All things political. Coronavirus Edition. (16 Viewers)

The political war over the coronavirus pandemic is over, and it’s hard not to think that the people who shrugged at it from the outset emerged victorious.


This is the nature of political debates at the moment, really. Nuanced situations that evolve over time lend themselves readily to cherry-picked reinterpretation, and there are entire communities of people online who rock-tumble rhetoric until it is smoothed to its most polished and appealing.

Layer on the perceived empowerment from thinking you know more than the experts and the elites and you can explain much of the past three years.

The reality is that the country’s hastily crafted response to the pandemic in early 2020 evolved into a clearer, more useful one. The introduction of vaccines that could largely prevent serious illness undoubtedly saved hundreds of thousands of lives, even if the rollout was itself haphazard and even though the vaccines arrived just as Republican skepticism about pandemic precautions was peaking.

For the past two years, the story of the pandemic has been the partisan divide in what the country ought to do about it, with Republicans disproportionately likely to die from covid-19 as a result.

It’s hard to win a political debate against someone willing to die for their beliefs, even if that death is viral. Given the decreased mortality of recent variants of the virus (even if the long-term effects of infection are still murky), Democratic leaders have been increasingly willing to accede to moving the pandemic to the rearview mirror.

The new Republican majority in the House, powered by a base that views its long-standing skepticism as validated by the new, less-lethal strains, is demanding that the nation formally declare the pandemic ended. The Biden administration is prepared to do just that, ending the national emergency in May.

The practical effect of this shift will generally be subtle. The Kaiser Family Foundation delineates the immediate changes, most of which involve an end to reduced-cost treatments or expanded accessibility to health-care systems. The federal declaration affected federal systems, ones that aren’t always obvious to regular citizens.


The political effect, though, will be that Biden and House Republicans will race to take credit for the pandemic’s end.

Both sides are in agreement, really; the fight now is over spin……..

Three years after the COVID-19 virus first arrived in the United States and only a few months before the Biden administration plans to formally end the public health emergency, we’re still dealing with the disease—and still squabbling over its politics.

In recent months, the so-called “liberal media” have shown a willingness to concede that some aggressive interventions launched early in the pandemic, such as school closures and some lockdowns, were excessive; some commentators, such as Brown University professor Emily Oster in the Atlantic, have suggested an “amnesty” over mistakes made in the scramble to deal with an unknown and frightening illness.

The response on the right has been to do an “I told you so!” victory dance over the concessions and gleefully cry that there will be no quarter for the guilty. The idea that National Institutes of Health chief immunologist Anthony Fauci must be punished for his role in inflicting upon America a supposed totalitarian nightmare seems to have particular currency; it has even been picked up by Twitter’s new “Chief Twit,” Elon Musk, although the degree of irony he intends is hard to discern:



Meanwhile, one would look in vain for similar concessions or contrition on the right. No one is asking for forgiveness for the fine folks who confidently predicted in the spring of 2020 that COVID-19 would end up being no worse than an average flu season or that fatalities wouldn’t go up by much after the first 60 deaths by mid-March.

Or who peddled ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine (remember that?).

Or who celebrated vaccine refusers while brushing off their later deaths of COVID.

Or who contributed to the strong trend of more people in red states and counties dying of COVID-19 because of lower vaccination rates—a pattern that a September 2022 paper by three Yale scientists confirmed on the individual, Republican vs. Democrat, voter registration level. (Killing off one’s own political “tribe”: Now there’s a novel and compassionate strategy.)

Instead, the covidiot ecosystem on the right—and, to some extent, in “anti-woke” and “cultural dissident” circles that don’t always explicitly identify as right-wing—continues to flourish. Most recently, it’s been manifesting itself in the rather fanciful notion that people didn’t “suddenly” die of heart attacks and strokes before “the jab” came along...............

But generally speaking, left-wing covidiots who think we should act as if it were still March 2020 are not treated as mainstream opinion makers in left-of-center discourse. Right-wing covidiots who think the real problem in March 2020 was Anthony Fauci and that the real problem today is “the vax” are much more firmly ensconced within the right and in “anti-establishment” circles. In December, the Free Press even touted hardcore antivax crank Alex Berenson as a victim of Twitter censorship while describing him simply as “a journalist skeptical of lockdowns and mRNA vaccines” with “hundreds of thousands of followers.”

Ten days earlier, Berenson had treated those hundreds of thousands of followers to a thread that harassed the widow of soccer analyst Grant Wahl by speculating that Wahl’s sudden death at the World Cup was due to “the jab.” Wahl’s widow, Dr. Céline Gounder, is a professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine and a strong vaccine proponent who served as a COVID-19 adviser on President Joseph Biden’s transition team. (A statement by Gounder made clear that Wahl’s death was entirely unrelated to his vaccination.)

The irony is that, if what COVID-19 “dissenters” hate most is the pandemic’s disruptions to daily life and restrictions on our freedom, “the jab”—which offers only weak protection against infection with COVID’s newest variants but still provides substantial protection from severe disease—is the best option.

For all that we hear about how COVID is no longer a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” unvaccinated people are still dying of COVID at something like 5 times the rates of the fully vaccinated and more than 10 times the rate of those who have also received the new bivalent booster (at present, that’s only around 13 percent of the population).

You’d think smart advocates of post-pandemic normalization would urge people to get the new booster. Instead, to take a recent example, the Wall Street Journal has run a piece decrying the bivalent booster campaign on the grounds that we supposedly don’t know if the evidence for the booster’s efficacy conflates its effect with that of other factors (which is not very likely).............

This is crazy considering the situation in China

MT15 said:

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because just by the mere researching a vaccine was enough to shed it into the public and cause it,..lol

For many Americans, the relentless focus on covid seems largely a thing of the past: Far fewer are wearing masks, businesses and schools are mostly open, and many people have learned to live with the occasional threat of contracting the virus.


But among activist Republicans, immense anger and resentment persists at government policies aimed at curbing the pandemic, such as vaccine mandates, school closures and mask requirements.

And as that anger bubbles up in the newly Republican-controlled House and among potential GOP presidential contenders, it is shaping up as a significant part of the party’s message.


Former president Donald Trump, who has announced he is seeking the presidency in 2024, and a potential leading rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), have begun fiercely sparring over who did a better job of rejecting public health measures they viewed as overreach.

In remarks to reporters on Saturday, Trump accused DeSantis of “trying to rewrite history” on his response to the pandemic, saying that “Florida was closed for a long period of time.”

DeSantis has lately styled himself a public health dove who presided over the “free state of Florida,” and he has become increasingly hostile toward the coronavirus vaccines. He hit back on the former president Tuesday, noting that he was resoundingly reelected while Trump was not in 2020.


“If you take a crisis situation like covid … the good thing is that the people are able to render a judgment on that, whether they reelect you or not,” DeSantis said at a news conference. “I’m happy to say in my case … we won.”

On Capitol Hill, House Republicans are focused this week on delivering a political message to their base: The pandemic has long been over and the Biden administration doesn’t realize it.

House GOP leaders lined up four pandemic-related votes that aim to end two coronavirus emergency declarations, lift the vaccine mandate for many health workers, and require federal agencies to reinstate their pre-pandemic telework policies.

“House Republicans are voting on legislation to restore our constitutional rights and freedoms after two long years of Democrats’ covid-19 power grab policies,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), the No. 3 House Republican, said Tuesday, blasting “extended covid lockdowns” and “unconstitutional vaccine mandates.”……..

For many Republicans, covid restrictions epitomize their fear of government intrusion into private life. Studies have shown that shutdowns in March and April of 2020 saved tens of thousands of lives and prevented even more covid hospitalizations. But even some Democrats have argued that schools remained closed far longer than they needed to and after there was evidence that children did not get infected at the same rates or with nearly the same severity as adults…….

For Democrats, the current push is an extension of conservatives’ insistence on embracing false conspiracy theories from the beginning, like saying the virus is not a real threat, vaccines are harmful and unproven treatments are effective.


Among a faction of hard-line Republicans, conspiracy theories about coronavirus immunizations clearly continue to flourish. They blame the vaccine for almost any widely publicized health event whose cause seems less than obvious, such as the death of sportswriter Grant Wahl of an aortic aneurysm or the collapse of Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin from cardiac arrest……

Around 600,000 data points: the value of vaccination just cannot be denied.

MT15 said:

Around 600,000 data points: the value of vaccination just cannot be denied.

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I thought you had met @Farb already.

All lies pushed by the gov't to keep you from using the true cure of ivermectin.. lol

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are kicking off an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 by requesting documents and testimony for current and former Biden administration officials.

The Republican chairmen of the House Oversight Committee and the Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic are seeking information, including from Dr. Anthony Fauci, concerning the idea that the coronavirus leaked accidentally from a Chinese lab.

“This investigation must begin with where and how this virus came about so that we can attempt to predict, prepare or prevent it from happening again,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, chair of the virus subcommittee, said in a statement on Monday.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the oversight committee, said Republicans will “follow the facts” and “hold U.S. government officials that took part in any sort of cover-up accountable.”

The letters to Fauci, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines, Health Secretary Xavier Beccera and others are the latest effort by the new Republican majority to make good on promises made during the 2022 midterms campaign…….

Optimus Prime said:

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are kicking off an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 by requesting documents and testimony for current and former Biden administration officials.

The Republican chairmen of the House Oversight Committee and the Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic are seeking information, including from Dr. Anthony Fauci, concerning the idea that the coronavirus leaked accidentally from a Chinese lab.

“This investigation must begin with where and how this virus came about so that we can attempt to predict, prepare or prevent it from happening again,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, chair of the virus subcommittee, said in a statement on Monday.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the oversight committee, said Republicans will “follow the facts” and “hold U.S. government officials that took part in any sort of cover-up accountable.”

The letters to Fauci, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines, Health Secretary Xavier Beccera and others are the latest effort by the new Republican majority to make good on promises made during the 2022 midterms campaign…….

GOP launches probe into COVID origins with letter to Fauci

House Republicans have kicked off an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 by issuing a series of letters to current and former Biden administration officials for documents and testimony.

apnews.com

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This will not go as well as they think it will. We have genetic evidence now, as I understand it, that the virus indeed made the jump from an animal host to humans. All they have is some emails, taken out of context and misunderstood by them, of researchers discussing the possibility before we had the knowledge we do now.

In other words, what happened is that this possibility was seriously discussed and considered before it was discarded due to actual scientific evidence.

Rs on this committee are just morons. They should find someone with real knowledge who can explain it to them rather than listening to conspiracy theorists, charlatans and propagandists.

Yet another study:

This is a great thread. Read it to understand how anti-vaxxers are misusing clinical studies to claim obvious falsities like “masks don’t work!” It’s a fairly long thread but well worth the read, especially since so many people are believing the nonsense.

Former Republican Senator James Inhofe, who retired at the end of last year, announced that he suffered from symptoms of long Covid after he voted repeatedly against Covid-19 aid packages.

Mr Inhofe, who represented Oklahoma for decades in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, told The Tulsa World that he left the Senate because of the lingering effects from contracting Covid-19…….

Optimus Prime said:

Former Republican Senator James Inhofe, who retired at the end of last year, announced that he suffered from symptoms of long Covid after he voted repeatedly against Covid-19 aid packages.

Mr Inhofe, who represented Oklahoma for decades in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, told The Tulsa World that he left the Senate because of the lingering effects from contracting Covid-19…….

Former Republican senator who voted against Covid-19 aid resigned over long Covid

James Inhofe spent much of his time in the Senate opposing provisions to combat climate change

www.independent.co.uk

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Good riddance to a real piece of shirt.

posted by eeyore on EE
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MIAMI - The "Ban the jab" resolution passed with a majority vote in the Lee County Republican Party and will now head to Governor Ron DeSantis' desk.

This comes after a member of the Lee County Republican Party wrote a resolution for the executive committee to consider. Joe Sansone argued the risks of the COVID vaccine are not worth it.

Sansone so far as to label the vaccine a bioweapon.

“The Lee County Republican Party is going to be on the vanguard of this campaign to stop the genocide because we have foreign non governmental entities that are unleashing biological weapons on the American people," he said.

Because the Republican Party of Lee County has no power per so, DeSantis can just ignore it if he chooses.…..

CNN —
The US Department of Energy has assessed that the Covid-19 pandemic most likely came from a laboratory leak in China, according to a newly updated classified intelligence report.

Two sources said that the Department of Energy assessed in the intelligence report that it had “low confidence” the Covid-19 virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan.

Intelligence agencies can make assessments with either low, medium or high confidence. A low confidence assessment generally means that the information obtained is not reliable enough or too fragmented to make a more definitive analytic judgment or that there is not enough information available to draw a more robust conclusion……