Covid-19 miscellany

[lpetrich]

Matt Ford on Twitter: "Washington ordered ..." / Twitter

Washington ordered the entire Continental Army to get smallpox inoculations and pressured his wife to do the same. After Franklin lost his 4-year-old son to smallpox, he became a relentless advocate for inoculation as well.

It's really hard to avoid the conclusion that conservatives—who previously almost never fought vaccine mandates—are only doing so now out of partisan spite. Owning the libs by prolonging a pandemic.

I can't summarize it better than this juxtaposition.

Then a screencap of these tweets:

House Republicans @HouseGOP 31m Joe Biden has failed to protect the American people.

House Republicans @HouseGOP 40m The United States of America is the land of the FREE.

Don't let anyone tell you anything else, not even our President.

Matt Ford on Twitter: "They’re just straight-up saying it at this point:" / Twitter
noting
Greg Sargent on Twitter: "After going to great lengths to impair or sabotage our Covid recovery, Republicans are already running for 2022 on the idea that Biden and Dems are solely to blame for our failure to quickly defeat it.

So Dems must make this an issue on their own terms: (links)" / Twitter
Opinion | DCCC memo goes on offense against GOP’s exploiting of covid to win power - The Washington Post

Here’s a midterm message for you: Judging by the GOP’s continuing slide into extremist and destructive behavior in the face of a surging covid-19, electing more Republicans to positions of responsibility right now would likely mean more economic malaise, sickness, misery and death.

This is what Democrats come very close to saying in a new memo about the 2022 elections that their House campaign arm is now distributing. The memo is an important marker: It suggests Democrats are finally leaning into prosecuting the case against Republicans for actively impairing the nation’s response to the covid-19 resurgence.

noting Interested Parties Memo: Democrats Ring The Alarm, Republicans’ Deadly, Dangerous, and Divisive COVID-19 Lies Harming Americans - Interested-Parties-Memo__-Democrats-Ring-The-Alarm-Republicans-Deadly-Dangerous-and-Divisive-COVID-19-Lies-Harming-Americans.pdf

 

[lpetrich]

Back to the WaPo.

“House Republicans have lied about its impact” and “dangerously rejected medical guidance to wear masks and social distance,” the memo says, adding that “extremist Republicans” have “even encouraged Americans to consume horse and cattle dewormer.”

House Republicans and GOP candidates have spread disinformation about the virus, have staged epic fake-outrage fests about mask mandates, have demagogued about vaccines in ridiculous, hallucinogenic and obscenely wretched ways, and have pushed the rankest of absurdities to undermine confidence in federal health officials.

Noting that Republicans' sabotage of good responses to COVID-19 impede “getting Americans back to work.”

 

[blastula]

[TWEET]https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1436079193146724353?s=20[/TWEET]

Wow, very impressed with Biden. This is a risky move logistically and politically. First Afghanistan and now this. It's like he's out of fucks. Half a year in and already Biden >>> Obama.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

As stated in the other thread, I can only hope this holds up, as there are confounding and uncontrolled elements in the research, namely all the people got treated with the same ivermectin in the same place for the same reason, likely by the same people. It could be any one of those common elements...

Oh, don’t be such a killjoy.
I know it will very likely turn out to be a negligible effect. But the linked study was done on people suffering river blindness, so the subjects almost certainly got the prescription version. Hopefully the horse de-wormer will turn out to be even more effective at neutering Texans.

It's not that it's negligible, it's that it doesn't persist. Invermectin messes with sperm production, it doesn't damage the machinery. Not good enough to be a decent birth control pill, though.

 

[ideologyhunter]

But will your babies have hooves?

 

[Harry Bosch]

[TWEET]https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1436079193146724353?s=20[/TWEET]

Wow, very impressed with Biden. This is a risky move logistically and politically. First Afghanistan and now this. It's like he's out of fucks. Half a year in and already Biden >>> Obama.

You have to say this about Biden: he's man of action. Trump didn't get shit done. Just talked about it all the time. Biden does it.

 

[Angry Floof]

[TWEET]https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1436079193146724353?s=20[/TWEET]

Wow, very impressed with Biden. This is a risky move logistically and politically. First Afghanistan and now this. It's like he's out of fucks. Half a year in and already Biden >>> Obama.

You have to say this about Biden: he's man of action. Trump didn't get shit done. Just talked about it all the time. Biden does it.

One shit that Trump did get done was that whole deal with the Taliban thing.

 

[horhangi]

How things are going for me in southern CA: I teach 8th grade science and we have been full in person in school for 8 1/2 weeks. Masks required when indoors for both students and teachers, but not social distancing. Initially teachers indoors with only other teachers if all vaccinated could be unmasked, that has been rescinded and masks now required.
The first 3-4 weeks we had cases of students testing positive and isolations. I would get the public notice of a student has tested positive and is in isolation unless it was one of my students. If it was one of my students I would be provided the name and then have to provide the names of students who would have been In close contact, 2 meters for 15 minutes or more. Since the first 4 weeks we have had no cases, and those cases in the first 4 weeks appear to have been infected outside school.
My son is in the High School we feed to as a middle school, so same population. I get almost weekly emails about a case found on campus and the person in isolation. They have the same protocols on campus as we do; same school district.
Schools do not seem to be a source of spread if done right, masks indoors and good ventilation. We are currently taxing our havoc system s because doors must remain open during class, so air conditioning is running all day and marginally cooling the room as the air flow takes the cool air out the door. Small sacrifices.

 

[lpetrich]

Biden’s New Vaccine Push Is a Fight for the U.S. Economy - The New York Times - "The effort reflects the continuing and evolving threat the coronavirus pandemic poses to the economic recovery."

President Biden’s aggressive move to expand the number of vaccinated Americans and halt the spread of the Delta variant is not just an effort to save lives. It is also an attempt to counter the continuing and evolving threat that the virus poses to the economy.

Delta’s rise has been fueled in part by the inability of Mr. Biden and his administration to persuade millions of vaccine-refusing Americans to inoculate themselves against the virus. That has created another problem: a drag on the economic recovery. Real-time gauges of restaurant visits, airline travel and other services show consumers pulled back on some face-to-face spending in recent weeks.

After weeks of playing down the threat that a new wave of infections posed to the recovery, the president and his team blamed Delta for slowing job growth in August. “We’re in a tough stretch,” he conceded on Thursday, after heralding the economic progress made under his administration so far this year, “and it could last for a while.”

Biden Mandates Vaccines for Workers, Saying, ‘Our Patience Is Wearing Thin’ - The New York Times - "Initially reluctant to enact mandates, the president is now moving aggressively to require vaccination as the Delta variant races across the country."

The Economy Is Booming but Far From Normal, Posing a Challenge for Biden - The New York Times - "High inflation, ghostly downtowns and a resurgent virus have rattled consumers and created new obstacles as the president tries to push his broader economic agenda."

August Jobs Report is Concerning News for Fed - The New York Times - "The Federal Reserve and White House had hoped for strong job gains, and the August report did not deliver. That makes coming numbers critical."


Republicans Aren’t New To The Anti-Vaxx Movement | FiveThirtyEight

The modern anti-vaccination movement in America has often been associated with a stereotype of left-wing, coastal, white, wealthy moms — those “crunchy granola” types. In recent years, outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, spurred by low vaccination rates in children, emerged in wealthy, liberal places like Marin County, California, and Boulder, Colorado.

...
And polls over the past two decades have consistently found Republicans are just as likely as Democrats to hold vaccine-hesitant views. So while the right-wing resistance to the COVID-19 vaccines may feel like an about-face for who is anti-vax in America, both sides of the political divide were always there — but now one side’s fringe views have slipped into its mainstream.

 

[Artemus]

Another friend in an earlier life (high school in this case, more than 40 years ago) died of Covid in the last week. I saw him at some reunions and we were Facebook friends for a time, but I unfriended him more than five years ago when he kept posting every conspiracy theory available about Obama, and then ignored his follow-up friend requests. He of course was not vaccinated. I must admit that I have become so jaded that I LOL'd when I saw the notice. At this point, fools get what they deserve.

 

[DrZoidberg]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58508547

So Biden orders employees of big businesses to be vaccinated against Covid-19 or face weekly testing.

Completely fair assuming, in this executive order is also included a plan for how to finance it, and organise it in a way that doesn't unnecessarily complicate the lives of unvaccinated. Is there? If there isn't he's a fascist totalitarian bully. If it is, he's a good competent president. It would have been nice if this information was in the article.

Does anybody know?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

If there isn't he's a fascist totalitarian bully.

Fascism isn't ordering people to do safe things during a pandemic. That's not what fascism is.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58508547

So Biden orders employees of big businesses to be vaccinated against Covid-19 or face weekly testing.

Completely fair assuming, in this executive order is also included a plan for how to finance it, and organise it in a way that doesn't unnecessarily complicate the lives of unvaccinated.

You are mistaken. OSHA's purpose to ensure a safe working place. This isn't about coddling the anti-vax'ers, it is about making certain that the workers aren't needlessly exposed to risk.

The order only applies to companies with 100 plus employees, so the cost won't be that high relative to their bottom line, and the anti-vax'ers selected not to get the vaccine, so in order to prove they aren't endangering the workplace, they need to be tested. It is unknown, but reasonable to think that large corporations will be cool with this as the cost for preventing an outbreak is << than loss of profits due to an outbreak.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Electoral-Vote.com has a really good piece going into at least the "counter-argument" from the right-wing on 'this'. Long story short, Biden was going to be a "tyrant" no matter what he proposed.

 

[TomC]

in this executive order is also included a plan for how to finance it, and organise it in a way that doesn't unnecessarily complicate the lives of unvaccinated.

I don't know about elsewhere, but around here you just walk in to the Health Department and poof, you're out of there in 45 minutes. If your insurance or employer will pay they'll bill them, but it doesn't affect the service at all if you don't.
Tom

 

[Rhea]

The order only applies to companies with 100 plus employees, so the cost won't be that high relative to their bottom line, and the anti-vax'ers selected not to get the vaccine, so in order to prove they aren't endangering the workplace, they need to be tested. It is unknown, but reasonable to think that large corporations will be cool with this as the cost for preventing an outbreak is << than loss of profits due to an outbreak.

My company has been doing this all along, voluntarily. I don’t know if they are getting any gov’t dollars for it, but I don’t think so yet. It has made everyone in the workplace much more comfortable coming in to work. We have identified cases before they become plant-wide outbreaks. It has saved the company an enormous amount of money compared to our plants in other locations who are not doing it and regularly losing parts of the workforce to quarantines.

 

[crazyfingers]

in this executive order is also included a plan for how to finance it, and organise it in a way that doesn't unnecessarily complicate the lives of unvaccinated.

I don't know about elsewhere, but around here you just walk in to the Health Department and poof, you're out of there in 45 minutes. If your insurance or employer will pay they'll bill them, but it doesn't affect the service at all if you don't.
Tom

Around here you can walk in to any major pharmacy chain without an appointment and "poof" you've vaccinated. If you have insurance the insurance pays. If not the government pays.

Testing is nearly the same deal sign up for a test on-line at any major pharmacy. Drive down and do it though the drive though. No charge. I assume the government pays.

 

[TomC]

Around here you can walk in to any major pharmacy chain without an appointment and "poof" you've vaccinated. If you have insurance the insurance pays. If not the government pays.

I'm pretty sure that's true around here as well.
But the Health department is located near lots of other stuff I do, so it was convenient. I didn't look for any other options.
Besides, I trust the government more than mega-corporations like Walgreens.
Tom

 

[crazyfingers]

My hope is that with Pfizer fully approved and Maderna soon to be, backed up with this executive order, companies will have the full backing they feel they need to force vaccination.

The more inconvenient live becomes for non-vaxed the better. They are are clear and present danger to others and are holding back the economy.

 

[TomC]

The more inconvenient live becomes for non-vaxed the better. They are are clear and present danger to others and are holding back the economy.

I prefer this method over mandates.

My partner's employer did it well, in my opinion. Strict protocols, starting winter of 2020. Temperature taken to enter. Required both a mask and a clear plastic face shield. They were also generous, he got two weeks off with pay when his mom tested positive, even though he tested negative.
Once vaccination was easily available, the policy changed to "Vaccinated don't have to mask. Unvaccinated still do." That caused a rush to vaccination sites.
Tom