Read Ed Yong. He’s explaining how 3% of the country — 7 million people — are immunocompromised for various causes, and vaccine and mask resistance (and outright denial) are putting them at risk. We seem to have just written them all off.
Finding and keeping jobs can be very hard for people with chronic illnesses such as lupus, which can leave them feeling powerless to advocate for themselves. With “close to no say about your working conditions, you can only do so much to protect yourself,” Levantovskaya, the literature professor, said. Several immunocompromised people have been told that they’re holding the rest of society back. In fact, it is the opposite: They’re being forced to reintegrate with no regard for their residual risk.
And perhaps worst of all, immunocompromised people began to be outright dismissed by their friends, relatives, and colleagues because of the misleading narrative that Omicron is mild. The variant bypassed some of the defenses that even immunocompetent people had built up, rendered several antibody treatments ineffective, and swamped the health-care system that immunocompromised people rely on. And yet one of Wallace’s patients was told by their sister that no one is dying anymore. In fact, people are still dying, and immunocompromised people disproportionately so. Ignoring that sends an implicit message: Your lives don’t matter.
The pandemic is not over, despite people insisting they’re done with COVID. COVID’s not done with us.
Meanwhile, over on the Washington Post, they dedicate a long article to Chris Crouch. “Who?” you might ask. I did. Reading the article didn’t help explain why he gets all the attention. He and his wife Diana were deniers.
When the vaccines came along, Chris became outspoken against them, espousing views that were common in his workplace and much of Texas but that put him at odds with his mother, sister and the close friends he had grown up with in the Heights, a liberal bastion in Houston. Despite his family’s pleading, Chris and Diana were adamant they did not need to be vaccinated. They did wear masks, but only when required.
Chris felt that vaccine mandates infringed on personal liberties, a perspective promoted by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other prominent Republicans. And Chris and Diana also worried that the shots had been developed too quickly. As he liked to say, “God gave us our immune system and we can fight the viruses with our own immune system.” Diana, meanwhile, was leery of anything that might hurt the developing baby she carried. She knew that early stories linking the vaccines to miscarriage and infertility were false, but thought avoiding them was the prudent thing to do, like skipping wine, raw fish and unpasteurized cheese — especially given some of the medical community’s early hesitation. The World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommend that all pregnant people get vaccinated.
So…stupid asshole with the usual array of bogus arguments.
But then, it turns out that pregnancy is one of those complicating factors for COVID-19. Diana came down with a savage case, spends months on a ventilator and in a coma, has a series of small strokes, her lung collapses, the doctors expect that her chances of survival are very, very low, and that the pregnancy was a seriously debilitating factor.
Chris Crouch decides “he had to try to save them both.” That was a jarring statement. HE is going to save his wife and the fetus? I don’t know that there is much he could do, and further, his wife was unconscious and on a ventilator, the doctors and nurses were doing all the work. I guess he alone decided that he would maintain the elevated risk for his wife. If I were in a similar situation, I’d have instantly made a different choice, but ultimately would have wanted my wife’s opinion. It’s her body, her life, the husband is not the one suffering and close to dying.
“I didn’t know if one or the other was going to live, or both were going to die,” he said. “I didn’t know if I was going to go back home without anybody.”
Oh no! Pity poor Chris Crouch! Then he has a revelation.
During those long hours alone, he struggled with how strongly he had held to beliefs about the vaccines without really examining them. Increasingly, he felt a responsibility to warn others about his mistakes, so he began writing to friends, family and even strangers on Facebook, urging them to get the shots. Somewhere along the way, he got vaccinated himself.
“When you sit there and you see your wife on life support because of covid, you throw out politics,” he said later. “None of that matters anymore.”
Jesus christ. Almost a million dead in the US alone, with doctors and scientists telling you all along that this was a serious disease and that precautions are necessary, and now, at the last minute, when one person close to you is dying of the disease you belittle, NOW you decide maybe you could have been wrong, and that you shouldn’t have let your politics wreck public health policy. You dumbass. You goddamn selfish, self-centered, poisonous little asshole.
Then, the icing on the cake: Chris Crouch gets a whole long story in the Washington Post, entirely centered on him, on his struggle, his encounter with COVID, his difficult months watching his wife wasting away in a hospital bed, his wrestling with his conscience. It’s all him, him, him, him.
His wife survived. Her baby survived, delivered by C-section in the midst of her suffering. Why wasn’t she the heart of this story? Fuck Chris Crouch. He’s one of the reasons COVID has been as crippling and deadly as it has been, and I am totally out of patience and sympathy with his kind.
Also, fuck Texas and all Republicans.
I have sympathy for his wife though. Maybe if he hadn’t been so poisonously anti vax she would have got the jab. It sounds like she was concerned about her baby and trying to make the safest decision in the midst of misinformation and conspiracy theories. I mean, she was wrong, but it’s somehow less unforgivable.
On another subject, if you want to encourage all those southern bigots to get vaxxed it will be more effective to have a stupid, entitled, self centered man say it than a woman.
Are you seriously suggesting that straight, white men SHOULDN’T be the centre of all attention? What a notion!
This particular article was probably written this way hoping that some of the other privileged morons might see themselves in it and learn something. That view has an endearing optimism to it, but perhaps it is true that if some idiots can wrap their tiny brains around the idea that their babymommas and babies might be affected, they might take COVID more seriously.
It is so infuriating that so many people just do not care about anyone outside of their little circle of Facebook friends or whatever. What a sad and broken way to live.
Just wondering,was this said to them in the original German? I mean that’s straight-up eugenics right there…
@4 I read the article as well, and the majority of their extended family were telling them to get the vax.
“It infringes on muh freedumb!!!” isn’t caring about anyone outside of their little circle of facebook friends…it’s not caring about anyone else, period.
Objectively, considering how many of these dumbshits have died themselves, you could say it’s not caring about anyone, not even themselves. Pure nihilism.
There ya go again – being too damn nice!
It seems a common characteristic amongst all these fools that literally nothing is ever wrong until it affects someone in their immediate family.
Gays are horrible! Oh wait, my son is gay…gays are great!
It happens all the time. I guess empathy is not a defining trait of this group.
They said the same thing early in the pandemic about old people. Covid-19 virus isn’t too dangerous because it mostly kills old people.
As a Boomer, I resemble that class of people. I cringed a little bit every time I heard that my cohort and I had lives that didn’t matter and we were disposable people.
Honestly? I’m starting to feel like Captain Kirk in the Star Trek The Undiscovered Country:
Spock: (in reference to the Klingons) Jim, they’re dying.
Kirk: Let. Them. Die!
Xpost from the Infinite thread
This just happened.
Friend: My dad’s (over 70) kidneys suddenly shut down. He is now on dialysis.
Me: How did that happen. Kidneys don’t just shut down. They do it for a reason and it often takes decades.
Friend: Not sure. He isn’t adjusting well to dialysis three times a week.
Me: You know that the Covid-19 virus can directly infect and damage the kidneys.
Friend: (Lightbulb goes on.) He was an antivaxxer and lives in a Red area. One that has had high rates of Covid-19 virus infections.
To make it worse, he was scheduled for a seriously needed orthopedic operation. No surgeon will do it now. Kidney dialysis negatively affects the bones and bone healing by causing lower levels of blood calcium and phosphorus.
The local regional hospital in the area where this guy lives has been overrun and over capacity with Covid-19 virus patients for most of 2021.
I have Rheumatoid Arthritis and the drug I take has fecked up my immune system,so I am going to
keep wearing my mask.Out shopping today,maskers and dickhead moronic cretins who think the pandemic is over
were around equal numbers.Saw couples,sometimes both were wearing masks,other times none,and sometimes only one was wearing a mask.
Nice to see Ed Yong mentioned,I had forgotten about him.
PS,fuck all tories as well.
Just a thought but are the people who so cleverly argued that “all lives matter” to the BLM supporters, the same people that are saying “immunocompromised lives don’t matter” ?
@10 Let the bodies pile high.
That twat faced twat johnson.
This isn’t a new story. Those who refused to be vaccinated exhibit the same attitudes and behaviours towards immunocompromised people as smokers do to people with asthma and other health conditions, or even to non-smokers in general. The youtube videos linked below are made by the US’s CDC.
People with severe asthma can be hospitalized for days or even die from exposure to just one cigarette. The attitude of many smokers has been, “then stay home!” So children should not go to school, people should not walk down sidewalks, and not be allowed to have jobs just so smokers aren’t inconvenienced? They sound just like anti-maskers.
And just like Crouch in the other cited item, smokers don’t care about how their actions affect others until it affects themselves. Brian, ex-USAF retiree, was a lifelong smoker who eventually needed a heart transplant. He was removed from organ donor list when doctors found nicotine in his blood. He was still smoking after being told to quit, and sentence himself to death. It was only when his family would be left without income that he woke up to what he had done, just like Crouch.
Another is Amanda who selfishly ignored the instructions of doctors, smoking while she was pregnant. Her baby was born prematurely with defects because of it. It took the consequences of her actions affecting her baby to change her attitude.
So I guess this is a monthly WaPo special now (see also #s 133 and 134 at the link).
davidc1 @ #14, could you maybe stop using that particular insult here? Thanks.
“People aren’t dying anymore.” is indeed a strange takeaway if you look at charts, for instance showing the moving average of deaths in California higher than it was at any time since March 2021.
My daughter is immunocompromised and chooses to attend high school in person. The schools around here have done a good job, I assume with strict masking policy and testing. She’s also boosted (3 full strength vaccinations and another booster).
brucej @5: Hitler modeled the Nazi eugenics program off of eugenics programs being performed in the US. Some of which were officially still being practiced into the 1970s. And unofficially, the US has never ended them.
WTF? The entire concept behind vaccines is to fight disease with your adaptive immune system.
I am sick of reading stories like this. They go back almost to Day One of the pandemic. How many of these tear jerker mea culpas do we need to hear about? The stories are cookie cutter in their mundanity. Some guy or gal refuses the vaccines for half bright reasons, refuses to mask up because of poorly thought out notions of freedom, takes no precautions, goes to large public events or family gatherings, and, voila, they fall ill, or someone near and dear to them ends up in ICU and dies. Then we’re supposed to feel sorry for them? Well, I do, but not in the way they might think. If we were just culling the herd of Republican voters I’d be in the silver lining crowd. But it doesn’t always work that way. I had two bouts of Covid. One before vaccines and one after. Alpha sucked big time. Omicon was like a mild, two day head cold. I still wear masks when I go out among people. Not because I’m worried so much about Covid anymore myself, but because I know I can be asymptomatic and can still be contagious. It’s called being a member of society. That concept seems to have been lost on many Magats and anti-science dunderheads.
I don’t get it.
So the new infections have dropped. To where they peaked during the previous two waves. Clearly this is a good time to relax mask mandates like ${WORK} just did.
Yeah, that statement about how everyone has an immune system is so stupid, it is almost not worth pointing out.
Everyone in the history of the world that has died of an infectious disease had an immune system. This is billions and billions of people. The Black Plague, the 1918 flu pandemic and the high background rate of deaths from one microbe or another. Not to mention the 900,000 + people dead in the USA from the current Covid-19 virus pandemic. They all had an immune system!!! So what.
A century ago, the average lifespan in the USA was 47. We’ve gained 30 years of lifespan in that time. A lot of it had to do with the invention of antibiotics and vaccines to…fight off infectious diseases. Before that time people often died from one pathogen or another.
I was randomly surfing the net, looking for an address for a relative when I saw an old death notice. From the early 20th century for a relative I didn’t even know I had. She died at age 18. From an infectious disease that now kills no one in the USA.
I live in a place with a fairly high vaccination rate. Of people 5yo and older, 91.5% have completed vaccination and 88% are “fully vaccinated” (i.e. passed the 2 week wait). Still there were 31 new cases yesterday and 2 additional people admitted to ICU. Yesterday, California reported 12,444 new cases and 240 deaths. Anyone who thinks “COVID-19 is over” is just stupid.
I just looked at the NYTimes data page.
Yesterday, February 16, 2022 3,306 people died from the Covid-19 virus.
The 7 day moving average 2,217 people dead per day.
In terms of death, we are barely past the Omicron peak.
Denmark lifted all Covid-19 pandemic restrictions at the beginning of February. Cases of the virus just kept on rising.
We are about to do this also in the USA in the coming months as the Omicron peak goes down.
And, most likely there will be another peak of virus cases, starting a few weeks after that.
The lack understanding of problems that do not immediately effect yourself or a family member is a hallmark of RightWing personalities.
Which is why it is urgent to make sure that RWNJs grow into their full potential as humans, when they are unemployed, broke, homeless lying in a filthy gutter, suffering from painful debilitating curable (yet untreated) diseases, falsely convicted, cold and hungry.
THEN we can say “our work here is done”.
Make it so.
Reading the article didn’t help explain why he gets all the attention.
I can’t help but wonder if Chris Crouch has any relation to Paul and Jan Crouch, multimillionaire co-founders (with Jim Bakker) of TBN (aka Trinity Broadcasting Network), headquartered in Texas and vocal anti-vaxxers.
@26 Raven “Denmark lifted all Covid-19 pandemic restrictions at the beginning of February. Cases of the virus just kept on rising.”
No they didn’t! Please check the data! Since Feb 1 (when they lifted the restrictions), the number of cases 7-day moving average has been holding steady at around 43K-44K. I saw a headline that “this should be a warning for the US”. Just more scare tactics from the Impending Doom crowd.
yes he is a fool and finally saw the light about covid-19 good on him. The article is fine I guess but it was not on fox news so i doubt it will have a huge effect from being in the Washington Post. i doubt that many of the anti-vaxers are readers of anything as “liberal” as that nor probably avid readers of any news paper at all
torcuato@29 “Holding steady” is a weak boast. Yes, linear case growth beats exponential growth, but herd immunity should result in exponential decrease. What I see in the graph looks like a wobbly plateau, when the goal should be a sharp drop.
Impending doom? My view is that this pandemic, like all others, will eventually end no matter how stupid we are about it. Our immune systems are smarter (apparently) than many of us. But historically, pandemics have taken many years to burn out, at which point we’re stuck with a new viral pal indefinitely (which we may be already). In the meantime we risk new variants, possibly ones that are both more contagious and more harmful than what we started with.
We could actually have crushed this virus early. It would have required the US and Europe to do as well as many Asian countries, and it would have also required paying attention to less affluent nations (Omicron emerged in Africa) to prevent the spread there as well. The fact that we did not does not mean it’s impossible. It just means that we as a collection of nations, and human beings living on this planet, screwed up again despite having the means to do much better.
I find myself using the word Panglossian a lot these days, though I do not associate it with optimism, so maybe I’m using it wrong. The idea that seems to show up in a great deal of commentary especially in the US but also other Western nations that “We just can’t do any better without ‘sacrificing our freedom.'” (So, the best of all possible worlds, but without a smile.)
If many people die from a pandemic, that simply proves that the outcome of many people dying is the best one, since it means we’re protecting “our freedoms” such as not wearing masks and ignoring hard-earned lessons of immunology that any genealogy fan should know about (massive infant and child deaths from diseases we now vaccinate for).
The attitude towards “the free market” is similar (and more familiar at least since the 80s). We have massive evidence that the result of unregulated markets is externalities such as pollution and the inexorable march of global warming. In also concentrates wealth into very few hands. While it powers “innovation”, the new discoveries are driven by what generates immediate income (big advances in machine learning aimed at targeted advertising for instance) rather than basic human needs. But success is defined circularly: any outcome of an unregulated market must be the best one, and any other outcome is by definition a distortion.
It is unconscionable that we not only accept the crappy world we live in (which is simple fatalism) but a certain segment of Americans seems to believe that the crappiness of our existence is something to brag about.
@14 Why?Do tell,it sums him up to a T, and a W,and a A,and another T.
Chortle,chortle.
In the US, it’s a misogynistic insult, similar to c— (which I don’t think is allowed here). (It’s also a misogynistic insult in British slang, but harder to get people to acknowledge, so I’ll stick to pointing out that it’s insulting to women in the US and this is a US-based blog.) You clearly have other insults at hand, since you used them @ #12, so I don’t see how it would be any big sacrifice for you to drop that one here.
There were endless discussions about this here years ago, which I’m not interested in repeating. If you get that it harms women and stop using it, great and thanks. If you read this and insist on using it anyway, then fuck off.
microraptor@19, sadly, you’re spot on.
@PaulBC, I’m reminded yet again of smallpox. A disease finally conquered when I was in my teens, but which we had a vaccination against for centuries. Hell, the word vaccination originated with vaccinia, which was the virus used to immunize against variola, aka smallpox virus. Before vaccination, we had variolation, which used attenuated virus from the healing pustules of recovering smallpox patients.
During that time of arguing against eliminating the disease, we ignored the 35% of victims who died of the virus (that number would hold true even today, despite our advances in medicine, as viruses adapt quickly to antiviral drugs).
To the “my immune system will defeat it”, I simply reply, “Let me know how that works out when you’re exposed to rabies”.
@34Well I am afraid I will just have to fuck off then.
The irony of that kind of shittiness in the comments to this post isn’t lost.
@32
it is the free market and the idea that money is the ideal value.
It is not about freedom that was clear from the very start of this episode. the ignorant worshipers of the market and all their creditors did not want to accept the disruption of the market place to interrupt the cash flow. They did not want to pay people to support people while we dealt with this virus. so instead we have what we have now a market disruption anyway with needless and pointless death and sickness. continuing on and on.
I thought they were the smart guys our betters that should lead us lower classes?
SC@34
I’m partial to “gammon”, which he has used before. Had to look it up the first time: “a middle-aged or older white man with conservative, traditionalist views, stereotypically characterized as having a red or flushed complexion [like the color of ham]”. I don’t know if there is some reason it technically cannot be applied to Boris Johnson.
PaulBC @39: I think that meaning of “gammon” is quite recent. My first exposure to the word was in George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman series, in which the meaning seems to be something like “bullshit”. Although it’s longer, I prefer “self-serving, lying sack of shit” for Johnson.
I have a heart condition called aortic stenosis, and just had my third echocardiogram (an ultrasound imaging procedure) in the last four years. I am going to see a cardiologist next week, and from what I’ve read at the American Heart Association website, surgery is probably in my near future. If I get a valve transplant, I expect to get drugs which will diminish my immune response so my body does not reject the new valve. I will probably spend time in an ICU surrounded by unvaccinated, Covid-infected plague rats. My “two Moderna plus booster” shots won’t protect me. Even though I’ve done everything right (including KN95 masks in closed public spaces), those idiot bastards might still kill me. If I sound bitter it’s because I am.
davidc1@36,
What is your problem? SC explained to you, politely, that “twat” is a misogynistic insult. This is, in fact, true in Britain as in the US, although you may not have realised this, as not everyone does. So if you insist on continuing to use it, the only possible conclusion is that you are, in fact, misogynist.
I’m going to heavily go against the grain here. The major problem in US is that the vaccine issue has entered the political deathmatch of Democrats vs Republicans. Obviously, the Republicans are off the charts when it comes to insanity but don’t let that delude you into thinking that the “left” has it all rational and that all this outrage at the unvaccinated is justified. It is not. There is a lot of misplaced outrage here and it becomes obvious once you think about the actual situation.
The existing vaccines are not very effective against the spread of the omicron variant. This is clearly seen from the data but the “left” conveniently forgets this because it is a convenient rhetoric argument to “win” against the right. You are not going to stop the spread of omicron with vaccines, unless you develop new vaccines and many of them for the zoo of variants. Denmark has 81% 2 dose vaccination rate with 62% booster rate while having one of the highest rates of infection.
Again, this is only with respect to stopping the spread and not the death rates.
The unvaccinated in the west do not contribute that much to the creation of new variants. There is a whole world of third world countries where they are strapping together low quality vaccines because the moderna/pfizer ones are just too expensive.
Instead of raging against the unvaccinated in the western countries, rage against the bullshit intellectual rights and the big pharma who are keeping the technologies involved exclusive and they are fighting against transfer of technology. They are the major players who are forcefully creating unvaccinated people.
Let’s hear it for rebel kids and Philadelphia:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/02/rights-for-teens-of-fox-news-parents
lotharloo@43 The “left” is still advocating masks if I’m not mistaken, so it’s not like there is some leftwing misconception that vaccines solve everything. Existing vaccines are at least effective in controlling severity (or last I heard they were) and if that’s true they should have at least some effect on viral load and I don’t see how they could not change the R value. No, they don’t bring it down to zero or even below one, but everything helps. It’s not all-or-nothing.
Is rage a non-renewable resource all of a sudden? Why not both?
I have an autoimmune disease called Sjogren’s. Here’s a link to a great description of it, if anyone is interested: https://www.sjogrens.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/SF_20106.05F-v1_0.pdf
Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a rheumatologist or been treated in any way for it since 2018.
We moved in 2019, and along with the pandemic, I also have a shitty PCP.
She honestly doesn’t believe that I have a condition that needs to be treated. Many people, including many MDs, believe that it only causes dry eyes and dry mouth.
When I asked for a referral to a rheumatologist (in her building!), her reply was “Why? It’s ONLY Sjogren’s!”.
If you look at that link to the Sjogren’s Foundation website, it’s obvious that the disease can affect any organ in the body and causes some very serious neurological issues.
It attacked my sweat glands in 2013, so I can no longer sweat, which made living in South Texas downright dangerous for me – one of the many reasons we moved to California.
I have several neurological symptoms, including a tremor in my right hand, numb toes and constantly contracted calf muscles.
I realized that her beliefs about Sjogren’s were why she refused to place me on the priority list for the COVID vaccine. Knowing that I was high-risk, I advocated for myself and walked into the vaccine clinic on my forearm crutches and mentioned that I have an autoimmune disease with my wavering voice that has been damaged by Spasmodic Dysphonia. Nobody in the clinic questioned my right to be there and gave me the jab.
It’s been a long, hard fight to stay healthy these two years!
lotharloo:
Yeah, it is. Basically, being unvaccinated increases the likelihood of infection by 3-5 times (for Omicron variant) compared to being vaccinated. In short, it increases the R-rate.
When this is due to the perverse and wilful desire to not be vaccinated, it is indeed a blameworthy decision. Not much different to driving with a high blood alcohol level.
But nobody blames those who wish to be vaccinated but cannot access the vaccine.
lotharloo @ #43, I’m not even sure what your argument is. There’s anger at the anti-vaxxers because they:
contribute disproportionately to the spread of the disease both by rejecting vaccination and very frequently refusing to wear masks or socially distance (making life far more difficult for vulnerable people)
oppose science and evidence and often push pseudoscience and quackery
encourage others not to get vaccinated, thus endangering those people’s lives and the lives of those with whom they come into contact
often attack, harass, mock, demean, and threaten scientists, healthcare workers, and public health officials
contribute as a group to overwhelming hospitals, traumatizing healthcare workers, and weakening routine and emergency care for everyone (there are examples on this very thread)
potentially, and avoidably, create a well for the emergence of new variants
often suffer from short-, medium-, and long-term sequelae we’re just beginning to understand, at huge personal, familial, and societal cost
die preventable deaths, leaving heartache and often poverty in their wake
Sorry – had hyphens for each item @ #48 but they disappeared.
lotharloo @ #43:
This is just wrong. Vaccinated people contribute less to the spread of the disease. And we’re not forgetting or denying that vaccinated people can still contract and spread it even if they’re less likely to do so. We’re saying vaccinated people (and especially vaccinated, masked, socially distanced people – and these tend to go together) are less likely to spread it; vaccinated people are much less likely to be hospitalized with it; and vaccinated people are far less likely to die from it.
Again, I’m not sure what your point is, so this might not be responding to it.
Vaccinated people contribute less to the spread of the disease.
I should probably say “spread of the virus.” It’s both, really, but I’m doing Vincent Racaniello’s virology course and want to be precise.
:)
SC:
In my estimation, it’s something like “Don’t blame the dupes, blame the system”.
what “system” this is a bunch of opposing groupings and people all pushing their own personal agendas. Is that the system you are referencing? it looks to me like the “system” as constituted today is just a short step from chaos incorporated.
unclefrogy, it’s not my claim, it’s my perhaps too-terse adumbration of lotharloo’s gist.
“Instead of raging against the unvaccinated in the western countries, rage against the bullshit intellectual rights and the big pharma who are keeping the technologies involved exclusive and they are fighting against transfer of technology.”
You are wrong on the data.
I know this because… I just checked the data.
The number of cases is about the same mostly because testing is down by 25%.
Both hospitalizations and deaths are up sharply in the two weeks since all the restrictions have been lifted.
“Just more scare tactics from the Impending Doom crowd.”
Just another stupid lie from the Covid-19 virus is no big deal crowd. You don’t think anyone is going to miss those 900,000 Americans who have already died from Covid-19 virus? A few of those were my friends.
@magistramarla, fire your PCP yesterday. Such an idiot is simply a hazard to your life. The doctor refuses to listen to you or the medical professionals reports in your chart, which means that that professional’s view is always right and nobody else in the world is right.
Frankly, I’d be tempted to fire that physician using real fire.
I’m tired of the wildfire, so I’m totally over them. Ignore them and they’ll go away. Learn to live with them.
Ignore the building catching fire, learn to live with it.
Live with the wildfire that’s encircling your home, nobody in your situation complained afterward, so it’s not a problem and only wimps die of fire.
Insert obligatory inflammable joke here…
lotharloo @ #43:
There’s no law to that effect. Alpha originated in the UK. New variants can arise anywhere the virus continues to spread among humans and other animals.
Incidentally, here’s some reporting from last night on BA.2.
@SC, @John Morales
Exactly. I want to see a discussion on both waving the intellectual property laws and transfer of technology. The current situation is essentially a transfer of wealth from poorer and less technologically advanced countries to the rich countries. At the beginning of the vaccination regime, when the Westerners felt the issue of vaccine shortage, people talked about this but as soon as the situation changed in the Western world, and American’s felt the case of abundance of vaccines, everyone forgot about it. Now it’s just a constant talk about the “anti-vax” people. I get it, it’s a problem but it’s not that big of a problem (I’ll add more below).
There are a lot of fuckers who argue that only a few hundred billion dollars of profit is not enough motivation for research and development of vaccines if the intellectual property laws are repealed. Those fuckers are more dangerous than the anti-vax Karens since it is clear that we will have the virus around for a very long time and the exclusive ownership of efficient vaccine technologies by the rich countries and rich companies is going to be a big problem. We might need boosters, vaccines for the new variants, then I don’t know, vaccine cocktails for a combination of the variants and so on for years to come. I don’t want a few fucking companies to own all the rights to development and production of these vaccines but the discussion around this topic has been a game of moving goal posts, because the next immediate milestone is just around the corner and thus transfer of technology which takes time is made to seem less helpful; originally, it was argued that vaccination will be done in less than a year while transfer of technology takes years, so why bother. Now we argue “oh but applying boosters takes less than a year and the transfer of technology takes years”. In 2-3 years, we might be talking of “oh but applying this vaccine cocktail of top variants takes less than a year, why bother with technology transfer” and so on.
Finally, vaccines are not effective (in protecting) against omicron and probably much less so against the newer BA2 variant. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8733787/
Boosters seem to help but it’s not clear boosters help against BA2 (and judging by the situation in Denmark, I would say they are probably not very effective). I don’t think any of this is surprising. The virus continues to evolve and obviously the virus that can spread despite the vaccine has even a bigger advantage to be dominant.
Basically, given the systemic problems that we have in terms of the global management of the pandemic, I find it really silly to focus so much on the unvaccinated given that the existing vaccines are becoming ineffective by the day against the mutated virus.
As some others here remarked, that is not an argument against a vaccine, as the vaccine merely teaches you to fight the virus without having your body having to deal with the disease.
But it is an argument against using antibiotics, as those don’t teach your immune system anything. So I guess the use of antibiotics amongst people like Chris Crouch is going to drop dramatically anytime soon. Your immune system does the trick, innit?
…
Yeah, I though so.
Here are some recent articles about vaccination in poor countries:
Guardian – “Misinformation and distrust: behind Bolivia’s low Covid vaccination rates.”
OpenDemocracy – “US conservatives spreading anti-vax misinformation to unvaccinated Uganda.”
Respectful Insolence – “The Brownstone Institute: Promoting antivaccine misinformation in Africa.”
AJ – “A new international health order is within reach.”
Today, a lot of restrictions will be lifted in the Netherlands. Next week, February 25th, nearly all of the rest will be lifted as well. Practically the only thing left will be compulsory mask wearing in public transport and airplanes. On Saturday, February 26th, carnival will start, which was a major factor in the initial spread of Covid-19 in 2019, when we still thought that we’d somehow be spared by that strange disease from Asia. Lots of people got very sick and lots died.
I hope for the best, but I fear that we will pay a price for that. As PCR testing is going down (and now more or less discouraged by the authorities), the only way we will know it was the wrong decision is when the hospitals start to complain about rising admissions due to Covid-19.
I don’t know whether that short period of “freedom” will be worth all that.
lotharloo:
WTF? The global (mis)management of the pandemic and the rejection of the best tool we have to fight the pandemic are both important and complicated matters and we needn’t focus on either one exclusively. And you need to stop saying stupid shit like “the existing vaccines are becoming ineffective by the day against the mutated virus.” The existing vaccines are highly effective against severe disease and death. I don’t know where you are, but the US is losing thousands of people every day, and the vast majority of these deaths could have been prevented by vaccination and other simple public health measures. Many others will suffer with debilitating health conditions for the rest of their (likely shortened) lives. They’re continuing to spread the disease. And everything else I noted (and you ignored) @ #48. This isn’t a silly thing to focus on, you asshole.
And again, I’m not seeing your point. If you care about vaccine development, then you should be angry about the anti-vaccine disinformation that’s killing people who have access to life-saving vaccines right now. A pandemic isn’t a matter of institutions or elites vs. helpless people; we’re all potentially victims and vectors of the virus. The anti-vaxxers are in large part dupes but they aren’t just dupes – they’re people making choices that affect themselves and others. And in any case, I don’t see how they’re the dupes of the system you’re talking about, so this all seems fairly incoherent.
Anyway, you’re not citing any concrete arguments you’re engaging with, so your nebulous references to discussions, arguments, and fuckers aren’t helpful. Perhaps come back when you have something more useful to say than “Stop talking about what you’re talking about.”
@37 I asked some women on a faceache page,some said they saw no problem with the word,others did.
Using your logic,women should not refer to men as dicks,pricks,or any of the other slang words for penises
because it is insulting to men.And arsehole is an insult to everyone.
@39 Gammon also refers to the dimwits who voted to leave,also a lot of tory mp’s,such as edward leigh.
@42 No I am not,other that my use of that word you know sod all about me.
lotharloo:
Nor do I. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone on this blog, much less this thread, argue for the existing global regime of intellectual property rights, corporate control of medicine or health care, or global health inequality. OK, I think I’m getting it now. You’re under some strange impression that discussion of anti-vaccine/anti-science movements – which aren’t just in richer countries, by the way – has emerged as a distraction from the “real” problems at the level of global economic and political power and institutions. But in fact they’re separate (though related) problems.
It would be totally valid to argue that in talking about these movements we shouldn’t lose sight of the other issues, but it’s wholly another thing to attempt to mash them together the way you are. In order to try to make the case you’re making, you have to start to move almost into vaccine denialism, as you have, and toward dismissing real preventable suffering, as you are. This is a huge problem on its own, but it also undercuts your larger, important, point about the production of scientific knowledge and sharing of technology.
@60:
BS cherry-picked articles. Anti-vaccination is a problem, I have never denied that, the point is that there are far bigger problems than that but fighting anti-vax Karen takes almost all the oxygen in the room. Do you deny that there are huge problem with out vaccines are made, distributed and how there’s an effective monopoly when it comes to rich vs poor countries?
Exactly. My point is that there is an exclusive focus on anti-vax people. There is zero pressure on Biden to e.g., waive the intellectual property laws.
About the vaccine effectiveness, even your link shows how ineffective they are. They protections offered after two doses is very low, it shoots up after a booster but a lot of those number seem to be taken at the point when a booster shot is at its maximum effectiveness (two weeks to a few weeks after the booster). Not to mention these numbers are for most advanced vaccines (mRNA ones) and the protection offered by the other vaccines is much much lower. So no, I don’t see why we need to let all the oxygen in the room be wasted on unvaccinted people while ignoring other problems.
davidc1@63
Sorry, reposting to correct the blockquote fail @65.
davidc1@63
Quite so. All gender-based insults are deprecated here. Do try to keep up!
Tosh. A person’s statement that they do not harbour a particular form of bigotry is completely uninformative. You have been posting here for some time, so I have learned quite a bit about you. And your ridiculously stubborn, defensive and entitled response to a request not to use a specific insult tells me a lot in itself.
Okay I missed this reply of yours and there are some things I want to say in clarification.
Yes, I agree because I don’t think in an anti-capitalist blog, there would be positive sentiments towards very powerful companies. However, again, my point is that this is almost entirely lost in a battle against the anti-vax people. The right has effectively shut down the discussion on the waiver, with their very predictable arguments, but there isn’t much fighting happening from the left against them. This is my major problem.
lotharloo:
They weren’t chosen to advance any argument, which is why they weren’t included in any of my responses to you. They were shared to advance knowledge, so the accusation of cherry-picking makes no sense. The “BS” part is unsubstantiated as well. And you evidently didn’t look at the last one.
The anti-vaccination and anti-public health movements are almost entirely rightwing political movements, spread via rightwing propaganda outlets and backed by libertarian “think tanks” and political networks. They’re causing untold suffering and helping to kill thousands of people in my country daily. Your constant dismissive reference to “anti-vax Karen” is a form of denialism. You’re helping them when you do this, and undermining your own efforts to address the problems you want to address.
NO I DO NOT I’VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THESE ISSUES FOR YEARS AND I SAID IT ABOVE AND NO ONE ELSE ON THIS THREAD OR THAT YOU’VE CITED TO ARGUE WITH HAS EITHER JFC WHY IS THIS NOT CLEAR.
That isn’t your point. You chose to comment on a post/thread about anti-vaxxers and vulnerable people in the US, which is obviously going to be about those issues. That doesn’t mean it’s anyone’s exclusive focus inside or outside of this “room.” You could have raised the issue without trying to claim the topic of the thread isn’t worthwhile, or you could have been talking about it on the Infinite Thread, which isn’t devoted to any specific issue, all along.
You really need to stop saying this. It’s very harmful and factually incorrect.
[Citation needed]
[Citation needed]
Re:Nicotine and transplant recipients.
Is the nicotine a proxy for something else or does it cause a problem? I’m not trying to nitpick people trying to make the best decisions for scarce organs, I just want to know.
I vape because it helps with the adhd, pragmatically it’s worth the benefit. I’m not expecting to need a transplant but it’s worth knowing. I’m going to search but I thought I would ask.
@67
“All gender-based insults are deprecated here. Do try to keep up!”
No they are not,Dr Myers uses the insult Arsehole/s all the time, sometimes it is wall to wall arseholes.
And I repeat you know sod all about me.
Answer me this,
how old am I?
where do I live?
what do I do full time?
what are my political views?
@davidc 71
Those characteristics about yourself don’t change the effect of your words on others.
While the non-literal use of the anus is certainly a thing, it’s a separate thing. With it’s own dynamics. So by all means start that conversation somewhere, “bu–hurt” has some rapeyness. I don’t see a lot of women called assholes but that’s more society and aggression bias. The anus is common between us, the genitals not.
Your shield is broken.
Arsehole isn’t a gender-based insult, you numpty: people of all genders have arseholes.
I know you are a stubborn crank, as evidenced by your bizarre use of punctuation, despite people telling you it makes your comments more difficult to read. According to what you say, you live in the UK, suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, consider yourself “thick” (IIRC you don’t have a degree) but not misogynistic, and dislike Johnson. Your nym indicates that you are a man. Of course you could be a completely healthy woman with a doctorate in nuclear physics, living in Borneo and writing Johnson love-letters every day – but in that case, you are to blame for my misapprehensions.
In related news.. at least 1,000 idiots, at a time when we can’t get f-ing store shelves stocked, a “trucker protest”, which will be coming through my county, where of course all the local idiots (probably 90% of the population) will be welcoming them as some sort of patriots, “patterned themselves” on the assholes in Canada, who actually sealed the door of an occupied building and lit it on fire, presumably to make their political statement by trying to kill people… I.e., actually terrorists, not just a crowd of concerned people who are protesting against violence and death, some of whom damaged property, but actual people that conspired to murder as a political statement.
Yeah, I am SO terribly comfortable with a group of idiots who think that the Canadian “shipping owners”, and anti-government wackos, are something to emulate are “visiting” my state, and possibly driving by (or worse, through) the place I live in.
What are they protesting to try to do? Get rid of the War Powers Act.. Which I assume they have no f-ing clue what they are talking about, since that law “limits” the power of presidents to do exactly what Biden seems intent on doing (by throwing even more funds at our military than even the GOP does when ever in office, probably in some delusional belief it will help us deal with Russia and the situation in the Ukraine??? I don’t know.. Maybe they didn’t like Trump not being allowed to nuke who ever he liked?) I really think though that they are stupidly confused and think that the act is something granting presidents the right to jail people for treason, and they are “saving” the Jan. 6 wackos by calling for its removal, or something… You know, those “patriots” who are simultaneously false flag liberals, who faked the attack to make conservatives look bad.
It might be ablest but I am going to say it anyway – if there was some sort of cosmic psychology expert, who could help these people, he/she/it would have run screaming from the universe by this point, thrown out its degrees, and taken up a job making sandwiches in some other distant galaxy for the local equivalent of racoons instead of dealing with these loonies. This is the equivalent, at this point, for some of them, of being the soldiers in Mom and Dad Save the Universe, who, confronted with a “light grenade”, would keep picking the damn thing up, and calling to say they might need backup.
Light Grenade – a device which, when the pin is pulled, then set on the ground, will instantly vaporize the next person that picks it up, and the next, and the next, and the next, until, presumably, its power source runs out. It doesn’t do this if you don’t actually pick the damn thing up.”
#NLM
No Lives Matter!
@sc
The fact that there’s no thread about waivers and technology transfer kind of proves my point though. Also, my point still stands that you are not going to stop the spread of the virus by simply vaccinating your people. The numbers provided by own link proves it, the case of countries like Denmark prove it and so on. Something that I forgot to add is that if you look at the data for the less than the top-tier mRNA vaccines (Chinese ones, asterazenica, etc) the situation is worse. In other words, when you consider what the rest of the developing world has to use for their protection, you will realize they are getting by with scraps.
It is this absolute injustice that is annoying and also privileged assholes like yourself who fucking claim left cares about these issues whereas their actions, and their focus shows they don’t. Out of every 10 vaccine related headlines, posts and so on 9 and half are about the anti-vax.
I’m also fucking done with this pointless discussion, if you disagree with this last point, show me a mainstream or independent media that has a more balanced focus on those issues but I bet you won’t find it.
Finally, you disagree that left has an almost exclusive focus on anti-vax people while ignoring the global and international problems with development and distribution of the vaccines.
@71 My shield is broken,once more for a thicko like me.
@72So I am a numpty,so what.
Anyhow ,I intend to keep using my fav insult,what was it now,oh yes.
Twat faced twat,so you can all go and fuck off.
Would anyone be insulted if I called them a Fanny?
In GB it means one thing,over in America it means something else,so you have a choice of how it
insults you.
@72″ The anus is common between us, the genitals not”. What about trans people?
“No! I wanna keep using body part words that bother people and I’m gonna keep pointing at random examples instead of processing the ones I got told about!”
Ok sexist.
You have a choice to use a few words or not and people don’t choose the experiences that go with the words. Just like you can’t help how it feels to get criticized. And you will keep feeling it and other consequences unless you stop.
@79 HAHAHA so I am a sexist now,ok I can live with that.
@80,Nope I didn’t understand that,once more.
How about a less theoretical rule? If someone says they’re offended, believe them.
@davidc1
Did you choose how you felt with criticism?
Choose to feel insulted? The lies of a privileged society. You look like you are going to keep propagating a lie so far. How about you address that simple idea of not choosing how we feel?
It looks like weakness to me too. All that feeling and need to connect vigina to bad. Feelings that can be twisted, used, poked at. Used. But I try to be better than that. I’ll stick to STOP at different severity. But the sexist might want to get those feelings looked at if they can’t.
@55 Raven
We both read the same article; there’s barely any data there. Saying “Not looking good in Denmark” is not data. Hospitalizations and deaths are lagging indicators, as we all know. I was questioning the scare tactics “soaring rates” in the headline. Just checked the Worldometer page again, and cases are still holding steady in the low 40000’s. Also, where did you get that testing is down by 25%? It doesn’t appear anywhere in the article you quote.
So twat is bad because it is insulting to Vaginas,but fucking is ok as an insult,but most of the time vaginas are used in that action ,so why is it ok for people on here to tell me to fuck off?
As for the rest of your comments you are trying to make me out to be one of them intels,or whatever they are called.
And what weakness are you going on about?
@davidc1
The weakness is all these strong manipulable feelings you have for specific anatomical insults. All those other ones don’t mean anything about the ones you are avoiding. From my privileged perspective I could just poke at those feelings. Your need for T—, independent of all of that other stuff.
And you can be poked at with that stuff independently too apparently, but that’s separate.
“Oh no! Now I have to think about anatomical insults in a broader way because specific ones!” Weakness.
@87 With the greatest of respect,you are talking bollox. You are not a Sociology grad are you? So I am going to use my fav insult regarding that twat faced twat johnson for as long as I am allowed.
@davidc1
You can choose to do what you want. And accept any consequences.
Uh oh, I’m wrong because I don’t have the official knowledge. The need for a local “vagina bad” is too strong.
89&90 HAHAHAHAHAHA
@78. davidc1 :
Trans people have anus’es.
Actually trans people haev genitals too.
Why exactly do want to use gendered slurs and especially misogynist ones when the majority of people on this blog have decided they are unacceptable here?
This is where I point out that humor is about twisting emotion. The raw empty laughter only useful if you can show why it’s funny. All that 91 does is show me they need to feel better about something.
I freely admit my mockery is about things I feel negative about. So if “vigina bad” is in your set your intentions and origin don’t do much. It is a quantifiable, analyzable, and rejectable thing. Other people are the ones who should feel free to add to, replace or modify what I put there. People with personal experience of things related to vaginas. Not people who just want to use that anatomy as an insult.
No, using “twat” as an insult is bad because it is insulting to people who have vaginas. There’s a concept of “splash damage” which is relevant here; look it up. If you want to argue that “fuck off” should be dropped, you may have a point, but since people of all genders fuck (and by the way, it’s a bit… weird to say “vaginas are used in that action”), it does not single out a particular gender as possessing a body part that can rightfully be compared to a vile individual.
I think, despite your self-designated “thickness”, you are perfectly capable of understanding this issue, but out of stubbornness, and perhaps something of a chip on your shoulder, you choose not to. Well, up to you, unless and until PZ says otherwise, but you’ll have to put up with the resulting contempt from others. You might also want to consider that while you insist on continuing to use your favourite insult for Johnson, the conversation may be about your behaviour, rather than Johnson’s.
Fuck all the people who dislike my use of the word twat,sorry but I am in a foul mood,so I am going to keep using it.
Better clutch them pearls a little harder.
It seems absurd that humans will engage in careless selfishness that actively harms their society, rather than admit error and modify their behavior.
Maybe davidc1 can explain why his white male pain is so special that it justifies his use of gendered insults?
Oh? From here it just looks like you are being foul to be contrary, rather than get your damn vaccine.
While I totally sympathize with chronic pain, it does not give anyone the right to act like a bloody chav and quadruple down on using misogynistic slurs.
Wow, davidc1, you’re a gaping hemorrhoid-riddled asshole. Do fuck off if you can’t handle being called out on your sexist bullshit.
@ 95. davidc1 : .. but I am in a foul mood,so I am going to keep using it.
How will that help? By doing so you are taking out and spreading your foul mood to others hurting or at least annoying them and making their day that little worse and cheesing other people off and getting them angrier at you which will make their interactions with you less convival and more irritated and it will keep cycling from there. Also – as already noted by #94 KG – you are distracting from BJ’s bad words and actions with your own…
Maybe instead of digging down find an better way of dealing with your foul mood – take a break, do something you enjoy, whatever rather than take action that is inevitably going to be counter-productive and make everyone’s mood worse?
Also first rule of holes?
Wow,I am a sexest ahole,who would have thought it,well go and take a long walk off a short pier.
lotharloo @ #76:
(I’m not going to respond to everything in your post as I think I’ve responded to several of these points above and you’ve ignored it. I’ll also point you once again to #48.)
Even if this is true, it doesn’t prove any point. (By the way, <a href="https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2021/12/12/cubas-vaccination-production-effort-pays-off/"here's a Mano Singham post from December. I’ve also posted about this on the Infinite Thread. And for background, here’s a post of mine from 2011 – note the organized campaigns of rightwing hostility to public health then, which are very much of a piece with what’s happening now in the US and elsewhere.) As I said, you could have been posting about it on the Infinite Thread all along. You could have posted about it here without the stupidity of insisting that talking about the global rightwing anti-vax/science/public health movement is a frivolous distraction from the Real Issues or somehow precludes talking about anything else.
We all have different points of focus. Mine include the need for a radical restructuring of the global food system, most importantly the elimination of animal agriculture but not only that. But I realize this is a larger, more complex thing to change, and I don’t think discussion of other problems distracts from it.
Even with regard to vaccination, there are a number of important issues. Here’s an article from Saturday – “Covid-19 in Africa: ‘The doses are here, but vaccine hesitancy remains high'”:
The primary hurdles to vaccination on the continent appear to be low COVID death rates, mis- and disinformation (much of it originating here), and weak infrasructure for vaccine delivery (due no doubt to decades of IMF-imposed austerity regimes which have hollowed out healthcare systems and frequent US/European support for oppressive kleptocratic regimes – huge problems on their own).
The first of these is worth considering. You said above:
The entire African continent, with a population of 1.2 billion, has seen 246,000 COVID deaths. The US, with a population of 330 million, has seen almost a million, and people here who have easy access to free vaccines are dying by the thousands every day and putting others at risk. It’s pretty rich to suggest that the immunocompromised people posting on this thread about the direct, immediate risks to their health are being distracted from the real issues or that media attention to this movement (which I’ll note again is increasingly global, spreading through churches and social media, and backed by big rightwing money) in this moment is misplaced.