outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

I saw maybe yesterday that the confirmed cases in IL from the day before were down...and now I see today that the confirmed cases from yesterday jumped like 4x from the day we saw a dip.

(I'm assuming that's largely a result of increased testing, but still.)

There is a pattern of periodicity that occurs on Tuesday where things catch-up from as far back as Friday, it's clearer to look at things in 7-day bins (moving).

it's the weekend effect, too, in addition to increased testing. the counts almost always drop substantially over the weekend and then pop back up on Monday/Tuesday as they catch up with data entry (or at least that's what i assume causes it)

xp

Get Ready for a Vaccine Information War

...I’ve been following the anti-vaccine community on and off for years, watching its members operate in private Facebook groups and Instagram accounts, and have found that they are much more organized and strategic than many of their critics believe. They are savvy media manipulators, effective communicators and experienced at exploiting the weaknesses of social media platforms. (Just one example: Shortly after Facebook and YouTube began taking down copies of “Plandemic” for violating their rules, I saw people in anti-vaccine groups editing it in subtle ways to evade the platforms’ automated enforcement software and reposting it.)

In short, the anti-vaxxers have been practicing for this. And I’m worried that they will be unusually effective in sowing doubts about a Covid-19 vaccine for several reasons.

First, because of the pandemic’s urgency, any promising Covid-19 vaccine is likely to be fast-tracked through the testing and approval process. It may not go through years of clinical trials and careful studies of possible long-term side effects, the way other drugs do. That could create an opening for anti-vaccine activists to claim that it is untested and dangerous, and to spin reasonable concerns about the vaccine into widespread, unfounded fears about its safety.

Second, if a vaccine does emerge, there is a good chance that leading health organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or the World Health Organization will have a hand in producing or distributing it. If that’s the case, anti-vaccine activists, who have been crusading against these groups for years, will have plenty of material stockpiled to try to discredit them. They are already taking aim at Mr. Gates with baseless conspiracy theories claiming that he created and is trying to profit from the virus. These theories will be amplified, and the attempts to discredit leading virus research efforts will intensify as the vaccine nears.

Third, if and when a Covid-19 vaccine is approved for widespread use, people may be required to take it before being allowed to fly on certain airlines, attend certain schools or enter certain businesses. That’s a good idea, public health-wise, but it would play into some of the worst fears of the anti-vaccine movement.

Mandatory vaccination has been an especially potent talking point for anti-vaccine activists, some of whom have rebranded themselves “pro-choice” when it comes to vaccines. And years of battling states and school districts over mandatory vaccine policies have given them a playbook for creating a tangle of legal roadblocks and damaging publicity campaigns.

...

Bring on ape rule, we shouldn't be in charge

again and again, i continue to be amazed that the US is managing to actively make a global crisis worse, at both a political and civilian level.

The part I can’t really figure out is where the money and the overarching organization comes from with all this stuff. Sure a lot of it is just “concerned people” and alternative healthcare peddlers, but having seen covert online influence tactics since the 90s (NRA mostly at that point) it looks like a whole lot more is going on here. It’s very unsettling.

you, as an individual human, are perfectly within your rights to not be vaccinated or have your kids vaccinated.
we, as a society, are perfectly within our rights to exclude you if you choose to not be vaccinated

xp

tracking dark money is near impossible, but indications are that it's the same group of rich libertarians that have been trying to undermine society for the last 40 years: DeVos family, Koch brothers, the Coors family, etc

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/far-right-coronavirus-protests-restrictions

and of course this is a nightmare scenario for libertarians. you couldn't draw up a situation that is more ill-suited for the libertarian approach to "governance"

Wait, you mean the "make seat belts optional" crowd lacks seriousness where it comes to public health? Huh.

(if you don't like the seat belt analogy replace with stop signs, speed limits, meat inspection, air traffic control, etc.)

I guess they don’t find it ironic that libertarians would turn to dishonest money tactics and mass manipulation to secure the individual freedoms they claim to value? (not actually a question I guess)

Ducey also announced that pools, spas gyms and fitness centers both public and in hotels and apartments, will also be allowed to open immediately. And, beginning Saturday, major league teams are welcome to start playing their games here.

But for the moment, the stadiums and arenas will have only the players and staff. No spectators will be allowed, though Ducey said he believes the conditions of the pandemic in Arizona actually are safe enough here to permit people in the stands.

One key figure the governor is using to support his decisions is a decline in the percentage of tests for the virus coming back positive. At one point the rate was in the 10 percent range; the most recent figures are at 7.5 percent.

Only thing is, the initial tests performed for months in Arizona had been only of those who showed symptoms of COVID-19. That was done at least in part because of limited testing supplies.

In the past few weeks, however, state Health Director Cara Christ has allowed testing of all who thinks they may have been exposed. By definition, that increases the pool of those tested to include more who are less likely to have the virus.

Ducey reacted angrily to questions about whether relying on those declining positive tests is a mistake.

"I'm not going to allow you to manipulate the metrics that have been presented,'' he said.

YOU are the one "manipulating the metrics", you fucking weasel.

But Ducey, who mentioned more than once his desire to reopen the state's stalled economy, made it clear that he believes Arizonans should be making decisions based on all he said he and his administration have done to deal with the problem and not other factors -- like news reports of about the pandemic.

"I wouldn't address people to feel safe by what they see on the evening news,'' he said.

TRUST ME, NOT WHAT YOU SEE, HEAR OR READ

Lolol

To the pro-eternal shutdown cheerleaders, when your favorite government pals start canceling pride parades, we better not hear a peep out of you!!!

— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) May 7, 2020

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/woodstock-occur-during-pandemic/

Snopes finally got around to the WOODSTOCK OCCURRED DURING A PANDEMIC article that the moron from AIER wrote.

Theirs is a cut above the rest as they actually received exclusive quotes from a scientist at the NIAID and an epidemiologist, rather than other fact checkers, who pieced it together solely from existing data, or quoting people who aren't experts in their field.

The AIER author is now bitching about Reuters calling his article misleading, citing US Today reporting it as "True" even though they picked his claims apart and ruled it true only because it is "technically" true

I've emailed AIER dickhead every debunk article as it arrives in my view. He was a complete evasive dick to me in his responses so it's no shock that he still insists he's right.

Get one brain, Dr. Morens!

Sorry

Haha

Kind of afraid I'm gonna get doxxed by this author now

Turns out that whole Fyre Festival thing the world laughed at was actually a prophetic allegory. Humans. Will we never learn?

Fuck the USA

Sanofi's CEO Paul Hudson said Wednesday that if its efforts to find a coronavirus vaccine pan out, he would supply the US government first because "it's invested in taking the risk", after it expanded a partnership with his company earlier this year....But Hudson's comments drew outrage from French health associations, not least since Sanofi has benefited from tens of millions of euros in research credits from the French state in recent years.

"For us, it would be unacceptable for there to be privileged access to such and such a country for financial reasons," deputy finance minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher told Sud Radio..."The head of Sanofi's French division confirmed to me that a vaccine would be available in every country and obviously... to the French as well, not least because it has production capacity in France," said Pannier-Runacher.

luckily people are working hard to reduce demand in the US

Communism is good:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/the-coronavirus-slayer-how-keralas-rock-star-health-minister-helped-save-it-from-covid-19

<3

i still struggle with where to post this stuff. sorry. "this stuff" meaning the rebellion in the united states against the idea that there is a problem. to an extent, this stupidity affects the rest of the world too, but it's also our special little dumb american problem. so i don't know. sorry.

On Monday, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, issued an extraordinary rebuke of Republicans who said they would defy his shutdown orders.

“These folks are choosing to desert in the face of the enemy,” Mr. Wolf said.

Republican officials in half a dozen counties have said they would ignore a stay-home order recently extended to June 4 and allow some businesses to reopen on Friday. Mr. Wolf threatened those counties with the loss of federal relief funds, and businesses with the loss of liquor licenses and other permits.

Mr. Trump waded into the fight on Twitter, where he wrote: “The great people of Pennsylvania want their freedom now, and they are fully aware of what that entails. The Democrats are moving slowly, all over the U.S.A., for political purposes.”

Pennsylvania, a state Mr. Trump narrowly won, will again be an electoral battleground this year, and some analysts see a strategy by the president and his supporters to use gut-level anger over shutdowns to drive turnout in November. With most visits and presidential rallies on hold, the Trump campaign has been pouring resources into Pennsylvania, harnessing anger over the shutdown to digitally recruit and train more volunteers.

These folks are choosing to desert in the face of the enemy

More of this plz

meanwhile, a former top vaccine scientist (recently ousted from his position for telling the truth, of course) is currently testifying to congress about the likelihood of “the darkest winter in modern history” if the trump administration doesn't significantly step up their game

i feel like i've lost my mind, watching this hearing. i really do.

all the republicans are 1) making the case that the president did a great job, and/or 2) asking Dr Bright why the drug cocktail that their friend told them totally works against coronavirus isn't the number one drug.

meanwhile, the president is going to pennsylvania to urge everyone to go back to normal, and wisconsin's supreme court is doing the same, against the democratic governor's lockdown order.

it is just a gut blow, day after day. tens of thousands of people unnecessarily dying because of this. and no plan. as the guy testifying keeps saying: there is no comprehensive plan in the federal government. this is fucking madness.

I don't see why no one can explain it to him in four words:

Your voters will die.

They believe the other team's voters are the ones who will day, and in some ways they are right.

Do not underestimate the extent to which the GOP views this as a crude eugenics experiment with the end goal of reducing the voting base of their opponents

It's simple. They rely on voters who rely on FOX News (or even worse) for their information, which for them becomes The Truth About All This. Anyone who deviates from this version of The Truth instantly becomes The Enemy of Freedom. What happened in NYC, and Milan, and Barcelona, and Tehran is beside the point for the voters in Rhinelander, WI and Emporia, Kansas. Until it suddenly becomes The Crisis in the Heartland.

They believe the other team's voters are the ones who will day, and in some ways they are right.

i've seen this argument but i don't buy it. i mean i buy that maybe they believe it's true but i just don't see how the math works out. if the most vulnerable groups are the oldest, and older voters are the strongest and largest constituency for the republicans, then even if a higher percentage of marginalized voters are also at risk the massive numbers of elderly at risk should overwhelm that i'd think? i know someone said that in georgia (or maybe just atlanta?) they thought the numbers actually did work out in the gop's favor but even if that's true (and i'm skeptical) would it be true throughout the US? no area is going to escape coronavirus with the level of not locking down we've done.

I'm not completely convinced it works out either, especially as we continue to see spikes in rural areas. It absolutely could backfire. But then you look at 2016 vote differentials in a place like Michigan and it's clear that it doesn't take much.

I imagine they're hoping not enough of their voter base dies to make a significant electoral difference in November, when balanced against the fact that sensible people (more likely to be Democrats) wouldn't go anywhere near a polling station due to the risk - which will undoubtedly still be high even then.

When all your politics are reactionary and feed exclusively on a sense of crisis, then preventive measures make no sense, except as a thing you are reacting against. As soon as the crisis moves into republican strongholds then the messaging will shift from outrage over tyranny to embracing police state measures to control it.

xposts

i agree with mordy, the "reduce voting base of opponents" angle for the GOP just...makes no sense. anyone with a passing familiarity with covid19 understands that the elderly are particularly vulnerable. he's killing off his own base, not his political enemies.

but also, i think much more important: let's not minimize how COMPLETELY FUCKED UP it is to let political calculations influence the public health response to covid19. i mean, holy shit. this is not hypothetical or abstract or indirect, this is just straight up negligent murder, it really is

we're sitting here thinking about how it might influence the election if trump kills off more of one group vs the other

i mean, that's all we can do, i guess, but seriously. i don't know what else to say, it boggles the mind

It's not just that old people are more vulnerable - it's that Trump's asshole cultists are more likely to go out unmasked and stand too close to other asshole cultists in groups, etc., etc. Their performative rebellion is gonna bite them in the ass; after the protest outside the governor's mansion in Wisconsin, 72 people came down with COVID.

This is exceptionally ugly--going after Bright right now for his salary and questioning the legitimacy of his health issues.

and trump went after him this morning, too! before he even fucking testified!

It's gruesome, but I genuinely think that's a big part of their reasoning, that it is killing off people they do not care about and that it's voter suppression by other means.

But yes, MAGAs are also killing themselves with their greed and stupidity.

xposts

if the most vulnerable groups are the oldest, and older voters are the strongest and largest constituency for the republicans, then even if a higher percentage of marginalized voters are also at risk the massive numbers of elderly at risk should overwhelm that i'd think?

older people are the most at risk from covid, yes, but they're also the ones most likely to hunker down and avoid taking risks. marginalized groups are less financially secure and are more likely to be in situations where they contract the disease. there's also a bit of intersectionality here, as the most likely to contract the disease and die from it are elderly voters from marginalized groups (reliable democratic voters)

are trump voters the ones most likely to hunker down and avoid taking risks?

Republicans are death cultists, and they just like it when anyone dies