Jas. Phillips has left a new comment on your post "Lockdown fury. Let seniors protect themselves.":
"To channel Bill Murray, at least the anti-science Republican idiots will continue to infect and kill each other, 'at least we've got that working for us'."
People who don't think COVID is a big deal spread it to like-minded people. COVID clusters are leaky. The disease spreads to others.
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She said she would trust Newsmax or One America Network, if they told her she should get tested. They are the news sources she finds credible. “It is not that I don’t believe in getting tested. I don’t trust the tests," she told the Washington Post.
America entered a new stage in the COVID story. One part is alarm, because COVID infections are climbing, and deaths lag two weeks behind. Daily deaths are now about 2,500 per day and are expected to climb after the Thanksgiving travel leading into more travel at Christmas. Americans are resisting the calls not to travel. The pattern in my own community tells the story: Young people, who aren't all that worried about the disease, work and socialize together and infect one another, and eventually it infects older people, the population that dies. Nearly all the COVID deaths locally are from people in their seventies and eighties. Click Today marked 106 new cases. Three new deaths, elderly people.
Then there is a cross-current cutting the other direction. Fox News is full of stories about resistance-heroes, restaurant-owners who refuse to close, sheriffs who refuse to enforce laws, Christian schools that stay open, judges that rule that a public health shutdown was too broad. The direction of comment is against shutdowns. They are too strict, too capricious, too hurtful, and probably useless. The conservative media is about COVID tyranny, not COVID deaths.
A third story in the mix is Biden, urging patience and forbearance because COVID is here and growing and the vaccine is on its way but not here yet. Hold on. Don't let up yet. It shows him as a man attempting to hold back the tide, losing the battle, but on the side of the good guys, in the establishment mainstream media. In the conservative media, Biden is the new tyrant, the new job killer, the guy who hates Thanksgiving, Christmas, and families.
The fourth is Trump, declaring COVID victory, saying the vaccine he developed at "warp speed" saved the day, his doing. The virus has infected 15% of Americans so far, positive progress toward herd immunity, as Trump described it. COVID is essentially a past-tense item for Trump. The illness and death are old news--barely news at all, since it is already happening. The excitement is in what is coming, thanks to Trump.
Meanwhile, a Pew poll shows Americans divided about whether or not to get the COVID vaccine shot, although there have been a series of news stories that describe it positively, and the numbers of vaccine supporters are growing from a low base. Click: Pew Research There are anti-vaccination people on both left and right, who say their minds are made up: No. The Pew poll says 21% of Americans fall into this category.
Democrats generally fear the virus and trust the CDC and FDA to do its job responsibly far more than do Republicans. Democrats have more trust in medical science and science generally than do Republicans. Trump supporters are more likely to discount the virus, but, like Mellissa Carone, trust Trump, who is praising the vaccines. A Pew poll says that people who are not very worried about getting or being sick from COVID are evenly divided about whether to get the vaccine.
Netting out all these cross currents 69% of Democrats say they expect to get the COVID vaccination; 50% of Republicans. This would suggest that the James Phillips/Bill Murray quotation that led off this post is a glass half-full. Virus-skeptical Republicans will hold back, Democrats will get vaccinated, and if the vaccine works as hoped, and if the virus is as dangerous as Democrats think it is, Democrats will survive better.
Trump has the leadership credibility to change this, by urging Republicans to get vaccinated. I expect this. Trump wants credit for ending the epidemic, and project "warp speed" appears to have been a success.
If the vaccine works, Trump wants to be associated with it. He wants it to be the Trump vaccine, not the Fauci vaccine. And certainly not the Biden vaccine.
7 comments:
Everyone involved in the COVID-denial scam is doing it for money.
It's profitable for FOX to politicize the pandemic, profitable to the GOP, and especially profitable to corporate advertisers who get a pass while being both the beneficiary and an enabler of the propaganda networks.
Let him have the credit. No, GIVE him the credit. Lavish him with the credit. Help move any moveable Republicans off the dime.
I can’t think of anything cheaper or easier.
Herd immunity will by almost all accounts require an 80% population level of vaccination. (Measles needs 95.)
Not to mention there’s some fairness here.
I’ll also be interested to see what the left-wing and new age nutters (represented in Ashland by Jeff Golden ~~ you should talk to him, Peter ~~ do with this. With Golden’s help they helped defeat the mandatory vaccinations for school attendance bill a couple of years ago.
I don't know if the right site for this, so delete it, as needed Peter.
While in Rogue River today, I stopped by my (now former) Chiropractors Office, to pay my bill. When I entered, there were three people, the receptionist, another person, and a third, apparently paying her bill. None were masked or attempting to distance. When the counter cleared, I told the young lady I was there to pay my Bill, but why wasn't anyone masking ? Her response ?
"Because we're adults!"... I told her if you were an adult you would be wearing a mask. Paid my bill, and got out. Next stop, the NAPA store, same town, no masks. Left without buying some things I needed.
What is wrong with these people ? Here in Gold Hill, I know 4 people who have tested positive, three hospitalized and yet, downtown Gold Hill there is a less than 50% probability of seeing people either masking, or distancing.
This is a good place to post that. I don't want to be tiresome but I am writing about it again tomorrow. Ed--and others reading this--write a longer, specific Guest Post, ideally with a couple of photos from your phone. I appreciate the idea that you quoted people. My intent is to describe real events, un-mediated by reporters or commenters or me--telling people what you witnessed yourself, up close.
Please go back into town tomorrow or soon, wearing a mask, and talk with a few people. Quote them. Describe objectively what you see. And send what you see to me.
Thans!!!
Peter Sage
Ok, Peter. It's past time to start calling these people out. Another friend told me that it's being reported that only Hawaii, of the 50 States, is actually enforcing rules which might slowv or help stop this Virus.
Given the Regressive opinions of at least 2 of our 3 Commissioners, I don't see that happening here, at least not for a while.
Perhaps the numbers might explain people's sense of invulnerability. Let's start with the basics. Jackson County is about 2,800 square miles and has a population of about 220,000 people. that's an average of less than 8 people per square mile, although there are more dense areas of course.
According to Jackson County's Vital Statistics site, https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ph/birthdeathcertificates/vitalstatistics/death/pages/index.aspx
about 2,100 people in Jackson County have died from all causes (including COVID19) through the end of October this year, over 80% of whom were over 65 years old. You should note that 1% is about the normal mortality rate in Jackson County each year. So while Oregon has reported 1,045 COVID19 deaths statewide so far this year, only 44 people in Jackson county have died from COVID19. That's only 2% of all deaths in Jackson County this year which is within a normal year to year variance.
If you are predisposed to distrust the big national media and you look around and don't see any more hearses driving down the streets of Jackson County than normal, then you have to ask if there's really a risk? Yes, Medford's ICU beds are 80% occupied, but nobody is being turned away and there aren't refrigerated morgues with bodies piling up.
I'm not arguing that that the risk is not real and deadly, but it may help explain why people act so incautiously in your town.
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