The Coronavirus Thread

[Sean Hayden]

100% conformity may be unwise. Of course if the only people not getting vaccinated are Trump supporters it's six of one, half a dozen of the other... --too crumplesque?

I suppose that we could look at it as fighting fire with fire. The virus adapts via natural selection, and most of us adapt with science and intellect.

It appears some of us a going the natural selection route.

It does look that way. However, most have probably already had kids...

That raises an interesting question; is Trump support an inheritable trait?

We can employ the usual bullshit: a combination of traits which make it more likely an individual will become a Trump supporter are to some extent heritable.

[Sean Hayden]

About the former US president's failure to make any real effort to change his followers' minds about the vaccine:

'Trump Keeps Rejecting Pleas From Allies for Pro-Vax Campaign'

It’s been more than six months since Donald Trump left office and, despite pleas from multiple friends and advisers, the former president has kept refusing to mount anything resembling a real effort to get his supporters vaccinated.

As COVID-19 continues to rip through the United States, Trump has done little more than make sporadic gestures toward the vaccine, including when he said he’d “recommend” people get the shot during a Fox News interview, while underscoring at the same time that he respected people’s “freedoms” to not get vaccinated.

But Trump’s resistance toward truly pushing for people to get the vaccine hasn’t been from lack of trying from some of his allies.

According to four people who’ve independently spoken to Trump about a potential pro-vaccine campaign, the former president has shown little interest in tying his name to broader efforts to get people inoculated.

When asked why Trump hadn’t done more on vaccines, Stephen Moore—who previously advised Trump on economic and coronavirus-related policy—said he didn’t have a “good answer for that.”

Moore, a former top Trump surrogate, said that after he published an op-ed in The Hill late last month arguing that Trump should give a national primetime address with President Joe Biden urging his supporters and voters to get the shot, “especially because of the Delta variant,” Moore made sure to send the article to the former president.

“I know from a friend who works with Trump that they gave it to him…[and that it] got to his desk,” he added. “I think he would be well-advised to make a public statement and a speech [devoted to] really encouraging people to get vaccinated; I think it would influence people…It would be in his own political interest, as well as the nation’s interest.”

...

Although Trump has told unvaccinated supporters to get their coronavirus shots during a handful of public appearances—campaign-style rallies, fundraisers, media interviews—he’s also qualified his endorsement of the vaccines by emphasizing that the “freedoms” not to get it are important, too.

Trump even released a written statement last month sympathizing with anti-vaxxers because, according to Trump, "people are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don't trust [Biden’s] Administration, they don't trust the Election results, and they certainly don’t trust the Fake News, which is refusing to tell the Truth.”

In poll after poll this year, self-identified Republicans have been out of step with the mainstream of Americans on a number of public health issues related to the coronavirus pandemic, from attitudes towards mask requirements, to vaccine hesitancy, to blatant anti-vaccine posturing.

...

A poll conducted by Monmouth University in late July found that Republicans make up the bulk of those who are staunchly opposed to the vaccine rather than the merely hesitant or procrastinating. Seventeen percent of respondents made up the hardcore of respondents who said they will “likely will never get the vaccine” if they can avoid it. Republicans make up the vast majority of those hardcore refusals, accounting for 70 percent of the “never” respondents compared to just six percent for Democrats.

...

As for the current Trump fundraising operation, there isn’t much shyness when it comes to hitting up donors and supporters with messages encouraging vaccine “freedom.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Team Trump texted supporters asking, “Why haven’t you claimed your ‘FREEDOM PASSPORT’ shirt from President Trump?”

The link sends users to a page from WinRed, the Republican fundraising platform, offering a white T-shirt emblazoned with the American flag and the words “THIS IS MY FREEDOM PASSPORT” for a $45 donation.

While the page text itself doesn’t mention vaccines, metadata tags in the page’s html code instruct social media platforms to apply a more direct headline when the link is posted to Facebook or Twitter: “FREEDOM PASSPORTS > VACCINE PASSPORTS.”

I guess we'll have to assign some degree of blame to the bastid after all. I would only add that he's responding to his followers here...

[Brian Peacock]

So the bleach, the hydroxychloroquine, and the light blubs up the bum weren't a good idea after all?

[Sean Hayden]

--he knows his audience

[Tero]

I have a brother in law who I have not seen but once in 10 years. He seems to understand things at that level. He graduated high school, I don't know how. We don't worry about his politics, he does not vote. he may be working a bit. Mainly he sits in his basement, smokes and drinks Bud Light. while watching sports.

[Cunt]

One can understand that view only if one believes, at some basic level, that everything that happens to you in life is solely your responsibility or the result of one's own action, or lack thereof. 100 years ago it was not uncommon for people to believe that a congenital disability was punishment for sin. We also saw how Fred Phelps et al blamed the 9/11 outrage on manly bum sex. It's magical thinking.

When I was a lad a yearly treat was to watch the Grand National steeple chase - and my father would ask each of us to pick a horse before the race and then he'd pop down to the local bookies to put 50p on each horse. My pick, I think it was called Alverston, fell a Becher's Brook and broke it's leg and had to be destroyed. I remember brief background shots of it thrashing around on the ground unable to get up as the race continued. As silly as it seems now, at the time I was consumed with guilt, somehow believing that picking it as 'my horse' had sealed it's fate. In my mind Alverston's death was intimately tied to my action of picking it out of the list. That was childish magical thinking of course, but at that age one's lack of life experiences predisposes you to seeing yourself as the reference point for all things.

I think anti-makders/vaxxers may similarly see themselves as the reference point for all things they experience in life. For one, they're obviously all people who haven't died from the virus - so in some sense a raging pandemic is not something that has effected them. What has effected them is the fallout: the lockdowns, the mandates, the lay-offs, and the other things that have negatively impacted on them and ability to make the kind of choices they want to make. They may also believe that individually each of them is in total control of everything that happens to them, and so the fact that they're not fighting for breath in an ICU is a vindication that they've made the right choices - at least so far. If they believe, on the basis of personal experience, that Covid is something which happens to other people then why should they wear masks or have a vaccine(?) - at the end of the day that's someone else's problem not theirs, and trying to force them to wear a mask or take a vaccine is to remove personal agency from them; to make them do something to mitigate problems that other people are having.

Choosing to eat enough to achieve, and maintain obesity is ones own responsibility though.

This disease seems to do some of its worst damage, to those with comorbidities.

If someone is spreading more disease by declining a vaccine, or a mask, then the same is true for being fat. It will absolutely spread more disease if they get a more severe case, and especially if they end up needing health care assistance.

So encourage masks, encourage vaccines, of course. But also point out that controlling one's obesity is just as much a responsible choice. Just as easy to implement. It's just a mask. It's just a jab. It's just putting the fork down.

But fatty doesn't usually want to take responsibility for choosing to be obese. It's intimately tied in with the condition, often.

Some, out of love for their fat loved ones, instinctively leap to defend the choices. I've done it myself.

[pErvinalia]

So encourage masks, encourage vaccines, of course. But also point out that controlling one's obesity is just as much a responsible choice. Just as easy to implement.

It's obviously not easy, as can be evidenced by the large amount of fat people in the world (well in the west, at least).

[Brian Peacock]

On Tuesday afternoon, a steady stream of customers flowed into Austin’s famed music store, Waterloo Records. Aisle after aisle, everyone wore masks. No mask, no vinyl.

“Either you’re gonna fight and not be able to come in, or wear a mask and come in. I mean, it’s really not hard,” said Jessy Schwartz, Waterloo’s manager.

The Austin area is in the midst of a dire Covid-19 crisis, after setting local records this week for the most patients in intensive care and on ventilators. Only seven ICU beds remain in a region of almost 2.4 million. Statewide, hospitals are so depleted that the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, is turning to medical personnel from out of state.

Yet Abbott has expressly prohibited governmental entities like school districts, cities and counties from requiring masks or vaccines – two of the easiest, most effective weapons against the virus. In stricken Austin, like much of Texas and other Republican-run states, rightwing governors are actively hampering the health policies that could halt the spread of the virus.

Private businesses like Waterloo can tell customers to wear masks, but unlike earlier this year, they have no statewide mandate to back them up. And if businesses ask for their patrons’ proof of vaccination, they risk losing their licenses and permits.

“Abbott is a complete idiot. He’s the biggest piece of shit,” Schwartz said.

“Yeah he is,” an eavesdropper chimed in...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... reg-abbott

Texas and Florida accounted for c.40% of US Covid hospitalizations last week.

[Sean Hayden]

I'm unhappy with the youngest being in school. Hopefully they'll approve a vaccine for them soon.

[NineBerry]

[Cunt]

So encourage masks, encourage vaccines, of course. But also point out that controlling one's obesity is just as much a responsible choice. Just as easy to implement.

It's obviously not easy, as can be evidenced by the large amount of fat people in the world (well in the west, at least).

It IS easy. It is complicated by every individuals psychology, but if it was just about how to, that part is SO easy.

What point I am making, is that public health should take more care to promote health fortification, such as exercise, controlling personal bodyfat etc.

Reduce your comorbidities, and less virus gets made and spread around.

[Seabass]

Reduce your comorbidities, and less virus gets made and spread around.

Citation needed.

[Seabass]

If someone is spreading more disease by declining a vaccine, or a mask, then the same is true for being fat.

Citation needed.

It will absolutely spread more disease if they get a more severe case, and especially if they end up needing health care assistance.

Citation needed.

[Sean Hayden]

So the Proud Boys will be supporting the anti-maskers at our school board meeting this week to decide on defying Abott's order.

There are way more of us than them --many of whom, most(?)-- won't even have kids in the district. Still, it all feels rather hopeless.

[JimC]

One can understand that view only if one believes, at some basic level, that everything that happens to you in life is solely your responsibility or the result of one's own action, or lack thereof. 100 years ago it was not uncommon for people to believe that a congenital disability was punishment for sin. We also saw how Fred Phelps et al blamed the 9/11 outrage on manly bum sex. It's magical thinking.

When I was a lad a yearly treat was to watch the Grand National steeple chase - and my father would ask each of us to pick a horse before the race and then he'd pop down to the local bookies to put 50p on each horse. My pick, I think it was called Alverston, fell a Becher's Brook and broke it's leg and had to be destroyed. I remember brief background shots of it thrashing around on the ground unable to get up as the race continued. As silly as it seems now, at the time I was consumed with guilt, somehow believing that picking it as 'my horse' had sealed it's fate. In my mind Alverston's death was intimately tied to my action of picking it out of the list. That was childish magical thinking of course, but at that age one's lack of life experiences predisposes you to seeing yourself as the reference point for all things.

I think anti-makders/vaxxers may similarly see themselves as the reference point for all things they experience in life. For one, they're obviously all people who haven't died from the virus - so in some sense a raging pandemic is not something that has effected them. What has effected them is the fallout: the lockdowns, the mandates, the lay-offs, and the other things that have negatively impacted on them and ability to make the kind of choices they want to make. They may also believe that individually each of them is in total control of everything that happens to them, and so the fact that they're not fighting for breath in an ICU is a vindication that they've made the right choices - at least so far. If they believe, on the basis of personal experience, that Covid is something which happens to other people then why should they wear masks or have a vaccine(?) - at the end of the day that's someone else's problem not theirs, and trying to force them to wear a mask or take a vaccine is to remove personal agency from them; to make them do something to mitigate problems that other people are having.

That makes a lot of sense, Brian. But I think such thinking is reinforced by a conservative ideology which obsesses over individual freedom, and distrusts any call to collective action for the common good. One immediately thinks of Thatcher's "there is no such thing as society"...