Coronavirus, Monkeypox, and Other Contagious Diseases

[LFC]

Republicans continue to spread COVID and vaccine lies and Kristi Noem has been at the forefront for years. Her Republican legislators are mostly just as dumb and/or dishonest.

Halfway into robotically reading her hour-long State of the State speech off teleprompters, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem promised “to protect the people’s right to a medical or religious exemption from COVID vaccines.”

She then raised her hand with the index finger extended to emphasize some particular idiocy.

“We will also recognize natural immunity,” she said.

The majority of the state legislators applauded, indicating they are not only Republicans but also foolish enough to endorse her fiction that people who have had COVID-19 do not need to be vaccinated.

A leading research bioinformatician at the Yale School of Public Health terms such thinking “irresponsible.”

“Contracting COVID once does not make you immune over the long term and certainly does not make you immune to new variants,” Jeffrey Townsend told The Daily Beast on Tuesday.

Townsend is the author of a study published by The Lancet Microbe in October 2021 whose conclusion he summarized in a Yale News write-up.

“Reinfection can reasonably happen in three months or less,” he was quoted saying. “Therefore, those who have been naturally infected should get vaccinated. Previous infection alone can offer very little long-term protection against subsequent infections.”

[LFC]

They really do want to watch the nation burn, as long as it pisses off the libs.

In passing, the Natural and Ultra face masks might seem like just a couple more unremarkable reusable cloths in the sea of facial coverings that have come to define pandemic life. But photos and product reviews of the masks show that, when viewed up close, pores become visible all across them. Reviewers have described the materials as sort of like a fine mesh, a structure experts say likely offers little protection against the coronavirus.

Rather than some kind of bug or limitation, however, the dissonance between the masks’ look from afar and up close is at the heart of the appeal of UnMask, the niche brand behind these and a few more face mask designs. They offer the appearance—but not necessarily the efficacy, experts say—of well-made conventional cloth masks. And they seem to be growing more visible just as the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, which has started to inundate hospitals nationwide, makes effective masks and masking more vital than ever.

[Bact PhD]

Jan 12, 2022 17:58:55 GMT LFC said:

They really do want to watch the nation burn, as long as it pisses off the libs.

In passing, the Natural and Ultra face masks might seem like just a couple more unremarkable reusable cloths in the sea of facial coverings that have come to define pandemic life. But photos and product reviews of the masks show that, when viewed up close, pores become visible all across them. Reviewers have described the materials as sort of like a fine mesh, a structure experts say likely offers little protection against the coronavirus….

From later in the piece(bold mine):

“This is absolute bullshit,” Jeffrey Klausner, a USC epidemiologist and former CDC official (and occasional Daily Beast contributor), said in an interview. “They make it easier for people to thwart safety requirements. It’s like a company selling guns that evade metal detectors.”

Dear God, please don’t give these people ideas!!!

[jackd]

I think there are already plastic guns.

[LFC]

Rand Paul shows us, once again, why he had to create his own medical certification. He's a classic case of ignorant and arrogant, just like his dad. He's a regular chip off the old blockhead. Bold mine.

Sen. Rand Paul, who’s made a sport of hunting Dr. Anthony Fauci, really stuck the shiv in at the Senate COVID hearing on Tuesday. It can hardly get more personal than asking Fauci if he thinks it’s “appropriate to use your $420,000 salary to smear scientists who don’t agree with you?” Paul kept at it, describing how eminent the scientists were, without naming them, waving emails he said would prove his point.

There was more—Paul’s questioning went on for about ten minutes, twice as long as allowed, and he didn’t so much ask questions as call the doctor reprehensible, among other epithets, while ignoring the other expert witnesses. Listening to Paul, I understood why his next door-neighbor finally hauled off and attacked him.

As Sen. Patty Murray inexplicably let Paul go on for twice his allowed time, only invoking the rules to give Fauci about two minutes to answer over eight minutes of what would otherwise have been an uninterrupted monologue, the doctor cut to the chase, saying that Paul’s continued lies about him “kindled the crazies” to the point where the police, in a routine stop for speeding, came upon one of the crazies driving from Sacramento to Washington with an AR-15 and ammo and a plan to kill Fauci. He waved his own piece of paper from Paul’s website with the message “Fire Dr. Fauci” used to solicit donations.

I question the author's use of the term "shiv" which to me connotes sly and sneaky. This wasn't the slick use of a shiv, it was just a f***ing blathering man-monkey throwing his own poop.

[LFC]

Is this guy a RINO now for saying he's glad he's vaccinated and boosted?

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R-WV) says he is “extremely unwell” after testing positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday and will have to cancel his State of the State address scheduled for Wednesday. In a statement, the governor’s office said Justice experienced a “sudden onset of symptoms” Tuesday and subsequently tested positive for the virus. “I woke up this morning with congestion and a cough. A little while later, I developed a headache and fever, so I decided to get tested right away,” Justice said, adding that his symptoms worsened throughout the day. “That being said, I feel extremely unwell at this point, and I have no choice but to postpone my State of the State address to the Legislature,” he wrote. The event will now be held at an as-yet-undetermined date. Justice noted that he is “thankful” to be vaccinated and boosted, and said he had already begun undergoing monoclonal antibody treatment. “I ask everyone to continue praying for the 5,452 great West Virginians that we’ve lost. We need to keep pulling the rope together. We’re going to get through this and put an end to this terrible pandemic once and for all,” he said.

[LFC]

America doesn't hold a monopoly on COVidiots, not by any stretch.

The messages started popping up on Telegram a few days after Italy announced a new vaccine mandate requiring everyone over age 50 to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or risk hefty fines and even termination from their jobs.

Here in the first epicenter of the pandemic outside of China, Italy has paid a hefty price with lockdowns that have crippled the economy and the deaths of more than 140,000 people. Vaccine mandates have become the primary strategy in moving forward, yet a small number of people continue to resist.

The only alternative to getting vaccinated is having recovered from the infection, which must be registered on a person’s national health card. “I am urgently looking for a positive and I am willing to pay,” one desperate anti-vaxxer wrote, according to Italian police who are cracking down on the clandestine COVID meetups and other scams ahead of the Feb. 1 deadline for the over-50 vaccine mandate.

Soon after the announcement of the new law, enterprising opportunists started offering COVID parties where people who tested positive for the disease mix and mingle with those who want to catch it—one racket in Tuscany even includes a truffle dinner with Barolo wine, along with a positive-testing infection for around $150.

Other scams have also emerged. Two people were arrested in Rome after one man who was COVID positive used the health card of someone who wanted to skirt the vaccines to get tested at a pharmacy. When the COVID-positive man opted to pay with his own credit card—which obviously did not match the health card of the man who wanted a positive COVID diagnosis attached to his—the pharmacy conducting the test reported them both.

[goldenvalley]

Jan 12, 2022 19:24:13 GMT LFC said:

Is this guy a RINO now for saying he's glad he's vaccinated and boosted?

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R-WV) says he is “extremely unwell” after testing positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday and will have to cancel his State of the State address scheduled for Wednesday. In a statement, the governor’s office said Justice experienced a “sudden onset of symptoms” Tuesday and subsequently tested positive for the virus. “I woke up this morning with congestion and a cough. A little while later, I developed a headache and fever, so I decided to get tested right away,” Justice said, adding that his symptoms worsened throughout the day. “That being said, I feel extremely unwell at this point, and I have no choice but to postpone my State of the State address to the Legislature,” he wrote. The event will now be held at an as-yet-undetermined date. Justice noted that he is “thankful” to be vaccinated and boosted, and said he had already begun undergoing monoclonal antibody treatment. “I ask everyone to continue praying for the 5,452 great West Virginians that we’ve lost. We need to keep pulling the rope together. We’re going to get through this and put an end to this terrible pandemic once and for all,” he said.

The answer depends on who you ask.  I suspect Trump would say he isn't a RINO, but lots of other so called Republicans will say the governor sold out.

[pnwguy]

Jan 12, 2022 19:25:22 GMT LFC said:

America doesn't hold a monopoly on COVidiots, not by any stretch.

The messages started popping up on Telegram a few days after Italy announced a new vaccine mandate requiring everyone over age 50 to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or risk hefty fines and even termination from their jobs.

Here in the first epicenter of the pandemic outside of China, Italy has paid a hefty price with lockdowns that have crippled the economy and the deaths of more than 140,000 people. Vaccine mandates have become the primary strategy in moving forward, yet a small number of people continue to resist.

The only alternative to getting vaccinated is having recovered from the infection, which must be registered on a person’s national health card. “I am urgently looking for a positive and I am willing to pay,” one desperate anti-vaxxer wrote, according to Italian police who are cracking down on the clandestine COVID meetups and other scams ahead of the Feb. 1 deadline for the over-50 vaccine mandate.

Soon after the announcement of the new law, enterprising opportunists started offering COVID parties where people who tested positive for the disease mix and mingle with those who want to catch it—one racket in Tuscany even includes a truffle dinner with Barolo wine, along with a positive-testing infection for around $150.

Other scams have also emerged. Two people were arrested in Rome after one man who was COVID positive used the health card of someone who wanted to skirt the vaccines to get tested at a pharmacy. When the COVID-positive man opted to pay with his own credit card—which obviously did not match the health card of the man who wanted a positive COVID diagnosis attached to his—the pharmacy conducting the test reported them both.

Right wing political operators and misinformation specialists have gone international now.  While for decades people were talking about a global communist conspiracy (where there was a lot of actual collaboration), the neo-fascisms have taken that idea and begun to cooperate across borders.  People like Bannon are happy to help out with other autocracies around the globe, and social media sites like Facebook are certainly global in scope.

[pnwguy]

Best part is the reference to Bud Light...

[Bact PhD]

This is in a district of just under 30K students and 4K staff. I wonder how it compares to similarly sized districts elsewhere (heavily excerpted due to paywall):

www.gainesville.com/story/news/education/2022/01/11/alachua-county-schools-face-teacher-shortages-bus-relays-amid-surge/9170559002/

Daily operations for Alachua County Public Schools have begun to be affected by the surge in COVID-19 cases, with a quickly growing number of students and staff infected or in quarantine as the system starts a new semester.

In an email Monday afternoon to families, spokeswoman Jackie Johnson said that numbers in the school district continue to increase, with more than 400 students and 100 staff members who have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 10 days.

Johnson told the Gainesville Sun the district hopes that it won't have to close schools due to staffing shortages, but the conversation has come up.

"But that's another question, how much flexibility would we have under the state law to shut down schools if we have what we don't feel is an appropriate number of staff," Johnson said.

She said that due to the uptick, there are numerous employee absences district wide which are affecting daily operations.

According to the Alachua County COVID-19 dashboard, there are 616 students and 137 staff employees who have tested positive with the virus within the past 10 days.

On Jan. 10 there were 945 students who were in quarantine. The County's COVID-19 dashboard also stated that there were seven hospitalized pediatric cases. It's unclear if these students were Alachua County Public School students..

Bus routes delayed by staff shortage

The rise in positive COVID-19 cases has severely impacted bus routes. Johnson said that of the district's 120 or so bus drivers, more than 20 have contracted the virus in recent days.

Tuesday morning there were 25 late buses. Some of the buses showing up 30 to 90 minutes late, and even some even later. On Monday morning there 26 late buses. On a normal school day there are about 10 late buses, Johnson said.

"And then of course we have sub drivers who are out. We have other staffers in the department who will often fill in when bus drivers are absent. They're out. So people we usually turn to to fill in for regular bus driver absences, they're out as well," Johnson said.

[snip]

Governor insists schools remain open

In a Tuesday press conference Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state "has worked hard" in keeping schools open throughout the pandemic. He noted that there have been numerous schools across the country who have closed their doors due to the virus and the action would not be tolerated in Florida.

According to burbia, a nationwide online tracker that tracks the number of schools that have closed, there are 5,409 schools in the U.S. that have closed due to COVID-19 as of Jan. 2.

In an email, Christina Pushaw, press secretary for Gov. Ron DeSantis said the governor has remained steadfast on his position that closure of schools is harmful for children and education.

"The state of Florida does not allow for schools to close for COVID-19, nor do we force healthy students to quarantine," Pushaw, said in the email.

To combat the spread, the district is still requiring masking for staff and will continue to vaccinate students.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that children ages 12-15 get the booster shot five months after they receive their second Pfizer vaccination.

Johnson said, as soon as the Alachua County Department of Health receives authorization from Florida Department of Health the district will begin offering to vaccinate children booster.

However, until then parents can still get their children vaccinated at one the local vaccination sites.

Due to state law, the school district cannot enforce a mask mandate, however the district does recommend the safety precaution to protect students.

[goldenvalley]

Jan 13, 2022 15:29:09 GMT Bact PhD said:

This is in a district of just under 30K students and 4K staff. I wonder how it compares to similarly sized districts elsewhere (heavily excerpted due to paywall):

Is there any real difference between closing a school district to prevent spread of Covid and closing a school district because many staff/faculty/administrators and many students are sick with Covid?  The schools are closed either way, but somehow some people seem to believe that closing for the first reason is bad while closing for the second reason is acceptable.  

[pnwguy]

Jan 13, 2022 15:47:34 GMT goldenvalley said:

Jan 13, 2022 15:29:09 GMT Bact PhD said:

This is in a district of just under 30K students and 4K staff. I wonder how it compares to similarly sized districts elsewhere (heavily excerpted due to paywall):

Is there any real difference between closing a school district to prevent spread of Covid and closing a school district because many staff/faculty/administrators and many students are sick with Covid?  The schools are closed either way, but somehow some people seem to believe that closing for the first reason is bad while closing for the second reason is acceptable.  

Part of Flori-duh are seeing 500 cases per 100K residents PER DAY.  That means 5% of the population is getting Covid every 10 days.  That can shut down businesses and public entities like schools pretty fast.

That's REAL FREEDUMB for you, brought to you by the GOP and their media ecosystem.  Thanks!

[Rue Bella]

twitter.com/search?q=%22Glenn%20Beck%22&src=trend_click&vertical=trends

Conservative commentator and radio host Glenn Beck, who has claimed he's unvaccinated, announces he has contracted COVID-19 for a second time and that it has spread to his lungs

Is it bad that I laughed?

[LFC]

Hundreds of scientists told Joe Rogan to STFU.

Nearly 300 scientists and doctors have signed an open letter to Spotify asking the audio platform to take action against podcaster Joe Rogan, who they say has a "concerning history" of broadcasting misinformation in regard to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The letter, first reported by Rolling Stone, focuses on a December 2021 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience featuring guest Dr Robert Malone, who was recently banned from Twitter for violating the platform's COVID-19 misinformation policy. During the episode, Malone made reference to a baseless conspiracy theory that people had been "hypnotized" into believing the prevailing scientific views about COVID.

During the two hours and 45 minutes interview, Malone made claims that "there was an intentional, very comprehensive suppression of early treatment in order to promote fear, suffering, isolation, hospitalization, and death." Malone doubled down, adding "It seemed to be completely organized and intentional in order to create acceptance for and then promote mass vaccination," going on to say — baselessly — that it's "pretty clear that this [pandemic] was planned."

[LFC]

Interesting new experiment to determine how long COVID can live in the air.

It’s not often that good news comes out about the COVID-19 pandemic, but you may have noticed one piece making the headlines recently: apparently, a study has shown that the virus loses 90 percent of its infectious ability after 20 minutes in air. So, what's the science behind this, and how reliable is it?

“When you move further away [from somebody], not only is the aerosol diluted down, there’s also less infectious virus because the virus has lost infectivity [as a result of time],” study lead author Jonathan Reid, director of the University of Bristol’s Aerosol Research Centre, told The Guardian.

“It means that if I’m meeting friends for lunch in a pub today, the primary [risk] is likely to be me transmitting it to my friends, or my friends transmitting it to me, rather than it being transmitted from someone on the other side of the room.”

There are good reasons to be optimistic about these results. Our ideas until now about how the virus spreads in air were based on experiments with Goldberg drums – a kind of scientific tombola that spins continuously in order to keep the particles inside aerosolized. From those studies, researchers concluded that viral particles remained present in the air for at least three hours – results which informed much of the advice, good and bad, going forward.

However, the new paper used a completely different technique – one that Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder Jose-Luis Jimenez, who was not involved in the research, described in tweets as “very elegant” and “outstanding.” The team developed specialized apparatus that allowed them to levitate particles between two electric rings for up to twenty minutes while tightly controlling the humidity, temperature, and UV light.

[pnwguy]

Jan 13, 2022 17:14:11 GMT LFC said:

Interesting new experiment to determine how long COVID can live in the air.

This would be a great time to invest in major HVAC suppliers. We'll probably see an effort to re-think air circulation systems in offices and public retail space, to be as safe as commercial aircraft. This has benefits beyond Covid, for reducing the spread of other respiratory pathogens like flu and cold virus.

A potential conflict will be that the cost savings accrue to public health, but the costs are accrued by private businesses who currently see no specific benefit. Perhaps what will be needed is a public ratings system that must be visibly posted, much like restaurant grades given out in in periodic health inspections. That does let the free market pressure come to bare, which would help get some GOP support. That's assuming there are ANY Republicans that care about governing policy instead of manufactured grievance. Fat chance, eh?

[LFC]

Biden is pulling out more stops.

The White House’s latest COVID-19 mitigation efforts are a contrast to the Supreme Court’s ruling today.

President Biden announced Thursday that his administration would double its previous promise to hand out free at-home COVID-19 tests, with plans to send out one billion to Americans’ homes. Along with that, the Biden administration will distribute N95 masks to the public as the country faces an unprecedented spike in COVID infections.

Biden is also deploying more military personnel to hospitals. Speaking from the White House the President said that next week he will send 1,000 military medics to hospitals across the country that have become overrun with patients dangerously sick with the coronavirus. The spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant has left the nation’s hospitals overburdened and short-staffed in recent weeks.

Biden didn’t mince his words in his address announcing the drastic moves.

Acknowledging that he knows the public is “frustrated” with the surge in cases, he placed the blame on one specific portion of the population: “as we remain in this pandemic, this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And I mean by this: Right now, both vaccinated and unvaccinated people are testing positive, but what happens after that could not be more different.”

The military deployment and doubled rollout of PPE comes as the the Supreme Court ties the administration’s hands with its ruling on the OSHA vaccine mandate this afternoon. SCOTUS blocked the enforcement of Biden’s executive order that would have required employers with 100-plus workers to enforce vaccine mandates or require weekly COVID testing in the workplace. It would’ve affected about 80 million Americans. (The court did let a similar mandate for health care workers at certain facilities that receive federal Medicare and Medicaid funding remain in place, at least for the time being.)

Rolling out of PPE? How different from the Trump administration which stole and hoarded it, doling some of it out to the states that kissed his ass.

[LFC]

Could vaccine denier Glenn Beck be next?

Glenn Beck Gets COVID-19 Again And Announces He’s Fat

Beck, who’s said he won’t get vaccinated against COVID, told fellow conservative radio host Mark Levin on Wednesday that he was sick with the virus for the second time — and that it was starting to get into his lungs, which was “a little disturbing.”

• “I am a fatty-fat-fatso, so that is probably not the best thing,” Beck said.

• The monoclonal antibody treatment he’s getting “doesn’t seem to be working.”

• Beck claimed he wasn’t worried about his situation while also coughing several times as he was speaking.

• The radio host declared in April that he wouldn’t be getting the vaccine because he’d already had COVID.

[goldenvalley]

Jan 14, 2022 16:39:41 GMT LFC said:

Could vaccine denier Glenn Beck be next?

Glenn Beck Gets COVID-19 Again And Announces He’s Fat

Beck, who’s said he won’t get vaccinated against COVID, told fellow conservative radio host Mark Levin on Wednesday that he was sick with the virus for the second time — and that it was starting to get into his lungs, which was “a little disturbing.”

• “I am a fatty-fat-fatso, so that is probably not the best thing,” Beck said.

• The monoclonal antibody treatment he’s getting “doesn’t seem to be working.”

• Beck claimed he wasn’t worried about his situation while also coughing several times as he was speaking.

• The radio host declared in April that he wouldn’t be getting the vaccine because he’d already had COVID.

Maybe Hershel Walker set him up with the dry mist cure.

[LFC]

No, Smoking Weed Won’t Help You Avoid Covid

Stoners got their hopes up way too high after a recent study found that compounds in hemp may neutralize the coronavirus in a petri dish.

A new study that found compounds in cannabis could stop the coronavirus from infecting cells has understandably captured the internet’s attention this week. But while the findings are worth following up on, people shouldn’t get too excited yet, as the researchers are very clear that simply smoking or otherwise ingesting cannabis isn’t going to make someone covid-proof.

Bummer, dude.

[pnwguy]

Jan 14, 2022 18:16:49 GMT LFC said:

No, Smoking Weed Won’t Help You Avoid Covid

Stoners got their hopes up way too high after a recent study found that compounds in hemp may neutralize the coronavirus in a petri dish.

A new study that found compounds in cannabis could stop the coronavirus from infecting cells has understandably captured the internet’s attention this week. But while the findings are worth following up on, people shouldn’t get too excited yet, as the researchers are very clear that simply smoking or otherwise ingesting cannabis isn’t going to make someone covid-proof.

Bummer, dude.

Yeah, a Ph.D. friend who works at Oregon State gave me the heads up on this earlier in the week.  I wasn't aware the univerisity was doing so much cannabis research, but as big of an industry we have here, it makes sense.

[LFC]

DeSatanist continues to push for the spread of disease and death as his pathway to the presidency, even going so far as to push back against Trump. Imagine the deaths and economic collapse we would have experienced if DeSatanist had been in charge. In any normal society this piece of shit would be a pariah. Here? He's a right-wingnut hero.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who’s been waging war on COVID-19 safety measures in a clear bid to be the next MAGA king ahead of 2024, sees ex-president Donald Trump’s oblique swipe and raises him a challenge of who can be more pro-spread than the other.

When asked during an interview with a right-wing podcast on Thursday what he wished he had done differently during his governorship, DeSantis artfully used the question to criticize what the Trump administration did, which was: being too harsh against the virus.

The GOP governor recounted how he was advising Trump when COVID-19 first struck the U.S. in 2020 and was completely blindsided when the government enacted shutdowns to keep the virus from spreading.

“What could you do earlier?” DeSantis asked, repeating the question. “When COVID was first coming we was engaged in it. I was telling Trump, ‘stop the flights from China,’ because we didn’t know what we were dealing with,” he said.

“I never thought in February, early March that [COVID-19] would lead to locking down the country. I just didn’t. I just didn’t think that was on the radar,” DeSantis continued.

And so “knowing now what I know then, if that was a threat earlier, I would have been much louder about trying to say ‘This is not–’” the governor said before cutting himself off.

“But what happened was, people like Fauci panicked,” he concluded. “They were following the data out of China.”

In essence, DeSantis claims his mistake was not keeping the Trump administration from making a mistake because boy, that sure was a big mistake that it made!

[AnBr]

[jackd]

Good old science gets right to the point!