All things political. Coronavirus Edition. (14 Viewers)

[Maxp]

I fear we are really going to be in a bad place due to the obvious cuts to the federal agencies that deal with infectious disease, but also the negative effect the Affordable Care act has had on non urban hospitals. Our front line defenses are ineffectual and our ability to treat the populous is probably at an all time low. Factor in the cost of healthcare and I can see our system crashing. What do you think about the politics of this virus?

 

[MT15]

This looks interesting and it says it’s free.

 

[MT15]

 

[UriUT]

One example and reason why we need to set aside more research dollars in our federal budget. Our dominance is rooted in our rnd; and our higher education.

 

[MT15]

 

[Optimus Prime]

New Zealand’s globally praised Covid responsesaved about 20,000 lives, new research shows.

The report, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, looks at the impact of the nation’s strategy, which included an almost complete international border closure for two years and strict lockdowns for days or weeks at a time.

The result was a Covid death rate per million people that was 80% lower than in the US. The report also calls for some preventive measures used during the pandemic, including mask-wearing in medical facilities, to continue in order to combat Covid and other more common respiratory infections, including RSV and influenza.

“I would hate for us to go back to really shrugging our shoulders and saying, we don’t care about [infectious diseases] or that there’s nothing we can do about them. That’s fatalism,” said professor Michael Baker from the University of Otago, who was instrumental in New Zealand’s pandemic response and is one of the report’s 16 co-authors.…..

New Zealand Covid response saved 20,000 lives, study says

Government’s strategy, which included closing the border, meant death rate was 80% lower than in the US, according to the New Zealand Medical Journal

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

A courtroom settlement over withheld Covid-19 data that critics say cost thousands of lives has deflated Ron DeSantis’s campaign trail persona as a courageous freedom warrior who kept his state open during a deadly peak of the pandemic.

It comes at a pivotal time for the Florida governor, whose teetering run for the Republican presidential nomination is mired in financial difficulties and collapsing poll numbers in early primary states.

Among the efforts DeSantis has made to try to arrest his slide among Republican hardliners include positioning himself as a champion for “medical freedom”, and defying federal health guidance to advise Floridians against taking new Covid-19 booster shots.

The settlement ends a two-year legal battle between the DeSantis administration and a coalition of Democrats, open government advocates and media outlets that began in June 2021 when the Florida health department ended daily updates of Covid cases, deaths and vaccinations on its online dashboard.

The department will pay the plaintiffs’ $152,000 legal bill and resume regular posting of the data that DeSantis’s communications team insisted at the time was no longer necessary because cases had “significantly decreased” and that Florida was “returning to normal”.

In reality, as DeSantis dismissed reporting on the pandemic as “media hysteria”, the Delta variant of the virus was just taking hold, and cases and fatalities spiked, to a record 385 a day in Florida by September 2021. Simultaneously, Florida led the nation in pediatric Covid hospitalizations.

Critics dubbed DeSantis “the Pied Piper of Covid, leading everybody off a cliff”, as he forged ahead with an executive order banning mask mandates in schools, having already signed legislation awarding himself veto power over coronavirus mandates set by municipalities.

“Twenty-three thousand Floridians died during the Delta surge, and not only did the DeSantis administration restrict information on Covid during that time, they repeatedly downplayed the severity of the outbreak to fit their political narrative and help DeSantis run for president. That decision cost lives,” said Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democratic former state congressman who filed the lawsuit against the Florida health department, later joined by the Florida Center for Government Accountability.……

‘That decision cost lives’: Covid data case further deflates Ron DeSantis’s campaign

Settlement over withheld virus data that critics say cost thousands of lives comes at pivotal time for Republican governor and his teetering campaign

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

HOLLAND, Mich. — Every few hours, Sierra Schuetz checked to see if Ottawa County’s leaders had posted a new version of the 2024 budget — one that she hoped might save her job.


She worked for the county’s health department, running a program that provided free food to about 22,000 low-income residents each year. In late September, Schuetz was steering a van full of bags of fresh produce bound for a nearby farm where about 75 migrant workers were waiting.


She was 31 years old, six months pregnant and increasingly worried about how she was going to provide for her own family. On Sept. 26 — just six days away — the county’s board of commissioners was set to vote on the health department’s budget. If it passed as proposed, Schuetz’s bosses told her that her job would be eliminated.

“I get a rush of fear just thinking about it,” she said.


Her van sped by cornfields, a Cambodian Buddhist temple and a few Trump flags fluttering in the early fall breeze. Eight of the 11 commissioners on the county board that would decide her fate were political newcomers who had channeled voter rage over pandemic-era restrictions into a successful insurgent campaign last fall.

The new commissioners, all Republicans, had been trying since January to fire the head of the health department and replace her with a safety manager from a local HVAC company who had risen to prominence as a critic of mask mandates.

They had blocked the county government from accepting grants that mentioned the goals of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or World Health Organization.

And they had passed a measure questioning the safety of vaccines.

Now they wanted to return the health department’s budget to pre-pandemic levels, which they hoped would help return their county to a moment before the coronavirus disrupted their lives and their community.

Covid had killed more than a million Americans and triggered one of the largest government interventions into everyday lives since World War II.

Even though deaths caused by the virus have declined dramatically, the anger, mistrust and disinformation that grew out of the government’s response were still radiating through the nation’s politics at all levels.


In Ottawa County, a fast-growing, middle-class community of about 300,000 people on the Lake Michigan shore, battles over mask mandates and whether to get vaccinated had divided families and torn apart church congregations.

They had eroded trust not only in medical experts and government institutions, but also among neighbors and friends. They had turned the county, which voted to reelect Donald Trump by 21 points, into a place where the Republican Party’s future was taking shape……..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/22/ottawa-county-michigan-covid-mistrust/

 

[UriUT]

Sometimes last week as I went through my post.news feed, I saw someone posted a screenshot of a tweet that a right winger's proposal of exposing us to "weak version of a virus" as opposed to getting vaccines. I knew his name but really forgot it immediately bc my limited memory shouldn't waste space for them. Plus I went through the feed so quickly I really can't verify if it's true.

Of course .. as I'm trying out threads, I see someone refer to him...jack posobiec..so I googled his name and "weak version". I finally found that tweet.



Wow, my brain hurts at this idiocy.

 

[MT15]

This is satire, but basically this is what conspiracy nuts are thinking:

 

[Optimus Prime]

Brexit was prioritised over tackling Covid-19 in the early days of the outbreak, a former health minister has said, as the inquiry into the UK response to the pandemic gathers pace.

Lord Bethell, who was appointed a health minister in March 2020, the month the UK went into its first lockdown, said Boris Johnson did “everything he could” to avoid focusing on the pandemic.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the Conservative peer said: “I was aware that during the early days of the pandemic, it was extremely difficult to get any response from Downing Street, and we could see this train coming down the tracks at us.”

“It was put to us there were other priorities including Brexit. I personally found that completely unexplainable and baffling,” he said.

“I know [Boris Johnson] found the prospect of a pandemic personally very difficult to focus on, it was bad news of a kind he doesn’t like to respond to, and he did everything he could to try to avoid the subject,” he said.

Bethell’s comments come before the appearance of Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former chief adviser, at the Covid-19 inquiry on Tuesday.

Lee Cain, the former No 10 director of communications who left government a day before Cummings, will also appear.

Bethell told the Today programme the culture in Downing Street at the time was “chaotic”, describing it as an “office culture that had gone badly wrong, where bullying and chaotic behaviours had become normalised”.

The peer said after backing Johnson for prime minister, he felt “very let down [that] things went as badly as they did”…….

Brexit prioritised over tackling Covid at start of pandemic, says ex-minister

Lord Bethell says Boris Johnson did ‘everything he could’ to avoid focusing on pandemic in early days of crisis

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

At the end of the summer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved an updated version of vaccines targeting the coronavirus responsible for covid-19. But uptake has been slow; as of this writing, only 56.4 million Americans have gotten the new version of the vaccine.

Polling released Friday shows an interesting pattern in views of the updated vaccine. The survey by KFF found that about a fifth of respondents said they had already gotten vaccinated, just about in line with 56 million relative to the country’s adult population.

But there was a noticeable gap by race: most Black and Hispanic Americans said they had gotten or would likely get the updated vaccine, while most White Americans said they wouldn’t……

But if you go a level deeper, you see that the divide here isn’t really a racial one.

Instead, it’s largely a political one.

KFF provided The Washington Post with data on views of the vaccines among Whites by party. The data already indicated that Democrats were far more likely to say they planned to get the new vaccine than Republicans, with three-quarters of the former group saying they had or planned to, and three-quarters of the latter saying they probably wouldn’t.

Actually, more than half of Republicans said they definitely would not get the updated vaccine.

Republicans are overwhelmingly White. So when we break out White respondents by party, you see the effect: White Democrats are far more likely to say they will get the vaccine than Black or Hispanic Americans.

The total for Whites is pulled in the other direction, though, by opposition from White Republicans.

In other words, views of the vaccine are — as they have been for a very long time now — largely polarized not by race but by party.


When the delta variant of the virus surged in the middle of 2021, we began to see the effects of this divide.

Research showed that, after vaccines became broadly available, deaths from covid-19 in Ohio and Florida were disproportionately occurring among Republicans. Before the vaccines were available, there was no such divide.


We’ve also seen that opposition to vaccines on the right extends beyond the covid-19 inoculations. Last December, we looked at polling that showed a big drop in support for MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccines among Republicans — a drop that was measured after the pandemic…….

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/17/covid-vaccine-partisan-gap/

 

[Optimus Prime]

One of the comments of the above article
====================

What scares me most is that when the inevitable begins to happen, and we see decreases in life expectancy, higher morbidity rates and continued low birthrates for White people the response from many of them will be MORE racism, xenophobia and anti-immigrant rage.

This might result in more Trumpism and a stronger embrace of authoritarianism in an attempt to maintain there social standing.

This could be dangerous.

 

[Dragon]

One of the comments of the above article
====================

What scares me most is that when the inevitable begins to happen, and we see decreases in life expectancy, higher morbidity rates and continued low birthrates for White people the response from many of them will be MORE racism, xenophobia and anti-immigrant rage.

This might result in more Trumpism and a stronger embrace of authoritarianism in an attempt to maintain there social standing.

This could be dangerous.

Maybe among the older generations - I see a clear division by age. Young people who has grown up using the internet very differently from their parents and grandparent. Most of those are "floppers" looking for multiple source of information while their parents are more likely to just accept the first source they come across which matches their own predisposition. Young people are far more explorative when it comes to information today - One of the facts that the Republicans try to stop by sensoring books and teachers.

 

[Dragon]

Oh well - so much for being careless and feeling secure. I had to go to the hospital for a minor issue 4 days ago - and masks are no longer used at the general waiting area there since everyone is vaccinated and boostet. I too have been fully vaccinated and tripple boosted, Woke up with a sniffle this morning and it was getting to be a regular cold this evening so I took a test - just for precaution and yo and behold positive I had the last booster a little over a month ago and felt secure - well not so much right now lol. - Lesson learned.

 

[MT15]

Oh well - so much for being careless and feeling secure. I had to go to the hospital for a minor issue 4 days ago - and masks are no longer used at the general waiting area there since everyone is vaccinated and boostet. I too have been fully vaccinated and tripple boosted, Woke up with a sniffle this morning and it was getting to be a regular cold this evening so I took a test - just for precaution and yo and behold positive I had the last booster a little over a month ago and felt secure - well not so much right now lol. - Lesson learned.

I too have cold symptoms but my test was negative. Here is hoping you have a very mild case that goes away quickly.

 

[RobF]

Oh well - so much for being careless and feeling secure. I had to go to the hospital for a minor issue 4 days ago - and masks are no longer used at the general waiting area there since everyone is vaccinated and boostet. I too have been fully vaccinated and tripple boosted, Woke up with a sniffle this morning and it was getting to be a regular cold this evening so I took a test - just for precaution and yo and behold positive I had the last booster a little over a month ago and felt secure - well not so much right now lol. - Lesson learned.

I feel your pain. Literally I guess, because I've been suffering with Covid for a week, along with the rest of my family.

I know exactly how we got it too, because we've still been on the higher end of cautious. We see my wife's parents from time to time. They're both retired, and don't go out that much, and still mask while shopping. They occasionally visit the partner of my father-in-law's late mother, he's in his eighties, also doesn't go out much, masks while shopping.

But he somehow picked it up. They saw him on the Sunday, when he was completely asymptomatic, and got infected then. They stopped around ours two days later, also completely asymptomatic, and infected all four of us. We found out on Friday when both our kids fell ill with fevers within an hour of each other. I tested positive on Saturday a week ago, and have been enjoying the ride all week.

No idea what variant this is, but it's no joke; making vaccinated and boosted people highly infectious, asymptomatically, within two days of exposure?

Hopefully we've just been really unlucky. But keep taking care out there!

 

[Dragon]

I feel your pain. Literally I guess, because I've been suffering with Covid for a week, along with the rest of my family.

I know exactly how we got it too, because we've still been on the higher end of cautious. We see my wife's parents from time to time. They're both retired, and don't go out that much, and still mask while shopping. They occasionally visit the partner of my father-in-law's late mother, he's in his eighties, also doesn't go out much, masks while shopping.

But he somehow picked it up. They saw him on the Sunday, when he was completely asymptomatic, and got infected then. They stopped around ours two days later, also completely asymptomatic, and infected all four of us. We found out on Friday when both our kids fell ill with fevers within an hour of each other. I tested positive on Saturday a week ago, and have been enjoying the ride all week.

No idea what variant this is, but it's no joke; making vaccinated and boosted people highly infectious, asymptomatically, within two days of exposure?

Hopefully we've just been really unlucky. But keep taking care out there!

My doctor suspected the new BA.2.86 which is on the move here in Denmark. And it hits like an elephant. Started nice and easy with a bad cold and within 24 hours - high fever, cough, and every muscle aches. A new thing for me is that I seem to have lost quite a lot of my hearing. Not the type where you feel that pressure in your head or on your eardrums but my hearing has definitely become a lot worse than before (and I have been using a hearing aid for years due to a hereditary issue) I really hope that is temporary but the specialist wont see me until I am no longer contageous.

 

[LA - L.A.]

I feel your pain. Literally I guess, because I've been suffering with Covid for a week, along with the rest of my family.

I know exactly how we got it too, because we've still been on the higher end of cautious. We see my wife's parents from time to time. They're both retired, and don't go out that much, and still mask while shopping. They occasionally visit the partner of my father-in-law's late mother, he's in his eighties, also doesn't go out much, masks while shopping.

But he somehow picked it up. They saw him on the Sunday, when he was completely asymptomatic, and got infected then. They stopped around ours two days later, also completely asymptomatic, and infected all four of us. We found out on Friday when both our kids fell ill with fevers within an hour of each other. I tested positive on Saturday a week ago, and have been enjoying the ride all week.

No idea what variant this is, but it's no joke; making vaccinated and boosted people highly infectious, asymptomatically, within two days of exposure?

Hopefully we've just been really unlucky. But keep taking care out there!

My doctor suspected the new BA.2.86 which is on the move here in Denmark. And it hits like an elephant. Started nice and easy with a bad cold and within 24 hours - high fever, cough, and every muscle aches. A new thing for me is that I seem to have lost quite a lot of my hearing. Not the type where you feel that pressure in your head or on your eardrums but my hearing has definitely become a lot worse than before (and I have been using a hearing aid for years due to a hereditary issue) I really hope that is temporary but the specialist wont see me until I am no longer contageous.

Hope both of you and your families have a full and speedy recovery.