The Space Race but between the US government trying to vaccinate everyone and the Texas government trying to spawn a vaccine-resistant variant through aggregate cases. https://t.co/tvu2vxpmvt
— Zeddy (@Zeddary) March 2, 2021
Abbott *really* wants to be the next Trump, only worse, doesn’t he?
Gov. Abbott (R-TX) announces all businesses in the state can reopen and ends the statewide mask mandate. pic.twitter.com/3RyGdMVXvD
— The Recount (@therecount) March 2, 2021
Here goes a domino effect: Gov. Tate Reeves (R-MS) just ended the mask mandate and opened all businesses in Mississippi. pic.twitter.com/ye9IWmOW84
— The Recount (@therecount) March 2, 2021
BIG DEAL HE STAYED ON THE TRACKS SO WHAT OUR CONDUCTOR PROBABLY COULD HAVE DONE THAT IF HE WANTED ANYWAY THE DVD LIBRARY IN THE ENTERTAINMENT CAR SUCKS HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT THAT HUH
— kilgore trout, ted’s travel agent (@KT_So_It_Goes) March 2, 2021
dmsilev
A literal death cult. Condolences to the minority of sane people trapped in the insane states.
Mary G
Biden has withdrawn Neera Tanden’s nomination. He better have gotten Manchin to vote to kill the filibuster for it.
cain
Rose twitter will be celebrating. Fuck them.
ETA – I doubt he would have convinced Manchin of anything – he’s pretty adamant about keeping that filibuster – I’m not sure what his underlying fear is, but there is one
jl
I don’t think anyone knows how much of recent drop is due to existing immunity due to previous disease plus immunization, versus rebound effect of people getting sloppy due to changes in risk perceptions after a sudden and large decline.
Also, what we are seeing may be an issue of aggregation. Most of nursing home residence and oldest old have been vaccinated from news reports I’ve seen. It may that the big drop in that population (which by itself is responsible for at least 30 percent of the hospitalizations and a higher proportion of deaths, and an outsized proportion of cases) has masked continuing spread among the younger and healthier population.
I’m not a fan of ‘too soon’ sloganeering. The bottom line is: does Texas have a plan to control outbreaks or a resurgence at the current level of disease prevalence of active cases? Or does it not?
If it thinks it does, what is it? Those questions need to be asked and answered right away.
Raoul Paste
These jackasses could greatly postpone the date when life gets back to nearly normal
And when that happens the same people will blame Joe Biden
cain
Dig deeply inside your soul – you know the answer to that. We are talking about anti-govt types here. I’m surprised they have not told the Feds to fuck off with the vaccination that they’ll do it alone.
cain
The plan was always to blame Joe Biden and the Democrats. They got their fox news, and various other media outlets to help dish that stuff out.
trollhattan
The current Texas Covid numbers are terrible, and only look “Hey, time to open!”ish if you squint really hard and compare against when Texas was worse than it currently is.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/us/texas
He. Will. Get. People. Killed.
Baud
@cain:
The only people they’ll convince are the people who don’t need convincing.
Brachiator
@jl:
The Texas plan is to pray to Jesus you don’t catch the virus.
JPL
@Mary G: Murkowski had a bribe.. Give me oil, or else. Biden said you get nothing. That’s my take anyway.
Brachiator
@Raoul Paste:
Democrats need to ignore this. There is no point in playing GOP and pundit games.
tokyokie
@trollhattan:
He already has with his handling of the electric utilities crisis. Guess it’s time to go after those who retained their home heating during the subfreezing weather.
Old Man Shadow
Relocating the decent people out of the old Confederate states and putting a dome over them is looking better and better every day.
trollhattan
South Carolina gets Texas to hold its beer and deal with something really important.
Baud
@trollhattan: It’s good to have options.
jl
@Raoul Paste: “life gets back to nearly normal”
That won’t happen any time soon unless the US gets a consensus on how to manage the glide path from whatever degree of herd immunity we get with mass immunization, to dealing with covid as an SOP disease control problem like other diseases with respiratory transmission (bacterial meningitis, seasonal flu, TB, etc.). I don’t see that issue discussed enough.
Instead I see people making vague promises based on some expected very vague idea about what degree of herd immunity we’ll end up with after the immunization, and the likely length of population protection (that is, if and when we’ll need a booster).
I also see, on the other hand, vague statements about need for open ended large scale social and economic restrictions. This one just isn’t going to happen. As we go down the age and high risk priority list, hospitalizations will drop sharply. The danger of a health system meltdown will become far less likely. But that is the repeated, and publicly stated, rationale of state and local public health officials for coercive measures. Soon, that rationale will disappear. That camp may be rendered irrelevant because elected officials, courts, and popular opinion may start just ignoring them if the stated rationale for their policies starts to disappear.
I hope we see the fed public health officials start giving more specific scenarios and plans about how we manage the transition from emergency to eventual landing of another every day disease control problem.
trollhattan
@Baud:
Be Gary Gilmore!
James E Powell
@Brachiator:
Exactly. Our success in 2022 depends on our success in delivering relief now to as many people as possible. The Great OMB Nominee Crisis will not figure into it. And the pro-COVID wingnuts won’t get anyone’s thanks.
jl
@Brachiator:
” The Texas plan is to pray to Jesus you don’t catch the virus. ”
Probably, but I want the Texas leaders demonstrate their concern for their population by being put on the spot about it. OTOH, if enough people freeze, then that may reduce the pool of susceptibles. If that’s their plan, they should say so.
Mo Salad
@trollhattan:
It’s more humane than the electric chair or lethal injections, though.
There should be NO executions. But if there are, a firing squad is a valid option.
Patricia Kayden
VOR
Guessing the governors of both TX and MS have already received vaccine. I hope their surviving constituents vote them out of office.
debbie
I can already imagine Trump’s rude, mocking remarks about Abbott. //
Brachiator
@jl:
Texas officials can’t be put on the spot. They have learned from Fox News and the Orange Beast that lying and denial are standard operating procedure.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Even if high risk populations are protected by immunization, if the virus spreads in the low risk population, it will mutate and may pose a risk to the high risk populations again.
Baud
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mary G: That sucks, she’d be a good OMB Director(she’s also a Bruin).
L85NJGT
Abbott is attempting a media diversion for the Texas power grid collapse, and the billions in utility bankruptcies occurring now.
That guy is fucked.
debbie
@trollhattan:
Good to see they’ve gotten rid of any pretense of humaneness. //
Subsole
@Mary G: Keep dreaming.
Manchin has said he will never drop the filibuster. Because apparently he has a real problem with brown folks who forget their station, try to do respectable white-people shit. Like vote.
That pretty well guarantees McConnell will filibuster everything up to and including the covid bill – and I don’t trust Sinema and Manchin on that anymore, either. Rampant voter suppression means wipeout in both houses come the midterms. Check and mate. Permanent christofascist dictatorship.
Beautiful new Joe Manchin Memorial Coal Mine, tho.
jl
I’m not in the cautious camp, but the country, states, local officials need to lay out specifics of their control plans, to keep population on board. Some may say that people should just do as they are told, but that ignores the ‘you and whose army?’ problem of enforcement.
One thing I will give the cautious open ended social distancing and social restrictions camp is that we are doing mass immunization in an unfamiliar environment. The CW on epidemic control has been to use other means to reduce circulating disease to a low level, and then start mass immunization. That makes some sense for other respiratory disease outbreaks in the past. But with changes in effective control policies for many of those diseases, the CW is changing. And we probably have to forge ahead anyway due to the immense costs of covid.
But, still, we don’t have much experience with the approach we are taking. In a low prevalence setting, reaching the herd immunity threshold gets you to a no or low disease herd immunity steady state very quickly. But with high prevalence that is not true, and all sorts of surprising unpleasant things may occur. Like large unexpected outbreaks in portions of society that have less immunization. Or irregular cyclic resurgences if we need a booster every year, but means for that is not in place.
Winston
ASAP the Democratic party should pass the 2021 version of the 1954 Communist Control Act as the Republican Control Act and make the Republican Party illegal. The Communists never attacked our Capital and never mounted an armed insurrection, but Republicans have. There is a lot more evidence to ban them and there is precedent.
UncleEbeneezer
This shit has me absolutely LIVID today. My in-laws (both 70+ years old with extreme risk) have been effectively prisoners in their homes since last year. Vaccine rollout is almost non-existent and now this. FUCK TEXAS REPUBLICANS!!
Brachiator
@Patricia Kayden:
Opening Texas up puts everyone at risk. People will go back to work in offices where there is no mask wearing and no social distancing. It will be interesting to see if any businesses maintain remote work policies.
Bars, restaurants, all the potential super spreader sites will be up and running.
jl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yes. And, just between us economists, it is more than, from a long run-cost-benefit view point, of whether viral escape will ruin everything over the next few months (which I think most virologists who’ve gone over the data say is unlikely).
It sets up how much how much viral mutation potential develops now that may increase the problem of frequency of required booster shots, if needed, in the future. IMHO.
Subsole
@Raoul Paste: Exactly. There’s a reason red states are pulling this shit. Joe is actually fixing stuff. They plan to spike that, blame Biden/Democrats, let our gutless braindead asshole jurmalists bothsides it, then ride the No Votes for Blacks Ever Again wave back to power in 2022.
Beautiful new coal mines in WV, tho.
PsiFighter37
I hope the GOP enjoys the standard they are setting for mean tweets for any nominee. And thanks to our useless mainstream media once again failing to highlight the obvious double standard.
MazeDancer
The GOP will, literally, kill people to try to make Mr. Biden look bad.
The worse part is variants could kill all of us.
Subsole
@jl: Dude and/or Ma’am.
Seriously? These fuckers literally cannot keep the lights on or the water running. You think they have a plan for virus containment?
Even if this wasn’t the deliberate act of sabotage it is, these people are NOT paragons of competency.
Cameron
@trollhattan: Bipartisan! Reaching across the aisle!
scav
Ah, they must have found a way to implement surge pricing in Texas ICUs and morgues. FREEDOM!!
Besides, gotta collect those game tokens proving one’s fidelity to the golden calves.
jl
@cain: I understand that a tone of bland neutrality risks my being banned from this blog. Yet, here I stand, I can do no other.
eclare
@dmsilev: I am one of those, thanks. I’m in Memphis, but a lot of people come here to work, shop, etc. from MS.
JPL
@PsiFighter37: IOKIYR Didn’t Sen. Kennedy call Pelosi dumb as a bag of rocks or something.
Subsole
@Old Man Shadow:
Counterpropisal – leave us here, relocate them under a dome somewhere.
Preferably a solid one.
Subsole
@VOR: Go bug Manchin and Sinema about it.
jl
@Subsole: I did mention the ‘reduce the excess population through freezing them to death’ option.
Timurid
We’ve entered the most dangerous stage of the pandemic, when ordinary people falsely believe they are out of danger and when elites correctly believe that they are completely safe. The people making these decisions, and anyone they care about, are all vaccinated now. If they somehow get a very unlucky break they can fall back on the kind of platinum tier medical care that got Trump from the brink of the ICU back to the golf course inside a month. They have zero skin left in this game now.
Another big spike this spring is baked in now. Just as vaccines arrive in real volume, every mass vaccination… even with the obvious precautions in place… will be a potential superspreader event.
Many people making these choices are driven by simple selfishness and indifference, but there are likely a few in the GOP who see this as a Hail Mary play to extend the pandemic until the midterms.
Subsole
@Winston: I’m sure senators Coalhole and Sparkles will get right on that.
@PsiFighter37: The ridiculous double standard they actively participated in. Don’t forget brave jurmalist and politico alum Seung Min Karen showing those tweets to Senator Murky…
Subsole
@jl: True. Spoilt for choice, we are.
Gonna miss not being allowed to vote against those callous assholes…
Beautiful new coal mines, tho.
tokyokie
@UncleEbeneezer:
I’m a texass resident, and I’ve gotten two doses through the spousal unit’s employer, a hospital. (I could have gotten the first injection from the nursing home where I work, but I was in quarantine because of a case of Covid when those were administered.) But the rollout has been miserable, Der trumpenführer didn’t have a plan and just dumped vaccines on the states, and in that spirit, Abbott dumped those vaccines on local governments. Tarrant County has had a sign-up process since early January, but I didn’t see it publicized until the last couple of weeks, and I’m guessing that’s because no money was budgeted to do so. Abbott is rescinding the mask mandate to distract from his bungling the electric utilities crisis, but I’m not sure that will work.
jl
@Timurid:
I think about essential workers, which the US has still not shown any ability or interest in protecting. I wonder how many mini and medium sized resurgences will result if they are left behind in the immunization campaign.
If no one looks, no one will know. There were horrible surges that went on for months in low income agricultural counties in California, as bad as the big first wave in NYC. But, small populations, just fly cases you can’t handle locally to LA, SF or Sacto. Never even mentioned until the issue hit the news when hospital capacity was maxed out all over the state.
Winston
You never know.
Martin
@jl:
Martin points to their power grid.
Mo Salad
What has eight wheels and goes nowhere?
Abbott/Cawthorn 2024!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Subsole: They have a plan, capital gains tax cuts and prayer, the ‘rona can’t fight that!
It is a well known fact that capital gains tax cuts will cure the clap, why not the ‘rona with a bit of prayer to our lord and savior.
Dorothy A. Winsor
It’s maddening. It would be hard enough to deal with the pandemic and economy and everything else without having people like Abbott actively working against it. How can he think this is a good idea? Wait, let me guess. Campaign contributions?
Benw
This is fucking insane. Along with NY opening indoor dining again! We just have to hang on for a couple more months and there will be COVID relief $, more vaccines, and warm weather so things can move back outside. Thousands more needless deaths piled on the hundreds of thousands already. I can’t stand it.
jl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The Abbott wing mistakenly believes that public health orders by themselves are responsible for 100 percent of the social and economic damage from the epidemic. But the strong consensus of research on it shows that at least half the damage is due to population response to perceived risk (as news of outbreaks spread) before coercive public health orders.
So, if Texas runs into an outbreak or resurgence it can’t handle, Abbot and the state GOP won’t get what they want anyway.
And, just a Science Drop for that crew, did you know outbreaks of infectious disease WILL occur? Amazing, believe it or don’t, but true.
Did you know that we have outbreaks of measles, mumps, TB and all sorts of scary stuff? Why should covid be any different? TB outbreaks don’t cause shutdowns and social distancing orders (as they did after WWI and WWII) because we know how to handle outbreaks. Can Texas handle the outbreaks that are guaranteed to occur (because, guess what… infectious disease!), or a resurgence if their assumptions are wrong?
Edit: sizeable outbreaks of typhoid, if measles and TB don’t scare people enough, big enough to cause big problems years ago, occur in US every year. But, we know how to control it.
Ksmiami
@jl: no- it’s hurry up and die especially if you’re poor or a minority…
Winston
@Benw: And all this while rjerks are flooding media saying Biden is mandating lockdowns, which I don’t think he is. All deaths from now on are on Biden. That’s the strategy. So let’s make a lot of them.
Ksmiami
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Don’t forget the judges – they got judges who would be comfortable with the Spanish Inquisition
Baud
Impressive vote for a black woman.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Food and Ag workers are currently getting the jab here in LA County, that includes grocery workers.
Subsole
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Abbott is a very nasty piece of shit.
I am so very, very tired of this shit. All of it. I am tired of shortsighted chickenshit democratic senators saying it is perfectly okay to strip peoples votes, and snippy little mean gurl reporters clapping along and sucking up to people who want them dead while treating us like garbage, and a public that is too busy amusing itself to death to care how hard they are getting fucked, and who usually blame the wrong folks anyway.
karen marie
@Old Man Shadow: A dome? No. I vote for loading them into rockets and shooting them into the fucking sun.
Subsole
@Winston: Nailed it in one. Cause pain, blame the doctor.
Baud
Martin
@Ksmiami: Well, not really because though their methods are admirable they’re too lazy to learn the language.
karen marie
If I weren’t so lazy, I’d start going to the store with no pants on and sue the fuck out of Kroger’s when they try to enforce the “must wear pants” rule.
If they can’t enforce a mask mandate, they can’t enforce the “must wear pants” rule, right?
jl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yes, that is great news. Big campaign to get San Benito, So Santa Clara Valley, and Salinas Valley essential workers, including ag, immunized. I hope they keep it up.
The equity problem is a control problem, and the control problem is an equity problem, IMHO. I think the fact that the US hasn’t done very much to protect them is a big source of failures in epidemic control we’ve seen even in scientific nanny state dystopias like California.
Martin
Katie Porter leaning hard into HR1. Start writing people. This is the most important piece of legislation the Democrats have.
Sure Lurkalot
@Brachiator: My good friend outside Austin is able to WFH but only with resistance. There are no protocols at her office with 30 people or so. Never really were.
jl
@karen marie: good point. By one means or another public health has to recruit its army. Get buy in from corporations, increase feasible enforcement through fed and state OSHA for willful bad faith from corps. Publicize hotlines to rat out bad corporations for not protecting their workers, as well as your neighbors for having a big party inside. Free legal clinics for customers who have standing to sue.
All of them sound good to me.
A Ghost to Most
Texass and Mississippi are two states I have lived in, and will not visit again. A small exception may be required for Big Bend. It’s assholes all the way down, and damn few redeeming qualities.
JaneE
How long before the rest of the country realizes that freedom for the GOP means the freedom to kill others with impunity? There is nothing careless or unintended in doing everything that is known to spread the disease, and nothing unintended in permitting and encouraging people to engage in the behavior that spreads the disease. They all know what the end result is. They have seen it, and if they refuse to believe it, that refusal is deliberate.
Roger Moore
@jl:
I think California’s housing shortage has been another huge contributor to COVID. Nothing will make a disease spread faster than cramming people into a confined space, which is exactly what happens when you don’t have enough housing to go around.
Subsole
@A Ghost to Most: What if we had a shiny new dome under which we kept all the assholes?
Airholes optional.
Winston
I’m a week after my second jab of moderno. So next week you can expect me to be at the bar, walmart, bingo, and trying to kiss strange women 1/4 my age, right? My ear bug has been going off for the last couple weeks. I mean if crying like a rainstorm, howling like the wind, wasn’t just the best album name ever, then I kept it hid, won’t mean anything to you.
Baud
Chris Hayes Caption: The Good, The Bad, and Texas.
Perfect.
eclare
@JaneE: Absolutely. My boiler broke last week, it is 55 inside my house. I am terrified to call a repair person because my basement is the definition of a small enclosed space. And my repair person could be from MS.
Fucking assholes. We were so close.
mrmoshpotato
@karen marie:
Speaking my language.
jl
@Roger Moore: Yes, I agree. Even local public health officials have been forced to admit this. I’ve heard news interviews with a county public health official says that 99 percent of the spread is due to naughty people in the suburbs having backyard BBQs, but when asked for examples, then says that ‘well, the real problem is essential workers spreading stuff across country lines’. That doesn’t add up.
Los Angeles has one of the highest percentages of overcrowded housing in the country, more than NYC, Chicago, far more than SF Bay, mostly among lower income essential workers. Edit: and poor rural counties like Tulare and Imperial have a lot of overcrowded housing too, and ghastly epidemics were roaring in those places for months earlier this year, as I noted above, worse than the first big wave in NYC.
This epidemic has demonstrated to me how stratified this society is along race/ethnic, immigrant, income divides. The elites in charge seem simply unable to understand that lower income essential workers exist, or play any role at all in the epidemic, either as victims or part of the disease control problem.
UncleEbeneezer
@tokyokie: Our fam is in Denton County. My wife signed them up for waiting list but they are number 160,000 or so and the county was still at #80,000 or so last we checked. Super frustrating as MIL is a double-lung transplantee and FIL had a stroke in 2019.
Kent
Without the filibuster, he becomes the deciding 50th vote on every progressive piece of legislation in the Senate. With the filibuster his vote is irrelevant.
Perhaps he doesn’t want to the be the deciding vote for every single progressive piece of legislation in the next 2 years. That’s a hell of a hot seat to sit on if you are from a blood red state.
Brachiator
@Baud:
Interesting. We will see how this works out.
Kent
San Francisco is much more dense than most of Southern California. Yet it is Southern California where the epicenter of the epidemic happened. San Francisco hasn’t seen high rates of Covid at any point during the Pandemic. So it isn’t just density.
jl
@Kent: At least for covid, a lot of research concludes that spread is far more affected by overcrowding than population density. SF is more dense, but Los Angeles has far more overcrowding, even among lower income essential workers
Edit: if the problem were just density, Hong Kong would be obliterated by now.
Baud
OT. Interesting reddit thread about Hazel Scott, who I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t know about.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/lwcfl8/til_in_1928_the_founder_of_juilliard_overheard_an/gpgix7g
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: That’s a contributing factor, but the big bump in cases came after Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas; some folk had to have “normal” holidays and some had funerals 3 weeks later.
Jeffro
@cain:I doubt he would have convinced Manchin of anything – he’s pretty adamant about keeping that filibuster – I’m not sure what his underlying fear is, but there is one
I’m convinced that our lesser lights Manchin and Sinema think that either a) the filibuster is the only thing that makes the Senate more specialer than the House, b) there really IS something magical about somehow…magically…summoning up 60 non-existent votes, and if we could just GET THERE, by gosh, America would be “fixed”, or c) both.
Shorter: they’re fucking idiotic, privileged morons, and they better drop the filibuster for the new HR 1/John Lewis Voting Rights Act at a minimum or we’re all fucked.
Roger Moore
@Kent:
There’s a difference between density and crowding. Density is having a lot of people per square mile of land; crowding is having a lot of people per square foot of home. You can achieve high density without crowding by building up, and you can have crowding without high density by having too many families in too few homes.
jl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: No question that holiday naughtiness across different segments of society contributed to latest surge.
I don’t know about Los Angeles, but the resurgence in SF Bay started immediately after its second reopening attempt. Pretty much the consensus among experts, and I think apparent in the data. Anyway, George Rutherford, the prof who has been running SF’s excellent contact tracing program has been banging the drum on not blaming everything on the holidays, at least for the SF Bay.
Edit: I may have misread you comment. Sure, it is true that the control problems are mix of things. Naughty middle class indoor parties, lack of protection for lower income essential workers, policy mistakes.
Baud
Kattails
@karen marie: luckily my state has a solid mask mandate in place, and believe me I would be making the same consideration as you if we did not. And there are still idiots treating the mask as a chin diaper. I’ve called the city enforcer once, and the store manager on another occasion, this below the snot-hole thing. Both were sympathetic.
The Pale Scot
@Mo Salad:
MP’s Death by naked chase seems like a good way to go
L85NJGT
Abbott’s job approval rating in Texas was lower than Biden’s before the power grid disaster.
Jeffro
@trollhattan: in the aggregate…I know we all know this…the GQP has just gone absolutely bugfuck nuts.
they are just absolutely losing. their. minds.
The questions from the GQP Senators during the nomination hearings (I don’t have to be specific…you can pick ANY hearing) were just nuts, especially since half of them were in on the insurrection!
What to do? I dunno, Dem leaders. Maybe call a prime-time news conference and denounce them all as enemies of a free and just society, with round-ups and re-education camps to follow? (psych! gotcha there, GQP! We’re not really like that)
But seriously…these people are off the fucking hook. Get the most entertaining of Dem Reps and Senators to give it their best shot mocking the holy living fuck of these people on a rotating basis, every day.
Winston
@karen marie: Let me know where and when and I will be a witness. With a camera.
Kineslaw
@tokyokie: I found out about the vaccine sign up via a tweet, probably from the Star-Telegram. I qualified based on health conditions, but purposefully waited 24 hours before signing up. I also told my parents and brother about it.
People who weren’t plugged into local media and somewhat tech savvy were screwed, especially because they just went down the list in order and gave less than 48 hours notice of vaccine appointments.
At this point a lot of people I know have been vaccinated, but that is a sign of how unfair the rollout was. It’s slightly better now, but Beto’s org is doing block walking on Saturday trying to get people signed up. Power to the People has become the shadow government here in Texas, and while I’m thankful for the work they’ve done, I’m beyond angry we need one.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Lower class, essential workers celebrate the holidays as well, maybe more so.
gene108
@cain:
My wild guess is the fewer votes he has to take, the less material for attack ads will be available.
Kayla Rudbek
@Subsole: send them to Mars. One-way trip.
jl
The thing about the latest Texas experiment that is really dangerous is that it is a lot more than masks.
It’s lift mask mandate, reopen all businesses all at once, no capacity limits for retail business (which includes restaurants, bars, etc.). Last time Texas tried this, local officials, Dem and GOP alike, had to admit defeat and close shit down, impose curfews, clean up the mess handed to them by the state GOP.
Occupancy caps based on ventilation (not fire codes) may be an essential item for opening back up safely, more important than masks at all times, or exactly what opens up. That has been how successful European countries have handled reopening with populations that don’t want to wear masks all the time.
Maybe immunization will keep up with the Texas explosion, but maybe not.
gene108
@cain:
@Baud:
I disagree Baud. Repeat something loud enough and for long enough eventually the MSM will start framing the news the way right-wing media wants, which can sway enough voters to make a difference in elections.
This is basically what happened to Gore in 2000, for example.
zhena gogolia
I’m sick of the Cuomo story, but JL Cauvin does it again
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eORq3bDdrnQ&feature=youtu.be
Kayla Rudbek
@Baud: ooh, I wonder if there are recordings from her on iTunes. Also off topic and in today-I-learned, the American Chemical Society was featuring articles about Black chemists and chemical engineers last month. I really liked this one about Norbert Rillieux:
Link
Subsole
@Jeffro: And Joe and Kristen wanna be friends with ’em.
And why not? It’s not like they have to give up their votes in the name of comity and friendship.
I’m honestly mad enough at those two stupid fuckers that I’d yank the covid bill from reconciliation, loudly announce that the two cgampions of peace and bipartisanship were convinced they could get 10 republicans on board, and MAKE them fucking go get 10 republican votes for it. Then explain why they couldn’t. Let them take the ENTIRE fucking blame.
The filibuster is that goddamn special, they can go explain why we all deserve to suffer for it.
I know it wouldn’t work that way and it is pure petty spite to even think it, and people don’t need to suffer over grudges but god I am SICK OF THIS SHIT. I feel like I am losing my fucking mind here!
We’re seriously gonna let the GOP close the book on over 200 years of democracy because of a friggin’ procedure?! Really? So Sparkles and Hillbilly can make friends? Get stroked by the DC pundit corps?
Lol this country sucks so much ass, sometimes.
Subsole
@Kayla Rudbek: No. I will not mar the pristine wonder of the universe by injecting that fucking filth into it.
They can stay right under the fucking shame-cube where they belong.
Winston
@Winston: And so Ronstadt’s most controversial statement was ” who likes nuclear warfare? ‘”
Gvg
@Subsole: Actually he has not said that and has talked about what if the republicans won’t do anything. He should already know it’s hopeless but he isn’t as stupid as you indicate. It’s Siemena who is denying any chance of ending the filibuster.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@gene108: I think Manchin sincerely believes himself to be a statesman, and that bipartisanship is good and Debt and Deficit is bad.
karen marie
@Winston: Pretty much why I won’t actually do it. *This* should not be photographed with no pants. With pants, it’s bad enough.
eclare
@karen marie: Wearing a mask is to protect others, just like pants.
Old School
I assume Texas and Mississippi are two states that don’t allow cities and municipalities to have their own COVID safety regulations.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@karen marie: Baud will represent you in this suit.
raven
Our local Y just put out a newsletter with “Faith Over Fear” headline and noted their membership dropped 47%. I’m not sure who they think will like that but there are some unhappy people who stopped going but kept paying to try to help keep them afloat.
The Pale Scot
@karen marie:
Ark B will do just fine
?BillinGlendaleCA
@karen marie:
Why do you hate the Sun?
Subsole
@Gvg: I heard otherwise.
I heard he specifically said “never” when asked if he might change his mind.
Even said “Jesus Christ what part of never don’t you get.”
Because civility, y’know. It’s not just for brown people.*
And you are correct.
He is not in any wise stupid. Nor is Sinema. On that we fully agree.
I was trying to be generous in my interpretation of their actions and character by attributing to lack of intelligence what can more easily be explained by lack of redeeming moral qualities..
*guess what…
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I hope Abbott, Paxton and about two dozen top tier Texas GOP muckety mucks get a COVID variant and die choking deaths on a ventilator, alone.
I’d watch that on pay per view, chortling every time.
Patricia Kayden
@trollhattan:
“ He. Will. Get. People. Killed.”
That appears to be the whole point. As long as it’s the right people (of color) dying, it’s all good.
karen marie
@eclare: I’m hip to the concept. It’s Kroger’s management that has trouble with grasping it.
Wyatt Salamanca
Greg Abbott is raising the stakes in a valiant, all out effort to out douche Ted Cruz.
At the end of the day, who’ll take home the crown of the biggest douchebag politician in Texas?
Subsole
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: His aide? Or a Republican?
Not snarking, I am legit curious.
I tried reading through that ridiculous pile of pompous horseshit he never bothers to apply to republicans and had to bail.
Sorry, my gag reflex was threatening to secede by the fourth graf.
Patricia Kayden
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Abbott has already gotten his two Covid shots so I assume he feels invincible. He got his.
SiubhanDuinne
Rachel had a clip a few minutes ago of Dolly Parton getting her first Moderna vaccination. Dolly has rewritten “Jolene” as “Vaccine,” and sang it a capella. RM reminded us that several months ago, Dolly gave a million dollars to Vanderbilt to help support their piece of the research into what eventually became the Moderna vaccine. So full circle.
JaySinWA
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I am sure Buad has a suit with no pants.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap’!!!
Subsole
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I fear neither the gods nor the devils have that much mercy left in their hearts.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne: here’s the full video, from her twitter account
Subsole
@raven: Like dogs, we really don’t deserve her…
Cameron
@raven: Maybe they need better marketing. https://youtu.be/CS9OO0S5w2k
Mike in NC
@SiubhanDuinne: They showed that on the ABC Nightly Network news tonight. Very cool.
Subsole
@JaySinWA:
Where…
where does the tie go…???
SiubhanDuinne
@eclare:
Not wearing pants in public can get you arrested on public indecency charges. We need to convince the PTB that visible mouths and noses qualify as “indecent exposure.”
(“Mommy, mommy, that nasty man showed me his NOSE!!”)
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
That line has made me laugh for the past fifty years!
debbie
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Quite a contest going on to see who can self-destruct the fastest: Abbott, Cruz, Hawley, or Lee.
frosty
Texas and Mississippi are on our route in March. Fortunately, just overnights in state parks … unless I can get a vaccination appointment in a Walmart in Hattiesburg and convince them that since my grandmother was born there I’m almost a resident.
Fucking idiots, I won’t feel even marginally safe until we’re in New Mexico.
raven
@frosty: Teachers here are going to Alabama to get it. I guess things are looser there.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike in NC:
Oh, nice to know. It was very sweet, and I’m glad to see it getting attention. Dolly is a treasure.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Just looking at the jab rates here in LA County, quite a bit of disparity in the rates between wealthy communities and those that are not. Does say Beverly Hills have more old folk than say Glendale(twice the rate of vaccination).
Winston
@Winston: And so Ronstadt’s most controversial statement was ” who likes nuclear warfare? ‘”
The Lodger
@raven: Tusks are looser in Alabama.
raven
@The Lodger: Talk talk talk. . .sometimes I think I must go mad. . .
Cameron
OT, but it ain’t just MS & TX. FL has to get in on the act: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/carl-hiaasen/article249558288.html
eclare
@frosty: I think MS is pretty open for vaccinations.
SiubhanDuinne
@frosty:
I’m not travelling until October, but it’s hard to get from Atlanta to Phoenix without going through and spending a couple of overnights in Mississippi and Texas. Can be done, at the cost of extra miles and additional time on the road. I guess I’ll wait until closer to the time and see what covid numbers look like in 6-7 months, and plan my itinerary accordingly.
Winston
In case you missed it, congress passed a law in 1954 outlawing the communist party. Seeing that you are all a lazy commentariat, there isn’t a response as yet as how this could apply to the current Republican party who has actively waged war on our democracy.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Pick a little, talk a little,
Pick a little, talk a little,
Pick pick pick,
Talk a lot, pick a little more…
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
“I’m old enough to get it, and I’m smart enough to get it!”
SiubhanDuinne
@The Lodger:
Groan. That took a couple of minutes.
Martin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, about ⅓ more.
Decent rule of thumb in CA: the whiter it is the older it is. 65+ is majority white, 18- is almost 2/3 latino.
But a lot of the disparity is also due to income – which also correlates with race. Beverly Hills has no shortage of health infrastructure.
And it could just be coincidence. I get a message from my city every morning saying how many open appointments there are for that day – people who cancelled, etc. even though it’s being administered at the county level, so residents of my city appear to have opportunities to get the shot simply by jumping over a city and taking cancelations there that other cities aren’t promoting. So could just be a variance along those lines.
smedley the uncertain
@VOR: Before they die.
frosty
@raven:
We go straight from the Panhandle to Mississippi, so no stop in Alabama to see if we can get it there. We’ll see how it goes.
frosty
@eclare:
There website says there’s a residency requirement, but like you say, I’ve heard that it’s not really enforced. Last time I checked WalMart had vaccine in stock.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: I looked it up, Beverly Hills has about 19% over 65 and Glendale about 16%, so that alone doesn’t account for the disparity that’s a factor of 2. However, outreach on the city level could, I’ve checked the City of Glendale’s site and it basically says to look to the County of LA(which of course tells me to wait).
ETA: Interesting enough, Beverly Hills has no hospitals in the city, but Cedars is right across the city limits.
frosty
@SiubhanDuinne:
COVID numbers were looking good when we planned this one, so good luck.
SiubhanDuinne
@zhena gogolia:
He is really talented. I’m so grateful to you for calling him to my attention a few months ago.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Los Angeles County, Long Beach, Pasadena (which have their own health agencies) are pretty good about getting information out about vaccine appointments.
I receive an up to date email.
There was also a phone number to call. Don’t know how easy that was compared to email.
I do not know how good outreach is for Spanish, Chinese, other language speakers.
SiubhanDuinne
@frosty:
Thanks. Same to you!
Winston
Probably too hard for your heads to think about.
dmsilev
@Brachiator: I ended up getting my first shot via Pasadena Public Health, administered at Huntington Hospital. Both the sign-up and the actual procedure went very smoothly. The nurse said that the hospital has been doing 5-600 shots per day over the last week or so, but their setup looked like it could scale up by a factor of two or so if needed, even just staying in the few rooms and corridor space that they had blocked off from the rest of the facility.
Winston
@Winston: Even Baud is at a loss for words.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: and that ‘aide’ picks up a $100 weekly payoff on the side from parties unknown ( but certainly guessed at) in what must surely be the best investment of all time.
$5200/year to keep an entire country from making progress of most any sort. Shoot, I’D pony up for that, only twice as much, and in the reverse.
david
Pretty fucking hilarious that this twitter account was trying to railroad a well qualified Asian-American woman’s employer into firing her just a couple of days ago.
Sandia Blanca
@Mo Salad: Should I feel guilty for laughing out loud at this one?
Winston
Why doesn’t the majority of congress pass a law to make the Republican party illegal, as they did in 1954 against the Communist party, who was a threat, but did not attack us?
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … STATNews:
(Lightly edited.)
We’re probably going to be hearing about more examples of them going around Congress for years to come.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Subsole
@Winston: Caldonia! Caldonia!
Jay
Companies don’t want to do “The Enforcement” for liability issues. They would have to push “The Enforcement” down to the Store level, and when Employees get murdered over it, they will be liable.
Managers and employees are “disempowered” to enforce the rules. See above. Also, nobody wants to die for a shitty jerb.
Governments could enforce it, but they are Craven Pussies.
EG, the BC Government has mandated that all Disposable Workers, have to fill out and display a Covid App/Survey, before they can enter their store and go to work.
My Corp also mandates that we have to do the same shit over the Internal Coms system before we can go to the floor.
First, people who can’t afford to miss work, are going to lie their asses off.
Second, we have 158 employees, 73 part timers,…..
Who deal with 2000 to 6000 customers a day, none of whom are required to take and “prove” a health check before going recreationally shopping.
We have had 12 cases of Covid amongst the Staff, since the beginning. 1 death, 6 hospitalizations, none of whom, came to work with symptoms or while waiting for test results.
Meanwhile, we have had over 412 people who knew they had covid, walk in the doors, idly wandering the isles and asking Staff stupid questions. Just to get out of the house.
I have stopped 6 assaults on coworkers, by Covidiots, since the start of covid. Several involved weapons.
Winston
@Subsole: Wut? You know if you are being sarcastic, then the proper sign is //. But if your intent is to be an asshole, you did the right thing.,
Jay
@Winston:
it was passed by 60+ Majorities in both Houses from both Parties.
Don’t think you will get 10+ ReThug Votes for banning the GQP.
Second, is was only used in two obscure cases in Jersey, which of course, were tossed on appeal.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Sigh. Trump supporters probably think this chicanery is an excellent example of how the Orange Beast used his mad business skills to get things done.
I also wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Young Jared had his hand in this stuff also.
We may need some investigations and the promise of serious jail time for these grifters.
Winston
@Jay: But you don’t see the communist party around today.
Yutsano
@Sandia Blanca: I’m disabled. I snickered. But I think we can do better than exploiting disability for humour. YMMV.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
What’s all this I’m hearing about Beverly Hills and Glen Dale? Who are they and what movies are they in?
wombat probability cloud
@Baud: This, and your comment at 27., may be the inflection points for all that comes in the future. Fingers crossed.
Jay
@Winston:
they still exist, they still run Candidates for Office,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA
Mai Naem mobile
@Mary G the GOP and Manchin got the scalp they wanted. Fuck Manchin. Asshole’s constituents could have been truly helped by the leader of the Center for American Progress. The fucker voted for POS Mick Mulvaney and Racist in Chief Jeffery Beauregard Sessions but a brown woman with a furrin sounding name who knows the good food stamps does isn’t good enough.
Winston
@Winston: And it doesn’t mean that hearings should not begin.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Something about Soviet jewelry back in the mid 70’s.
Winston
@Jay: Fuck
NotMax
@Jay
Same holds true for the Prohibition party.
;)
Jay
@Winston:
with Manchin and Seemia (sp) as co-chairs.//
Subsole
@Winston: My apologies.
I was making a joke about a Mel Brooks movie. Meant nothing else by it.
Subsole
@NotMax: No way.
In America?
Like, teetotal prohibition?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kent: Go look at the Alameda County website, most of the cases are in South Oakland, That’s were working poor who do the service jobs in SF live.
Jay
@Subsole:
Way,……
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_Party
Subsole
@Jay: Ok, real talk – I saw Phil Collins listed as chairman and for a moment, for one shining moment, I dared to hope… I mean, if the simulation were finally breaking down under the sheer weight of its compounded absurdity…
Alas.
Jay
@Subsole:
this reality sucks.
on the bright side, in September, I turn 59 yet again because 2020 doesn’t count. I demand a mulligan.
Subsole
@Jay: Sounds fair.
Fuck it. Take two. I didn’t see shit.
cain
@tokyokie:
This is exactly what I think it is. He’s trying to give people a release so they’ll forget and party and celebrate and all that. I think he has no idea what’s going to happen and soon he’s going to be wishing that he had a better handle on those vaccinations because he doens’t have a plan for that either. Spring is going to be a disaster.
rikyrah
This is phucking INSANE???
Subsole
@cain: I live under the fucker.
I am telling you. He wants people sick and dying.
I want to say that he is doing this under some sort of plan – sabotage the recovery, blame Democrats, wait for the hack media to legitimize the horseshit. And I’m sure that is part of it.
But he’s also just legit a psycho. He kills a lot of prisoners, even for this state. Callous. I think he thinks his wheelchair gives him the right to put other people in one, if that makes sense? A real animus towards life.
cain
After COVID – nothing is more important – even considering the $15/hour wage – because if we cannot stay in power we cannot build on any of those policies – we could get kicked out and they could revert $15 hourly wage a bunch of other things and a permanent occupation of the GOP.
rikyrah
@JPL:
That was my take too. 46 wasn’t going to let her destroy the environment.
She could have gotten good infrastructure for Alaska…. But, she wanted to destroy the environment
Jay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
yup, Fraser Health bites, Vancouver Health rules,
simply because the difference between crossing the bridge for work, saves you $250k on housing, but it costs you $50k+ on income.
The commute sucks too.
Another Scott
JuanitaJean:
I hope people ignore his attempts at distraction and do the right thing for their health and safety.
Grrr….
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@Another Scott:
You must not know the college kids I know. ?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott: couple of tidbits from MSNBC tonight:
– of the twenty counties in the country with the highest infection rate, 11 are in Texas
-Houston is the only major metro area where all known variants of Covid have been identified
Jay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
luckily Houston is no Padre Island.
Another Scott
ICYMI, Justice Kagan apparently did very well today. Charlie Pierce at Esquire has the play by play:
I good, short, read.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@debbie: I keep hearing that college kids are much smarter these days. ;-)
Yeah, I know…
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I try to be an optimist, but it’s hard some days.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott: Ouch.
Sandia Blanca
@Yutsano: Thanks, guess I’m just looking for any opportunity to dunk on my horrible governor. Both he and Cawthorn seem to have cashed in on their misfortunes, thanks to large settlements from their accidents. Their lack of empathy for others is infuriating.
cain
Still kids.. now I hear our high school kids are smarter than we were. :-)
cain
Went through this whole post and not one reference to Monty Python – “no one expects the Spanish Inquisition!”. Good grief, do I have to do everything around here?!
James E Powell
@gene108:
You’re right. See also, the Swift-Boating of John Kerry and Benghazi & Emails!!!
Mo Salad
@Yutsano: I understand completely. I was only 60/40 in favor of the joke myself, and I wrote the damn thing.
My rationalization was that I was making fun of two assholes who happen to be in wheelchairs. Granted, the structure of the joke ties the lack of mobility to what would be a disaster of a presidential ticket with the phrase “going nowhere”…
…it’s iffy. But it did pass my “Is it funny enough to to be forgiven?” test. We laugh, and then feel a bit guilty. But we still laughed.
burnspbesq
@trollhattan:
‘And no matter how many he kills, he will get primaried from the right because he didn’t kill enough.
Sloane Ranger
Didn’t a congressperson recently give a shout out to the Amish for successfully culling the herd or something?
I think that generations of mythologising the brave frontiersman/settler, who alone or with their wimminfolk, went out into the wilderness and, after braving and overcoming, challenges like having to wrestle with a bear and sew their leg back on after it had been bitten off before crawling back to their log cabin, which had been buried in 100 foot of snow and then, after surviving winter by melting snow for water and gnawing on their leather belt have to fight off Injins as soon as spring came, has created a kind of culture in those parts of the country whose population consider themselves the descendents of these American heroes that this is the sort of tough, self reliant behaviour they should emulate and failure just shows you don’thave what it takes. Just like those weak, effete people who stayed in the safety of the cities.
2liberal
there was a story in Wired about the SF response to Covid. The local medical officials got their response reflexes from HIV.
Another Scott
@Sloane Ranger: Ohio state representative.
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
fuckwit
Close the borders between these rogue states and any other states. Refuse to allow anyone from Texas or Mississippi to enter any other state.
Treat them like what they literally are: pariah states.