Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

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

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

The willow is too close to the house.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

He really is that stupid.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

This blog will pay for itself.

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

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

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

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: June 21, 2023

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: June 21, 2023

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There’s many reasons — contrarianism, credulity, GOP ratf*cking — but I honestly believe *part* of the current fad for ‘Vaccines are the devil, and scientists are his servants’ is that people want to forget the pandemic. If it was just a couple of bad flu seasons, exacerbated by globalists hoping to tighten their grip on an unwilling populace and Big Pharma wanting to increase profits, well… good thing clean people, superior intellects like the guy who owns twitter and the people who pay him for it, need nothing but their own informed debate and a sufficient supply of ivermectin!



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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: June 21, 2023 1
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The WSJ is *never* giving up it lab-leak chew toy:
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: June 21, 2023 2
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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: June 21, 2023 3
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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: June 21, 2023 4
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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: June 21, 2023 5
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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: June 21, 2023 6
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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: June 21, 2023

… One of the paramount lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic is that fresh air matters. Although officials were initially reluctant to acknowledge that the coronavirus was airborne, it soon became clear that the virus spread easily through the air indoors. As the pandemic raged on, experts began urging building operators to crank up their ventilation systems and Americans to keep their windows open. The message: A well-ventilated building could be a bulwark against disease.

It was not a novel idea. More than a century ago, when infectious diseases ravaged cities in the United States and Europe, public health reformers preached the power of good ventilation, and open-air homes, hospitals and schools sprang up in New York, London and other locales on both sides of the Atlantic.

But over the last century, society lost hold of that idea. Scientific advances turned pathogens into problems that could be solved at the individual, biomedical level, with medicines and vaccines, rather than through infrastructure or societal change. Skylines became crowded with air-conditioned towers. An energy crisis encouraged engineers to seal structures tightly. And by the time the coronavirus arrived, Americans were spending their days in schools, offices and homes that could barely breathe.

“So you get a virus that spread nearly entirely indoors butting up against our building infrastructure that we know is not designed for health,” said Joseph Allen, an expert on healthy buildings at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard.

Three years later, many Americans have a new, hard-earned appreciation for the health benefits of clean air. But some experts worry that the lesson may not stick. The Covid-19 public health emergency has now expired, and public attention has shifted to other airborne threats, such as the acrid wildfire smoke that has recently smothered many Eastern cities. Given these developments, it might be tempting to seal our buildings back up again…

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COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: June 21, 2023 8
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Reader Interactions

38Comments

  1. 1.

    Soprano2

    I’m amazed that people are amazed that those who are in a cult don’t easily give up their beliefs. At this point anti-vaxx is a cult belief. No matter what evidence is presented, to them it gets twisted to show that vaccines are bad and cause injury.

    Also, enough with what seems like almost wishing for another Covid spike. I checked our local wastewater monitoring; one plant shows the lowest levels of Covid EVER since they started monitoring back in 2020, and the other shows historically low levels but not the lowest ever. It almost seems that some people are pining for another Covid spike!

  3. 3.

    WereBear

    I honestly believe *part* of the current fad for ‘Vaccines are the devil, and scientists are his servants’ is that people want to forget the pandemic.

    Of course they do. While I understand the impulse, Pretending Otherwise is a favorite and horrible strategy.

    It has yet to be scrubbed from our genetics because our imaginations are a double-edged sword. It makes things possible by letting us run with ideas. But allows us to use our own minds as a numbing drug.

    Pretending Otherwise is a hell we inflict on each other, and is only useful in a time span of mere days.

  4. 4.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s Ministry of Health reported 400 new Covid-19 cases on 17th June, for a cumulative reported total of 5,108,586 cases. All 400 of these new cases were local infections; no new cases were imported. It also reported no deaths, for an adjusted cumulative total of 37,118 deaths – 0.73% of the cumulative reported total, 0.73% of resolved cases.

    5,587 Covid-19 tests were conducted on 17th June, with a positivity rate of 7%.

    There were 17,756 active cases on 17th June, 230 fewer than the day before. 515 were in hospital. 15 confirmed cases were in ICU; of these patients, 12 confirmed cases were on ventilators. Meanwhile, 630 patients recovered, for a cumulative total of 5,057,145 patients recovered – 99.0% of the cumulative reported total.

    The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 188 doses of vaccine on 20th June: 31 first doses, 15 second doses, 107 first booster doses, and 35 second booster doses. The cumulative total is 72,851,997 doses administered: 28,137,818 first doses, 27,550,740 second doses, 16,338,307 first booster doses, and 825,132 second booster doses. 86.2% of the population have received their first dose, 84.4% their second dose, 50.0% their first booster dose, and 2.5% their second booster dose.

  6. 6.

    New Deal democrat

    According to BIobot’s latest, no summer wave has started yet, either nationwide or in any Census region. Particles are at 170 per milliliter, the lowest in the past 22 months except for March 2022. Levels have continued to decline in all regions except the West, where they are level.

    Hospitalizations per week have also continued to decline to 6,649 as of the last update through June 13.

    Deaths per week have also declined to 682 as of the last week of reliable data, May 20. Preliminary, incomplete data suggests the decline has continued since then as well.

    Variant information was last updated June 10, showing that the various XBB subvariants continue to make up 99% of all cases. This information will next be updated on Friday.

    So far this summer solstice, so good. Continuing to keep fingers crossed.

    P.S.: society is always most vulnerable to those problems which have faded from living memory. Those who cannot see must feel.

  7. 7.

    Soprano2

    @WereBear: I’m not surprised; look at how people “forgot” the 1918 pandemic in just a few years. People don’t want to remember something that awful. I have to confess that sometimes the memories from 2020 seem hazy to me – it’s like a “lost” year in my  mind.

  8. 8.

    gVOR08

    but I honestly believe *part* of the current fad for ‘Vaccines are the devil, and scientists are his servants’ is that people want to forget the pandemic.

    That may make the ground more fertile for it, but mostly it’s FOX/GOP propaganda

  9. 9.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Current status of this website: the billionaire owner and a podcast host worth hundreds of millions are currently dogpiling a pediatrician who develops vaccines to give to impoverished countries.

    Oh, so let me guess, this Dr’s vaccine program is undercutting Rogan and Musk’s latest grift and so he must be destroyed.

  10. 10.

    Betty

    Some anecdotal evidence for the importance of ventilation in the spread of Covid. Dominica had relatively very few cases and not close to a hundred reported deaths. Most people here have their windows open all the time. It is mostly only businesses in town that have air conditioning.

  11. 11.

    AM in NC

    As a NC resident, and from a completely non-medical perspective, I thought Mandy Cohen did a GREAT job as our state health director during COVID, and I am thrilled that someone with a public health background (and a kick-ass public communicator) will be heading the CDC.   Democratic Executives at the state and national levels making smart, competent hires that benefit their citizens? Whocouldaknowed?

  13. 13.

    The Moar You Know

    There’s many reasons — contrarianism, credulity, GOP ratf*cking — but I honestly believe *part* of the current fad for ‘Vaccines are the devil, and scientists are his servants’ is that people want to forget the pandemic.

    May I suggest a simpler alternative.  The CDC, in the early days of the pandemic, made an innocent announcement that they’d noticed that black and Hispanic folks were affected by the virus far more than Caucasians, and that those folks might want to take extra precautions.

    That was the end right there.  They meant no harm by the statement, just the opposite, but they really should have thought that through.  Red state people and governments figured this would be a great way to kill off all the minorities and everything that’s happened makes sense if you view it in that light.

    They don’t want to forget the pandemic, they want it to finish the job.

  14. 14.

    WereBear

    Strategies we tried for Mr WereBear reflects that Long Viral Syndromes are metabolic problems, with mitochondria rebuilding central to a cure.

    Poor nutrition is a known vulnerability factor. And we have rotten nutrition advice in this country. The whole food pyramid turns out to rest on bribery when it came to the science, just like the sugar scandal.

  15. 15.

    WereBear

    @raven: And yet I’ve had anti-vaxxers use this sign the vaccine is working as a sign it’s NOT.

    Sigh. When someone knows so little about how anything works, we have no tools to work with.

  17. 17.

    WereBear

    @The Moar You Know:

    The CDC, in the early days of the pandemic, made an innocent announcement that they’d noticed that black and Hispanic folks were affected by the virus far more than Caucasians, and that those folks might want to take extra precautions.

    I don’t see any way around a public health organization making public health announcements.

    We constantly announce that women are dying when someone else controls their reproductive freedom. Some red states leaped to increase the suffering.

    The problem is THEM. We can do nothing that will push their behavior in any positive direction. They don’t work like that.

  18. 18.

    Kayla Rudbek

    I’m irritated that I can’t get another shot at CVS; apparently my vaccination back in late March is still okay according to them? Maybe I’ll try again next week when it will have been over 3 months.

  19. 19.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2: I think there’s a desire among people who are being most careful about COVID for their caution to be vindicated. There are people who are really bothered that, while COVID has not entirely gone away and there are still some cases and deaths and serious damage, most people aren’t still acting like they’re under active pandemic conditions 3 years on. And for them to experience no great consequences for that feels morally unsatisfying on some level.

  20. 20.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @The Moar You Know: Every anti-vax person I know or have observed: 1.) lacks critical thinking skills, 2.) is extremely selfish, 3.) usually has an anti-government attitude rooted in a racist worry that someone, somewhere (and I think we all know who they mean) will get something they don’t deserve and 4.) have extreme persecution fantasies.

  21. 21.

    TooTallTom

    In my opinion, it is all about cognitive dissonance. Once they become convinced of a position on a topic: vaccines, Trump, wokeness, etc., it is more painful to them to admit that they believed the wrong thing than to accept verifiable science. Hence, the famous 28% that never give up on TIFG, despite mountains of evidence of his crimes and lies.

    People are stubborn like that.
    In 1543, Copernicus detailed his radical theory of the Universe in which the Earth, along with the other planets, rotated around the Sun. His theory took more than a century to become widely accepted.

  23. 23.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Soprano2:

     I have to confess that sometimes the memories from 2020 seem hazy to me – it’s like a “lost” year in my  mind.

    I don’t remember that much of 2020, but I think part of the reason is that with shutdowns, no travel, etc., a lot less happened in the lives of those of us who didn’t get sick or knew someone who did.

    Didn’t see didn’t see family other than my wife and son, didn’t see friends, didn’t see co-workers from mid-March on. Didn’t go on vacation. Didn’t go out to eat.  There really wasn’t much to remember.  My son turned 13 that summer, and the party was just my wife and me and him.   It really was a lost year from mid-March on.

  24. 24.

    Bill Arnold

    @Soprano2:

    At this point anti-vaxx is a cult belief.

    it is a deadly (set of) cult belief(s).
    Anti-vaxxers have been committing mass homicide for over 200 years. The resistance to smallpox variolation (inducing a mild case of real smallpox) was understandable, but once an early actual vaccine was developed (Edward Jenner, cow pox), the risk/benefit ratio became quite clear, and on the side off vaccination. The history of anti-smallpox-vaccination movements (and their rhetoric) is interesting.

  25. 25.

    moonbat

    Again, thanks for these updates, Anne.

    I hadn’t heard about the CDC switching back to mono-valent vaccine development. I guess XBB is the new king of the hill for the foreseeable future. Great news about no summer spike yet.
    The breathing buildings issue is going to come back to get us if changes aren’t made. The building where I teach most of my classes was built in the 1970s and has TERRIBLE ventilation. I’m just going to make sure every room I teach in has a HEPA filter from now on.

  26. 26.

    Matt McIrvin

    @UncleEbeneezer: The antivaxxer I spent the most time arguing with in 2021 or so had this extreme “wellness” mindset–he seemed to think of conventional medicine, including vaccines, as something that lazy people who wouldn’t follow his intense diet and exercise program used as a cheap substitute.

    That you could do all that stuff AND get vaccinated didn’t seem to fully register–his attitude was, if you won’t make the effort to be as healthy as I am, why are you bugging me about vaccines? Why should I listen to you? And he put a LOT of his eggs in the basket of the reports about how people who were in good physical shape did better with COVID. He seemed to feel like that should be enough.

  27. 27.

    Matt McIrvin

    @moonbat: I think there was some speculation that the bivalent shots, because they had the vaccine against the original strain as a component, reinforced immune imprinting on the original wild-type variant that might have made them less effective against Omicron variants than a pure Omicron shot would be.

    All this is kind of working in the dark, of course.

  28. 28.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kayla Rudbek: The government hasn’t approved/recommended any additional shots for people (most people, at least) who already got the full initial sequence plus the bivalent booster. So most pharmacies seem to not be letting you get them. The attitude is that they’ll wait for some new recommendation in the fall, probably for a new shot for XBB.

  29. 29.

    sab

    @Soprano2: We never talked about the 1918 pandemic but my elderly ( when I was a teen and now I am an elder ) next door neighbor lost both her parents in that pandemic and was shipped from California to Boston to live with cousins she hated.

    Before I talked to her only mention of it I had heard of was in fiction (Conan Doyle or Kipling, I forget which)  and yet all of my grandparents lived through it.  Shoved right down the memory hole.

  30. 30.

    Matt McIrvin

    @sab: My great-grandmother died of flu in 1921, considerably after the dates we usually think of as the duration of the pandemic, and my grandfather and his siblings were adopted out to various other families in their Scandinavian-immigrant-populated farm town; he went from a Norwegian-speaking household to the Danish-speaking preacher’s family. I think of that a lot these days in the context of long tails and the pandemic being “over” or not.

  31. 31.

    Ruckus

    @WereBear:

    This bears repeating:

    The problem is THEM. We can do nothing that will push their behavior in any positive direction. They don’t work like that.

    Negativism is their goal. Nothing should or can change, because change is something they then have to think about, live with and they need all the little boxes in their tiny minds to remain the same. It is a simple vision of life, that it never changes. Of course time and life never stand still, they move on regardless of the desire of the stand still clan.

  32. 32.

    Spinoza Is My Co-pilot

    @Matt McIrvin: Over at that other site (LGM) it seems it’s been some little while (far as I know, anyway) since there was a post with an extensive discussion amongst the commentariat about COVID, but the last time I participated in such a thread there was a significant number of those commenting (very much including some regulars) who seemed to be much as you describe — still being quite careful about COVID with a desire (if not stated so baldly) that their caution be vindicated, and really bothered that most people (like the vast majority anymore) aren’t now acting like we’re all still under active pandemic conditions 3 years on.

    Had one guy (a semi-regular, seen him around there going back some years) tell me I was killing children because I was no longer masking, which almost no one where I live (Arizona) has done for a long time, and my travels over the past 10 months or so to California, Oregon, Washington state, British Columbia, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Alabama, Georgia, and N Carolina indicates that Arizona isn’t some outlier in that regard, not hardly. That no such “great consequence” (i.e., children dying from COVID in some notable number) was actually occurring in our society even though the vast majority were no longer adhering to previous pandemic protocols definitely seemed to be morally unsatisfying at some level to this guy (and some others there as well).

    The desire to be proven right, dammit! is a powerful psychological impulse, I know (I’m as prone to that as anyone) but sticking to that against all evidence is always disappointing to me when engaged in by those on “our side” (I expect it from the goddamn fascists, and they almost never disappoint me in this regard).

  33. 33.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Spinoza Is My Co-pilot: There’s a wide range of attitudes over there, as there is here.

    I have to admit, I’ve largely reverted to pre-pandemic behavior in this regard except that I still mask up on the bus and sometimes at the supermarket. But I kind of feel guilty about it, because I still have friends who are really upset that people aren’t wearing masks all the time and treat it as mass MAGA insanity. And I still watch the wastewater numbers–will definitely go back to stricter measures if I see another wave.

  34. 34.

    Ruckus

    @Spinoza Is My Co-pilot:

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Here in LA, when I travel on the train, which I took last weekend all the way across LA, east San Gabriel Valley to Santa Monica (new service, much better, far easier and I only change trains once instead of twice, last weekend free to ride anywhere. any time, all weekend,) It actually works very well and as a senior the price is almost free

    And to your point, almost no one is masking up. Not anywhere in public. Not on the train. I still have to mask at the VA hospital when waiting for appointment, talking to the docs, etc but otherwise no mask necessary.

  35. 35.

    Hob

    @Soprano2: ​
    Speaking for myself only, I am being more cautious than most people around me right now, but I am not in any way hoping for another COVID spike and neither are any of the people I know who are also being more cautious. And I would feel pretty insulted by that statement, if it weren’t such a nebulous statement that it’s basically impossible to tell what your standards are for this (like, is it possible for anyone to be still worried about this without annoying you— maybe, I really can’t tell), so I won’t assume that it applies to me. But my own continuing anxiety is due to three things: 1. the wastewater sampling in my area is not at historically low levels, it is consistent with previous seasonal lows; 2. people here aren’t just not acting like it’s an active pandemic, they’re using basically no caution at all and partying as hard as possible; 3. PEOPLE I KNOW ARE STILL GETTING VERY SICK WITH COVID and I’m pretty sure that would not be happening as much if people were being even a little more cautious.

  36. 36.

    Hob

    @UncleEbeneezer: I think that’s largely true, but I do also know some people for whom it really is just a giant amount of #1 plus maybe some amount of #4. These are people with a pre-existing inclination toward woo wellness stuff and a type of anti-government feeling that’s more common on the left, definitely not opposed to equal social welfare but very willing to assume that large government efforts with any private industry/pharma component could be nefarious. Also tends to go along with “supporting Ukraine is just a scam by warmongers” type stuff which they’re getting from sources that have clearly pitched this message toward well-meaning anti-war people, rather than the openly Putinist version of the message, even though they end up effectively buying all the same ideas (again the “lack of critical thinking” factor is very big). It is really sad and awful to see them descend the rabbit hole and adopt more and more Qanon-style shit since those people are now their new best friends and are giving them constant reinforcement of the “if your mainstream friends are against us, that proves we’re right” kind.

  37. 37.

    NeenerNeener

    Yikes! I got so busy this morning I forgot it was Wednesday! And the stats for this last week were really good, too.

     

    Monroe County, NY:

    8 new cases on 06/14/23.
    5 new cases on 06/15/23.
    13 new cases on 06/16/23.
    10 new cases on 06/17/23.
    5 new cases on 06/18/23.
    4 new cases on 06/19/23.
    5 new cases on 06/20/23.

    Deaths now at 2285, up 0 since last week. Woo hoo!

  38. 38.

    Glidwrith

    Really late to the thread, but I am still masking at work and indoors and I am thoroughly pissed at my 80 year old parents. They flew home after a visit and spent more than 12 hours in airports and planes without a mask. Predictably, three days later and my dad is sick. They knew better but decided to ignore what I told them. Grrrrrr.

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