that point. And she takes an a la carte approach to vaccinating her children because vaccines are such big business. I gather she’s smart, but she clearly has poor judgement.
I still don’t understand how that producer who selected himself “Dick Cheney-style” is still in charge there. Vetting doesn’t seem to be something he’s capable of doing. It should have been a lot harder to screw up this much.
But I don’t watch, so who cares what I think?
Ken
Other way around — vaccinated people were 25.3% of cases.
Dan B
@WaterGirl: I’m certain that “ragrets” is precisely the way it’s pronounced.
Sue me!
//
Chief Oshkosh
@cain:
But death does visit everyone. Or have I been misinformed?
;)
Kay
@CaseyL:
I do think the Fox personalities own some of the death toll. When I read that they’re unemployable after they leave Fox it was clarifying. They stay and continue to lie because they can’t make that kind of money anywhere else. Pure greedy self interest.
Baud
If you have a horse in Texas, I hope it’s healthy. (LGM)
smith
@CaseyL: Tent wards staffed by antivax nurses would be ideal.
germy
Ken
So she’s said.
raven
“, because the terrorist really did only take himself out. ” huh?
nwerner
@Chetan Murthy: I live in Seattle and we have one of the most robust and updated data sets of anyplace in the country because we were hit first. I don’t think the 1% stat was ever accurate. King County has over 75% vaccination coverage but our hospitalizations are up 177% over the same time last year and deaths are the same.
Roger Moore
@bbleh:
It’s not just that we maintain empathy for the front-line workers who have been risking their lives. It’s that we understand that the covidiots are the ones who are increasing their risk. The anger we feel toward the covidiots is an expression of our empathy for the others who are suffering for their idiocy. I think we can shed some of our perception of ourselves turning into bad people by recognizing that, and also by trying to make that expression explicit. Rather than just pointing and mocking the people getting their comeuppance, we should explicitly say how we’re angry at them for what they’re putting others through. The people saying “I reserve my sympathy for the loved ones they’ve left behind” or “I’m angry they’re taking a hospital bed that could go to a car crash victim” are on the right track.
Delk
The guy wasn’t content to be mere asshole. He had to organize other assholes. Zero fucks to give.
sdhays
@germy: Texas thanks South Dakota for its service in delivering them from Kid Rock (for now).
Just Chuck
@Ken: Was that 25% hospitalizations or just test results? We know that the vax doesn’t stop every last virus, it just lets the immune system wipe it out before it becomes systemic.
piratedan
and while I agree that most of what we see is fear, all this rage and hate and stridency is all based on that. It’s those that perpetuate and feed this that are the ones that I really save my own anger for. They’re vaccinated, protected from their actions and just manipulating these people because it makes life tougher for those that they don’t agree with. Continually salting the earth behind them, using these people as pawns in their bad faith arguments.
no idea on what their supposed end game is, just know that I really dislike their disdain for people on the whole.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Cosigned.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Bill Arnold: We’re also getting close to a 911 or major civil war battle, every day.
Just Chuck
@germy:
And there was much rejoicing.
NutmegAgain
@Kay: What Kay said.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: It’s from the movie We’re the Millers.
trollhattan
Larry Elder, meet Hershel Walker. Hershel, Larry. Republicans.
Vetting either isn’t important, or they’re doing it very poorly.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Baud: The horses are only supposed to take it once a year, and it’s a pretty serious laxative.
ETtheLibrarian
@Heidi Mom: At this point I wonder if it is pride as well. No one likes to admit they were wrong or listening to someone who was so very, very wrong. Add to that, being part of the tRump cult where anything other than slavering devotion is unacceptable and you have a deadly combo.
Chief Oshkosh
@Embir: Yep. We need to do as more and more are doing. To wit, instead of “I respect their [fill in the blank]”, the sane people should be saying “I refuse to indulge the prattlings of the dim and dangerous. Grow up and attempt to meet your responsibilities as an adult citizen.”
Philbert
@Ella in New Mexico: “reports are” that Florida has had more Covid fatalities than the R vote margin in 2020. These people.
trollhattan
@Omnes Omnibus:
“Boner Garage”
Chief Oshkosh
@Almost Retired:
Well, he may be doing some good inadvertently by dying so publicly.
dmsilev
@Ken:
All the details you could possibly want in the original CDC paper.
Summary of statistics:
Suzanne
@The Thin Black Duke:
Absolutely correct. They are scared they really are as dumb as we think they are.
trollhattan
@germy:
There is too a God. Kid Rock, the Kanye West of Ted Nugents.
quakerinabasement
Here’s hoping that each of these needless deaths sends a few more folks to the vax clinic.
Ken
@Just Chuck: There was a link to the Reuters article in nwerner’s original. It had percentages for vaxxed and unvaxxed, for ICU, and so on. I think he converted those to absolute numbers for comparison. As you say, there are probably a lot of COVID cases that aren’t noticed because they never become symptomatic, so the baseline numbers are a little wonky too.
gratuitous
I think I’ve settled on a response, at least for a day or two: Please be sure your estate planning documents are in order and up to date, including making provision for any minor children you might have. Carry a copy of your Advance Directive in case you reach the point where you can’t speak for yourself (like when you’re heavily sedated and on a ventilator, for example).
Have you decided what music you’d like played at your funeral or memorial service? Favorite songs or piece of music? Please be sure you have anyone you’d like to speak at your service lined up so they can prepare now for all the nice things they’ll be saying about you. Maybe go through your phone or other digital photo archive and make sure your friends and relatives have copies of the good ones for any montages or slide shows they might have to put together.
Woodrow/asim
Thank you for saying this. I was really struggling with a good way to discuss this, and you hit my feelings right on the nailhead.
lahke
@Percysowner:
Why can’t folks doing ICU management just unplug the unvaccinated when a bed is needed for a non- Covid case? Call it interactive triage or something.
Yeah, yeah, lawsuits, but it’s way more fair to everyone else.
gene108
@Heidi Mom:
My opinion is people have a very hard time accepting they can become seriously ill, and there are things regarding their health that are beyond their control.
I think these attitudes merge so people ignore their health, avoid seeing the doctor, etc., because they do not want to accept the first condition of becoming seriously ill and will live under the imagined sense of control they still have by denying potential illness.
If they make lifestyle changes to exercise and eat healthier, they are not in control. They are following someone else’s orders.
Or they are so obsessed with the idea they can become invulnerable to ailments by their rigorous exercise routine, healthy diet, etc., no illness can come along to cause them to lose this control over their health.
COVID just blew these assumptions away. We are not individually in control of our health. Avoiding the disease requires help from the person next to you to be masked, vaccinated, etc. No amount of ignoring it or CrossFit can save you, if the next guy in line in the grocery store isn’t masked and has asymptomatic COVID.
This dynamic already exists with so many health issues, but those aren’t contagious. These issues are just on display with a contagious disease.
trollhattan
@dmsilev:
Wish our county stats were fleshed out that well, but they do keep adding New Interesting graphs. We now know, for example, that while breakthrough cases are a minuscule sliver of the historical total, the breakthrough new case rate is “impressive” @ 12/100k residents out of 34/100k total cases. Big fraction. In June the count was 0.5%.
They don’t break down hospitalizations and IDK if they even have that data.
Benw
@Jeffro: the dude in the OP looks a little like young Axl. That’s the joke.
Ten absolutely slaps! Enjoy. (I really really like Gigaton, which is… not 30 years old!)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ken: Or She Said, She Said.
Peale
@bbleh: yep. Ignore those gofundme requests. Instead go back to where we were last April and find out how to support the front liners again.
catclub
@Philbert:
trump won Florida by almost 400k votes. the total US deaths from covid are about 650k
randy khan
I’m really sorry for the people they leave behind. I am, uh, somewhat less sorry about them.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
They’re vetting very carefully; they just have completely different criteria from you or I.
oatler
@gratuitous:
Hey you’re young and swingin’
No time to think about tomorrow
But there ain’t no way to deny it
One day you’re gonna buy it
Another Scott
Counterpoint at Jay Baruch at STATNews:
Click over – it’s a good read.
One thing in the back of my head, but always there, is that we know Vladi and others want nothing better than to increase chaos in the USA and the West. I think it’s clear that the same MO is being applied to COVID vaccines, masking, and all the rest.
Letting our emotions govern our responses to this public health catastrophe isn’t the way forward. We should reserve most of our anger for the monsters in power who are pushing the disinformation.
Cheers,
Scott.
randy khan
@Philbert:
I think that should be 2018 – DeSantis won by very little, somewhere around 40,000 votes, give or take.
Mdub
You are not alone. Feel the same way
Another Scott
@Another Scott: Moderation?? For one link?
WTF??
(sigh)
Help?
Thanks.
[eta:] And now it’s completely gone??!
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
@Delk:
Remember when “community organizer” was a disrespected occupation? Who was president then, anyway?
I do ponder how somebody relatively young, three kids with a bun in the oven, possibly has time to go out and organize+attend demonstrations. Got jerb? In this economy, you gotta figure it takes two jobs, minimum, to keep a largish family in pajamas and Spaghetti-Os.
Chetan Murthy
@Roger Moore:
Yes, this is part of it. But part of it is the anger of life denied for yet another year. I have a mother for whom every year of life delayed is a year of life denied. That’s suffering, too. I and a lot of my friends and relatives are still in waiting, waiting for life to start again: we thought it was doing so in June, but then it stopped again a month later. All because of these motherless fucks.
It’s not just altruism, though I am angry that my mailman must wear a mask again on his rounds, and angry for the poor non-covid patients denied medical care, and angry for the cancer patient I read about in The Guardian, who has made their peace with “no bucket list, just sit in one place and slowly die”.
It’s not just altruism; I want my fucking life back.
Another Scott
@Another Scott:
In case my longer comment doesn’t return…
This piece at STATNews is a good counterpoint.
Also too, Vlad and others want us fighting with each other. Don’t help them.
Cheers,
Scott.
NutmegAgain
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: The dog dose must be much less per kg. I’ve been giving doggos Ivermectin, aka Heartgard for years to prevent heartworm infestation, and (thankfully) none has gotten the shits from it. (…eating dead squirrels, well, that’s different.) The Anti- Anti- morons have’t glommed on to the canine supply yet, nor the healthful possibilities of dead squirrels.
Chetan Murthy
@lahke: I’ve read bits of the r/nursing reddit, and it’s clear that that’s just not in the mindset of people who become nurses. Just not there: they’d rather quit than do it. And I have to respect that.
Also: hooboy, nurses, talk about a horrible job. It was always awful, but now …. hooboy. assaults for patients and their families, mgmt not having their back, abysmal levels of understaffing and overwork, Branch Covidian co-workers, and on and on.
germy
Apologetic Nurse Informs Man Having Heart Attack There’s About An Hour Wait Until Next Covid Patient Dies
Chetan Murthy
@Another Scott: Yeah, no. “harm reduction strategy”? these are the same yutzes who wanna throw people into prison for life, for a few grams of crack. Hoist by their own petard.
Suzanne
@gene108:
Everyone is afraid of mortality, yes, and in denial about it. But I don’t think that’s what is at play here. They are afraid of looking dumb or weak within their social cohort, and taking the virus seriously makes them look weak and liberal.
Look, we already know they have an inferiority complex. All this blah blah blah about elites, the now-gaping chasm between college-educated and not- voters…. they are terrified that we are right.
Carol
A Cartoon for every occasion, John…. https://www.startribune.com/sack-cartoon-cards-for-the-anti-vaxxers/600090666/
Papa Boyle
John I sympathize with your mood. I feel it too. Hourly. But I just can’t agree.
If there’s an infinite supply of hospital beds and hospital staff to take care of these world historic morons while they’re dying horribly and slowly, then get back to me and see if my mind is changed.
But for now these willful idiots are taking up beds from good people who are doing their level best to survive, such as this sweet kid:
https://www.abc57.com/news/michiana-boy-with-cancer-not-admitted-to-hospital-right-away
phdesmond
@germy:
i discovered this stuff on the web last summer. sounds like you might be interested.
Cornel West taught a Dartmouth class in the summer of 2017 on W.E.B. Du Bois. Nine one-hour lectures are free on the internet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcDySbv9OyM&list=PLPDZ9rcIfxyO0K6sjLn8AH_QMFlPmkred&index=1
Brother West is a lively lecturer (article):
https://news.dartmouth.edu/news/2017/07/summer-school-reading-web-du-bois-cornel-west
One could read the assigned chapters in The Souls of Black Folk before watching West discourse on them. Don’t be surprised when he introduces new material.
At the end of lecture 3, West confesses, “I’ve kind of gone around the text.” Then there are his occasional obiter dicta about Larry Summers and Harvard!
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/408/408-h/408-h.htm
Also assigned: Du Bois’s 1940 memoir, Dusk of Dawn:
http://faculty.washington.edu/nbeadie/530%20Readings/Week%206/DuBois%20Dusk%20of%20Dawn.pdf
Steeplejack
@germy:
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions.”
Old Dan and Little Ann
@germy: Billy Bob’s! World’s biggest honkey tonk. I’ve been there. My wife thought she was at the world’s worst Hallloween party.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I wonder how much of it is based on the sunk cost fallacy. Like those who don’t want to leave Afghanistan because it means all of our efforts there was a waste, the GOP base doesn’t want to change their ways because it means that their whole political life has been a lie. So in the end, their only option is to double down.
NotMax
Musical interlude.
The Vaccines – A Lack of Understanding.
Roger Moore
@gene108:
It’s just counter-intutitive that these feelings would result in someone becoming antivax, though. After all, getting vaccinated is one of the best things you can do to retake control of your health from COVID. Wearing a mask is more about protecting others if you get ill, but there’s abundant evidence that masks do help protect the people wearing them. I’m not saying your argument is wrong- I’m sure there’s a substantial contingent of people for whom it’s spot on- just pointing out the irony of people who want the illusion of control over their health ignoring things that would give them actual control over their health.
geg6
@sdhays:
I read somewhere that she has some really weird ideas about breast feeding, too.
germy
Suzanne
@Baud: Look, most of these people really want to believe that life outcomes are pure chance. They really do not want education or work ethic or privilege to matter, because that would imply that they deserve their shitty lives. If we are right, that means they are dumb and ergo earned their shitty position.
geg6
Halp! Halp! I am in moderation for, apparently, talking about feeding a baby naturally.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
One thing about the horse-dewormer, is that it probably increases the chances of mortality for people who get covid. It sounds like taking it causes massive diarrhea which would deplete the body of some of it’s resources that could be turned to you know, fighting the Covid virus.
Roger Moore
@Benw:
One of the many weird things from the past few years was Axl Rose coming out as vigorously anti-Trump. Woke Axl was weird, but I’ll take allies in whatever form they choose to take.
Professor Bigfoot
@Woodrow/asim: yeppers.
That’s the only possible Republican end-game: an effectively one-party, apartheid United States.
They’d like to see the Jim Crow South expanded to cover the entire country.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
Some of my completely innocuous posts have been getting flagged for moderation, too. I think the hamster is getting tired again.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@ShadeTail: I remember when measles first came back in the late 1980s. One of my college buddies got it while he was home for Christmas. The reason it came back then, though, was not because of anti-vaxxers. It was because they THOUGHT the measles vaccine they gave all us Gen Xers in childhood provided lifelong immunity but it turns out it didn’t. It started wearing off around the time we high high school/college depending on our exact age cohort.
So we all (everyone at my college) went out and got re-vaxxed, because that’s what you did. I remember going to a building in downtown Springfield, OH to get that shot but there’s no public record of it. I’ve thought about getting another dose of MMR at some point because who knows, maybe it wore off again?
Philbert
@catclub: Thanks, happy to be wrong given those numbers.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
But of course!
Cheers,
Scott.
jnfr
I went out for a few groceries today and realized I was walking around in a total rage. I don’t mean I was shouting at people, because I’m not that kind of asshole. But most folks were unmasked, and you can be sure some of them are unvaxxed and I think I was just waiting for someone to complain about people wearing masks so that I could scream at them.
It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. Thinking about it, I believe I started getting angry this morning listening to the Republicans beat their chests and demand Biden resign. Yeah, it began to ramp up before I even got to the store.
Anyway, I got home safe without any confrontation, though I did warn Mr. J to steer clear of trying to talk to me for a while.
Omnes Omnibus
Oddly, I am making a concerted effort not to think that way about the idiots. I don’t want to be like them. So I try to be better.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: In moderation yet again, for no obvious reason.
Something’s broken. :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: Moderation for trying to be a better person? There is a lesson in that.
Austin Bailey
Apparently, when Caleb’s symptoms first manifested he decided not to seek medical help, but instead self-treated with (you guessed it) a “cocktail of Vitamin C, zinc, aspirin and ivermectin”. He did not want to become a Covid statistic. He certainly failed in that goal. Also, not mentioned in most of the articles I’ve seen, Caleb is the State Coordinator for the West Texas Minutemen.
He has a long history of advocacy for the most extreme right wing positions, so his anti-mask/vaccine position was at least consistent. Not that will be much consolation to his wife and children.
I assume he is going to leave his family burdened with massive debt and, after his weeks in the hospital, leave it up to the public to pay for his medical care as his wife is unlikely to be able to cover the cost of a month in the ICU.
Amir Khalid
@germy:
I can’t say that I feel sorry for either Kid Rock or his band.
smith
It would probably be a bitch to demonstrate, but I wonder if the case numbers are skewed by vaxxed people being more willing to be tested when they’re exposed or develop symptoms. It would be in perfect accord with the Goobers’ avoidant-denial response to covid. My sister does contact tracing in a red, mostly rural county in WI, and she sees this phenomenon a lot among the unvaxxed: refusing to get tested until they’re on death’s door (or preventing family members frm being tested), and blatantly lying about whether they’ve been exposed or exposed anyone else.
Amir Khalid
Why is my comment in moderation?
Another Scott
@geg6: I sent a note to WG because it’s happening to me too.
(I wonder if this will post…)
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That’s how gods turn into demons and priesthoods fall since the Bronze Age. After the passion dies down a lot of these good and true Christians who had covid are going to start questioning whether the guy up at the altar is really in good with god like he claims.
Omnes Omnibus
Now comments are disappearing into the ether.
JoyceH
I saw a news story related to the non-vaccinated that did manage to make me feel a twinge of sympathy because at least the people involved hadn’t been public mouthpieces against vaccines. Woman was hospitalized for COVID, released from hospital, and came home to find her husband dead from COVID. He’d been diagnosed before her but appeared to have a mild case, so was sent home from clinic with meds. She said they hadn’t been vaccinated because ‘it hadn’t been tested enough.’ Oh, and their dogs were famished by the time she arrived home, so I certainly felt sympathy for them.
Captain C
@trollhattan: I was a fan of Herschel Walker when he played on the Generals (notably, also the first I ever heard of TFG). I don’t recall him being nearly this bad. I wonder how much of it is mental illness, and how much is related to the many hits he took as a power running back for over a decade (including some extremely heavy-usage years with the Generals; I think he had 2 400-carry seasons and 1,100 carries overall with them over 3 years even before he went to the NFL).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@dmsilev: That’s why I don’t get the fascination for it. Anti Inflammatories are supposed to work at mitigating COVID symptoms, but a laxative? that sounds like a quick way to the hospital for dehydration.
catclub
@geg6: boobies!
SiubhanDuinne
Testing. I had a comment float off into the Ewigkeit a short time ago
MomSense
@The Thin Black Duke:
Exactly right. It’s become a loyalty oath at this point.
@The Thin Black Duke:
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
It has begun.
Fair Economist
A general point about vaxxed vs unvaxxed hospitalization and deaths:
In general high risk people are more like to be vaxxed, so the vaxxed population is generally more vulnerable. Thus the real benefits are substantially higher than the already high raw numbers.
For example the weak benefit for hospitalization in Israel went away if they just classifies by over and under 50, producing protection of 85-92%. And that’s still not accounting for other risk factors like immune status, diabetes, age within groups, etc.
Flea, RN
Hey y’all – Flea, RN here, delurking.
As some of you know, I’m an ED nurse, been dealing with this stuff for 18 months now. I’m on a break at work, but I would like to recommend this podcast – it’s a long listen, but it’s the best explanation for why these people are so… deluded.
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2021/08/23/yanss-213-how-to-improve-your-chances-of-nudging-the-vaccine-hesitant-away-from-hesitancy-and-toward-vaccination/
I also recommend this article from Time: https://time.com/6092368/americas-frontline-doctors-covid-19-misinformation/
I offer this because I know that this is a caring, committed Tribe; I have to remind myself every day that these people are also tribal, and there are malign forces that want to use that tribalism for different types of profit.
I’m one of those who have watched people die, refusing to believe that they have an infection; have had people yank off the Oxygen which is the only thing keeping them alive and leave the Emergency Dept to go home, only to come back within hours to be intubated.
It’s incredibly frustrating, and maddening, to be told that some yahoo on YouTube has more credibility than someone who has been saving lives and treating children in this community for 20 years.
I hope that everyone here can find a way to empathize – it’s hurting those who care and want the best for these people nearly as much as it’s killing them.
NutmegAgain
@Another Scott: me three, or four…
PhaedrusOnBass
You’re not alone, John. It pisses me off no end.
My wife is tired of hearing about my frustration. She doesn’t understand that I need to vent this stuff lest my blood vessels explode.
gene108
@Suzanne:
I think the two points I mentioned about not believing you can be seriously ill and you can always control your health are at play.
20 to 30 year olds have lower vaccination rates than older people. Some minority groups have lower vaccination rates than the average.
The politicization of masks and COVID mitigation strategies Trump started is playing a huge part in low vaccination rates in Republican areas. There is a strong correlation between political affiliation and vaccination rates.
It just is not the only factor.
There’s some deeper human attitude towards our health that drives people to make unhealthy decisions, which is also at play here.
Ken
“So, it has come to this” is also acceptable
By the way, I have not noticed any problem posting comments, even with links. If you have, you may want to consider upgrading to the Platinum membership level.
Bmaccnm
@WaterGirl:
We (I) believe it.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Uh-oh – Skynet has become self aware.
Another Scott
@Flea, RN: Thank you for the links. And for all you’re doing and trying to do. It’s important, and appreciated.
Cheers,
Scott.
phdesmond
@Chetan Murthy:
love that expression, which is new to me. there are only 2200 hits for it on google! although one of them is an entry in the Urban Dictionary.
Captain C
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Having just had my Golden Anniversary colonoscopy, I can safely say that I would not take laxatives again unless they were absolutely medically necessary.
James E Powell
@The Thin Black Duke:
Right-wingers I know – including two of my brothers – would rather die than admit this on any issue.
WaterGirl
Not sure what’s going on there with comment craziness. Looking now.
James E Powell
@germy:
LeVar Burton said he’s watched just about every Jeopardy episode, going back to the Art Fleming days. He really wants the job.
I haven’t followed this at all. Did he get an audition? Did he offer to appear as Geordi La Forge?
Bill Arnold
debbie
I’ll never catch up reading all the posts, but I guess it’s too much to hope that the guy in the photo is the guy in the Huffpost post.
Bill Arnold
@germy:
Ivermectin was on the short list of successors-to-hydroxychloroquine from about February 2020. There are a few others. I keep hoping we’ll get luck and somebody will find and trial (successfully) an actual antiviral, though the monoclonal antibody treatments are close. (Those e.g. Regeneron’s treatment are still under EUA btw, as far as I know.)
debbie
@germy:
Jesus, yes. Save us from ever hearing about booby pictures or Blossom again.
Scout211
@Flea, RN:
Thank you for your dedication and for all you and your colleagues do in the ED every day .
And thank you for the gentle nudge toward compassion that maybe we need right now.
James E Powell
@Mike in NC:
Couple days ago I (stupidly) got into a twitter thread regarding the recall. Turns out that Newsom closing the schools was worse than the Nazis, worse than Stalin, worse even, if you can believe it, than Hillary Clinton.
Geminid
@Captain C: Herschel Walker certainly acts like he has effects from numerous traumatic brain injuries. These injuries affect different athletes in different ways. Hardhitting safety Irv Cross suffered a number of concussions in his playing career, but went on to a groundbreaking career as a major nerwork sportscaster.* Cross only started to show effects of TBI a few years before his death early this year, although he suffered severe neck pain for decades.
But Walker shows signs of brain damage, and would be a weak Senate candidate. His status is entirely due to trump’s promotion of him, and when it comes to political judgement trump is a fool.
*Irv Cross gave a good demonstration of his mental acuity when he won his first job as a network NFL anchor. Producers asked him to wear a leisure suit and a gold chain! Cross showed up in a coat and tie, as he did throughout his second career.
debbie
@Flea, RN:
NYT’s podcast The Daily ran a half hour on Frank Luntz trying to get through to a group of hesitants. Despite his (self-proclaimed) excellence at messaging, he was gobsmacked at how difficult it was getting through to them.
ETA: Thank you for what you do. Hope you don’t have to do it for too much longer.
dmsilev
@James E Powell:
Unpossible.
debbie
@Heidi Mom:
They don’t want to be known as having given in to libtards. Nothing more than that.
Anastasio Beaverhausen
As a recently retired ophthalmologist, and Lord of the Manor here at Sighthound Hall, I enjoy restful days and sleep-filled nights. (I jest, husband and I have a 6 and 5 year old and we are just finishing up my retirement present to me, a kitchen and bath remodel.) But when I see posts like ShadeTail’s I hark back to my situation just a year ago. I was f’ing terrified about going to work every day, though I hid it well. My profession involves face to face exams, a foot apart, at the slit lamp. Was my next patient going to be the loaded chamber in today’s game of Russian roulette? If so, I could contract COVID, and maybe die. Honestly, at 60 something I’ve had a good life and maybe made some meaningful contributions here and there. Dying is not right, but it’s OK. What really kept me awake at night was the thought of bringing it home to my husband and kids. Their loss was unfathomable. But on December 21st, I got my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine! And not because I was front line medical. No, no. It was because my organization was coordinating immunizations for first responders here in DC, and when we opened a jeroboam of vaccines, expecting a stampede of patients……crickets. The cops, the firemen, and the EMTs couldn’t be bothered. So staff went through the building hoping to save the opened doses. “Who wants to be….?” “MOVE!!” I rolled up my scrub sleeve, texted every other doc I knew and got a jab. But still, I knew the average patient would not have my level of access, at least not for a while, so I was patient, and understanding. But fast forward 9+ months. I went to Target today for back to school supplies (Dante’s 7th level of Hell) and could have gotten a free COVID shot while checking out and telling the girl child to put back the accessories for a doll she doesn’t even own. Our nationwide daily death toll from COVID should be 50-100, not 1000+. I never thought I would say this as a physician, but for you unvaccinated, I don’t understand your position, and I certainly don’t share it. I am speaking for hundreds, if not thousands of my medical colleagues when I say, our empathy well is dry.
rikyrah
The MSM is underestimating the growing RAGE OF THE VACCINATED.
We read the latest incarnation of the Cletus Safari, and think
Phuck him!
You should feel for all the people he intentionally infected?
THAT is who I care about
Not this selfish piece of human garbage?
debbie
@Bill Arnold:
I can almost understand hydroxychloroquine because it works for a number of autoimmune diseases for reasons unknown. But horse paste? COVID isn’t a worm, for chrissakes.
randy khan
@Ken:
@nwerner:
As Ken points out, vaccinated people represented 25.3% of those infected, 3.2% of those people were hospitalized, 0.5% of those went to ICU and 0.2% required ventilators. Unvaccinated people were 71.4% of the cases, 7.5% of them were hospitalized, 1.5% of them went to the ICU and 0.5% of them required ventilators. (The remaining cases seem to be people who had been vaccinated but weren’t yet fully vaccinated.) If you figure a 60% average vaccination rate for the period of the study, unvaccinated people are better than 4 times more likely than vaccinated people to test positive, 3-1/2 time more likely to be admitted to the hospital, 4-1/2 times more likely to go into the ICU and 3-3/4 times more likely to be put on a vent. That seems pretty good to me.
As a footnote, delta became the predominant variant in the U.S. in early July, so during the middle of the time period for the study.
Another Scott
(Testing…)
An excerpt from the STATNews piece above:
Worth a click over.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
Peanut is fully vaccinated. It’s the only way that I feel comfortable with her going back to in-person school.
My heart aches for parents and family of kids too young to be vaccinated, but going back to school.???
Especially in the states with killing Governors
MomSense
@Another Scott:
Except for the intoxicated driver example, all the others are people who harm themselves with their bad health and lifestyle choices. The Covid vaccine is different especially with a virus that is so contagious. These are people who are harming others. We prosecute people who drive while intoxicated. If they are repeat offenders they lose their license to operate a vehicle. The anti vaxxers are causing harm and death to others.
BobinPDX
All I can ask is that they are organ donors. Not the brains, or course, but many lives can be saved with heart, lung, liver, and kidneys, as long as Covid didn’t screw them up.
Ksmiami
@Ella in New Mexico: I’ve been there for awhile
Bill Arnold
@Delk:
Like a drunk driver who actively encourages other people to drive drunk, using all sorts of propaganda arguments about the virtues of drunk driving and the evils of sobriety. And the arguments aren’t even original; they are crafted by psychopath experts at such influence operations, and mass-distributed to the gullible, who repeat them (recursively).
Elizabelle
In other ragrattable news, the odious Cardinal Raymond Burke, COVID denier who was recently on a ventilator in the ICU, seems to be improving. He’s off the ventilator and in a regular hospital room.
I guess Satan does not want him home this soon. Ragrattably.
Another Scott
@MomSense: Yes, all that is true.
The question is, since we’re not going to send them all off to FEMA camps and will therefore have to live among them, what’s the best way to get them to change their behavior and get vaccinated?
I’m a fan of all of the above approaches – belt and suspenders, mandate and encouragement, etc. We have lots of evidence that punching down doesn’t work. We should do the things that do work.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
@Anastasio Beaverhausen: Welcome!! We have been hearing about you.
Parenthood. Hope you are off to an excellent and well-deserved retirement.
phdesmond
@Flea, RN:
thanks for sharing!
Another Scott
It looks like most/all of my “moderation” comments eventually appeared above.
???
Cheers,
Scott.
Ksmiami
@James E Powell:
Let’s get rid of them first…
@Professor Bigfoot:
SiubhanDuinne
Testing at WG’s request.
Ken
@debbie: Derek Lowe’s blog has some of the history of this: “What’s Up with Ivermectin” and “Ivermectin As a COVID-19 Therapy“. There was a study that showed ivermectin could kill coronavirus in vitro. This is not surprising, there are any number of things including soap and bleach that do that; the question is, can it do it in a patient?
So there were follow-up studies, which got mixed results. For a while it looked like “maybe”, but then one of the most positive studies turned out to be fraudulent, and when that one was removed the answer became “not with any statistical significance”.
Which is probably a good thing, since to get the concentration that worked in vitro, you’d have to take roughly 10^5 (100,000) times the normal dose for anti-worming. So even the people eating an entire tube of horse dewormer that’s meant to treat ten horses aren’t getting enough to match that first study.
Ksmiami
@trollhattan: they live in west TX. His dumb crackerass pickup is probably worth more than the shack they live in
Ryan
FWIW out of fucks to give. Tots and pears!
trollhattan
@Anastasio Beaverhausen:
Was so very grateful to receive Pfizer jab #1 in February and assumed, fully assumed, that everybody would feel similarly and jam the queues for their chance. After eleven months of dread from our silent, invisible, deadly enemy, and our loud orange one, it was bliss entering the Covid offramp. “First-responders” refusing? Unthinkable. I’m blaming the steroids they’re using down at the gym.
No matter how often I relate this, I shall never capture the elegance of “jeroboam of vaccines.” {chef’s kiss}
OGLiberal
So he’ll leave 4 kids without a dad, a widow, and a legacy of being an complete fucking idiot. These morons will take a cocktail of horse parasite paste, OTC vitamins and who knows what else but won’t wear a mask, get vaccinated or go to the doctor.
Also, did he think about maybe giving his shit to his little kids and pregnant wife? Selfish d-bag.
If there is any hope for the future it’s that the government he despises will make sure that his widow and kids are cared for. They may have to leave Texas for that to happen.
Just Chuck
@Another Scott:
Nominated.
StringOnAStick
@Anastasio Beaverhausen: I was a dental hygienist when Covid hit, the Russian roulette aspect is why I immediately retired at age 61. Even with vaccines I still wouldn’t be comfortable practicing right now so I let my license expire. Done.
trnc
Which, IMHO, is not nearly enough of a story to day ratio.
debbie
@Ken:
Bet they’re losing weight, though. //
trollhattan
@BobinPDX:
IIUC Covid wrecks havoc upon the kidneys but yeah, whatever bits they can safely harvest and distribute, here’s your knife and spoon, doc, go to town.
J R in WV
@SiubhanDuinne:
So 200+ comments. ETA SO! 290 comments!!! Wife and I just got home, went to town for special Kitty food from the vet, AND to get our booster CoronaVirus vaccine at the big city Health Department. Moderna #3 right in my left arm. Were EMTs on their time off giving shots.No one even asked if either of us was immuno-compromised, although Wife is. I had a pretty severe reaction to my second Moderna shot back in March, hoping that doesn’t repeat.
I do not care if people who could have gotten fully vaccinated months ago, for free, after work, weekends, whenever, get really really sick and spend weeks on a vent. I spent nearly a month with my Wife while she was in an induced coma on a vent, which is why her immune system isn’t top drawer any more.
It was horrible, holding her foot because her arms were totally involved with IVs and monitoring devices. 18 hours a day with neighbors feeding the cats and dogs.
These people could be completely protected from that kind of illness, but NO, Mah FREEDOM won’t let ME get immunized. I Caint spel Immunisxed, so I don’t wnat none. Morons! We’ll be better off without mentally ill too stupid to repair people in the way of making the world a better place.
lgerard
I just scrolled through an online discussion of Ivermectin aficionados.
One woman insisted that taking medication meant for horses, sheep and cows was COMPLETELY WRONG!
They should be taking the formulation meant for dogs
No one could ever make this up
Ksmiami
@Another Scott: They are unreachable and unrepentant assholes. I really hope they rapture themselves with Covid and leave the rest of us alone.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I cried after making the appointment for the first shot.
I cried while waiting the 15 minutes after each shot.
The sense of relief that came when the 14 day antibodies countdown was done could not be measured.
Anastasio Beaverhausen
@trollhattan: I blush.
Another Scott
@Ken: “100,000 times” makes me flashback to Linus Pauling…
Cornell.edu:
If, as always, is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Pauling died of prostate cancer at age 93. IIRC, he argued that he should have taken more vitamin C, even though he was already taking 3 grams a day. A big MayoClinic study at 10 grams a day found no benefit compared to placebo in cancer treatment.
Maybe it does need to be directed locally to the tumor. Maybe. Maybe it’s nonsense, too.
Even really smart people (and few were smarter than Pauling) can get distracted by crazy ideas. Sometimes they actually work out, but usually they don’t – especially in biology and treatment of disease.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@Splitting Image: Poor Magrat. She was trying so hard.
Chris Johnson
@West of the Rockies: Russia didn’t always have as good organizational methods to direct them, en masse and through various cut-outs.
Thanks, Facebook, Fox News etc etc. And various other media outlets who chose to become traitors rather than go honorably out of business as the internet ate their lunch… but those had to be infiltrated in some form. Facebook and their like are the ones who literally took money to run propaganda to make a buck.
cain
@Miss Bianca:
It’s just a series of wtfs and head smacking – if you just think in the meta what all these people are doing and it’s not a small number – you just feel like we are never going to get out of this pandemic.
cain
You must admit there is something galactically comical about anti-vaxxers eating a laxative to cure themselves of a virus and then wind up having stool accidents everywhere they go (unmaked).
Self-owning to own the libs and then possibly dying.
cain
@Baud: Let Mortal Kombat begin!
ETA OMG OMG! #300!!! Yeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!
quakerinabasement
@germy: Still readable and still relevant.
debbie
@lgerard:
I trust she was banished. //
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Same for me. And the pharmacist at the Walmart who gave me both shots had the same name as my grandmother. Not sure why that made such an impression, but it just felt right.
J R in WV
@Anastasio Beaverhausen:
Yes! This. People fooling around with trying to convince people NOT to get vaccinated, NOT to wear masks… I think they need to be arrested on charges of voluntary manslaughter, jailed until the plague is over and they can do no more damage. Especially the politicians and judges!
Thanks for joining us, we’ve heard so much about you! We are commonly known as Jackals, but we’re really more cuddly than that.
Anastasio Beaverhausen
@J R in WV: apparently my reputation precedes me. I never knew. All good, I hope?
J R in WV
@trollhattan:
But all those harvested organs, won’t they be infective, saturated with Sars2-Corona19 virus? I’m all for harvesting, but not infecting people missing organs with deadly pandemic virus!
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
Us too. Not so much tears, but overwhelming emotional surge driving home. The first shot the clinic was running on their backup generators, the county seat was stone cold out of electric, so very winter.
Second shot 4 weeks later (nearly end of March) was drive thru on a beautiful spring day. People working outdoors had ponchos in case the weather changed, but weren’t wearing them. Sun shining!!
Today we got Moderna #3 in Charleston, was 94 outside, so different from the first two shots. The Health Department was taking all comers, working everyone into a hall way where EMTs volunteering were shooting people up. They may have feared some vaccine was going to expire — next door neighbor is a health inspector with them and tipped us off.
I had pretty significant side effects after the second shot, slept 16 hours a night for two nights, then woke up with extreme muscle cramps and charley horse pain. So far my arm isn’t even sore from the 3rd shot. Hoping that will be the general run over the weekend.
Citizen Alan
@BobinPDX: A thought experiment: Ask a antichoicer whether they would support a law that automatically made everyone in the country an organ donor, no exceptions. If they say no, ask them why corpses have more of a right to bodily integrity than pregnant women.
J R in WV
@Anastasio Beaverhausen:
Well, good, sure, but with snark, we do a lot of snark here. Some for you, some for him, here’s some for you, over there!
;~)
No One You Know
@Yarrow: I wish someone had offered you a microphone.
And this thread, a thousand times… because while I don’t condemn ignorance, anyone can be that on any topic, I loathe lethal, willful stupidity fueled by entitlement, resentment, and/or Oppositional Defiance Disorder “for muh freedumbs.”