At this point, 2/3 of a year since the vaccines were released, this could be the whole country:
Vermont was the first state to partially vaccinate at least 80 percent of residents 12 or older. The current rate of more than 83% compares with the nation’s 66.6% one-dose rate — according to the CDC — for the same age group.
More than 67% of the state’s roughly 624,000 residents have been fully vaccinated, compared with about 49% for the US overall.
The state has maintained one of the country’s lowest infection rates — currently at 1.6% for a seven-day average, according to the health department’s Covid-19 dashboard. Vermont has had 259 Covid-19 deaths.
“It’s the lowest number of deaths on the continental US,” said Levine, sitting in front of a bobblehead of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
It feels like all I write about anymore are these god damned vaccines and how stupid people are to not get them, but it is just so frustrating. Things could go back to normalish, people would stop dying in such large numbers, we’d stop destroying our health care workers and spending billions on needlessly hospitalized people, and on and on if people would just get fucking vaccinated.
And I say this as someone who wishes lockdown would continue forever, as it really has been the best of times.
Baud
Biden needs to go on Fox News and tell people the virus gives you CRT.
hrprogressive
The “carrot” of “You can go maskless if you get your shots!” was clearly a massive, massive, foolish error.
Time for the “stick’ of, as bluntly as possible:
“No shot? No society”
Shoulda been the case 2 months ago. Needs to be the case now. Period.
Wag
Thank you for this. I completely agree with everything you say.
And thanks too for BJ. Anne and her daily Covid updates are a godsend, and OTR keeps me sane.
my favorite site on the interwebs.
Morzer
Has Cole ever considered founding a monastery, possibly one devoted to pets and gaming?
They Call Me Blue
@hrprogressive: why is it that the same people who ranted about “lockdowns” are the ones unwilling to take any steps to prevent the need for…lockdowns?
Wag
@They Call Me Blue: Logic deficiency.
Bard the Grim
@Baud: Baud! for Minister of Health!
emmyelle
All hail Vermont, with its 68 people per square mile. I mean, seriously, kudos to them for their vaccination rate. But I want a shout-out to the Commonwealth of my birth and current residence, Massachusetts. With 9 million doses given and 64% of the population fully vaccinated, our dense-ass state, at about 850 people per square mile, is a better example of what the rest of the country *could* be. In the whole effin’ commonwealth, we right now have 163 people in the hospital, 36 in ICU.
The 600-ish cases today are still too many as far as i am concerned. But if the whole goddam country were like us, well. OK, everyone would drive like ass, but we would be kicking this thing
Life is pretty good here right now.
Lapassionara
I think more stories about life in Vermont might be helpful. I for one am pretty tired of life under COVID, and I bet others are too. If people could see what their future could look like with enough people getting vaccinated, maybe they would go get the jab.
Lapassionara
@emmyelle: ok, then, let’s do more about life in Mass!
wombat probability cloud
@Baud: I’m old enough that I though, “oscilloscope”?
raven
@emmyelle: balls said the queen, IF I had em I’d be king!
Scout211
I am pleasantly surprised that national and local news reporters have now changed from interviewing all the anti-vaxxers they could find and letting them spew their nonsense and conspiracy theories to now interviewing former anti-vaxxers who now are very sick and are discovering that COVID is real and they should have gotten a vaccination. It’s a subtle change, but in the right direction
https://www.kcra.com/article/self-proclaimed-ex-anti-vaxxer-hospitalized-covid-19-urges-vaccinations/37159106
Mary G
All these supposedly left wing people on Twitter bitching about the CDC “WWAKKHHHFFFKKKLLLING ON MASK WEARING” make me want to tear out some vocal cords with my bare hands. The virus changed, so the advice changed. The end.
I am so rattled I’m wearing a mask in my own house.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Smug Massholes are a break from smug Californians.
RSA
“Our bad! We thought Americans would be rational. In retrospect…”
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: reminding me of
Pregnant Women are Smug by Garfunkel and Oates
CaseyL
@Morzer: Would one be able to join just for the pets? Other than Solitaire (which I am shamefully addicted to), I’m not into video games.
But a bunch of non-social grumps, whose clothing choices consist of “what’s comfortable?,” and who only speak when they have something interesting, funny, or important to say, (and the resident animals would always be worth talking about!) would be heaven for me.
sdhays
@Mary G: I’m not “on” Twitter – I have an account and I see a handful of posts from people I follow every day, but I don’t look at the fire hose or tweet myself. Are there any people bitching at Nate Silver and the “wonk-bros” who were very publicly saying that the CDC was stupid and almost literally innumerate for being so slow to issue the guidance on vaccinated people not needing to wear masks back in May?
I think that the CDC looked at the variants at the time and the national trends with vaccination and caseloads and thought that giving a “reward” for people vaccinating would juice the vaccination rate enough to get us to where needed to get to. They were wrong, but the public pressure from the “wearing a mask is like the Holocaust” crowd and the insufferably stupid “wonk-bros” created the conditions for their decision.
I’m glad that blaming the unvaccinated has entered the national discourse. Public disgust will change some behaviors, particularly for people who aren’t “hesitant” in the Darwin-award sense and are just busy/stressed/procrastinators.
Quinerly
Loving my beloved Maple Leaf and Tips in NOLA. Requiring proof of vax or negative Covid test. I’m still afraid the rescheduled Jazz and Heritage Fest is going to be a super spreader event if the arguing about vaccinations and masks on the message boards, social media sites are indicators. The Stones have just been added to the schedule.
https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/keith_spera/article_84b4b3a4-eff0-11eb-a400-2fe12e0d5b3b.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=nolafb&utm_campaign=snd
lowtechcyclist
And >3 months now since it became a cinch to get a vaccination appointment, in those places where you couldn’t just walk on in and get vaxxed.
That’s the part that gets me. Three months during which all those refuseniks could have just walked in, gotten the shot, and walked out, then come back a few weeks later for shot #2.
Worthless scum. Fuck ’em.
hrprogressive
@They Call Me Blue:
This is a fascinating dynamic by which I believe the theorem goes like this:
“I don’t wanna!” and “Lol pwn the libs”
Both of which are eminently helpful positions to have in an ICU, I am sure.
dexwood
@hrprogressive: The whole honor system regarding vaccines, trust, was murdered in an alley several years ago. Time to get tough.
Victor Matheson
@emmyelle: Agreed about MA, but even here there are very troubling signs. Worcester County reached a low of an average of 6 cases per day back on June 26 (with a population of about 800,000) . By July 26 we were back up to 55 cases per day and climbing rapidly. We had our first positive test results since May at our campus testing facility this week and last. We had this totally beaten and let it come back. Frustrating.
Mike in NC
In the Navy I got jabbed with a thousand needles. What is the big deal?
schrodingers_cat
@emmyelle: There are counties in Mass that have vaccination rates close to 90 percent of the adult population.
Kent
We could be Canada. The entire country is down to 500 or so cases per day and about 7 deaths per day right now. They started after us and are now at 56% total vaccinated and 71% with one dose compared to our 49% completely vaccinated and 56% one dose (percent of total population).
jl
Yay, Vermont. I think it’s the only state, maybe only large jurisdiction in the United States, that put in a global best practice covid control effort . They designed an efficient, short and quick and effective shutdown early on; usually set a good balance between necessary social distancing, and periodic well-planned relaxations following responsible harm reduction principles to prevent too much ‘social distance’ fatigue.
I think two things were extremely important, absolutely necessary measures that have proved impossible for most of the rest of the country. The essential first one was very quick provision of safe quarantine and isolation facilities: quick conversion of closed hotels and tourist accommodations, expansion of capacity in other places. Second was very quick decompression of unsafe crowded conditions around the state, including for homeless. Social distancing policies were well designed to be flexible and easy to understand, to allow gradual safe reopening. Good communications with Vermonters (or Vermontites, whatever they’re called), less sloganeering about ‘Following the Science and Data’, when the quick action required for epidemic control really doesn’t allow that all the time, and more recognition the task was implementing a long term emergency social policy. Too many places sat and waited for fetishized RCT and p-value < 0.05 evidence where that was impossible, and took so long to get that things got out of control in the meantime. There is a lot of p-value < 0.05 evidence from SARS 1 that acting quickly with a second best policy is better for infectious disease control than waiting for gold plated platinum five star ‘The Science and the Data’.
We should all be proud of Vermont.
Vermont did have some advantages. One was being in relatively good public health neighborhood. Another is I don’t think a lot of severe poverty and social inequality. I don’t think being rural or low density was an unfair advantage, it’s not density but overcrowded housing that makes spread hard to stop. Los Angeles isn’t high density overall, but it ranks high in having a lot of people living in overcrowded housing. Though, the two often go together, but not always. About half of Saaremaa, an island tourist province in Estonia probably got sick early on. Mostly rural, low density, but big pocket of poverty with overcrowded housing.
Chetan Murthy
@Mary G: Not a bit of it: I remember when the CDC made the decision to relent on mask mandates, and the national conversation at the time consisted in:
At the time, the CDC buckled to this whining, on the theory that offering a carrot was better than, y’know, “no fear of covid killing me”, but also because there was *incessant* whining coming from precisely the people who never wore masks and didn’t get the vaxx. Yeah, this was a mistake. Sure. But at the time, if the CDC had insisted on retaining mask mandates, they’d have continued to get crucified by the RWNJ covidiot antivaxxers.
FlyingToaster
@emmyelle: It looks like about 10% of the cases are from the Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard July 4th clusters. The Provincetown cluster is up to 833; I haven’t seen good numbers from the Vineyard, but it’s also suposed to be in the hundreds.
It looks like a lot of people went bar hopping on the long weekend (vacationers and locals alike).
Fortunately, the majority of cases were low or no symptoms, but the sequencing of the P-town cases is all Delta.
The Cape and Islands are like 90% vaccinated for age 12+; Middlesex, Norfolk, Essex and Berkshire are all close to 80%.
Hampden and Bristol, however, are like at 50%. Shaking my damn head at Springfield, New Bedford and Fall River.
Chetan Murthy
@FlyingToaster: Saw a news report including an interview with a hotelier in P-Town, talking about how it’s all these out-of-towners coming in, spreading the bug. He was pretty damn furious, said he was instituting a mandate for his own hotel.
A Ghost to Most
An odd bit of Denver buzz: Matt and Trey of South Park fame are trying to buy Casa Bonita, the kitschy Mexican restaurant featured in at least one South Park episode.
NotMax
Have heard that draping one’s pets with fruit cocktail can be very calming.
:)
dr. bloor
@Chetan Murthy: That’s one naive hotelier.
VOR
@Mary G: the CDC said one thing, people heard another. And anti-vax, anti-mask people stopped pretending to comply. As the immortal quote from Animal House puts it: “you fucked up, you trusted us”.
And you are right, Delta variant is much worse so the advice changed. People don’t seem to understand this is a new virus which nobody on the planet had ever seen less than 2 years ago. Even our best and brightest are still learning so their best advice changes as we learn more. Have mistakes been made along the way? Hell yes. That’s just the way things go. And it didn’t help that TFG literally threw out the game plan left by the Obama admin based on their Swine Flu experience.
FlyingToaster
@Lapassionara: Life in Mass? Depends a lot on where you are, and which flavor of Masshole you encounter.
Here in inner suburban Boston, it’s few masks outdoors but a majority still mask indoors if not seated and eating. The vax rate hereabouts is 75%+ for age 12+, but we have 900,000 kids who can’t be vaxxed yet.
When you get out to the exurbs and places where DayStar network is a thing, you’ll see the full panoply of Magat/Xtianist/Covidiot behavior on display.
And of course, we drive like Massholes.
jl
@jl: I was going to mention social support of quarantine and isolation, but don’t remember much about it. But here is Vermont page on housing support. I think some of it was free, but not sure.
STATE OF VERMONT, Agency of Human Services
COVID-19 INFORMATION AND RESOURCES
https://humanservices.vermont.gov/help-and-resources/covid-19-information
I’d like to know how many places had something like the Ho Hum Motel I/Q facility.
FlyingToaster
@Chetan Murthy: And a lot of vacationers lied to their hotels and cruises. We decided to skip the Cape this summer because we’re paranoid. The only question is, are we paranoid enough?
StringOnAStick
Our town is a couple weeks into resumption of the Thursday night free concerts, this being year 30 (no concerts last year). We went last week but we’re not going anymore now that delta is raging. Too bad, this week’s band is a fun swing/rockabilly group. I enjoyed it last week but was low level anxious the whole time. Now the daily infection rates are headed up fast.
Princess Leia
@CaseyL: I’m in!
MomSense
Our state is now 72% fully vaccinated, but there are now two counties that are back under the mask mandate.
Fair Economist
@Chetan Murthy: The CDC could have provided dropping masks as a carrot without being irresponsible; all they needed to do was to say “mask mandates may be dropped for individuals who can prove vaccination”. A blanket drop was a total self-goal.
NotMax
@Morzer
The name Independent Order of Odd Fellows is already spoken for, more’s the pity.
;)
Another Scott
@jl: Thanks for that.
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@They Call Me Blue:
Because they are coming at it from a completely different position. They aren’t angry at the lockdowns just because they were inconvenient. They’re angry because they deny the entire problem. They refuse to accept any inconvenience to deal with COVID because they refuse to accept that COVID is any more dangerous than the common cold, or maybe the flu. If you refuse to accept that COVID is actually dangerous, of course you’ll refuse to accept any kind of serious measure to deal with it.
Chetan Murthy
@Fair Economist: From May 28, 2021: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/participate-in-activities.html
there is an update *at the top* that reiterates this. Just in case the CDC edited the body of this guidance, I looked in the wayback machine, and specifically the June 1 copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20210601164250/https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/participate-in-activities.html
and the guidance had not changed.
The CDC did what you asked.
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
I don’t think this is really correct. The real problem is that people refused to follow the CDC’s previous guidance, which said unvaccinated people should continue wearing masks in indoor public places. What happened in practice is that allowing some people to go without masks gave cover for everyone to do it. When unvaccinated people stopped wearing masks, they started infecting everyone around them, and cases went back up. Now we all have to go back to wearing masks all the time because the assholes who refuse to get vaccinated also refuse to wear masks if other people are allowed to go without.
C Nelson Reilly
@A Ghost to Most:
I loved Casa Bonita as a kid
Chetan Murthy
@Roger Moore:
FTFY.
Roger Moore
@A Ghost to Most:
I’m just amazed Casa Bonita is still in business. They were kind of a big thing when I was a kid, and I have a hard time believing they’ve managed to survive as long as they have.
dopey-o
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has a great article about rising anger among the vaxxed at the sacrifices they have made to the benefit of anti-vaxxed freeloaders.
But he neglects to mention That Fvkking Guy did everything he could to promote and spread the pandemic. And now TFG’s hard-core followers are doing their best to kill Americans.
There is 2nd civil war waging in America, and the Stupids are using virii and ignorance instead of rifles and cannon. Let’s hope it ends better than the original civil war……….waitaminnit, 650,00 dead? Any way I look at it, we lose.
Roger Moore
@Fair Economist:
The CDC did drop the mandate only for vaccinated people. The problem is it’s nearly impossible to enforce. A few businesses are actually demanding proof of vaccination, but that’s basically only places like concert venues where they already have your money when you try to get in. Everyone else just let people go without masks on the honor system, and that has proven to be a terrible idea. We really need a proper vaccine passport, and we need people to start demanding it.
Another Scott
@Fair Economist: I didn’t like the change in the CDC masking recommendations, mainly because I thought it was too nuanced and that the press would botch getting the message out.
SciAm (from June 29):
The trouble is, of course, that we’ve known for more than a year what people should do. Larry Brilliant said that (roughly) “if 70% of people wear a mask 70% of the time, we’ll have this licked”. People didn’t, and they still won’t.
Martin made a good point a day or so ago – the anti-pandemic system needs to be based on lots of little things that aren’t perfect. Masking isn’t perfect, temperature checks aren’t perfect, ventilation isn’t perfect, restricting group sizes isn’t perfect, vaccines aren’t perfect, etc. But working together, one can crush the virus pretty quickly.
(sigh)
CDC Direct Walensky said this in an NPR report:
At least the press, so far, seems to be getting the correct message out this time.
I do hope they elaborate on this message though. With Alpha the concern was that asymptomatic people were the vector spreading a lot / much / most of the infections. Do we have to worry about asymptomatic breakthrough cases the same way?
I’ll continue to mask up until community spread is crushed. It just seems sensible to me.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mary G
Roger Moore
@Chetan Murthy:
There are only a few people who absolutely refused to wear masks. There are a lot more who would grudgingly put on a mask when going some place that required one. But as soon as they could ditch the mask by lying and claiming to be fully vaccinated, they were all over it. So we need to go back to demanding everyone wear masks, or demanding proof of vaccination rather than people’s claim to be vaccinated, to get them to wear masks.
Mary G
Disagree it’s “awesome” – that would’ve been in January. Now he’s closing the barn door after the Delta variant is out.
Wvng
Big news in today’s Moorefield Examiner (WV) that the big health care provider in Eastern WV and the Shenandoah Valley (6 hospitals, 60 doctor offices and urgent care) is requiring all staff to get vaccinated, with few exceptions allowed. This is how it happens.
Kay
Ugh. This FOP offocial. So terrified of Trump and Trump supporters he can’t perform his job.
I don’t think they have to be represented by the Fraternal Order of Police. Why don’t the officers petition to get a new union instead of this cowardly, bumbling Trumpist?
Jeffro
I keep waiting for someone…anyone…in a position of power to point out that
1) trumpov politicized testing and mask-wearing from the get-go
2) Fox weaponized anti-vax crazies in order to “rally the troops”/kneecap the Biden administration
The above, in their lust for power, are out to kill Americans, full stop.
I hope the mask and vaccine mandates continue for as long as it takes. Shove THAT down your throats, deplorables.
Martin
Good job VT. CA just hit 75%. We’re inching that way.
Kay
Great! A “fake news!” uninformed dope who is a lousy, weak advocate. Whatever they’re paying him it’s too much.
Chetan Murthy
@Roger Moore:
maybe in your ‘hood. Certainly true in my ‘hood. But I’ve read a ton of reporting from the UGTR that confirms that, no, even before May, there were lots of areas where lots of people refused to wear masks.
Chetan Murthy
@Chetan Murthy: To wit: [back before May] Guy drives from LA to Ann Arbor, MI, thru UP Mich. Masks stop after Nevada, don’t return until he’s near Ann Arbor.
NotMax
OT for a longish read from the AP: Inside a KKK murder plot.
Chilling doesn’t scratch the surface of the experience of reading it.
Kay
That actually explains a lot.
Elizabelle
OT: Former Rocky Mount VA police officer Thomas Robertson will be jailed until his trial. Thank dog. He bought 3 more guns since it came to the court’s attention he’d already purchased 34. Per WaPost:
sdhays
@Chetan Murthy: Yes. In much of rural America, masking never got very high participation.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Note also that diabetes is co-related with dementia/Alzheimers. Prevent the first, you can often stave off the second (not always, but to some extent).
Another Scott
Speaking of unnecessary human-caused disasters…
Click to see the image.
(via dick_nixon)
Donate to Val Demings campaign (I just did, again).
Cheers,
Scott.
Nettoyeur
@FlyingToaster: Provincetown is a major vacation destination, incl bars (gay bars too). Prob increases exposure
Kent
NBC announced that Sam Kendricks, America’s top pole vaulter and 2019 world champion is bounced out of the Olympics due to testing positive for Covid. Twitter says he was unvaccinated and admitted as much on his own Twitter feed before the Olympics but has since deleted those posts. Probably not surprising. He’s from Mississippi and an Old Miss product and apparently a Trumper.
Imagine being such a hard core anti-Vaxer that you bounce your ass out of the Olympics, which is all you’ve been preparing for for the past 5 years. Sheesh.
NotMax
FYI.
Netflix will mandate COVID-19 vaccinations on productions in the US
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat:
Yes, but one of those is Barnstable County (Cape Cod) which is having a large COVID outbreak, so it’s hard to tell a neat story here.
(Of course, this probably happened because in the summer the place gets overrun with non-resident visitors, some of whom are not vaccinated.)
mrmoshpotato
@Mary G:
The turtle-faced, fascist motherfucker should have thrown himself into the Sun back in the 80’s.
That would’ve been awesome.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: The CDC specifically said that the reason they’ve changed their guidance now is that they think vaccinated people can transmit Delta.
Now, that may be a face-saving way of reversing themselves without calling the unvaccinated ~half of the US population a bunch of filthy liars. But it’s what they said.
RaflW
Disney FL just announced a resumption of mask mandates indoors at their resorts, regardless of vaccine status.
Surely this is good news for DeSantis!
Chetan Murthy
@Matt McIrvin: Your last sentence. I read elsewhere that many ID specialists are asking for the data to support the conclusion that (when infected) vaxxed & unvaxxed spread Delta equally well (that wasn’t true of Alpha), and the CDC isn’t obliging. So yeah: your last sentence.
James E Powell
@Kay:
Perhaps because the majority of police officers are Trumpists?
Bill Arnold
Republicans took that from us. Forevermore I will laugh at any Republican who attempts to make an argument about morality.
RandomMonster
The Nerdite Brotherhood?
Society of Introverts?
My Lady of War My Mustard?
NotMax
@RandomMonster
World of Krautcraft.
;)
RaflW
@Chetan Murthy: Minnesota apparently traced a fairly significant outbreak here to people who returned from the 4th at the Cape. We were in pretty good shape here, so wether it was tourist-to-tourist or what, the virus definitely took its opportunity.
Sister Golden Bear
@Mary G: The way I’ve put it: Covid stepped up its game, so now we’ve got to step up ours.
Mary G
trollhattan
As I noted yesterday:
Be like Vermont. 68.3% vaccinated.
Do not be Alabama. 34.3%.
California rates “meh” at 53.3%. Considering we’re 1/9 of the US population we need to improve a ton.
Newsom, soon to face recall election, has mandated all state employees be vaccinated or have weekly tests. UC and CSUS have mandated all students and staff be vaccinated. We’ll see what rules public schools have by fall semester. Guessing statewide indoor masking mandate will return, but might be county data driven.
Fair Economist
@Kay: Basically, you have to be sick to support Trump.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: The Brotherhood of Bigos?
Yutsano
@mrmoshpotato: As a person who has never had bigos & desperately wants to try bigos…right now I hate you. :P
jnfr
@C Nelson Reilly:
It is an amazingly strange building.
trollhattan
This just in, from Sportsball Millionaire HQ:
mrmoshpotato
@Yutsano:
?
I hope you’re mending well. Homemade bigos is an excellent winter dish.
Martin
@trollhattan: A small asterisk on CAs 53.3%. We have about 7 million kids 12 and under. 17.5%. That’s pretty high for most states.
In terms of adult population (12+), VT is 83%, CA is 75%. We’re not that bad off, but yeah, should be better.
Yutsano
@trollhattan: I’m just waiting to see what happens in the NFL now.The first team that this happens to will be the real case study as to whether Roger Goodell loves the league or money more.
Wait don’t answer that.
Yutsano
@mrmoshpotato: I’m…mending. Doc told me today it can take three months for my type of ulcer to heal. So yeah heading back to work will have to wait. At least I should have the leave part covered.
West of the Rockies
@Martin:
That’s reassuring, Martin. Of course, here in rural Butte County, the picture is not quite as rosy (although the sky has been rosy from the Dixie Fire).
mrmoshpotato
@Yutsano: Good to hear.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
From a site in Poland:
Adam Geffen
“And I say this as someone who wishes lockdown would continue forever, as it really has been the best of times.”
I had to give friends money for food and rent because under lockdown they had no jobs or income. Lockdown was f’ing awful. Necessary perhaps. But awful and wretched.