Coronavirus, Monkeypox, and Other Contagious Diseases

[LFC]

Jul 6, 2021 16:21:22 GMT goldenvalley said:

I understand the impulse to say that some folks shouldn't be treated for COVID when they insist it isn't real, but public health concerns are more important than psychic vengeance.

How about we set up special wards for those rejecting treatment for COVID, isolated and without ventilators or Remdesivir. If they insist that this is just the flu then fluids, antivirals, and a bed should be sufficient. (I'm joking ... kinda'.)

[LFC]

Yep, lots of reasons we can't have nice things. Who raised these self-important, entitled, rude little brats?

It was the flight from hell. Travelers heading from Charlotte, North Carolina, to the Bahamas on Monday had to switch planes because of a mechanical issue—and then their American Airlines flight was canceled altogether when a large group of students from a Boston-area high school refused to wear masks. “It was bad. First, they were yelling. They were cursing. They were being very obnoxious,” said passenger Malik Banks, who was seated next to the group of 30 students. Masks are still required on flights due to COVID-19. “All they had to do was follow the rules, put the mask on, sit there. No smart-mouth comments. And they couldn’t do it,” passenger Christina Randolph said. The flight was ultimately delayed until Tuesday, ruining some people’s vacations. No one was arrested and stranded passengers received a hotel voucher. The students, however, were too young to get their own hotel rooms, so they had to spend the night at the airport.

[LFC]

The Wuhan lab leak theory is still not universally accepted, not by a long shot.

Over the last few months, the theory that the novel coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory has been gathering momentum after initially being ridiculed as a zany example of tinfoil-hattery last year—but a group of scientists have had enough of the growing speculation.

Writing for The Lancet, the same group of researchers who in February 2020 described the lab leak idea as a baseless conspiracy theory said that they haven’t changed their minds. In fact, they state that recent studies have only bolstered their belief that the virus evolved naturally.

The lab leak theory has snowballed this year, particularly after President Joe Biden ordered a fresh effort from his intelligence officials to determine how the pandemic began, including a serious evaluation of the possibility that it broke out of a lab in Wuhan in the final months of 2019.

But, despite more and more people taking the lab leak theory seriously, this eminent group of scientists wrote in The Lancet that there’s still no evidence for it. In February 2020, they dismissed the lab leak origin as a “conspiracy theory,” and cited a string of academic papers to back up their belief that the coronavirus “originated in wildlife” before infecting millions.

In the article published Monday, they said the natural origin theory has become more credible—not less.

The group of scientists wrote: “We believe the strongest clue from new, credible, and peer-reviewed evidence in the scientific literature is that the virus evolved in nature, while suggestions of a laboratory-leak source of the pandemic remain without scientifically validated evidence that directly supports it in peer-reviewed scientific journals.”

The experts actually seem pretty angry about government officials lending credibility to the theory, writing at one point: “Allegations and conjecture are of no help, as they do not facilitate access to information and objective assessment of the pathway from a bat virus to a human pathogen that might help to prevent a future pandemic. Recrimination has not, and will not, encourage international cooperation and collaboration.”

[Bact PhD]

Jul 6, 2021 16:21:22 GMT goldenvalley said:

Life as a nurse in Covid Denial Land. 

The pandemic had hit late but hard in the Appalachian highlands — the mountainous region that includes Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee — and over the winter many of its victims had ended up on ventilators tended by Boucher and her fellow nurses at Johnston Memorial Hospital.

They were enduring the traumas known to ICU workers across the world: days filled with death, nights ruined by dreams in which they found themselves at infected patients’ bedsides without masks. But they were also enduring a trauma that many doctors and nurses elsewhere were not: the suspicion and derision of those they risked their lives to protect.

Conspiracy theories about the pandemic and lies recited on social media — or at White House news conferences — had penetrated deep into their community. When refrigerated trailers were brought in to relieve local hospitals’ overflowing morgues, people said they were stage props. Agitated and unmasked relatives stood outside the ICU insisting that their intubated relatives only had the flu. Many believed the doctors and nurses hailed elsewhere for their sacrifices were conspiring to make money by falsifying covid-19 diagnoses.

I understand the impulse to say that some folks shouldn't be treated for COVID when they insist it isn't real, but public health concerns are more important than psychic vengeance.

This is the piece I was referring to.

Here's where it gets PERSONAL. Not only do I have close friends who have been dealing with this shit in their professional settings, I have close relatives who have consumed waaaayyy too much of the Faux News/Facebook/YouTube Kool-Aid and have been screeching from the get-go about how COVID is a hoax, they've been inflating the numbers, the vaccine is bogus, yada, yada, yada. Whereas Mommie Dearest and everyone in the PhD household, including the 16-year-old, got the vaccine as soon as they could under the rules in place, these relatives steadfastly refuse to even consider the notion. Mommie Dearest has been frustrated with this refusal for some months ("I don't understand what they're thinking"), as she is NOT inclined to let her unvaccinated, mask-refusing offspring anywhere near the residential retirement community, even though said offspring would like to come down to help out. Neither my attempts to pin the continuing stubbornness on this branch getting their info from Facebook/YouTube/Faux nor Dear Daughter's snark about how this branch had simply gone loco was well-received. Well, Mommie Dearest read this piece earlier today and felt the need to ask whether I had (no, but I had received the notification and intended to do so shortly). Thus saith Mommie Dearest: This explains a lot about what's going on with your sibling, et al.

Ya think???

(Bact PhD engages in yet more facepalming)

(I've been resisting the urge to screech, WTF do you think I've been trying to tell you for the last FIVE MONTHS??!??)

[jackd]

It's hard to resist smackin' them alongside the head!

[goldenvalley]

Jul 7, 2021 0:39:24 GMT Bact PhD said:

Jul 6, 2021 16:21:22 GMT goldenvalley said:

Life as a nurse in Covid Denial Land. 
I understand the impulse to say that some folks shouldn't be treated for COVID when they insist it isn't real, but public health concerns are more important than psychic vengeance.

This is the piece I was referring to.

Here's where it gets PERSONAL. Not only do I have close friends who have been dealing with this shit in their professional settings, I have close relatives who have consumed waaaayyy too much of the Faux News/Facebook/YouTube Kool-Aid and have been screeching from the get-go about how COVID is a hoax, they've been inflating the numbers, the vaccine is bogus, yada, yada, yada. Whereas Mommie Dearest and everyone in the PhD household, including the 16-year-old, got the vaccine as soon as they could under the rules in place, these relatives steadfastly refuse to even consider the notion. Mommie Dearest has been frustrated with this refusal for some months ("I don't understand what they're thinking"), as she is NOT inclined to let her unvaccinated, mask-refusing offspring anywhere near the residential retirement community, even though said offspring would like to come down to help out. Neither my attempts to pin the continuing stubbornness on this branch getting their info from Facebook/YouTube/Faux nor Dear Daughter's snark about how this branch had simply gone loco was well-received. Well, Mommie Dearest read this piece earlier today and felt the need to ask whether I had (no, but I had received the notification and intended to do so shortly). Thus saith Mommie Dearest: This explains a lot about what's going on with your sibling, et al.

Ya think???

(Bact PhD engages in yet more facepalming)

(I've been resisting the urge to screech, WTF do you think I've been trying to tell you for the last FIVE MONTHS??!??)

Your frustration leaps out of the screen.  And they're thinking all that book learning' BactPhD did has addled her brain.

[andydp]

[AnBr]

Life in Stupid America

[andydp]

Jul 9, 2021 12:03:08 GMT AnBr said:

Life in Stupid America

Darwin.

[RichTBikkies]

Jul 9, 2021 12:03:08 GMT AnBr said:

Life in Stupid America

It burns.

[LFC]

Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Episode 3,187

Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House chief medical adviser, on Sunday expressed his dismay when asked about audience members at the Conservative Political Action Conference cheering on COVID-19 vaccine refusal.

Appearing on CNN, Fauci noted the jarring rates of vaccine hesitancy in red states and argued that getting vaccinated shouldn’t be seen as a political issue.

“It’s a public health issue. It doesn’t matter who you are. The virus doesn’t know whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican or an independent. For sure, we know that,” Fauci said. “And yet there is that divide of people wanting to get vaccinated and not wanting to get vaccinated, which is really unfortunate, because it’s losing lives.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper then pressed Fauci on his response to Alex Berenson — a former New York Times reporter who regularly appears on Fox News to peddle misleading claims on COVID-19 vaccines — gleefully touting to the CPAC crowd that the federal government can’t “sucker 90 percent of the population” into getting inoculated against the infectious disease that has killed more than 600,000 Americans.

Fauci replied that he finds the CPAC crowd’s reaction to Berenson’s remarks “horrifying.”

“I mean, they are cheering about someone saying that it’s a good thing for people not to try and save their lives,” Fauci said. “I mean, if you just unpack that for a second, Jake, it’s almost frightening to say, hey, guess what, we don’t want you to do something to save your life. Yay. Everybody starts screaming and clapping.”

“I just don’t get that. And I don’t think that anybody who is thinking clearly can get that. What is that all about? I don’t understand that,” Fauci said.

Berenson’s remarks at CPAC come a week after the country failed to meet President Biden’s vaccination goal of 70% by July 4.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger is gobsmacked.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) on Sunday called out his Republican colleagues who turned President Biden’s initiative of sending people door-to-door trying to get more people vaccinated into a fear-mongering tactic aimed at discouraging more Americans from getting vaccinated against COVID-19.

During an interview on CNN, Kinzinger was pressed on his Republican colleagues’ outrage over Biden’s door-to-door outreach initiative to encourage more COVID-19 vaccinations. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) invoked Nazi-era imagery while mocking the Biden administration’s initiative.

Last week, Boebert painted Biden’s door-to-door vaccinators as “needle Nazis.” Greene similarly likened officials carrying out Biden’s latest vaccination initiative to Nazi-era “brown shirts,” just weeks after issuing an overdue apology for “offensive” comments she made that likened the House’s mask mandate to the Holocaust.

Kinzinger — who has emerged as a vocal critic of former President Trump and was among the 10 House Republicans that voted to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection” — took aim at his colleagues who invoked Nazi-era imagery to discourage vaccinations during an interview on CNN.

“It’s absolute insanity,” Kinzinger said. “Now, what President Biden said — and maybe he could have said it slightly different — is, we’re willing to come to your house to give you the vaccine. At no point was anybody saying they’re going to break down your door and jam a vaccine in your arm, despite your protest.”

Kinzinger added that his GOP colleagues’ fear-mongering tactic shows the “outrage politics” that the Republican Party has increasingly embraced.

“And it’s going to get Americans killed. Our party has been hijacked. My party has been hijacked,” Kinzinger said. “It is on its way to the ground.”

Kinzinger went on to blast his colleagues who have risen to prominence by espousing rhetoric that endangers Americans’ lives before urging Republican voters to dismiss Greene’s outlandish claims.

“Listen, if you are a Republican voter, do not listen to people like Marjorie Taylor Greene. The vaccine is safe. COVID is real,” Kinzinger said, noting that Greene bragged about the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” that led to the creation of COVID-19 vaccines.

Kinzinger demanded that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and other GOP leaders to call out “these garbage politicians, these absolute clown politicians playing on your vaccine fears for their own selfish gain.”

[LFC]

The GOP is simply insane (paywalled).

The Conservative Political Action Conference over the weekend provided lots of concerning examples of just how dystopian Republican fearmongering around the COVID-19 vaccine has become.

A crowd of attendees broke out into maniacal cheers after Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter who’s become a staple of vaccine hesitancy on Fox News, exclaimed that the country hadn’t reached the 90 percent vaccinated adults threshold.

Conservative, Trumpy Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) at one point over the weekend warned that the Biden administration’s new door-to-door effort to educate the vaccine hesitant in under-vaccinated communities would lead to further government overreach — in the form of some boogeyman coming to your door to steal your “Bibles” and your “guns.”

“The thing about the mechanisms they would have to build to be able to actually execute that massive of a thing — and then think about what those mechanisms could be used for. They could then go door-to-door to take your guns. They could then go door-to-door to take your Bibles,” he said during an interview with the Right Side Broadcast Network. (These “mechanisms” that Cawthorn is referring to are essentially already in place in the U.S. — that’s how the Census is conducted, for example.)

This weekend hysteria over the vaccine comes as Republican state legislatures around the U.S. are proposing legislation that protects the unvaccinated from “discrimination.” As Axios reported, many of these bills mirror language used to protect people from discrimination based on race, gender and religion. Some states are pushing for laws that prevent businesses from treating unvaccinated costumers differently than the vaxxed. Others seek to ban the concept of a “vaccine passport” in the state. The White House has maintained for months it will not enact any type of federal vaccination mandate.

In states like Montana, the language of the new law literally mentions an “immunity passport” and prevents businesses from refusing to serve people who don’t have the shot. Most bills in other state are a bit more limited in scope, but a common thread that Axios noted in its report: many of the states considering these laws preventing vaccine requirements have much lower vaccination rates than other states. And cases are on the rise in some of them.

Nearly all of this vaccine hesitancy and vaccine fear mongering is rooted in politics. But the nation knows just how bad this can get if herd immunity isn’t reached — spikes in death and hospitalizations, like what we’re seeing in Arkansas, one of the lowest vaccinated states in the country.

[Rue Bella]

drtomfrieden.medium.com/for-many-covid-survivors-the-battle-isnt-over-a8a209e9dfc

(Long Covid - what percent will never recover?)

Although we don’t know for certain how many people are suffering from lasting symptoms, the numbers we do have are striking. Studies suggest it may be between 1 in 10 to more than half of those infected with Covid. In the UK as of June 6, 2021, an estimated 962,000 people (1.5% of the population) reported symptoms persisting more than four weeks after their suspected infection, with 178,000 (18.5%) reporting that their ability to undertake day-to-day activities had been “limited a lot” by their symptoms. Further, 385,000 people reported ongoing symptoms more than a year after their initial Covid illness. Even with so many people suffering from long Covid, many questions remain unanswered.

A new study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases monitored 96 adult in- and out-patients in Germany for 12 months after their Covid symptoms started. After a year, only 23% of these patients were completely free of symptoms. More than half experienced fatigue and reduced exercise capacity. Close to 40% experienced shortness of breath, concentration problems and problems finding words, and 26% percent experienced sleeping problems. Long Covid isn’t just a problem for the elderly or immunocompromised — the study shows that some symptoms were much more prevalent in patients younger than 60.

So far, we understand that long Covid symptoms can persist for at least a year after infection and can reduce quality of life significantly. The most effective way to avoid both severe illness and long Covid is vaccination.

[LFC]

I believe that decades from now they'll still be documenting the impacts of "long COVID." People who never even knew they had it will find themselves suffering in later life.

[LFC]

Republicans are completely willing to sicken and murder teenagers in their worship of Dear Leader. This is beyond sick. No vaccine denying Republican should ever be able to show up in any place where there are normal people without being called out as the death cult pariah that they are.

Dr. Michelle Fiscus, who served as the medical director for vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programs at the Tennessee Department of Health, was ousted on Monday after state Republican lawmakers attacked her for a recent memo on giving teens the COVID-19 vaccine.

Fiscus told the Tennessean that her firing was triggered by the lawmakers’ outrage over the agency’s push to get teens vaccinated.

“It was my job to provide evidence-based education and vaccine access so that Tennesseans could protect themselves against COVID-19,” the former official said. “I have now been terminated for doing exactly that.”

The Tennessean reported that Fiscus’s termination letter did not explain why she was being fired.

Bill Christian, the associate director of the health department’s communications office, told TPM in an email that the agency “cannot comment on HR or personnel matters.”

[Rue Bella]

Not just anti COVID vaccines. Bold mine.  These people are not just nuts, but evil. Not news, I know.

www.tennessean.com/story/news/health/2021/07/13/tennessee-halts-all-vaccine-outreach-minors-not-just-covid-19/7928701002/

Tennessee abandons vaccine outreach to minors — not just for COVID-19


The Tennessee Department of Health will halt all adolescent vaccine outreach – not just for coronavirus, but all diseases – amid pressure from Republican state lawmakers, according to an internal report and agency emails obtained by the Tennessean. If the health department must issue any information about vaccines, staff are instructed to strip the agency logo off the documents.

The health department will also stop all COVID-19 vaccine events on school property, despite holding at least one such event this month. The decisions to end vaccine outreach and school events come directly from Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey, the internal report states.

Additionally, the health department will take steps to ensure it no longer sends postcards or other notices reminding teenagers to get their second dose of the coronavirus vaccines. Postcards will still be sent to adults, but teens will be excluded from the mailing list so the postcards are not “potentially interpreted as solicitation to minors,” the report states.

[LFC]

Jul 13, 2021 22:41:00 GMT Rue Bella said:

Not just anti COVID vaccines. Bold mine.  These people are not just nuts, but evil. Not news, I know.

www.tennessean.com/story/news/health/2021/07/13/tennessee-halts-all-vaccine-outreach-minors-not-just-covid-19/7928701002/

A lightbulb just went off. I bet you that the Christianist objection to the HPV vaccine (you know, the vaccine that encourages "unspoiled" girls to be sluts) is quietly being brought up in back rooms.

[LFC]

The wisdom of Nirvana.

[AnBr]

[goldenvalley]

Southwest Missouri is having more COVID cases now than they did several months ago.  The medical personnel are getting hammered and disillusioned.

That they are in this position despite the wide availability of vaccines turns difficult days into unbearable ones. As bad as the winter surge was, Springfield’s health-care workers shared a common purpose of serving their community, Steve Edwards, the president and CEO of CoxHealth, told me. But now they’re “putting themselves in harm’s way for people who’ve chosen not to protect themselves,” he said. While there were always ways of preventing COVID-19 infections, Missourians could have almost entirely prevented this surge through vaccination—but didn’t. “My sense of hope is dwindling,” Tracy Hill, a nurse at Mercy, told me. “I’m losing a little bit of faith in mankind. But you can’t just not go to work.”

The grueling slog is harder now because it feels so needless, and because many patients don’t realize their mistake until it’s too late. On Tuesday, Hill spoke with an elderly man who had just been admitted and was very sick. “He said, ‘I’m embarrassed that I’m here,’” she told me. “He wanted to talk about the vaccine, and in the back of my mind I’m thinking, You have a very high likelihood of not leaving the hospital.” Other patients remain defiant. “We had someone spit in a nurse’s eye because she told him he had COVID and he didn’t believe her,” Edwards said.

Some health-care workers are starting to resent their patients—an emotion that feels taboo. “You’re just angry,” Coulter said, “and you feel guilty for getting angry, because they’re sick and dying.” Others are indignant on behalf of loved ones who don’t already have access to the vaccines. “I’m a mom of a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old, and the daughter of family members in Zimbabwe and South Africa who can’t get vaccinated yet,” says Matifadza Hlatshwayo Davis, who works at a Veterans Affairs hospital in St. Louis. “I’m frustrated, angry, and sad.”

[pnwguy]

[LFC]

So much for vaccine requirements. It sounds like they were a bit half-assed.

More than 1,000 coronavirus infections have been linked to a music festival in the Netherlands earlier this month in a blow that comes weeks after the country had lifted most lockdown measures because new infections were dropping.

Organizers of the two-day Verknipt festival have insisted that the 20,000 people who attended the event in Utrecht earlier this month were required to show proof using a QR code that they were vaccinated, had recently recovered from a coronavirus infection, or had a negative COVID-19 test.

Dutch News first reported that in spite of the “test for entry” efforts, roughly 1,050 people attendees have since tested positive for COVID. The staggering total is expected to continue to climb in the coming days.

“We cannot say that all these people were infected at the festival itself,” Utrecht’s regional health board spokesman Lennart van Trigt said, according to CNBC. “It could also be possible that they’ve been infected while traveling to the festival or in the evening before going to the festival or having an after-party.”

Attendees were permitted to test for COVID-19 up to 40 hours before the event, leaving a potential opening for festival-goers to contract the virus while visiting friends and going to bars and clubs before the event had started, van Trigt said.

“We’ve found out now that this period is too long,” he added.

Recently vaccinated people, who may still have been susceptible to the virus, were also allowed into the festival—even though it takes weeks after a jab to reach full immunity.

“We were a bit too trigger happy,” van Trigt said.

[LFC]

The self-important Meghan McCain, whose entire qualification list for much of anything is being a member of the lucky sperm club, continues to be self-important.

The morning after 18-year-old pop star Olivia Rodrigo took the White House podium to urge young people across the country to stop being so selfish and get the COVID-19 vaccine, another influencer of sorts revealed that she too would have liked to play a similar role in the Biden administration.

“There’s lots of different demographics that are vaccine hesitant for a lot of reasons, and we need to be reaching out to people in lots of different ways,” Meghan McCain said Thursday on The View. “I’m going to say it again, I don’t think the White House is doing a good job reaching out to Republicans. I don’t. I’ve offered my help. They haven’t accepted it. They don’t care.”

With her comments, McCain, who is leaving The View at the end of this month, seemed to confirm a story from a View “insider” that first appeared in Politico Playbook earlier this year. The “insider” claimed at the time that McCain offered to be vaccinated live on-air with her brother, Jimmy McCain, but the Biden team wasn’t interested. Instead, they gave The View’s moderator Whoopi Goldberg a private briefing at the White House about vaccine messaging.

“They should have given all of The View hosts this training, not just Whoopi,” the “insider” said. A source at the White House, in turn, pointed out that Meghan McCain was not yet eligible to be vaccinated at the time she initially reached out.

And yet, there are other reasons the Biden administration may have been wary about taking on McCain as some sort of official surrogate. For instance, there was her call in February of this year for Biden to replace Dr. Anthony Fauci with someone who actually “does understand science.”

“The fact that I, Meghan McCain, co-host of The View, don’t know when or how I will be able to get a vaccine because the rollout for my age range and my health is so nebulous, I have no idea when and how I get it,” the 36-year-old pundit said at the time. “I want to be responsible and obviously wait my turn, but this rollout has been a disaster.”

D-list celebrity who is dumb as a brick. Why didn't Biden want her as one of his representatives?

[Deleted]

Fox News' vaccine outreach is perfectly worthy of Republicans. If by now Republicans haven't cottoned on to the importance of getting inoculated, they need neocortex replacement more than vaccines.

[pnwguy]

As much as I might want Darwinism to take over, it's got problems. Besides the massive medical costs imposed on the living by those who die of it, the survivors may also be social burdens for years. And the petri dish of low-information unvaxxed fools may create a super-mutation that begins to evade the vaccinations.

The survival of the species is always threatened by the most destructive.