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CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk


Mrs Whiggins

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I'm in a similar situation. My dad passed suddenly last Wednesday morning and we're having his memorial this weekend. So far 30 have RSVP'd and it's probably going to be closer to 45 in total attending I'd guess. My 86yo grandma can't get vaccinated because of her infusion schedule, but she'll be goddamned if she doesn't go to her son in laws funeral. 
It's just another layer to the anxiety and tension of just trying to get through it all. 
I'm sorry for your loss

Damn, sorry to hear this man. Your family is in my thoughts. You as well, bolverk.
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1 hour ago, bolverk said:

East and West Texas seniors, I fear, are gonna get steamrolled. Like I said last night, my 80-year-old mom told me she thinks only about half of her social group (all old) refuse to get vaccinated, which aligns with the 52% figure given on the map up above. It's shear madness. I'm honestly hoping no one shows up for the damn memorial service, because I don't want to somehow be culpable if anyone gets sick and dies from attending. I'm still waiting to hear back on the funeral home and church at least having a box of masks outside the doors or maybe a sign saying the family kindly asks you to mask up before entering.

Dude good luck up there, and sorry about your dad.  I used to drive through there every year on my way home, but my parents moved to the permian basin so I hang a left at Sterling City now.  Of course, I've already told them I won't be heading that direction til my sister and her family get the jab.  Not sure how I'd handle a memorial service in this nonsense.  Really feel for you, man.

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Damn, 'verk and 'ant.  I am so sorry.

I live in a house with 6 full-timers and 1-2 part-timers, and 2 are not vaccinated (my stepdaughter and her 7 YO son).  Talk about a dilemma.  Stepdaughter doesn't work and only goes out masked to stores, but her son is in camp this week.  I think one of them is gonna catch delta.  It could kill her, as her immune system is all kinds of fucked up.  I can't out-argue her idiot dad who lives in Bangladesh, and she has nowhere to go, mostly because of her own doing.  I'm just hoping our own vaccines hold up.

Families.

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8 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Damn, 'verk and 'ant.  I am so sorry.

I live in a house with 6 full-timers and 1-2 part-timers, and 2 are not vaccinated (my stepdaughter and her 7 YO son).  Talk about a dilemma.  Stepdaughter doesn't work and only goes out masked to stores, but her son is in camp this week.  I think one of them is gonna catch delta.  It could kill her, as her immune system is all kinds of fucked up.  I can't out-argue her idiot dad who lives in Bangladesh, and she has nowhere to go, mostly because of her own doing.  I'm just hoping our own vaccines hold up.

Families.

Dear God, man. I'm not even sure where to start - not to be glib but maybe we need a flow chart to understand your living situation. Or maybe not. That sounds....unpleasant above and beyond the whole pandemic thing.

Just so I'm following, you had an immunocompromised stepdaughter and her son living under your roof, and they refuse to get vaccinated because her dad lives on another continent on the other side of the planet? It seems like you might have some leverage there that you're not utilizing. Or maybe I'm not understanding the situation correctly.

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2 hours ago, bolverk said:

Fuck. I'm really sorry to hear that. You've got my deepest condolences about your dad. There's been so much loss over the last year.

Way too much death this past year. I’ve personally experienced it. Some people say it’s just that you’re getting old. I’m in my 40s. That ain’t just it.

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On 7/13/2021 at 5:29 PM, Anastasis said:

Framing NY reporting as "conservative approach" after all the brain damage over the FL reporting is pretty funny. @BradInATX, come back so that we can examined the FL case/death reporting in context! 

 

https://apnews.com/article/health-new-york-coronavirus-pandemic-nyc-state-wire-1d0de9f568433dd2e560c30544a2df60

New York takes conservative approach counting virus deaths

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The federal government’s count of the COVID-19 death toll in New York has 11,000 more victims than the tally publicized by the administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, which has stuck with a far more conservative approach to counting virus deaths.

...

Other states including California, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey have taken approaches in line with the CDC, which includes in fatality counts all cases where COVID-19 is an associated or contributing factor. Texas, however, only counts a COVID-19 death in cases where the death certificate lists the virus as the main cause.

Eh. Covid sort of ended for me and my family when we got vaccinated, combined with a newborn and a deluge of work, plus the most insane period of (no politics) politics of my life ending and I ain't got time for all that. 

I was always on record thinking Cuomo was a disingenuous idiot. Fuck him. Where I ultimately landed on covid was:

- Politics of the states didn't really matter spread wise. Masks and policy maybe worked superficially but end of day people are going to gather privately with family and friends and spread it no matter how much they virtue signal or tout on Facebook to "mask up!!"

- it's a shame how political the whole thing was. It's a shame how unvaccinated some areas of the country are. It was a serious thing that killed probably 700-800k people end of day in our country and it's a shame that politics caused people to downplay that many deaths. It's also a shame that the media continued to fear monger even after about May of this year (and to this day) when being vaccinated almost guarantees your safety. 

- it did spread in schools, especially high schools. Pretending otherwise was silly. 

- I don't really give a fuck anymore. My wife and I are vaccinated. Neither of us have risk factors. Our kids are in the age group that's more likely to drown in my pool than die of covid. It's not a thing for us anymore. I don't even know where our masks are. 

Some day I'll look at the studies done on the data, but shit is so incomplete that I'm not ready to throw gotchas around. 

A lot of people died. A good portion of the deaths may have been preventable, but it was never gonna happen. Way she goes. 

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1 hour ago, bolverk said:

Just so I'm following, you had an immunocompromised stepdaughter and her son living under your roof, and they refuse to get vaccinated because her dad lives on another continent on the other side of the planet? It seems like you might have some leverage there that you're not utilizing. Or maybe I'm not understanding the situation correctly.

There is no leverage.  She's 29 years old and immature, with undiagnosed but serious and persistent health conditions and a huge level of distrust of western medicine, thanks to her fuckwit father (who despite his lunacy is one dissertation away from a PhD in electrical engineering from UT).  We can't -- or I won't -- kick her out.  She would be homeless.  Sometimes you just have to make the best of a bad situation.  Our relationship is shitty, it will never get better, but her relationship with her mom (my wife) isn't a big step up.  She is careful, no social contacts outside of the house, curbside shopping whenever possible, masked up when not, but I still think one of them will get it.  Since her son can't be vaccinated, it's kind of a done deal in my mind.  Me, my wife and our two kids are all 2X vaxxed with mRNA, so I'm just rolling the dice at this point.

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5 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

 

These fucking guys. The reason the MAGA crowd didn't get vaccinated is because of their rhetoric. Meanwhile, they've been vaxxed for months. And yet, this shit is spreading like fucking wildfire now -- in large part because their fucking "crowd" didn't get vaxxed (because of their rhetoric).

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12 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

I don't know if my doc will give that to me after having the J&J in the spring even with this new stuff coming out. Do I go to a pharmacy and say, "I need a new chip"?

Local Safeway told my wife they don’t track anything.  Seems I could show up, lie on the paperwork, and get a Moderna shot.  Still going to wait for doctor’s opinion on it, and/or some government announcement. 

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My folks talked to their Doctor on the booster shot since they had the J&J.  He said, and this was a couple of weeks ago, that at the time, it showed that the J&J shots were reasonably ok at preventing serious illness and death.  WIth the new data that came out yesterday (which I forwarded to my folks), I asked that they reach back out.  I think they should go ahead and get it, but they want the ok from their doctor.

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Marco Rubio on CBS News trying to walk on the razor’s edge. Saying you should get vaccinated, he and his family are vaccinated, but at the end of the day it’s up to personal choice. When pointed out that there are something like 29% of Republicans who refuse to get vaccinated compared to 6% of Democrats, he raises the topic of the African-American community. Then he speculates on the unsupported notion that the virus was modified in a Wuhan lab to make it more dangerous. (Something if you think rationally would literally make no sense to do, not even if you wanted to use it as a bio-weapon since it would put you at as much risk as anyone else.)

He mentioned at the end that a high school football teammate of his passed away from Covid. Maybe he should have gone public recommending the vaccine sooner. 

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I'd would like to be optimistic that most of the attendees were vaccinated, but there were over 15,000 attendees in San Antonio at the Texas High School Coaches Association meeting, so this could be a Delta superspreader event coming to a hs near you. It just finished up, so cross fingers that the numbers don't climb in the next week.

 

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Were they anti-vax before?
 

No. I’d bet plenty of money that all of GOP leadership, FOX News hosts, etc. are vaccinated. But as a group they’ve been happy to take a very soft approach to messaging until now, seeing a need for a coordinated change in tune.
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So this is a long ass thread (140+ tweets) that provides a really good and approachable overview of the vaccines and the immunology in the context of delta and the discussion around booster doses.  Worth a read through imo, but here are the bottom line conclusions. Thread is full of cites and receipts.  

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1417544454223843333.html

How to summarize what this all means?
- We don’t yet have data to support additional or higher doses of COVID vaccine for the general public. 
- In making the case for a 3rd dose of its vaccine, Pfizer presented data from ongoing follow-up of phase III study participants to the White House COVID Response Team this week, but this data has yet to be shared publicly. This data must be shared publicly. 

Based on the available data, some exceptions and groups in which I think an additional dose of COVID vaccine might be indicated include: 
- People who received the J&J vaccine, especially elderly persons who mount weaker immune responses to vaccination. Why? The J&J vaccine offers less robust protection against the Beta & Delta variants. 
- Solid organ transplant recipients and other significantly immunosuppressed persons. 

We’re still studying heterologous prime-boost vaccine regimens. This is when the 1st dose of a vaccine is one kind (e.g. J&J or AZ) followed by a 2nd type of vaccine (e.g. Pfizer or Moderna). Preliminary data suggests that mix-match regimens may be more potent.

 

Does it make sense to get tested to see if you’re immune after vaccination? The FDA recommends against it. This is completely unnecessary for most people.

However... 

If you are in a high-risk group (e.g. solid organ transplant recipient), it may make sense to get tested in consultation with an infectious disease specialist or immunologist. It’s important that the right test be ordered and interpreted correctly. The right test is a quantitative, high-sensitivity Spike protein antibody test. Many COVID antibody tests detect antibodies against nucleocapsid antigen. You will test negative on these tests if you were vaccinated, not infected. 

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44 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

Rafael Cruz tweet saying this is where radical socialist President Biden is taking us incoming in 3… 2… 1…

He can go fuck himself. The people who won’t get vaccinated should be the ones who have to stay home. 

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11 hours ago, lmao said:

Were they anti-vax before?

 

I get that being a big-brained centrist is part of your shtick, but are you suggesting that majority of conservative news outlets and politicians have NOT consistently downplayed the usefulness, effectiveness, or need for COVID-19 vaccines? I do agree that Shapiro has been pretty consistent and supported vaccines but point out an exception does not counter the general argument.

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2 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

It's late but I'll take the GOP telling people to get vaccinated. Of course, they will always claim that this was their constant declaration.

 

19 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Despite all the evidence on video and in social media to the contrary. 

 

8 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

And they will get away with it. 

Just posting these in sequence for the rock-solid truth of it.

 

ADDENDUM: and it still won't help, because the cult's gonna cult.  They've committed to a path, and the only unforgivable sin, the one thing they will NEVER do, is to admit they were wrong in their initial position.

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2 minutes ago, Serak The Preparer said:

I get that being a big-brained centrist is part of your shtick, but are you suggesting that majority of conservative news outlets and politicians have NOT consistently downplayed the usefulness, effectiveness, or need for COVID-19 vaccines? I do agree that Shapiro has been pretty consistent and supported vaccines but point out an exception does not counter the general argument.

Is that what that guy is going for now?  He was arguing with someone once that he was much further left than they were, but all his posts are about how mean we are to Trump supporters. 

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32 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

ADDENDUM: and it still won't help, because the cult's gonna cult.  They've committed to a path, and the only unforgivable sin, the one thing they will NEVER do, is to admit they were wrong in their initial position.

100%. A few might sneak out to quietly get the vaccine at some point and then perhaps even lie to their friends to avoid criticism.

Not taking the vaccine is more about showing up the libs who annoying talk about science.

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3 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

I would much rather have this than a mask mandate in NYC and NY State.  We have the Excelsior pass (it is a Electronic COVID Vaccine QR Code), so it would be easy to do IMO.

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4 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

It's late but I'll take the GOP telling people to get vaccinated. Of course, they will always claim that this was their constant declaration.

Not only that, they will campaign with a straight face next year that they were more influential on getting vaxxed numbers up vs. the Biden administration.

 

 

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3 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Not only that, they will campaign with a straight face next year that they were more influential on getting vaxxed numbers up vs. the Biden administration.

 

 

Next year?

On Tuesday, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican who said he had received his first Pfizer vaccine shot only on Sunday, blamed the hesitance on Biden and his criticism of Donald Trump’s vaccine drive last year. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said skeptics would not get their shots until “this administration acknowledges the efforts of the last one.”

 

Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas pointed the finger at the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“Every time Jen Psaki opens her mouth or Dr. Fauci opens his mouth,” he said, “10,000 more people say I’m never going to take the vaccine.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/virus-resurges-gop-lawmakers-allow-122225187.html

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Biden should go on national television, thank Fox News for their innovation with the clear pass, and announce he’s instituting a similar pass for other private businesses around the country  to utilize for the safety of both their workers and customers. 

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24 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Next year?

On Tuesday, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican who said he had received his first Pfizer vaccine shot only on Sunday, blamed the hesitance on Biden and his criticism of Donald Trump’s vaccine drive last year. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said skeptics would not get their shots until “this administration acknowledges the efforts of the last one.”

 

Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas pointed the finger at the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“Every time Jen Psaki opens her mouth or Dr. Fauci opens his mouth,” he said, “10,000 more people say I’m never going to take the vaccine.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/virus-resurges-gop-lawmakers-allow-122225187.html

If you are someone who is triggered by Psaki, then I am 100000% okay with you not getting the vaccine.  

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55 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Every time Jen Psaki opens her mouth or Dr. Fauci opens his mouth,” he said, “10,000 more people say I’m never going to take the vaccine.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/virus-resurges-gop-lawmakers-allow-122225187.html

I believe this is 100% the case. But if they want to play the game of doing the opposite of what Fauci says, so be it.

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3 hours ago, Serak The Preparer said:

I get that being a big-brained centrist is part of your shtick, but are you suggesting that majority of conservative news outlets and politicians have NOT consistently downplayed the usefulness, effectiveness, or need for COVID-19 vaccines? I do agree that Shapiro has been pretty consistent and supported vaccines but point out an exception does not counter the general argument.

I'm not a centrist. Shapiro is terrible, there is no need to make up that he's anti-vax. All it does it hurt the credibility of the accuser & give the GOP ammo. Plenty of terrible things he can & should be criticized & shamed for. 

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