outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

https://i.imgur.com/KLnkfSD.png

probably wasn't a great idea to shoot an indoors unmasked wedding tbh

a report from south dakota: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/09/south-dakota-mitchell-covid-masks

would the stupidity be this bad minus trump? idk

Probably wasn't a good idea for a government to abandon its citizens who need to feed their families.

Like, sorry not sorry kevin k and others, but some of the victim-blaming I've been seeing recently is maddening.

The government has left its citizens to spread this disease and die, with no safety net in place.

If the government isn't the first place you place blame, then you're fucking wrong. Period.

I think there's plenty of blame to go around and that it's perfectly acceptable to shed some blame to people who still absolutely insist on going to indoor bars unmasked after we're done blaming the government.

Going to indoor bars is stupid, yes.

Blaming a wedding photographer for taking jobs when she has kids to feed? Cruel.

from that texas wedding story upthread, i weep for humanity

The photographer who got sick after shooting the COVID-positive groom said her experiences throughout the pandemic have left her a little depressed. She recalled one conversation from that wedding, before she left the reception. “I have children,” she told a bridesmaid, “What if my children die?” The bridesmaid responded, “I understand, but this is her wedding day.”

Maddening quotes from that Guardian article:

"We’re here sitting outside, if we have to go inside we’ll wear a mask, all the seats and tables are apart, and they check if you live or work together.”

"At the end of the day, with the amount of people having parties in their own house, I just think it’s really silly.”

“I’m paranoid about the virus, but it’s so safe outside. We need to rethink and reimagine the whole thing.”

i have a lot of photog friends; they, like us, are doing their best to get by and pay their rent.

I blame the straights for getting married tbh

harsh but fair

I mean, I'm not getting married, but I have a couple younger cousins that we're supposed get married this past summer and both have tentatively rescheduled their weddings for 2021. I just don't understand the insistence on going forward with a wedding anyway, surely it's better and more enjoyable for everyone to just wait. Of course it's not ideal, but... I don't know.

Probably wasn't a good idea for a government to abandon its citizens who need to feed their families.

― "Bi" Dong A Ban He Try (the table is the table), Wednesday, December 16, 2020 1:00 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

no I get this, just saying that going to an unmasked indoor event is understanding you’re taking the risk that someone’s going to be positive. obviously the bride and groom are reprehensibly evil

I also agree that the entirety of the blame falls on the govt

The thing about a marriage is that you can just live together and postpone the ceremony indefinitely, or if the legal status is important right now you can have a judge officiate with a clerk to witness, send out announcements, and then schedule the big wedding celebration for later when it's safe.

Yeah. Sorry if I was a little testy, I'm just getting a bit miffed at how things are playing out in the court of public opinion.

Like, it isn't the fault of people taking risks to make ends meet when a government has so thoroughly abandoned its citizenry, but the news media and the government itself is really trying to make it out that this is entirely a personal responsibility issue. Fuck that noise.

The thing about a marriage is that you can just live together and postpone the ceremony indefinitely, or if the legal status is important right now you can have a judge officiate with a clerk to witness, send out announcements, and then schedule the big wedding celebration for later when it's safe.

Exactly. Which is why I judge pretty harshly those people who seem to be, "well it's MY special day and no one can tell me not to invite dozens of people to an unmasked ceremony and reception". I follow a former coworker on instagram and she posted photos from four different wedding receptions over the course of the summer, all of them unmasked, indoors and packed.

We were supposed to host a big party this past spring celebrating our marriage, but we cancelled it... indefinitely! Cuz we're not totally nuts!

As well as being horrible and stupid, aren’t the couple here also liable? Kinda hope they get sued

Politico scoop: ‘We want them infected’: Trump appointee demanded ‘herd immunity’ strategy, emails reveal https://t.co/HWZtvocgiR

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 16, 2020

The conservatives I come into contact with have bought that stupid Reagan line: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help."

I think that line is at the root of so much of the conservative project, and it's so damaging. People who buy into this are the ones arguing that the only way the government can help is to either:

1. Get out of the way and let all the businesses open up, virus be damned.
2. I heard one guy arguing that we should sue the govt under some kind of eminent domain reasoning, since businesses have lost money due to the COVID lockdowns.

Or, you know, maybe stop living in some kind of macho libertarian fantasy world and demand that our government support its citizenry with all of their tax dollars.

At this point, I actually believe that the government is in the business of trying to kill its citizenry.

I think you can say that our government is primarily to blame and also say that our government is generally a reflection of its citizens' infantile desires.

yes

the government's role is to let the big dogs eat. that's it

it didn’t work that way in my experience. the fever came and went of its own accord. acetominophen worked as pain relief (to an extent) but the fever would disappear and come back multiple times a day. usually worst in the evenings actually (after having had a whole day of continuous pain relief)

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, December 16, 2020 12:05 PM bookmarkflaglink

this was the exact same thing w/ my friend. shew as still getting elevated temps a month later, and then an hour later, normal again.

At this point, I actually believe that the government is in the business of trying to kill its citizenry.

Trump saw the pandemic as something he couldn't solve and that would reflect badly on him and that he couldn't profit from, so he was not interested in it and he tried to deflect from it and embraced any option that might have seemed to any idiot to have made it go away with the least effort on his part as possible. "Herd immunity sure will that that get rid of it then good." They're not out to kill the citizenry they just don't give a shit if they live or die, which is equally as bad.

demand that our government support its citizenry with all of their tax dollars.

stimulus printer go brrr

the economy is people

Stevie otm

Elections have consequences

Also, tho, pandemics have consequences. If he'd handled this with even the remotest semblance of competence he'd still be president I reckon. But it revealed his absolute lack of capability, empathy or concern over the citizens he was supposed to serve.

And yet, having revealed all these deficiencies, he still got more millions more votes in 2020 than in 2016. It is enough to make me think that a very large percentage of American citizens are equally incapable of empathy or concern for anyone not in their small circle of acquaintance.

^^ I think that's exactly it. Somehow roughly 40% of this country absolutely does not give a fuck about others and, rather than feeling even mild embarrassment for it, they loudly embrace it, shout it from the rooftops, and actively shame anyone who does express empathy for others as weak or pathetic. It's infuriating to see this reinforced on a near daily basis.

you don't have to be a conservative to believe in the myth of "personal responsibility", that our lot in life happens to us purely because of actions we took and nothing outside or nefarious. so their view is "what could Trump have done about COVID", which is nonsense, but so are they

the myth of "personal responsibility", or alternatively the story of the Three Little Pigs. Just build your house out of bricks** and you're proof against misfortune.

**please note: bricks can only be inherited

Related to the whole, "oh, c'mon, no one could possibly ever be that outraged on behalf of injustice done to someone they've never met before, so these protestors obviously have to be getting compensated by some billionaire" line of thinking re: blm.

See my reference to Reagan's stupid line about the government.

And yet, having revealed all these deficiencies, he still got more millions more votes in 2020 than in 2016. It is enough to make me think that a very large percentage of American citizens are equally incapable of empathy or concern for anyone not in their small circle of acquaintance.

To be fair, at least 75% of conservative-leaning voters in any country would vote for their party if a festering, maggot-ridden goat cadaver had somehow won the nomination. The rest, yes it's like you say.

many are saying it was the most well-oiled machine in the history, that has ever been seen

Officials in multiple states said they were alerted late Wednesday that their second shipments of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine next week had been reduced, sparking widespread confusion and spurring the company’s CEO to put out a statement saying it had millions more doses than were being distributed.

The changes prompted concern in health departments across the country about whether Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s vaccine accelerator, was capable of distributing doses quickly enough to meet the target of delivering first shots to 20 million people by year’s end. A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal plans, said the revised estimates for next week were the result of states requesting an expedited timeline for locking in future shipments — from Friday to Tuesday — leaving less time for federal authorities to inspect and clear available supply.

But Pfizer released a statement on Thursday that seemed at odds with that explanation, saying the company faced no production issues and had more doses available than were being distributed.

“We have millions more doses sitting in our warehouse but, as of now, we have not received any shipment instructions for additional doses,” the statement read.

A total of 2.9 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was cleared for shipment this week, and 5.9 million doses of Moderna’s regimen are poised to go out next week if the vaccine is authorized, as expected. That will be on top of additional supply from Pfizer, which Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Wednesday would amount to 2 million doses next week.

That represents a sharp drop-off from what states were expecting, according to health officials in several states. At least three states received notice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday informing them of the shortfall, forcing last-minute changes to vaccine distribution plans for next week. Some places were intending to use the second shipment from Pfizer to begin vaccinating residents of long-term care facilities, officials said, creating dilemmas about whether to go ahead with those plans or to finish inoculating health-care providers on the front lines of the intensifying pandemic.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) said anticipated shipments to the state in the next two weeks had been cut roughly in half. The uncertainty was even more pronounced in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said new shipments from Pfizer were “on hold,” as officials in his administration reported their expected allocation disappearing entirely in Tiberius, the online tracking system the Trump administration is using to coordinate with the states. Fred Piccolo Jr., a spokesman for DeSantis, said the numbers had come back online by Thursday but had been reduced significantly.

“It’s 40 percent less than we were originally thinking,” Washington State Health Secretary John Wiesman said in an interview on Thursday. “We thought we were getting 74,100 and now we are planning for 44,850 doses.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/12/17/pfizer-vaccine-supply-states/

much less important, but i can't fucking BELIEVE we have to formally refer to an "Operation Warp Speed" for the rest of our lives, jfc

The uncertainty was even more pronounced in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said new shipments from Pfizer were “on hold,” as officials in his administration reported their expected allocation disappearing entirely in Tiberius, the online tracking system the Trump administration is using to coordinate with the states. Fred Piccolo Jr., a spokesman for DeSantis, said the numbers had come back online by Thursday but had been reduced significantly.

there must have been so many suggest bans on the Tiberius forum that day

i am so tired of my state rn

Warp Speed is on hold in Tiberius?

Haaaaaaaaaaa.

Belgian government official leaked the vaccine prices per dose, wasn't supposed to do that, deleted the tweet real quick but the info got out. it's the screenshot of the tweet with the table (second column is price/dose, first one is the manufacturer, astra zeneca, johnson&johnson etc) here:

https://www.tijd.be/politiek-economie/belgie/algemeen/de-bleeker-legt-grote-prijsverschillen-tussen-vaccins-bloot/10272703.html

note: € vs $ and pfizer requires two doses I believe

Speaking of Warp Speed... what's gonna happen to the SPACE FORCE when Trump leaves office?

those prices leaking could be a very big deal apparently, they were confidential between the EU and the manufacturers

pew pew