outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

fuck this looks terrible, Illinois' daily new cases for the last month:

Week over week reference:
28 Days Ago: 248
21 Days Ago: 457
14 Days Ago: 617
7 Days Ago: 861
Today: 1,993

well the difference between this surge and all the others is that A) this one is almost exclusively happening among unvaccinated people and B) it's coming after a prolonged period of things looking better and more "normal". if lockdown measures need to be initiated again and suddenly baseball games and outdoor gatherings start getting cancelled people are gonna know exactly who's responsible, especially since "I don't wanna get the same shot that hundreds of millions of people already got" is a bit less sympathetic than "I don't want to punt a year of my life".

in other words I think Nate Silver's mostly right here, all the anti-vaxx stuff looks like it might be a major albatross for them, and since it's disproportionately killing Republicans it also threatens to undo all the work they've put into preventing black people from voting

This is blunt, but.

Prayers to his loved ones, RIP pic.twitter.com/8uFVG4zxg5

— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) July 22, 2021

Setting aside the snark in the replies, this does all appear to be real. Reading back over his tweets throughout July, it ain't pretty.

https://twitter.com/stephenharmon

And that last screenshot is indeed Brian Houston, founder of Hillsong.

Ben has just passed on to us the devastating news that our beloved friend, Stephen Harmon has passed away from Covid. Heartbreaking.

— Brian Houston (@BrianCHouston) July 22, 2021

tbh I'm also reeling from the sudden turn in Republican Lizard Land toward "please, y'all, get jabbed," and the only explanation I can come up with is, "Whoa, we're seeing terrible polling that might doom our midterm chances next year."

Let 'em suffer.

Very good piece, similar to the Wachter one.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/07/fully-vaccinated-masking-delta/619532/

the thing about dying of Covid when your social media is full of anti-vaxx bullshit is that it's such an incredibly embarrassing way to die, I almost feel bad for them

it doesn't matter. his friends and family won't speak of it, and they'll make up other reasons. there will be no Moment when they all speak the truth and talk about it openly. they just won't talk about it. everyone else, you, me, whoever's laughing at them - some other idiot will die tomorrow. they'll forget about Stephen...Harmon? what was his name? i don't want to load the previous page right now. but that's the point. Stephen __ will be forgotten by everyone else, and his former inner circle just won't talk about it. that makes the problem "go away" for them

for example, i believe stephen harmon died of advanced pneumonia. it's a tragedy that the lord had to take him away in the prime of his life, and doubly tragic that people are blaming it on covid. i heard that covid actually makes pneumonia more likely and also more severe - if covid wasn't so overblown maybe stephen could have gotten better healthcare. it's the hospital's fault.

everyone at the table nods along to that. yes. it could have been the hospital's fault. and billy had pneumonia a few years back - it was awful. no one at the table wants to talk about it anymore, neither with their family or the other people who will come calling. "I'm sorry to hear about Stephen passing. but masks wouldn't have helped, we know that. all this BS about covid and we drop the ball on pneumonia. it's sad. see you at church"

think of Roy Cohn's monologue to his doctor in Angels in America.

There's all this overblown hype about COVID killing people but the thing nobody wants to admit is that everybody dies anyway so (crosses arms, smirks)

(dies of COVID)

To quote our birthday boy Don Henley, offer up your best defense.

xp i haven't seen it! you mean the play or the movie/miniseries? probably both

I don't actually think this is *the* reason but maybe worth adding to the pile: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-07-22/delta-variant-stock-market-reacts-return-to-work-threatened

The miniseries

it looks really good. from the plot overview i just read, also highly relatable to our current context

The stock market attempted to return to work today after being temporarily sidelined by a work-related injury, but was threatened by a colleague upon arriving in the office.

The stock market was not vaccinated and the colleague was trying to get the stock market to put a mask on

the stock market doesn't understand the american faith in freedom and markets

yea KM I'm sure you're right, I mean I did recently meet a lady whose father died of Covid and her #1 priority right now seems to be getting Covid taken off the death certificate as she believes it was a Chinese bioweapon designed to stop Trump from winning re-election because he was so tough on them

and she doesn't want a public record of that? huh

dang, does she have money? because she's not going to be able to get compensated for the funeral unless the death certificate says it was covid.

Jesus killed her father

look don't even try to comprehend it unless you can get into the galaxy brain conservative mindset of believing everything at once. I'm sure she'll take the money while simultaneously decrying it as socialism but also crediting Trump who is actually calling the shots at the moment, even though China schemed a real/fake virus to take him out of office

good point

*everyone at dinner table nods and continues eating*

Absolutely every last thing the Tories do in the UK is about winning elections and holding on to power, even if it means abandoning everything they've previously said or done, without a second thought. I imagine Republicans are cut from the same cloth.

The virus is real
The virus is fake
Together we learn
Vaccine = mistake

Absolutely every last thing the Tories do in the UK is about winning elections and holding on to power, even if it means abandoning everything they've previously said or done, without a second thought. I imagine Republicans are cut from the same cloth.

Generally this is true, though they've been known to absolutely refuse to budge on certain issues even an inch, even when electorally unpopular (see: guns, abortion) because the loudest yellers with the deepest pockets give more power than just the stupid voters.

Meantime, some perfect comedy.

I'm never deleting this app. pic.twitter.com/OwYClG6L2R

— Labcoat Lesbian, Sundress Killa (@IpheliaPaine) July 22, 2021

Yeah, again, that makes sense as a simple explanation. But we've seen surges like this before and they didn't give a fuck. I have a hard time imagining these ghouls just suddenly care.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Thursday, July 22, 2021 12:53 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is the first national surge that's started since the vaccine became available.

... since it's disproportionately killing Republicans ...

― frogbs, Thursday, July 22, 2021 1:45 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i don't think this is true. IIUC the anti-vax GOP are a minority of the unvaccinated (who are mostly POC without reliable access to government services/outreach/ability to take time off work, etc.). and of course democrat voters are more likely to live in a high occupancy home/have a job they have to do that brings them into contact with lots of people, etc.

this was of late May, i think:

https://i.imgur.com/bZXcL9h.png

sorry, link: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-profile-of-the-unvaccinated/

this is the first national surge that's started since the vaccine became available.

True. That said, this is precisely why I expected to see more of the "see? vaccines don't work" bullshit being spouted.

was going to say, I'm fairly certain that POC are not the majority of unvaccinated people in the US

the report findings actually do indicate the unvaccinated are more likely to be POC. have to remember to consider the proportional makeup of the country - 76% of the US is white as of the last census, whereas 13.4% is Black and 18.5% is Hispanic.

and notice that white individuals have a larger proportion of the vaccination pie than they do the unvaccinated pie

proportionally yes, total numbers no

Buuut the problem with going by total numbers is it can miss the indication of a problem. It's unlikely for Hispanics or Black community to have a majority or plurality of the unvaccinated population due to how much larger the white population is.

But these stats do establish that POC are more likely than white individuals to not be vaccinated based on those proportions.

I suspect this is what caek was saying, though I'll let him speak for himself.

I don't think the anti-vaxxer population is negligible in that, while accuracy of response is always an issue, a significant (albeit decreasing) percent of Republican voters have indicated they will not get the vaccine.

I also don't think we'd necessarily get to herd immunity (which seems like a pipe dream with delta anyway) if every anti-vaxxer got jabbed tomorrow either.

Right, so there definitely needs to be increased outreach and accessibility for POC, but if you want to move the numbers significantly, you also need to address the very large mass of unvaccinated white people.

Saw this Chicago bar announce they're closing for a few days after vaccinated staff tested positive, and this New Orleans musician cancelling all shows after vaccinated friends tested positive.

Also have a vaccinated friend who tested positive last week: early 40s, one of the most fit people I know (bikes/runs long distances), and has been laid up with it for a week before starting to get better.

those numbers are backwards for the purposes of this discussion.

you don't want: what fraction of unvaccinated people are X. you want: among X, what fraction are unvaccinated.

but i might be wrong about the claim. my point is more: it's not obviously true that unvaccinated people dying is synonymous with republican voters dying, which is what i see a lot of people assuming. (and in any case, covid is killing a lot of people, but not so many that the votes of the people who themselves die would swing elections, unless they were like 80% one party.)

Can always hold out hope for ultra-gerrymandered districts like mine where they cling to a narrow majority.

xp

you would think, though, that there would be indirect effects on votes of friends, family, and acquaintances of the red staters who died. so not just the simple number of people who died, but the many more people who lost someone. y

But no, i realize there was not an important shift in voting patterns of conservatives because of covid. the 2020 election already showed that. it is really weird to me, though. i find it incredibly excruciating to listen to republicans mock covid on television. i try to avoid it, and it still happens frequently. it's relentless. don't these conservative people who loved someone who died of covid feel remotely the same? how can they just listen to them, and then go pull the lever for the very same people?

i know, we're talking about conservatives in the united states again, and covid. i realize it's more than that. probably more of a pointless topic for the us politics thread, heh

Yeah I guess the point is it seems like the only people not getting vaccinated are very vocal republicans, but that only seems true because they’re very vocal.

Meanwhile in Tennessee

https://www.wkrn.com/news/tennessee-governor-encouraging-vaccinations-after-vaccine-expert-ousted-for-sharing-state-law/

https://www.wkrn.com/news/conservative-talk-show-host-phil-valentine-hospitalized-with-covid-19/

jeez, the TN governor. profiles in courage

Ah for fun

Tonight, Sean Hannity went on a long rant on his radio show, assuring his audience that he’s “not urging people to get the COVID-19 vaccine”https://t.co/TY0Yxqn8gN pic.twitter.com/N80YIYNYGV

— Media Matters (@mmfa) July 23, 2021