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GRHorn

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  1. Spoiler

    MIAMI — Shouting “Freedom” and other anti-government slogans, thousands of Cubans took to the streets in cities around the country on Sunday to protest food and medicine shortages, in a remarkable eruption of discontent not seen in nearly 30 years.

    Thousands of people marched through San Antonio de los Baños, southwest of Havana, with videos streaming live on Facebook for nearly an hour before they suddenly disappeared. As the afternoon wore on, other videos appeared from demonstrations elsewhere, including Palma Soriano, in the country’s southeast. Hundreds of people also gathered in Havana, where a heavy police presence preceded their arrival.

    “The people are dying of hunger!” one woman shouted during a protest filmed in the province of Artemisa, in the island’s west. “Our children are dying of hunger!”

    One clip circulating on Twitter showed protesters overturning a police car in Cardenas, 90 miles east of Havana. Another video showed people looting from one of the much-detested government-run stores, which sell wildly overpriced items in currencies most Cubans do not possess.

     

    In a country known for repressive crackdowns on dissent, the rallies were widely viewed as astonishing. Activists and analysts called it the first time that so many people had openly protested against the Communist government since the so-called Maleconazo uprising, which exploded in the summer of 1994 into a huge wave of Cubans leaving the country by sea.

    Carolina Barrero, a Cuban activist, went even further. “It is the most massive popular demonstration to protest the government that we have experienced in Cuba since ’59,” she said by text message, referring to the year Fidel Castro took power. She called the public outpouring on Sunday “spontaneous, frontal and forceful.”

     
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    “What has happened is enormous,” she added.

    The protests were set off by a dire economic crisis in Cuba, where the coronavirus pandemic has cut off crucial tourism dollars. People now spend hours in line each day to buy basic food items. Many have been unable to work because restaurants and other businesses have remained on lockdown for months.
     

    The desperate conditions have triggered an uptick in migration by both land and sea.

    Since the start of the fiscal year last October, the U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted more than 512 Cubans at sea, compared with 49 for the entire previous year. On Saturday, the Coast Guard suspended the search for nine Cuban migrants whose vessel overturned at sea off Key West, Fla.

    The Cuban government attributes its longstanding economic problems to the American trade embargo, which cuts off its access to financing and imports. But the pandemic has worsened conditions, and in Matanzas, east of Havana, some patients and their families have resorted to posting videos on YouTube of furious people screaming about the lack of medicine and doctors.

    The Cuban Ministry of Health website says the nation of 11 million now has about 32,000 active cases of Covid-19. It reported 6,923 daily cases and 47 deaths on Sunday, breaking its prior record, set just Friday. Only about 15 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, the government said.

    The protest movement gained momentum after a number of celebrities started tweeting with the hashtag #SOSCuba. Mia Khalifa, a former adult film actress with nearly four million followers on Twitter, joined in by tweeting insults directed at the president. The president’s office even responded to criticism by a Puerto Rican singer, Residente. The post was later removed.

    President Miguel Díaz-Canel took office three years ago, the first time someone outside the Castro family was allowed to take the post. Raúl Castro, who had already handed over the presidency, then stepped down as the leader of the Communist Party this year.

    Mr. Díaz-Canel’s term was, at first, marked by increased access to the internet, which helped fuel public discontent against him, particularly by artists.

    Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, confirmed via Twitter that Mr. Díaz-Canel had rushed to San Antonio de los Baños, where the government insisted that “salaried” protesters were trying to provoke a severe reaction by the authorities.

    “Celebrating what they orchestrated today in San Antonio de los Baños only uncovers the worst nature of people,” a government Twitter account quoted the president as saying.

    “Cubans know perfectly well that the government of the United States is principally responsible for Cuba’s current situation,” the foreign ministry said in a Twitter post. “Cuba and its streets belong to the revolutionaries.”

     

    Within hours of the extraordinary events, the president broke into national television programming to urge government supporters to hit the streets and confront the protesters. He blamed the United States for restricting exports, access to funds and travel to Cuba, which led to widespread shortages.

    Mr. Díaz-Canel said in televised remarks on Sunday that the protests were a form of “systemic provocation” by dissidents doing the bidding of the United States. He said Washington in recent months had sought to destabilize and weaken the island’s economy as part of a policy designed to “provoke a massive social implosion.”

    Granma, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper, said in a rare reference to demonstrations that people who took to the streets on Sunday included government supporters who “may have been confused by disinformation on social media.”

    “We call all revolutionaries to hit the streets to defend the revolution everywhere,” the president said. He added that people loyal to the revolution were willing to give their lives to defend the government. “Over our dead bodies,” he said. “We are prepared to do anything.”

    Earlier on Sunday, Mr. Díaz-Canel posted photographs of nurses and other medical personnel arriving by bus in Matanzas. But it was too late: The months of pent-up frustration exploded.

    “They should be calling for peace and dialogue, not blood,” Andy Ruiz, a protester in Havana, said in an interview. “What I saw today was people seeing freedom for the first time.”

    Adonis Milán, a theater director in Havana, said the extreme conditions became too much to bear.

    “This is no longer a question of freedom of expression; it’s a question of hunger,” Mr. Milán said. “People are hitting the street. They are asking for an end to this government, to one-party rule, to repression and the misery we have lived through for 60 years.”

    A few hours later, he called back, sobbing, saying that the internet had been cut off, that anti-riot squads were in the streets and that a number of artists had been arrested after they demanded airtime on national television.

    “I managed to escape,” he said.

     

  2. On 7/10/2021 at 1:39 PM, blacklab said:

    Anyone have a kid use concerta for adhd?

    I'm very hesitant to give to my 11 year old but his neurologist thinks it will help him tremendously in school. He's not a bad student, most grades are 90+, but he'll do dumb things like fail the star test.

     

    What got you to a neurologist? Are there other issues beyond occasional bad test grade?

    One thing for sure is summer is the time to try it. You’ll be able to assess if side effects are an issue. You might need to tweak the dosage. Some kids metabolize it slower than others. You want this all figured out before he’s back at school. Good luck  

     

  3. Just now, midtown said:

    It's better than average

    Ok. It had a full parking lot so I was curious. 
     

    The drive out to Bandera is so nice. Different than other parts of the hill country in that there’s bigger pastures between some of the hills. Some incredible ranches out there I’m sure. 

  4. 49 minutes ago, CoachTex said:

    20210305_202246.thumb.jpg.a34fb0f8e2e1dd475c6760d62c16b5cf.jpg

    PSA. If you are in San Antonio and want some badass Mexican food, make the short drive to El Chaparral in Helotes.  Order the Valerie's special beef and thank me later.

    I saw that place today and wondered how it was. Drove my daughter to a new overnight camp outside Bandera. 

  5. 7 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

    vaccine-dvr-1200x900.png

    This poll is obviously fake news. here’s a total back of envelope breakdown. 
     

    Black people are 12% of the population. They vote 90% democratic. So the breakdown of the Democratic Party is about 20% black. That means if literally every other Democrat was vaccinated you would still need 80% of the black population to get vaccinated to leave 4% of the party unvaxxed. Must be a lot of people lying to pollsters here. 

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  6. 5 hours ago, Captainant said:

    For the umpteenth time - vaccinating kids isn't about protecting that individual child, it's about removing vectors for COVID to mutate and be transmitted and spread so that we can stamp it out or at least get on top of it. 

    It's impressive how you have consistently been underselling COVID and posting against every public health measure. 

    Triggered pretty hard by an informative post with new info from a nationwide study? Interesting. 
     

    My thoughts on Key public health measures

    I think almost all adults should get vaccinated, excluding specifically people with natural immunity.

    I was for masks before the vaccines came out  

    I was against school closures. That was probably correct. 
     

    I’m more cautious towards immunization of kids, especially 12 and under.

    I don’t think these are radical positions.  
     

     

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  7. 1 hour ago, Captainant said:

    I know you're not a local so this probably missed your radar, but:

    https://www.ksat.com/news/texas/2021/07/07/dozens-test-positive-for-covid-19-after-texas-church-camp

    LEAGUE CITY, Texas – Dozens of children and adults have tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a Texas church camp. Three tested positive for the highly contagious delta variant.

    Fifty-seven adults and youths from Galveston County tested positive, including six patients who were fully vaccinated against COVID-19, said Dr. Philip Keiser, the county’s local health authority. More than 90 others, including some from outside the county, have reported positive test results to Galveston County health officials, he said.

    More than 450 adults and grade-six-to-12 youths attended the camp organized near Giddings, Texas, by Clear Creek Community Church in League City, a Houston suburb in Galveston County.

    But I'm sure you're right, putting thousands of kids in one building close together without facemasks will go super duper double plus great

    Yeah I saw that. It’s going to happen. Btw you seem to hate on natural immunity, I wonder how many re-infections there were? Was it more or less than the 6 vaccinated positives that happened? Would be interesting to know.

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  8. 7 hours ago, Captainant said:

    From the new CDC guidance:

    I can hear the REEEEE from DT already - and this is good guidance to emphasize that natural immunity is not sufficient, and we should use every tool in our toolbox to fight the virus

    A couple glaring problems to me with this guidance. Requiring young kids to wear masks when it’s not required in almost any other setting is nonsensical. And don’t tell me kids will be grouped inside, it’s different. That’s nonsense. All the overnight summer camps are back. All the sports day camps are back. Vacation Bible School. It definitely feels like a set up to try to coerce vaccination of young kids (6-12) for a disease that causes them almost no symptoms. To no one’s surprise here, I find that dubious at best. 
     

    For older kids (12-18), punishing those who don’t get vaccinated perhaps because they have natural immunity is again nonsensical. Again to no one’s surprise, I think attempting to coerce young males that have already had covid to be vaccinated given the warning signs out there, is wrongheaded at best, and negligent at worst. 
     

    Thank God there’s a large segment of the population that will disregard this. For sure my school district will. 

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  9. 1 hour ago, Sawbonz said:

    That’s not really clinical data. A clinical study would compare reinfection rates between the 2 groups and more importantly transmissibility by those in the reinfected subgroups. While it is noteworthy that the antibody response to the vax is broader than that from infection, it does not follow that natural immunity isn’t sufficient to protect the individual and help get us to herd immunity 

     Correct. Also antibody response is only one facet of viral immunity. The T cell mediated component would be enhanced by natural immunity and that contribution is not picked up in that study or enhanced by vaccination. 

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  10. 22 minutes ago, Hefeweizen said:


     

    Honestly I’d be in favor of denying medical care to someone unvaccinated  who got Covid and had no good reason for it although that’s probably impossible.

    There’s obvious ethical issues there and also probably legal ones. It still only has emergency approval. 
     

    Also, how does CR feel about people with natural immunity passing on the vaccine?

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  11. 9 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

    Africa coming on strong. Only 1% of the population is vaccinated. Spoke with a good friend in Kenya. He was able to get dose one of AZ but was then told who knows when he can get #2. 

    “A few weeks ago, we projected this milestone would be reached shortly, and it brings me no joy to be right,” WHO regional director Dr. Matshidiso Moeti said at a press conference on Thursday. “For Africa, the worst is yet to come. The end to this precipitous rise is still weeks away. Cases are doubling now every 18 days, compared with every 21 days only a week ago.”

    The spike in cases has more to do with wealthy nations holding out on promised vaccines than the Delta variant, which authorities fear may mutate into a stronger African variant.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/huge-new-wave-is-the-covid-nightmare-scientists-feared-most

    Doesn’t it go against natural selection for something like a pandemic virus to become more deadly over time? What you should see is what we have seen. More infectious, but weaker versions over time. 

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