Coronavirus, Monkeypox, and Other Contagious Diseases

[Traveler]

Thanks Andy!

[Rue Bella]

From Twitter, from the New York Times

Millions are skipping their second doses of covid vaccines
Nearly 8% of people in the U.S. who got initial Pfizer or Moderna shots missed their second doses.

Considering basic human behavior, this is not a surprise. Too bad one dose J&J is now less trusted. 



Is it possible to get rid of the edit notation? 

[LFC]

At least one bit of dumbf***ery beloved by the right-wingnuts is being retracted by the fringe journal where it appeared.

A study cited by COVID-19 truthers claiming that masks are harmful to humans' health is reportedly about to get retracted.

According to Retraction Watch, a study written by physiologist Baruch Vainshelboim that claimed wearing masks led to adverse health outcomes is being retracted by Elsevier, which published it last year.

The study made a series of sweeping claims about the negative effects of wearing masks, including "hypoxia, hypercapnia, shortness of breath, increased acidity and toxicity, activation of fear and stress response, rise in stress hormones, immunosuppression, fatigue, headaches, decline in cognitive performance, predisposition for viral and infectious illnesses, chronic stress, anxiety and depression."

J. Alex Huffman, an aerosol scientist at the University of Denver, told FactCheck.org that Vainshelboim's paper made fundamental errors in describing the ways that viruses spread through the air.

"Viruses don't come out of your mouth as naked viruses," he explained to the website. "They come out in liquid drops that are full of mostly water but also some proteins and salts."

Additionally, as Snopes notes, the study was not peer reviewed before publication, as Elsevier's Medical Hypotheses journal specializes in publishing "radical, speculative and non-mainstream scientific ideas" so long as "they are coherently expressed."

[LFC]

Republicans always seem to be able to find an "expert" they like who is completely and totally wrong.

According to a report from The Daily Beast, a Michigan industrial hygienist who is passing herself off as an "exposure scientist" is getting audiences with influential Republican lawmakers. Her fraudulent information against the public wearing masks has scientists and health officials alarmed.

Kristen Meghan Kelly, 38, has laid claim to being a "health freedom advocate" after a video of her arguing against masks during the COVID-19 health crisis went viral. According to Kelly, "I actually travel around the country testifying in front of governors. I've opened up Texas and North Dakota."

In an interview with the Beast, she admitted she wants to "further loosen COVID-19 restrictions in her own state of Michigan," with the report helpfully adding the state is one of the hardest hit in the country.

"Kelly has enjoyed an increasingly robust platform in anti-mask circles in recent weeks. And this activism, public health officials fear, could cause big problems—especially in Michigan, which has become the country's worst COVID hotspot," the Beast's Larrison Campbell wrote.

Scientists and authorities in the field of industrial hygiene claim the Michigan mom is inflating her expertise and providing dangerous advice.

Laurence Svirchev, a certified industrial hygienist with the American Industrial Hygiene Association, explained: "Face coverings are a proper public health measure that mitigates the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. And if you're not wearing anything across your nose and mouth, you're only contributing to the generation of particles that are floating around in a room," before adding, "It's not a difficult concept to understand."

Larry Sloan, CEO of the AIHA, claimed that 99 percent of the membership believe Kelly is flat-out wrong.

According to the report, the job of industrial hygienists is to oversee that OSAHA standards are followed and that Kelly is going far afield outside her area of expertise.

The Beast report notes, "Kelly has capitalized on that relative obscurity and sudden relevance—as well as COVID's evolving science—to carve out a niche for herself as an expert for anti-maskers hungry for arguments that back up their desire to ignore mask mandates."

Adding to that, the Beast reports that Kelly background as a hygienist has some serious gaps.

[goldenvalley]

[Deleted]

Apparently going mask free outdoors is supposed to be a reward for getting vaccinated. Really, who thinks up such nonsense? Who is Biden kidding? As if people will wait to get vaccinated before claiming their “reward”.

[LFC]

Why America can't have nice things, episode 2,473,983. And this is a school, the kind that Betsy DeVos supported.

A private school in Miami banned teachers vaccinated against COVID-19 from contact with students because of its co-founder’s misguided beliefs in anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.

The Centner Academy, a prekindergarten to 8th-grade school in the city’s fashionable Design District, sent a letter to faculty and other staff last week informing them “with a heavy heart” that the vaccinated would be barred from student contact and could lose their jobs, The New York Times first reported Monday.

Leila Centner, who founded the school in 2019 with her husband David Centner, claimed in the message that “reports have surfaced recently of non-vaccinated people being negatively impacted by interacting with people who have been vaccinated,” according to the Times.

She noted that vaccinated individuals “may be transmitting something from their bodies” that could harm others, particularly the “reproductive systems, fertility, and normal growth and development in women and children.”

Centner offered no specifics or scientific facts. She claimed in a letter to parents to be consulting with unnamed “doctors.” As for the lack of evidence, Centner claimed her information is “new and yet to be researched.”

The future for vaccinated teachers at the school was bleak. “It is our policy, to the extent possible, not to employ anyone who has taken the experimental COVID-19 injection until further information is known,” Centner wrote to parents.

[LFC]

Tucker Carlson is all in on the stupid because ... Tucker Carlson.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday declared that it was “child abuse” for children to wear face masks while playing outdoors, and he urged viewers to call the police or child protective services if they see it.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that children older than 2 who can safely wear a mask should do so in public settings to prevent catching or spreading COVID-19. This would include when interacting with anyone they don’t live with indoors or outdoors, and is not a substitute for other preventive measures, such as staying 6 feet apart from others and washing their hands frequently.

Carlson, who has persistently trafficked in COVID-19 misinformation throughout the pandemic, was railing against a mask mandate in Colorado schools for children older than 10. The state will require masks in all schools, child care centers and indoor summer camps for the remainder of the school year in an effort to not jeopardize the return to in-person learning.

“People need fresh air. Especially children,” Carlson said. “Deprive them of fresh air and you hurt them. You knew that. We all knew that. It is obvious.”

Masks made according to medical guidance do not deprive you of oxygen, a concern that’s been debunked by pulmonary experts.

“As for forcing children to wear masks outside, that should be illegal,” he said. “Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response when you see someone beat a kid in Walmart. Call the police immediately. Contact child protective services. Keep calling until someone arrives. What you’re looking at is abuse, it’s child abuse, and you’re morally obligated to attempt to prevent it.”

According to Carlson, America has allowed “power-drunk politicians” to “wreck the country” by enforcing rules to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. COVID-19 has led to more than 570,000 deaths in the U.S.

He also claimed that masks “strip people of their identity as individuals,” “transform people from citizens into drones” and are “for the guilty, they’re signifiers of shame and submission.”

[goldenvalley]

LFC's last two posts...all I can do is say "Wow, such people walk among us".   

Tucker probably isn't so stupid as the head of that school.  He's venal and ambitious who disregards truth if it suits his venality and ambition.

[LFC]

Apr 27, 2021 18:11:47 GMT goldenvalley said:

LFC's last two posts...all I can do is say "Wow, such people walk among us".   

Tucker probably isn't so stupid as the head of that school.  He's venal and ambitious who disregards truth if it suits his venality and ambition.

I think Tucker has some serious personal issues he's never dealt with and that has caused him to start buying his own bullshit to prop up his own ego. I suspect it started out as simply being a smarmy right-winger but at this point he's gone way past that. He really believes the cow pies dropping out of his mouth are pure gold. He's just a slimmer, trimmer Bill O'Reilly, another mental mediocrity who embraced his self-made myth of being a genius.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 27, 2021 18:25:01 GMT LFC said:

Apr 27, 2021 18:11:47 GMT goldenvalley said:

LFC's last two posts...all I can do is say "Wow, such people walk among us".   

Tucker probably isn't so stupid as the head of that school.  He's venal and ambitious who disregards truth if it suits his venality and ambition.

I think Tucker has some serious personal issues he's never dealt with and that has caused him to start buying his own bullshit to prop up his own ego. I suspect it started out as simply being a smarmy right-winger but at this point he's gone way past that. He really believes the cow pies dropping out of his mouth are pure gold. He's just a slimmer, trimmer Bill O'Reilly, another mental mediocrity who embraced his self-made myth of being a genius.

You think he believes what he's saying?  I think Dreher does, but not Carlson.  He's making a buck by showing off his jerky, bratty persona...same as O'Reilly and Limbaugh.

[LFC]

Apr 27, 2021 18:49:11 GMT goldenvalley said:

You think he believes what he's saying?  I think Dreher does, but not Carlson.  He's making a buck by showing off his jerky, bratty persona...same as O'Reilly and Limbaugh.

I think he believes he is brilliant and even when when he's doing something iffy he believes it's appropriate because of his own personal intellect. That was O'Reilly as well though I'm not as sure about Limbaugh. I think Hannity is both dumb as a brick and knows he's a liar for hire. He believes in nothing but his net worth. Dreher? He's just nuts, the perpetual professional victim.

[goldenvalley]

West Virginia is bribing residents to get Covid vaccination.  If you are 16 to 35 you will get a $100 savings bond.  

What a country we live in.  We have adequate supplies of a vaccination yet must bribe people to use it because we're such spoiled "you can't make me!" types that we can't do anything to help the general public health.  

[indy]

I find you can never mull over the fourth universal law of human stupidity quite enough. If you ever think you've finally seen the fullest possible expression of the damaging power of stupid people, it just means you need to look a little harder.

[LFC]

India is falling the f*** apart. It's getting beyond just bad.

Several Indian states have run out of COVID-19 vaccines—a day before the country planned to widen its inoculation drive as it reels under a crushing new wave of infections. India is the world’s biggest producer of vaccines but only about 9 percent of India’s 1.4 billion people have received a vaccine dose since January. Vaccine producers have struggled to increase capacity beyond 80 million doses a month due to a shortage of raw materials and a fire at the Serum Institute, which manufactures AstraZeneca’s vaccine in India. Inoculation centers in Mumbai will be shut for three days starting Friday because of the shortage of vaccines, authorities said. Some 386,000 cases and 3,500 deaths were recorded Thursday but the numbers are believed to be a significant undercount. The BBC reported Friday that Delhi officials have told the Modi government that morgues and crematoriums are overrun and additional places are needed where the bodies of the COVID dead can be handled.

The Prime Minister appears to be more concerned about his political career than his people dying in droves. He's burying inconvenient data ... just like Trump wanted to do (and partially succeeded) to us.

More than 350 scientists in India have signed a petition begging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to publicly release crucial COVID-19 data in a desperate attempt to mitigate the spread and predict the next surge.

Some fear that Modi’s desire to keep such vital information on variants, tests carried out, recovered patients and vaccine efficacy secret suggests that the 18.7 million cases reported and 208,330 deaths might be a radical understatement of the scale of the problem.

India logged an astonishing 386,452 new cases Friday as new appeals for more space and firewood for cremations compounded the lack of hospital beds and oxygen.

[goldenvalley]

This worries me: Los Angeles County suddenly has more vaccine than people who want it.Los Angeles County is set to hit a milestone in COVID-19 vaccinations that no one is happy about.

For the first time, the county will not reach its goal of administering 95% of its weekly supply, officials said this week. The reason: Appointments for the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine have decreased by about 50%.

When the vaccine first became available, people clamored to get it, sometime cutting lines and going to other counties.

What happened? Here is what we know:

Officials are not completely sure.

“I do know that across the county this past week we saw much fewer people coming in to get vaccinated. For the first time ever, we’ve had appointments at many vaccination sites that have not been filled,” said L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer during a news briefing Thursday.


Health experts and officials have attributed the drop to a variety of reasons, including ongoing hesitancy around the vaccine and access issues.

They are shifting to walk in clinics instead of by appointment only clinics.  Maybe that will encourage those who are discouraged by the online hassles of booking an appointment.

There is so much talk among people comparing notes on reactions to the 2nd shots.  I'm not sure why it is so concerning that it would stop people from getting the second one.  Suffering from COVID and possibly having the long haul issues is so much worse than running a fever for a couple of days at most.  (and many people don't have that happen)

[jackd]

The falloff in demand is a concern all over the country.

[Bact PhD]

Overcoming vaccine hesitancy, one block at a time. This WaPo story concerns the Shenandoah Valley; I am also aware of efforts to reach homebound elderly in South Florida.

“Thank God,” S. Jeanie Clark thought to herself this week, as a nurse and sheriff’s deputy showed up at her door.

Clark, 77, sat on the edge of a hospital bed wedged into the living room of her Front Royal, Va., home that she hasn’t left since she was diagnosed with double pneumonia a year ago.

She was one of 17 people whom the nurse and deputy visited on Wednesday as they brought coronavirus vaccine to homebound seniors, one by one.

In Virginia and around the country, supplies of vaccine have begun outstripping demand for shots, forcing public health officials to shift their focus from large-scale clinics to creative and targeted strategies for delivering vaccine to hard-to-reach populations.

That means driving doses around rural counties and small towns, deploying mobile units the size of ice cream trucks with as few as 50 shots to neighborhoods, and making sure family physicians have shots to inoculate patients who might not trust anyone else.

There are glimmers of hope.

[Traveler]

Thanks Andy!  (

Ref to link instructions)

[goldenvalley]

Some articles on vaccine hesitancy: the Atlantic...lots of people feel that they haven't had the virus yet so their immune system must be pretty good and if they have had it, it was mild and now they are immune. No one is afraid of dying from it if they think they are otherwise healthy. Plus some political cultural concerns about liberals taking control of things...  I am struck by how people talk about fear...I'm not afraid of getting it, as if concern that you might get sick with this virus is somehow cowardly, not cautious. 

From WaPo some mind changing going on:  

 Alice Chen, a senior adviser for the vaccine equity advocacy organization Made to Save, credited the wave of efforts trying to win over holdouts, saying the cumulative effects laid the ground for breakthroughs.

“The ads on TV, reading up on the CDC site, talking to your buddy who’s a nurse — I think it’s going to be a combination of all these things that are going to help, particularly for the people who are the most hesitant,” Chen said.

An internal medicine doctor who’s been helping to give shots at a Florida clinic, Chen said she’s administered doses to self-confessed former skeptics, too.

“Almost all of them changed their mind because somebody they love told them to, because they saw people around them getting vaccinated,” Chen said. “I think that piece is so much more important than I think I even realized, going into this.”

All of this is accomplished via anecdote...but we are learning that humans want and are convinced by the stories, not the data.  And they want the stories from people they consider credible, even if others don't find them credible at all. I increasingly understand that humans are not particularly rational.

[AnBr]

[LFC]

On a personal note the results came back from the Johns Hopkins study for my post-2nd vaccine blood test. I'VE GOT ANTIBODIES! I was getting nervous after the first blood test returned negative.

[Traveler]

Great to hear. How about the better half? Was she even able to be vaccinated?

[LFC]

May 9, 2021 17:32:24 GMT Traveler said:

Great to hear. How about the better half? Was she even able to be vaccinated?

She's gotten both shots. Since she's on immunosuppressives as well we plan on getting her an antibody test even if we have to pay for it.

[Bact PhD]

Also personal note:
Dear Daughter got Shot #2 a week ago, and Dear Son got Shot #2 late yesterday. Both felt like utter crap the day after, but I’ll take it.