This isn’t a novel observation—we already know that Trump voters have been significantly more likely to die from COVID in the vaccine era—but it still smacks my gob to see how clearly New York City demonstrates this.
Drowning in your own lungs to own the libs… I don’t know about you, but I just can’t bring myself to care any more. Pity the poor children, yes, but none of the mandates are working on their parents, and what else are we supposed to do?
Open thread.
BigJimSlade
Conservatives, the ever-lasting gob-smacker.
cain
You should see https://reddit.com/r/HermanCainAwards – it’s a daily owning of the libs by dying. It’s practically a script now – the same memes, the same accusation of sheep, then sick, tortured experience, and then a death announcement followed by a GoFundMe.
Whole families are dying, kids are becoming parentless – it’s just nuts. They don’t even seem to learn their lesson! But they do end up scared shitless and screaming into the void till they transition out of htis plane of existence.
ETA: #2! It’s been soo soo damn long! Yayeee!!! I knew good things was coming! My company just got bought out so hopefully some windfall from that!
Matt McIrvin
What I care about is that they’re using it as a lever to dominate public spaces. Being infectious and not caring about it is a kind of superpower. We don’t want to be around them, so if they can open spaces up to themselves in the name of “freedom”, they can push us out of them just by being there. NYC is a rare place where they don’t have the upper hand–almost everywhere else in the US, even liberal-voting areas, they do. In Massachusetts they do.
It’s similar to the dynamic of open carrying. Yes, being a gun nut is more dangerous to yourself than to others. But if you can go to the 7-11 with your rifle you can subtly deny those areas to people who don’t want to be around someone carrying a rifle. You drive people who are not like you into the shadows, inhibit political participation and social participation.
With, say, racial integration you can say this dynamic only punishes people who have bad prejudices. But here, this is punishing people with legitimate safety concerns. Blurring that distinction is a central part of the right-wing project.
Annie
Here’s another gobsmack:
San Francisco, CA with a population of 874,961 people, has had:
57,696 cases of Covid-19 and 677 deaths.
The entire state of South Dakota, with a slightly higher population of 901,820, has had:
171,000 cases of Covid-19 and 2,392 deaths.
Gee, I guess those mask-and-shutdown things really work!
I’m so glad I live in San Francisco.
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin: I’ve been pretty pleased with NYC’s COVID policies in the vaccine era. We’ve opted for more mandates than restrictions, and with a very high vaccination rate, this means that we’ve had a very low death rate, even through a sizable and ongoing Delta wave.
And this is what endemic COVID realistically looks like. We have to live with it now. Mask up, stick to your comfort level, and get boosted!
Kent
This is what I wrote yesterday in our family chat to my MAGA uncle after he went off on his latest bit of Covid conspiracy stupidity:
dmsilev
My local urb has a vaccination rate northwards of 90% of the eligible population, and something like 97% of adults. Strong mask mandate, and a lot of people voluntarily wearing masks outdoors to boot. We have an aggregate COVID death toll over the last six or seven months that’s roughly 1 per 10,000 residents, which is ballpark 1/10th the death rate that Florida (for instance) has seen over the same time period.
And yeah, very strongly blue voting.
Betty Cracker
@Kent: Hahaha, that’s awesome!
Baud
I always wonder what would lead cities to build domes around themselves. Now I know.
Old Dan and Little Ann
My wife’s friend for 30+ years is a bit of a religious nut and anti-vaxxer. Her vaccinated husband got covid and did fine. He passed it on to her and she has been in and out of hospital all week with serious complications. I hate to say it but I doubt she will ever say, “I should’ve got the vaccine.”
Brachiator
The stupidity of the Covid deniers helps keep the virus circulating and evolving. This threatens everyone.
It makes no sense to try to parcel out who you care about more. The virus doesn’t care.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: But everywhere other than NYC and maybe parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, what that ends up looking like is “stay the fuck home while the MAGAts can go out and play.”
(Of course, even in NYC there are surely many people with trivially faked vaccine cards. I could make a convincing fake one right now. But being out and proud about being unvaccinated enhances the political effect, like open carry vs. concealed carry.)
Layer8Problem
Ah, Staten Island, Land of Mystery. I’d say give it the Bugs Bunny-Florida treatment: saw it off and send it to South America. Then I remember good liberals, progressives, and Democrats still live there amidst all that Know-Nothingism.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
F-ing Staten Island. No surprise there.
I’m surprised there’s a big red area of Brooklyn though. And who’s on the barrier island south of Brooklyn? Is that rich folks?
The little red area in the middle of blue Brooklyn and Queens is, I believe, the Williamsburg neighborhood, which I think is a major center of gentrification.
Layer8Problem
NotMax
FYI, Biden schedule to appear (via remote hook-up) on the Tonight Show this evening.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: So what else are we supposed to do? The law mandating that they get vaccinated in order to participate in society isn’t working.
And, again, it’s endemic now. Life will be something like it is now for quite a while. I’d much rather be able to see a Broadway play if I want to, than shut down gatherings in the face of low rates of self-inflicted death.
Matt McIrvin
@Layer8Problem: Have you read NK Jemisin’s “The City We Became”? I won’t spoil it, but it has pointed things to say about Staten Island…
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Not in my neck of the woods. Everyone is masked (over 90%) and vaccination rates are pretty high too.
cain
@Kent: I would enjoy reading that book – lol. I just finished a book called “Janson Directive” – loved it – although Lundlam does follow a formula of sorts.
My favorite part was inadvertently describes some scene where some dude while dying starts thinking about his high school – which just happened to be my high school in my little down in Indiana! So awesome!
Roger Moore
@cain:
The accusations of being sheep are the thing that gets me. Like the people who get their news from Fox and have been trained to repeat the day’s talking points without thinking about any contradictions with the past are models of thinking for themselves.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: Here in northeast Mass., to be fair, there were more people masked the last time I went to the grocery store but a month earlier it was maybe 20%.
Major Major Major Major
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
East Williamsburg. Ultra-Orthodox enclave. They don’t even vaccinate for measles. Their schools don’t teach in English, they don’t teach math, they hold illegal classes during shutdowns. Scofflaw religious nuts.
John Cole
They’re self culling. Get out of their way.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: And the people who regard the prospect of maybe getting regular booster shots as like being imprisoned in the Gulag, or being forced to join the Hitler Youth.
Snarki, child of Loki
“what else are we supposed to do?”
The MAGAtoids are objectively species-traitors, so shoot on sight.
brendancalling
Over at LGM, Paul Campos posted that he doesn’t think people who willfully refuse the vaccine (that is, without a REAL health or religious issue) should be denied hospital care, because the unvaccinated are crowding out other patients with heart conditions, diabetes, cancer broken limbs, etc. I could not agree more: I would send them home with a Bible, some ivermectin, and Joe Rogan’s phone number.
Matt McIrvin
@John Cole: But if “their way” includes all public spaces, they effectively win. Most of them aren’t going to die.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
It’s always projection.
Another Scott
ObOpenThread – some interesting understatement, found elsewhere:
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin: With rounding: The citywide death rate is 1/100k. The rate for vaccinated people is 0. The rate for unvaccinated is 2. Few are dying, but if anybody is doing the dying, it’s them. During the fall peak of delta it was 1/1/5.
zhena gogolia
@Major Major Major Major: I wonder if that’s going to change with Omicron.
Alce_e_ardillo
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: That is also where many of the ultra-orthodox Jews, who have been in an ongoing war with the state over mask and vaccine mandates, live.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent: Well done!
chopper
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
orthodox neighborhoods.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
The US and other countries all have problems with non-compliance, resistance, dumb ass conspiracy theories. There is no simple answer to this; otherwise Dr Fauci and Biden would have told us what to do next.
I don’t have the answer either. But, for example, we are lucky as hell that right now the Omicron variant does not appear to be especially lethal.
You are doing the best you can to protect yourself and to resume your life. This is entirely reasonable. But Covid is not now “endemic” just because you declare it to be.
cmorenc
Had Trump not been such a vain, fearful girly-man, afraid that masks and admitting vulnerability to COVID would make him appear weak such that he made a defiant political issue out of mounting stubborn resistance to responsibly dealing with it, we could have far more successfully contained the spread of the virus and the sickness and deaths it caused.
Major Major Major Major
@Alce_e_ardillo: they also live in the hot red area northeast of there.
JeanneT
What makes me sigh is that the red areas on this map represent an 8% positivity rate. Here in my home of Kent County, MI the positivity rate is 23%, and very few people are bothering to mask. Only 61% of the total population are fully vaccinated. Insanity.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: no, but the epidemiologists I follow on Twitter do have a say, which is who I’m aping.
NotMax
Anecdotal observational data: on Maui, in stores and any other indoor commercial or governmental space, virtually 100% are masked.
Can’t enter without one.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
I hope Biden rips Jimmy a new one for sucking Dump’s ass in 2016.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Expert opinion has not reached a firm consensus on this.
cain
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
The whole place is going through gentrification – pretty soon ordinary new yorkers won’t be able to afford living in the City. It’ll happen in all the boroughs I suspect.
It seems Kingpin’s plan is working!
Spanky
@brendancalling: “I can’t catch a fatal case of diabetes from Twinkie Man” should go a long way in refuting that argument.
JPL
@Annie: Thank you for posting that, since I had no idea that San Francisco had so few deaths due to Covid.
cain
@cmorenc:
I’m not so sure.. I think the anti-govt ideologues would have seen this as a way to show that govt is effective. They are opposed to anything that provides any kind of benefit to the population. Govt is always the problem.
Old School
RIP Michael Nesmith
gene108
@John Cole:
But their in my immunosupressed self’s way of getting back to any sense of normalcy. They aren’t dying off fast enough nor are they vaccinating.
I’m vaccinated and boostered up, but how much good will it do me? Doctors say it should help, but beyond the qualified maybe it’s ?♀️?♂️
It’s a giant pain in the ass, and after 20 months of different levels of self-isolation it’s a fucking mental grind.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
I don’t. Focusing on Dolt 45 in the limited time available in this case not an astute use of resources.
New Deal democrat
@Matt McIrvin:
“they’re [the unvaccinated] using it as a lever to dominate public spaces.”
You are exactly correct.
The time it has taken to vaccinate 10% more of the population (or adults only) has doubled from one month to two months to four months. If that continues it will take until the end of next summer to have vaccinated 80% of adults and 70% of the population — which as you know is still not enough. Biden’s “vaccine only” plan is going to fail.
It is well past time for the Biden Administration to proceed with a “Plan B,” which I submit would include cooperating with Blue State governors to enact NYC-style (and Germany- and Canada-style) restrictions on the unvaccinated, including testing and quarantining upon entering a Blue State. While it is very unclear to put it mildly that the Federal government can do this, it *is* historically clear that State governments via the Police Power can, and the Federal government can assist them with interstate aspects.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: Semantics. How about “this easily spread and frequently mutating disease, which has large animal reservoirs such as white-tailed deer, is not going away any time soon.”
chrome agnomen
@Matt McIrvin: you wouldn’t have to force them to join…
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
Went to the store yesterday, here in eastern LA county, with indoor mask mandates and 2 white men were walking around without masks. Nobody in the store is going to tell them, it isn’t worth the risk/effort. But these are the first I’ve seen without at least an attempt, although very occasionally I see a nose or two. The ones that are the best fake attempt are the bandannas, worn like bank robbers. Zero use as a medical/infectious disease mask, but still an effort, a tiny and useless effort.
germy
@Old School:
So Mickey is the only surviving one.
Major Major Major Major
@cain:
If only we were allowed to build housing at the rates we used to. The only reason housing isn’t San Francisco-level bad is because we have a huge stock from before the 1980s.
Nora Lenderbee
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
That long skinny island (actually several islands) includes the Rockaways, Long Beach, and Jones Beach. Fire Island is out of frame to the right.
Long Beach used to be mostly Democratic, but it’s starting to resemble the rest of Long Island. I grew up there. Racism was always a big problem on LI.
Librarian
@chopper: The big red area in the middle of Brooklyn is Borough Park. The peninsula south of Brooklyn is Rockaway, which is part of Queens.
brendancalling
@Major Major Major Major: The insurance companies would probably go along with denying coverage to the unvaccinated. Those companies are, after all, money-making enterprises, and they don’t like paying out claim after claim. Then when the morons get covid, treat them as uninsured.
Back in 2019, I wrote about a friend of mine who, due to miscommunication over a deadline, found himself without health insurance when his liver decided to crap out. He’s dead now, because “due to my lack of insurance, [the doctor] was reluctant to even begin talks about it because of the crippling out-of-pocket costs that it would incur.”
I’ve seen what it costs to treat someone with covid. It’s a LOT of money. It’s not affordable without insurance.
Spanky
William and Kate have shared their family Christmas card, and I’m OUTRAGED that there’s not a firearm in sight.
Matt McIrvin
@New Deal democrat: Charlie Baker is never going to cooperate. People persist in thinking of him as a “good Republican” but his true colors really come out in his refusal to even contemplate such things.
…but! Baker is not running again and his successor as the Republican nominee is likely to be some spittle-flinging MAGA type. So that’s either a bigger disaster in the making or (more likely) we get a Democratic Governor again.
different-church-lady
@Annie: Now throw in the figures for the number of people per square mile and it’s just jaw dropping.
New Deal democrat
@Matt McIrvin: You at very least need governors like Baker to allow cities (like Boston) to enact NYC-style restrictions.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
It is not semantics at all. What you reasonably choose to do or how you read your Twitter feed is not the same as a formal declaration that Covid is now endemic.
I’ve read other experts assert that we need to consider the degree to which hospitals are able to deal with the number of Covid patients, the numbers in ICUs, etc.
different-church-lady
@John Cole: At this point we should be discouraging them from the vaccines. “Yeah, you’re right, it’s another Soros plot, you’re smart to not fall for it.”
La Nonna
Just home from my booster dose of Moderna, 150 days after my 2 AstraZenrca (ptui) vaxx last spring/summer. The line for walk-in boosters was one hour long even with 6 intake screeners and injection points, in a town of 25,000 people. Uptake is great, Italians for the most part remember the horrible price we paid early in this pandemic. Still hoping the EU allows US citizens in for the holiday weeks, it has been a looong 2.5 years.
Matt McIrvin
@New Deal democrat: And even that is just way too spotty. Boston might do it. Haverhill won’t–Mayor Fiorentini surely knows he doesn’t have that level of political capital in a just-barely-blue city with a large Trumpster minority unless he has a state edict to lean on.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Kent:
Please post Norm’s response!
Kent
My wife is a primary care physician who has reached her last limit with both unvaccinated patients and staff. The plan that she and her other doctor colleagues advocate?
The are only half-joking.
dc
@Layer8Problem: What has South America done to deserve such a fate?
Alce_e_ardillo
@Major Major Major Major: Also if you go northwest of the city into Rockland you’ll find a bunch of Hasidic communities.
NotMax
@Librarian
Trivia:
The community of Far Rockaway (on that sliver island) is in Queens; the village of East Rockaway (Nassau County, on Long Island proper) was originally called Near Rockaway.
What eventually became Nassau County used to be a part (more than half by land area) of Queens County, but that’s another story.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
I suppose there’s endemic as in, “Yes, it’s a fact of our biological reality on this planet,” but then there’s also “It’s endemic in my head.” I am going through something right now (and I mean right now this very morning) where two of the most significant people in my life have let COVID worry become the sole component of their thought processes. They’re making fretting about it into an entire lifestyle, and they are driving everyone around them utterly up the wall with it. The rest of us want to deal with it, but we don’t want it to take over the entirety of our brains. But these two just won’t let up, won’t let any of us have any peace of mind or stay emotionally stable through quiet stoicism.
When you contrast that with the opposite extreme going on in those glowing red sections of the NYC map, it just makes my head want to implode.
zzyzx
I’m trying to schedule booster shots and it’s not going very well right now.
The Orthodox Jew thing pisses me off because one thing that was drummed home to me in Hebrew School is that protecting your own health transcends following any religious tradition.
Kent
Here you go!
different-church-lady
@Layer8Problem: How do you saw off an island?
Layer8Problem
@Old School: Damn. I’m trying to remember where I read someone call him “the thinking [person’s] Monkee” in a review of some of his post-Monkee work. Probably the Village Voice.
trollhattan
In which I learn that Hallmark commissioned Dali to paint Christmas cards in 1960. Santa and melted clocks? Yes, please, plus much much more.
Guessing only your beatnik aunt and uncle would have dared send these out, and obviously they were your favorite relatives, if not necessarily your parents’ fav. (True fact: I received bongos as a Christmas gift when I was really small. Not sure which relative it was who wanted to punish my folks.)
cain
@brendancalling:
Watching all of them with crushing debt afterward – it will eventually become a problem for all of them. They can get vaccinated or they can take the risk of going bankrupt. Their GOP and evangelical leaders friends will not be able to help them because they are all ideologues and will not allow govt to help them.
NotMax
@Alce_e_ardillo
See also City of Joel.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: not interested in arguing about it since I gave you what I actually mean. I don’t really care whether the WHO waves a magic wand to make it “officially endemic”. It won’t affect any public policy or behavior.
Layer8Problem
@different-church-lady: It has to be done; between the Outerbridge Crossing and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge it’s just too well tethered.
different-church-lady
@Layer8Problem: Good point. But I would think a high-quality buckknife and some determination would get the job done in an afternoon.
Sure Lurkalot
@New Deal democrat:
You can’t assume all Blue States would do this. Colorado has a D trifecta and its governor will not issue statewide mandates of any kind. Today, he declared the emergency over and stated “it’s not health officials’ jobs to tell Coloradans to wear masks…and if you haven’t been vaccinated, it’s really your old darn fault.” Omicron? “We’ll wait to see how well vaccines and natural immunity hold up to it.”
So, it must be nice to live in NYC where you have a reasonable expectation that vaccine status is being checked before you go to the theater or a restaurant and mask wearing is mandated.
brendancalling
@cain: One of the most darkly amusing things about the HCAs is that so many of the nominees and awardees are professed Christians, and not a single one of them seems to have read the fucking Bible.
One of my favorites is their conception of God as a comic book hero like Batman—except instead of the Bat-Signal, they want their friends to “flood heaven with prayers,” to summon God to rescue them.
Another is when they use Jesus’s name to demand that God help them—as if God is THEIR servant, not the other way around.
Finally, there’s the “You’re all a bunch of sheep, I’m not a sheep” crap, which—well, just read Matthew 25:31-46.
I don’t have a lick of sympathy for them. Their orphaned kids, yes. But not the awardees and nominees.
Kent
@different-church-lady: The term “endemic” in a biological sense implies that something is a stable component of an ecosystem and basically part of the background noise. Athlete’s foot fungus is basically endemic. It is part of the background noise.
Covid is nothing like that at all. It is crossing the globe in waves leaving havoc in its wake. And then mutating and doing it again. There is nothing endemic about Covid.
different-church-lady
@Kent: Try replying with, “You’re right,” see what happens.
Bill
@Nora Lenderbee: Long Beach and Jones Beach are also off the map in Nassau county. The red (western) part of the Rockaways is where a lot of fire and police officers live. The eastern part is where there are a lot of housing projects: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/nyregion/how-new-york-citys-coastline-became-home-to-the-poor.html
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: I know. It’s not going to happen. Regardless, Jimmy can fuck himself.
Kelly
Oregon masking and vaccinations maps well to R vs D voting patterns down to the zip code level. At hardware, auto parts, tires and feed store masks are rare here in very Trumpy rural Oregon. More masks in grocery stores although it varies a lot from visit to visit. Went to Portland yesterday. Nearly universal masks indoors. Maybe even 10% masks on people walking the sidewalks.
different-church-lady
@Kent: I’ll bet you anything Mother Nature thinks it’s “endemic” right now. Death is just part of her background noise every day of the year.
Snark aside, thanks for putting a finer definition on the term for me.
Tazj
@Brachiator: Do you think the administration made a mistake in allowing insurance reimbursement for rapid at home tests but not more simply free tests? I think free tests will be available at some clinics but many Democrats believe we should cut out as much red tape as possible. I know the press really got on Jen Psaki for her answer to a NPR reporter who asked about free testing.
brendancalling
@Kent: I actually have been proposing the “Covid tent” for months now. Keep those nasty plague rats out of the waiting room, where they can infect others, and put them among their covid-comrades.
I do like the idea of the unvaccinated staff being the ones to work with the covid morons. Might help cull the herd a little bit too.
chopper
@Librarian:
i lived in brooklyn for a long time, i know the neighborhoods.
Major Major Major Major
@Kent: so like influenza. Is there a certain amount of time it has to behave this way to get the determination, like a “recession”? Or we know it when we see it?
pluky
@Annie: This is even more remarkable when one considers the much higher population density (which facilitates transmission) of SF.
Ohio Mom
The barrier island just south of Brooklyn and Queens is Rockaway and there is a sizable ultraorthodox community there.
They always live in groups because they have to be able to walk to shul on Shabbos and various holidays. How they manage to set up a community all at once has always puzzled me —how do you get that much available housing at the same time? With a building that can serve as a synagogue and school? They must plan long in advance and buy up properties slowly.
I wouldn’t hope for them culling themselves into anything near oblivion though. A small ultraorthodox family has six kids, getting into the double digits of offspring not unusual. How do they afford all those kids? WIC, SNAP, etc. is part of it.
NotMax
@Bill
May have changed but a thing Long Beach was known for was forbidding gas stations and graveyards within city limits.
cain
@brendancalling: They clearly just take everything from whatever right wing pastors/ministers and their “respected’ news outlets without a shred of independent thought. If they logically thought about it they could see all the fallacies but they don’t.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent: Holy right wing nut job, Batman! With emphasis on “nut job!”
Major Major Major Major
@Tazj: reimbursement vs free imposes a significant administrative burden and secret means test. I don’t know how much they can do without further appropriations though.
cain
@Kelly: In Seattle it’s even more so – masking outside, contact tracing app sent to your phone when you arrive in the city – they got quite the operation.
Kelly
@pluky: Most of the people in rural states live in small towns which results in small clusters of similar population density to those blue state Babylons.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Kent:
Wow, he is really committed to the bit.
different-church-lady
@cain:
Memo to self: turn phone off before traveling to Seattle.
Layer8Problem
@different-church-lady: Or less, if this is any indication. One just has to put one’s back into it.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
Yep, it is nuts and people are getting frazzled. I am fortunate that my close family and friends are smart about Covid. A good friend’s daughter recently got married. At first they got married via Zoom. So modern, so cute.
Later they had a ceremony for friends and family and the deal was that guests had to have a Covid test or be vaccinated. Period.
Here in Southern California, we are doing well, but there are areas of the state where people are being stupid.
Even though some people still whine about the vaccine, data indicates that even the whiners are quietly getting vaccinated. Some public sector employees who refused the vaccine have been fired, as was promised. Some of these people will have a hard time finding equivalent jobs.
Things are messy, but there has not been stupid panic over the Omicron variant.
Despite any negative nonsense in the media, Biden has been very good about the pandemic. It makes a big damn difference simply that he and Fauci are on the same page.
But the US and other countries still have to deal with the ignorance, mischief and stupidity of the Covid deniers, including governors like DeSantis.
I wish to hell that the press would ask DeSantis and other dopes hard questions about what they actually have to contribute to fighting the pandemic. But I am not holding my breath.
Anyway, I do see that people are holding on. I have a few friends who still try not to leave the house as much as possible. Others mask up and do what they can when in public.
We do what we can and hope for better days.
Steeplejack (phone)
Just had my first shower since Tuesday morning. Wanted to do zoomies around the house, but that is contraindicated.
It felt good to soak in the hot shower for a long time. My pain level is greatly reduced, although I’m still moving gingerly. Swelling has not gone down much, which seems kind of weird. I don’t remember anybody giving me a timeline for that.
I’m starting to think about going back to my modest rooms in Threadkill Lane tomorrow or Sunday. Key factor will be whether I can sit in the doughty Kia to drive.
JWR
Time to classify the anti-vax forces a domestic terrorism org.
Baud
@Kent:
Again, it’s always projection.
Leto
@Kent: @different-church-lady: Idk, maybe respond with Exodus 12:13:
“Sorry, Norm. God recognizes our mark and is passing over this house. We’re having a feast next Friday; let me know if you can bring chips…”
Matt McIrvin
@different-church-lady: There’s such an extreme variation of comfort levels.
I’ll tell you right now, among my close family, I am the insane COVID obsessive who drives them up the wall. It’s caused genuine friction that I am just not willing to do some stuff that other people are.
Then I go online and realize that compared to many of the people I see and talk to there, I am a heedless and pernicious plague rat. I know people who literally have not left their homes since spring 2020 except maybe for walks around the block and brief, absolutely necessary errands. For some, it’s a medical necessity because of immune issues. For others, it’s because they figure that anyone who doesn’t do that is helping to breed the doomsday variant.
And I read that stuff and ask myself if I should get much, much stricter with myself. Possibly for the rest of my life.
Jager
@Ruckus:
We live in Ventura County, I haven’t seen anyone in a business without a mask in a long time. Early on at Von’s one afternoon, a big guy was pushing his cart unmasked, the store manager a 5 foot , middle-aged, buzz cut blonde walked up to the guy, she said, “Where’s your mask?” he mumbled something about, ‘don’t need one.” She looked up at him, “In my store you do, leave your cart right here, and please leave!” He told her to piss off and left. She got a nice round of applause from her happy customers.
Brachiator
@Tazj:
I don’t know. I wish that the federal government and all the states would press for vaccine mandates, and then offer regular testing as an alternative. Then, yeah, making tests free or cheap and easily accessible would be a good thing.
Roger Moore
@Ohio Mom:
You don’t have to to it all at once. If there’s an established community, it can easily expand. If they’re moving to a completely new area, they can start small as long as one of the families has a rabbi. Once they’re established, new families just move into the same area until they have a substantial presence. Once they have enough of a presence, they start trying to force their neighbors to live by their rules.
Kent
@Major Major Major Major: Basically yes. If you say something is endemic then you are basically saying that it has reached some sort of stable background population state, which might be consistently stable year-round, or something that occurs in stable seasonal waves like say, mosquitos.
We might get to that point with Covid. Where it is just a predictable seasonal ailment like the flu or common cold. But we are nowhere near that point yet and no one can predict where Covid is going to be next month let alone next May or September. We can, however, guess with some degree of reliability what the flu is going to look like next May or September.
Layer8Problem
@Matt McIrvin: Geez, from the Wikipedia entry on it, I’d guess. Drat, one more thing onto the big stack of books . . .
Kent
@Brachiator: I don’t think tests need to be free, or mailed to each household. If they were completely free then people would waste them just like they do ketchup packets from McDonalds.. But you should be able to walk into any pharmacy or grocery and pick one up for a buck or two. That is how it is in many other countries. To make that happen here would require massive government subsidies. Which would be possible but complex to implement.
NotMax
@Kent
TacoTest trucks on every corner!//
Roger Moore
@Kelly:
Not really. Small towns tend to have higher population density than the raw density for the state would suggest, but they’re nothing like big cities. Those small towns still put houses on big lots, and they tend not to have many apartment houses, much less condo towers. Of course that, by itself, doesn’t matter that much. What matters is whether people are gathering regularly and whether they’re vaccinated, wearing masks, etc. It only takes a few minutes for a carrier to infect the people around them, so as long as people regularly congregate densely- at the store, at church, in school, etc.- they’re at risk.
Sherparick
@John Cole: Paul Campos today wrote on LGM that unvacinnated people presenting for care a Emergency Care should be turned away since people who are sick & need treatment for diseases that can’t be avoided by a simple vaccination or suffering & dying because these fools are clogging the hospitals. He has a point.
Kent
Also many rural areas that have dispersed low density population are also vulnerable to rapid Covid spread because they have choke points. You can live in the least densely populated part of eastern Oregon and have no neighbors for miles. But if everyone in the county shops at the same single grocery store and the one clerk there is a maskless Covid carrier who chats everyone up then within a week’s time everyone in the county can be exposed despite none of them living within a mile of each other.
There are other things like churches which also tend to concentrate disperse rural populations for efficient Covid spread.
geg6
@JeanneT:
Hey, in my book, you’re doing pretty well there. Here in Beaver County, PA, only 49% are fully vaxxed and something like 58% have one jab.
I hate it here. I had my complaints about this place before COVID but didn’t hate it. But I truly hate it here now. I can’t go anywhere and haven’t really been able to since the election of 2016 because of so many empowered assholes around here.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
It will affect public policy. It may affect behavior. It may not affect you because you are already taking reasonable steps or making whatever decisions you feel are appropriate.
Matt McIrvin
@Old School: Damn. Nesmith had a huger influence on the world of entertainment than the obituary even implies–his role in creating the world of music videos is probably his most significant contribution.
Another Scott
@Kent: Several local public library systems in the DC area are giving out free BinaxNOW boxes. IIRC, others here have mentioned similar things in their areas.
It’s a good start, but I wonder how many people know about it…
Cheers,
Scott.
geg6
@Old School:
Oh wow. Big fan here. RIP Mike.
Jinchi
The thing is, it’s not them until it’s literally them. They don’t think they’re making that trade at all.
Hard core right wingers have no sense of empathy. It’s why they can’t understand why anyone would want young healthy children to wear masks in a classroom with their middle aged teachers or immune compromised peers.
Covid is a fake problem that doesn’t affect people with superior immune systems. Like the 74 year old former guy, whose doctor told him he had such good genes he’d probably live to be 200 years old.
This is how they all view themselves until they end up in a covid ward. And while it does have a high fatality rate, it’s still really long odds that you, in particular, will die, even if you catch it. If they don’t die, it simply confirms their belief in their own superiority (non-fatal consequences be damned.)
Matt McIrvin
@Jinchi: These people have spent the last 40 years being trained not to be able to think about collective-action problems.
geg6
@Layer8Problem:
Dude had many talents, only one small portion of which was his work with the Monkees.
Sherparick
@John Cole: Paul Campos today wrote on LGM that unvacinnated people presenting for care a Emergency Care should be turned away since people who are sick & need treatment for diseases that can’t be avoided by a simple vaccination or suffering & dying because these fools are clogging the hospitals. He has a point.
@brendancalling: Also could not agree more.
Tony Gerace
If I’m reading that map correctly, Staten Island is apparently the Alabama of New York City. What a surprise.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: Ok, just the first sentence then, since I’m not really interested in arguing about this either :)
Roger Moore
@Jinchi:
This is the thing. If you took good care of yourself, you’d have a strong immune system that would defend you. That you got sick is evidence of a moral failing. Of course that’s all out the window the moment they get sick.
Jim Appleton
@Another Scott: Speaking of F1 (autosport, not rocket engine), any BJers as hooked as I am, and enjoying the tie going into the season finale Sunday in Abu Dhabi?
Tony Gerace
@Kent: That’s right. Very few people in sparsely populated area are actually spending all their time alone huntin, fishin and growin their own food. That is another myth that they choose to believe. When I worked at IBM in upstate New York I worked with a lot of guys who lived in the middle of nowhere — but would drive 70 miles every morning to gather side by side with others in an office.
Matt McIrvin
@Tony Gerace: Also, that farmers are self-sufficient.
OGLiberal
@Nora Lenderbee: The map wouldn’t include Long Beach, Jones Beach…Nassau County, not NYC. The East end of that island is the Rockaways, the West End of the Island is Breezy Point – kind of an all white, gated community for Irish cops/retired cops. Staten Island is pretty much a retirement village for NYPD/NYFD. The blue spots are either non-white, diverse, or relatively wealthy, post-high school educated folks – mostly white but with some diversity. That Trumpy area in the middle of Queens is pretty much where Trump is from and the Trumpy area in South Brooklyn is Irish/Italian/Russian “real Americans”. Agree with the commenter above re: Williamsburg. It’s not the “gentrifiers”, it’s the Orthodox Jewish community that has been there forever.
I went to college in Nassau County and do agree that it’s going the way of Suffolk County – white flight and all that.
Ruckus
@gene108:
In life one always has to live with stupidity. Be it ingrained or taught, stupidity will always be around. And we have, in humanity, another often seen default, “I want what I want, when I want it, and you can’t make me.” faux news has been built to bring out the worst in some people, because the worst builds them a support group, who pay them, even if unknowingly, and gets their short sighted bullshit out in the wild. I wonder if maybe there was a bet somewhere, like the one supposedly between Heinlein and Hubbard in which Heinlein bet Hubbard $1.00 that he could not write a best selling science fiction book and we ended up with scientology. Except that faux news/conservative bullshit may actually be worse than scientology. Both want to take over humanity, but one is easier for more to swallow. Your choice which one is which.
Major Major Major Major
@Kent: Thanks!
Jinchi
I have an 80 year old relative living in a remote area. She took all the recommended precautions and was fully vaccinated. Then she fell at home and had to be sent to a rehab center. One where the staff are about 60% unvaccinated.
I expect you know where this is heading. The entire facility is on lockdown. Despite the patients being universally vaccinated, pretty much every one caught covid. Some severely. Fortunately, she seems to be doing okay, but others, not so much.
Kevin
The hits keep coming for us in MO. The “show me state” did a study whether masks actually help (spoiler alert they do) and when the study was finished our Trumpy red government didn’t bother to release the findings. But I’m sure people will still vote red next time even though they’ve done nothing substantial to protect the residents. I don’t get it.
Brachiator
@Kent:
Good points. They should also be easy to administer.
Also, people need quick access to clear, easy to understand recommendations for “What should I do if I test positive for Covid.”
Chief Oshkosh
@Brachiator:
Makes perfect sense. Ultimately, policymaking will be affected if enough people “care” more about vaccinated than unvaccinated people. Whether formalized or not, there are already stories floating around of various healthcare providers and organizations basing triage on vaccination status.
Gretchen
My son-in-law is a respiratory therapist in Staten Island, the large plague-ridden island on the lower left. He’s worked through the worst of it. He helped a nurse intubate their first COVID patient in early 2020. The nurse died. He got one mask that he had to keep in a paper bag between shifts. It’s been bad all along. He just started computer classes and plans to get the hell out of the profession ASAP.
Kelly
@Kent:
Yep. That’s what I was thinking about but did not manage to write.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: I don’t know how aware people are of this (or how hard it is to use), but NYC says they’ll give you a hotel room if you can’t adequately isolate in your own home, which is pretty neat.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: In all three cases the red spots in Brooklyn represent the International Hasidic Zone (mostly Williamsburg) and Russian immigrants (Sheepshead bay etc.) They vote Republican and believe that God will protect them.
They’re white, but only marginally gentrifiers. Most of them don’t have that much money.
Gretchen
@Layer8Problem: Yes, my very liberal daughter and son-in-law live in Staten Island because that’s where his family lives and they were able to get a house at a fairly reasonable price, compared to crazy Brooklyn prices.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kent:
WTF?? If only.
Getting a free vaccine and wearing a mask indoors in public spaces is “suffering and deprivation”? What a fucking whiner.
And this doesn’t even scratch the surface of the whole “it’s how people ended up in camps and massacred!” Yeah, none of those people were willfully killing their fellow citizens.
Fuck Norm. But he does have a point. He’s and his ilk have decided to behave in subhuman ways, and yep!, some humans are noticing and acting accordingly.
OGLiberal
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: I’ve had plenty of experience with Russian immigrants from South Brooklyn….they do not like brown people. At all. And they are not shy about it. Those who have lived here long enough – and that’s many of them – thought Rudy was the bestest mayor ever. And the non-Jewish ones kind of like Putin.
Layer8Problem
@Gretchen: Life’s more complicated than simple up-down binary reductionism-by-locality. In central West Virginia dealing with my mom’s affairs I worked with an elder-qualified lawyer with a Ruth Bader Ginsberg poster on her office wall and an RBG bobble-head doll on the desk. She said “yep, they all know me here and I’ve been here too long for them to throw me out.”
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Yep, that is not too bad at all.
Not aware of anything like that in Los Angeles County.
Chief Oshkosh
@Jim Appleton: I’m not addicted anymore, but I followed F1 for decades. My interest started to fall off when coverage moved from Speed/SpeedTV with the great team of Hobbs/Varsha/Matchett commentating to NBC with Varsha being replaced by some Aussie, then finally to the current dreck commentators the come with the package that ESPN bought
Thanks for the reminder about that upcoming race, though.
smith
The value of population density for predicting vulnerability to covid has pretty much been turned on its head, especially since the advent of vaccines and delta. The CDC has a pandemic vulnerability index that uses a number of variables, many of which are closely related to metropolitan status, that tend to predict that cities would be the covid hellscapes, but, especially since the beginning of this summer, metropolitan areas have done strikingly better on both cases and deaths. Just looking at their vulnerability map of IL counties, you’d predict that Chicago and its burbs would be the hardest hit in the state, but since June those areas have had the lowest per capita case and death rates. The cultural/political factors that lead to U.S. cities having higher vax rates and more compliance with mitigation efforts seem to have much greater weight than population density, pollution levels, etc.
sab
@Roger Moore: Our local just front-paged a newlywed unvaxed coupke. She got Covid like flu. He got Covid really bad, months in hospital, almost died. I give them credit for going so public with their story. “Just get the damn vaccine.”
But the thing is, she is in her early thirties, but he is in his mid-fifties. I don’t care how healthy you are, mid-fifties is a risk factor already.
Matt McIrvin
@Chief Oshkosh:
There is a good chance that before we’re fully out of this, Republicans will take over the federal government again. At that point, I’d expect a large amount of legal-regulatory coddling of the unvaccinated to happen just as political red meat. I would not be surprised if we see a federal ban on public and private vaccine mandates, maybe a ban on mask mandates a well, and laws requiring health care and coverage to refrain from discriminating against the unvaccinated, or even requiring it to favor the unvaccinated (rationing of treatment drugs, etc.) There also might be an end to subsidized COVID vaccination, and efforts to restrict the supply in Democratic areas.
rikyrah
@Annie:
London Breed has been a leader from the beginning on COVID.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
I hope not, but yeah it is possible. This is why it is important for the press to put hard questions to red state governors and federal politicians about how they would handle public health policy.
The Democrats should also be doing this.
And instead of simply disagreeing with anti-fax friends in social media, ask them hard questions as well.
The right wing has drifted or dived into anti-science irrationality with respect to Covid.
I hear some conservatives insist that what people do about Covid is about personal responsibility. Based on what information, obtained how?
This kind of thing is an empty avowal of philosophy. It has nothing to do with facts or science.
Conservative governors are against mask mandates, vaccine mandates, etc. What are they for? How do they propose to fight the pandemic?
Conservative governors want to keep schools open. What are they doing to make schools safe for students, teachers and workers? Have they spent money to renovate classrooms or to install better ventilation?
I think a front pager might have quoted some Republican idiot politician who noted that hundreds of thousands of people die from cancer each year, but we don’t shut down the economy for that.
Of course, the logical response would be that cancer ain’t contagious.
But some right wing politicians seem to think that any number of deaths from Covid is acceptable as long as society can continue as normal. If they believe this, make them say it and put this on the record.
The right wing should not be allowed to pretend that they are presenting an alternative approach to dealing with the pandemic.
Everyone should hold them accountable. Otherwise, we let them get away with selling snake oil instead of real help.
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin: This is the thing that keeps me up at night. I genuinely believe now that the next time the republicans control the house, the senate, and the presidency, they’re just gonna start trying to kill us all.
Ruckus
@Kent:
I like your wife and friends concept of idiot care.
First, they are idiots, so they should be treated like it.
Second, they are idiots, so their doctors can be idiots as well, it’s fitting.
Third, I’d bet it reduces the number of idiots faster and easier than 12-20 yrs of schooling ever did. And improves the lives of those who have learned not to be idiots. Of course there will be a cost to those they tearfully leave behind, but it seems that people will be able to live with that.
Ken
I think there’s some obscure British law that lets him use nuclear weapons without restriction, so it evens out.
EDIT: After checking Google, it’s the Duke of Cornwall who may have that right; a title currently held by Prince Charles.
Woodrow/asim
That’s not how their empathy works. Think of it as a “Black Best Friend” situation.
Right-wing “ethics” are about who’s in, and who’s out. Only the right people — and who is “right” is highly variable, but is almost always centered on Wealthy White Men — are to be trusted. They’ll “get along” with others, so long as we don’t push their fragile boundaries or bruise their tender egos.
They’ll have empathy for me, unless/until I push back hard enough. They have empathy for kids, until they are told that whatever they want to do — shoot guns, not wear masks — is impacted by the life those kids, and the teachers/staff who work with them, deserve to live. The limits of their empathy are so thin, it’s a risk for any marginalized person or group to put any trust into that empathy.
This (relative) unpredictability is at the heart of why they can be so manipulated by certain forces that prey on their insecurities, and thus challenging for others to engage. Why it’s so is a whole other item, and I need to go figure out dinner. :)
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan:
They already started last time. Long ago, really. They think we’ll take it lying down. That was why the George Floyd protests freaked them out so much–people actually cared about a Black man dying. That’s why they want to legally run over protesters and Stand Their Ground. That’s why Trump and Kushner decided to intercept PPE shipments.
The funny thing is they kill their own too, in the process. They don’t give a shit about that for some reason. Blue Lives Matter but when the cops start dying of COVID, they’re martyrs for freedom, somehow.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator:
If they really believed that they’d be exhorting their own to behave in responsible ways, to prove that mandates and shutdowns aren’t necessary–voluntary action would be enough. But I don’t see them doing that. I see them doing the opposite.
H-Bob
The Tree of Freedumb must be regularly watered by the mucus of MAGA saps.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Roger Moore:@Kelly: Small town are not nearly as dense. Going to the grocery store down the street, I will come into contact with more different people in an hour than some rural folks do in a week. Plus, there are more of a closed loop, with few people venturing very far outside those communities. Some of these in Missouri small towns didn’t have their first case until the end of the summer in 2020. That contributed to their furor about the restrictions and believing that it wasn’t a real threat.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
RE: I hear some conservatives insist that what people do about Covid is about personal responsibility. Based on what information, obtained how?
It is not about behaving responsibly. The “moderately” conservative hosts of a local talk radio station begin by rejecting the authority of the CDC and that of the local Los Angeles County public health officer. They hate the idea of government telling them what to do.
Next, they believe that letting each individual decide for themselves is properly allowing for liberty and personal responsibility.
The emphasis is not on the outcome, surviving the pandemic, but on the process, and being free to choose for yourself.
They then over-emphasize any error or inconsistency or uncertainty in a CDC or local public health decision as proof that the Big Bad Authorities are not just fallible, but definitively wrong.
The then wave a magic wand and conclude that since they believe in liberty and personal responsibility, letting people decide for themselves will ultimately let them arrive at the right choice.
In sum, conservative values is stronger than a virus.
Also, I read a couple of articles at the Reason, libertarian site, that straight up acknowledged that vaccines work, but that people should still be free to get vaccinated or refuse vaccination. They pretty much preferred liberty to life, and said so openly.
There is also a total refusal to accept any responsibility for helping society or other people other than immediate family.
SteveinPHX
Same
@Another Scott:
Same thing being done here in Maricopa County, AZ. Libraries giving them out.
cain
@Brachiator:
When it’s run by Democrats – as soon as it is GOP – they’ll listen and then yell at everyone else for not falling in line.
Matt McIrvin
@cain: Not even! Trump convinced them to reject advice from the CDC even when it was run by his appointee Redfield. He was undermining his own administration.
Brachiator
@cain:
RE: It is not about behaving responsibly. The “moderately” conservative hosts of a local talk radio station begin by rejecting the authority of the CDC and that of the local Los Angeles County public health officer. They hate the idea of government telling them what to do.
This is true to some extent. But the GOP has abandoned any pretense at rationality or belief in experts.
So, Trump the monster fought with and tried to undermine the CDC’s medical authority and substitute his own ego driven snake oil salesman stupidity. You still have morons resorting to the useless “cures” that Trump recommended.
Florida Governor DeSantis appears to have appointed an insane charlatan as his state public health director.
And DeSantis is abusing the power of government to enforce his will, even though individuals and businesses have determined that he is an idiot with respect to dealing with the pandemic.
And here in California, the Covid deniers still fume because they were unable to recall Governor Newsom. Their preferred candidate, talk radio nutcase Larry Elder, was hot to eliminate any state authority related to fighting the pandemic.
wenchacha
@Kent: Probably not ethical, but it seems sensible.
Jim Appleton
@Chief Oshkosh: Agreed. I’ve only ever watched ESPN with the sound off.
Currently, due to work, I can only monitor BBC text, then watch delayed YouTube highlights.
In any case, hale and we’ll met.
What a season this has been in F1.
Greatly looking forward to next year with Russel in the Merc.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: It is very close to insisting that you should be free to shoot people in public. But to a large extent they believe that too.
barbequebob
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
The Rockaway Peninsula is south of Brooklyn but part of Queens. The area you are talking about is Belle Harbor and Breezy Point, where the NYPD and NYFD not on Staten Island live.