The Politics of Covid 19, mask wearing and the vaccination process

[Victoria Raverna]

I was thinking. Maybe Nicky Minaj's cousin got his shots in his testicles.

Or he got STD but blamed it on the vaccine.

[Defiant]

[Kasey Chang]

And it's getting worse. Ars Technica is reporting that 25% of all ICUs in the US are over 95% full. Alabama has actually gone OVER 100%, having 1592 patients and only 1549 beds.

...Twenty-five percent of hospital intensive care units around the country are now above 95 percent full. That percentage is up from 20 percent in July and just 10 percent in June, according to data tracking by The New York Times.

The spike in critical care follows a surge in cases and hospitalizations. Average new daily cases in the country skyrocketed from around 12,000 a day in late June to the 150,000 or so in mid-September. Hospitalizations have likewise risen, shooting up from an average of nearly 17,000 a day at the start of July to around 100,000 now...

In Texas, 169 out of 506 reporting hospitals have ICUs above 95 percent full, which is up from just 69 in June, the Times notes. In Florida, 24 hospitals have reported having more ICU patients than beds in the last week. In Mississippi, 94 percent of the entire state's ICU beds are full.

Northern Idaho, and Anchorage Alaska's biggest hospital Providence Alaska Medical Center, have entered triage protocol to ration care.

And it gets worse... It seems most of these overflowing ICUs are in the poorer communities.

Forty-nine percent of the country’s lowest-income communities—with median incomes of $35,000 or less—have zero intensive care unit beds in their area hospitals. Looking only at rural areas, the picture is even worse: 55 percent had no ICU beds.

[Kasey Chang]

I was thinking. Maybe Nicky Minaj's cousin got his shots in his testicles.

Or he got STD but blamed it on the vaccine.

Personally, he just got kicked in the balls by the bride-to-be after finding out he'd been... oversharing.

[Kasey Chang]

In further development... Nicki Minaj fibbed about being invited to the White House to talk. (They offered her a chat to a doctor to explain things).

Then she posted on Instagram that Twitter blocked her for asking questions. Twitter claimed to third parties such as Vulture (magazine), that they took no enforcement actions on that account.

Three lies in a row, tsk, tsk.

But of course, Nicki Minaj thinks she's big **** now after being invited on Tucker Carlson so they can share COVID vaccine conspiracy theories. Never mind that Carlson famously said that Black Lives Matter is just a Demoncrat scheme to go after our rights.

Allegedly when Minaj was reminded of that... she replied, very paraphrased, he has a right to speak too.

[Daehawk]

If she had two brain cells they'd probably get in a fight and kill each other.

In other news. We win! We win! Tennessee COVID-19 cases climb to top in the country I'd like to thank our republican governor and GOP state gov for this win. Could not have done it without folks like Fleischmann, Blackburn, and Hagerty. Stand up and take a bow. Whats that? You're all on ventilators? Well theres always next time.

These republican governors are just pure evil.

Tennessee now ranks first in the country for new COVID-19 cases per capita as the state continues to battle its worst virus surge yet.

As of Tuesday, one in every 81 Tennesseans had tested positive for the virus in the past week, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins. Meanwhile, the average number of new cases daily has risen by nearly 90% since Aug. 29, to nearly 12,000 new cases a day as of Sunday.

The latest milestone is one of several records the state has reached in the past several weeks, stemming from a spike in cases and hospitalizations among school-aged children.

Hundreds of students throughout Tennessee have been forced to quarantine or isolate due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Some schools have closed classrooms due to staffing shortages, while others have temporarily asked the state to switch to virtual learning.

Yet the increase in cases among children have sparked heated responses from those opposed to enforcing stricter measures designed to help curb the spread of the disease.

Just last week, a Tennessee high school student who spoke at his district's school board meeting in favor of a mask mandate faced laughs and heckles from adults while he spoke about his grandmother dying from the virus. Grady Knox was forced to temporarily stop talking throughout his testimony during the Sept. 7 meeting as the jeers became disruptive.

In the Republican-dominant state, GOP Gov. Bill Lee has resisted calls from Democratic lawmakers and public health leaders to install strict measures to help curb the disease's spread.

Instead, Lee recently told reporters he was hopeful Tennessee was nearing a plateau in the virus spike.

“We’re beginning to see what we think and hope, cautiously optimistic, we’re hopeful is a plateau,” Lee said. “We do not know. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes it spikes back up. But we are hopeful that we’re at that point in the state.”
Lee has faced criticism both from state and federal officials after signing an executive order allowing parents to opt out of the mask requirement. Hundreds of students have been attending classes without masks ever since. Two lawsuits have since been filed attempting to overturn the statewide order, with a federal judge since temporarily blocking Lee's order in Shelby County as the suit moves through court.

[Kasey Chang]

What's interesting is according to a religious liberty expert (who argued for religious rights on many occasions), there is no law that requires the Feds to give a religious exemption to vaccines. They are only offered out of courtesy, not legal requirement.

Furthermore, state laws can't undo Federal vaccine mandate, only protect people from their state or local government.

Finally private businesses do NOT have to offer religious exemption at all under Title VII of Civil Rights Act.

Another thing the article noted is SCOTOSU had NOT allowed a general policy to be undermined by religion. You can't use religion to refuse to pay tax, to refuse service in the military, or even refuse to integrate restaurants. Chances that SCOTUS will allow religious exemption to vaccine mandate are likely to be nil.

[Default]

My condolences. I'm really sorry to hear this, but my brother called me a sheep for being vaccinated, so I know how you feel. Both he and my sister-in-law and my niece are rolling the dice and I have no emotion invested in them anymore.

[LordMortis]

[zaxxon]We're fucked[/zaxxon]

[TheMix]

[zaxxon]We're fucked[/zaxxon]

Q.F.T.

[Zaxxon]

That Zaxxon guy seems insightful.

[raydude]

That Zaxxon guy seems insightful.

Or a meme

[Zaxxon]

That Zaxxon guy seems insightful.

Or a meme

Or a meme.

[Daveman]

So our daughter is back in school here in NJ (6th grade) after being fully remote last year. We had the option to go back last year but kept her home.

It's seemingly going well, masks are required and there is distancing in the classroom but we'll be happy when vaccines are available for her (she's not 12 until March).

She's looking forward to being vaccinated and said so to some friends at lunch and one of them told her she shouldn't get it because her mom says it kills people.

*sigh*

[Zaxxon]

So our daughter is back in school here in NJ (6th grade) after being fully remote last year. We had the option to go back last year but kept her home.

It's seemingly going well, masks are required and there is distancing in the classroom but we'll be happy when vaccines are available for her (she's not 12 until March).

She's looking forward to being vaccinated and said so to some friends at lunch and one of them told her she shouldn't get it because her mom says it kills people.

*sigh*

That Zaxxon guy seems insightful.

Or a meme

Or a meme.

On second thought, let's go with insightful.

[LordMortis]

On second thought, let's go with insightful.

[Smoove_B]

As a reminder:

“In all 50 states, legislators have proposed bills to curb such public health powers since the COVID-19 pandemic began.”

26 states have passed them.

If this is how we rise to the challenge of a threat that has killed 650,000 people, we are in big trouble going forward.

[Archinerd]

Can't even use the (lame) excuse, "It's far away, somewhere else".

[Isgrimnur]

Death rates from coronavirus (COVID-19) in the United States as of September 15, 2021, by state

(per 100,000 people)

[Smoove_B]

Looking forward to not being #1 real soon, but JFC Mississippi, get your shit together.

[Max Peck]

According to World o' Meters, Mississippi has already pulled ahead.

[Daehawk]

Florida is WAY ahead except in deaths for some reason. How is it they have 4 times the new cases, a billion times total cases, and only 3 deaths?

[coopasonic]

Florida is WAY ahead except in deaths for some reason. How is it they have 4 times the new cases, a billion times total cases, and only 3 deaths?

Lies, damn lies, and statistics?

[Smoove_B]

Yeah, it was revealed last month they're juicing the numbers.

As cases ballooned in August, however, the Florida Department of Health changed the way it reported death data to the CDC, giving the appearance of a pandemic in decline, an analysis of Florida data by the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald found.

On Monday, Florida death data would have shown an average of 262 daily deaths reported to the CDC over the previous week had the health department used its former reporting system, the Herald analysis showed. Instead, the Monday update from Florida showed just 46 “new deaths” per day over the previous seven days.

The dramatic difference is due to a small change in the fine print. Until three weeks ago, data collected by DOH and published on the CDC website counted deaths by the date they were recorded — a common method for producing daily stats used by most states. On Aug. 10, Florida switched its methodology and, along with just a handful of other states, began to tally new deaths by the date the person died.

If you chart deaths by Florida’s new method, based on date of death, it will generally appear — even during a spike like the present — that deaths are on a recent downslope. That’s because it takes time for deaths to be evaluated and death certificates processed. When those deaths finally are tallied, they are assigned to the actual date of death — creating a spike where there once existed a downslope and moving the downslope forward in time.

[Alefroth]

Florida is WAY ahead except in deaths for some reason. How is it they have 4 times the new cases, a billion times total cases, and only 3 deaths?

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronaviru ... story.html

[stessier]

Time for some people to be educated.

A hospital system in Arkansas is making it a bit more difficult for staff to receive a religious exemption from its COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The hospital is now requiring staff to also swear off extremely common medicines, such as Tylenol, Tums, and even Preparation H, to get the exemption.

The move was prompted when Conway Regional Health System noted an unusual uptick in vaccine exemption requests that cited the use of fetal cell lines in the development and testing of the vaccines.

"This was significantly disproportionate to what we've seen with the influenza vaccine," Matt Troup, president and CEO of Conway Regional Health System, told Becker's Hospital Review in an interview Wednesday.

"Thus," Troup went on, "we provided a religious attestation form for those individuals requesting a religious exemption," he said. The form includes a list of 30 commonly used medicines that "fall into the same category as the COVID-19 vaccine in their use of fetal cell lines," Conway Regional said.

The list includes Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, aspirin, Tums, Lipitor, Senokot, Motrin, ibuprofen, Maalox, Ex-Lax, HIV-1, Benadryl, Sudafed, albuterol, Preparation H, MMR vaccine, Claritin, Zoloft, Prilosec OTC, and azithromycin.

Conway Regional notes that the list includes commonly used and available drugs but that it is not an all-inclusive list of such medicines.

Employees are asked to attest that they "truthfully acknowledge and affirm that my sincerely held religious belief is consistent and true" and that they do not and will not use the medications and any others like them.

[Smoove_B]

That's awesome.

[LawBeefaroni]

That's awesome.

But utterly unenforceable.

[noxiousdog]

I'm also skeptical. Many of those medicines far predate fetal cell research.

[TheMix]

I wonder if they are going with an implied threat. i.e. "If we catch you taking any of these at work, or hear about you taking them outside of work, we are going to fire you for lying to us."

Personally, I'd be really hesitant to sign something like that. Especially if I knew I was bullshitting about the reason for not wanting the vaccine. I don't know that they would even have to prove anything. They could simply say that someone told them they saw you take an aspirin. Bam! Gone.

I'd prefer that they just went with a financial penalty. Don't want the vaccine? Fine. We are going to take $100 out of every paycheck to cover the costs of testing.

[Smoove_B]

That's awesome.

But utterly unenforceable.

Possibly. That's why I'm more of a fan of the vaccinate or get fired policy. It's worked for influenza so it should be enforceable here.

[stessier]

I'm also skeptical. Many of those medicines far predate fetal cell research.

Moderna and Pfizer were not derived from fetal cells, but they were tested on them. All of the drugs on that list were also tested on fetal cells at some point.

[raydude]

Yeah, it was revealed last month they're juicing the numbers.

As cases ballooned in August, however, the Florida Department of Health changed the way it reported death data to the CDC, giving the appearance of a pandemic in decline, an analysis of Florida data by the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald found.

On Monday, Florida death data would have shown an average of 262 daily deaths reported to the CDC over the previous week had the health department used its former reporting system, the Herald analysis showed. Instead, the Monday update from Florida showed just 46 “new deaths” per day over the previous seven days.

The dramatic difference is due to a small change in the fine print. Until three weeks ago, data collected by DOH and published on the CDC website counted deaths by the date they were recorded — a common method for producing daily stats used by most states. On Aug. 10, Florida switched its methodology and, along with just a handful of other states, began to tally new deaths by the date the person died.

If you chart deaths by Florida’s new method, based on date of death, it will generally appear — even during a spike like the present — that deaths are on a recent downslope. That’s because it takes time for deaths to be evaluated and death certificates processed. When those deaths finally are tallied, they are assigned to the actual date of death — creating a spike where there once existed a downslope and moving the downslope forward in time.

So, it delays showing the spike by X amount of days, but if Florida still does nothing to mitigate the spread, that spike will still eventually turn into a bigger and bigger mountain with a big downward slope on the side closest to today, right? In other words, it just delays the horribleness of the data, it doesn't make it go away.

[Smoove_B]

Correct. It's smoke and mirrors. I am guessing in time someone from his administration will reveal that DeSantis was betting on COVID-19 news being bigger elsewhere and his whole plan involved sandbagging and throwing up smoke screens in the hopes the media would be moving on to some other state as part of their 48 hour news cycle. What he didn't count on was that FL was going to be so bad that attention wasn't going to shift elsewhere at all.

[Kasey Chang]

Apparently the Pope has weighed in on the issue, and said humanity had a long history of good relation with vaccines, or something like that.

He had previously said the benefits of the vaccine far outweighs the evil of using fetal cell line in their creation anyway.

[LawBeefaroni]

Yeah, it was revealed last month they're juicing the numbers.

As cases ballooned in August, however, the Florida Department of Health changed the way it reported death data to the CDC, giving the appearance of a pandemic in decline, an analysis of Florida data by the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald found.

On Monday, Florida death data would have shown an average of 262 daily deaths reported to the CDC over the previous week had the health department used its former reporting system, the Herald analysis showed. Instead, the Monday update from Florida showed just 46 “new deaths” per day over the previous seven days.

The dramatic difference is due to a small change in the fine print. Until three weeks ago, data collected by DOH and published on the CDC website counted deaths by the date they were recorded — a common method for producing daily stats used by most states. On Aug. 10, Florida switched its methodology and, along with just a handful of other states, began to tally new deaths by the date the person died.

If you chart deaths by Florida’s new method, based on date of death, it will generally appear — even during a spike like the present — that deaths are on a recent downslope. That’s because it takes time for deaths to be evaluated and death certificates processed. When those deaths finally are tallied, they are assigned to the actual date of death — creating a spike where there once existed a downslope and moving the downslope forward in time.

So, it delays showing the spike by X amount of days, but if Florida still does nothing to mitigate the spread, that spike will still eventually turn into a bigger and bigger mountain with a big downward slope on the side closest to today, right? In other words, it just delays the horribleness of the data, it doesn't make it go away.

But by that time case rates may decline so they'll just say deaths are a trailing indicator, were doing much better now. The goal is to avoid every having to say"we're doing poorly now." It's all sleight of hand trickery. Our news cycle cadence makes it extremely easy to do.

[Smoove_B]

Here's what happens when patients berate tired doctors.

That's nothing. Look at how many outpatient prescriptions for Ivermectin have been written. At least when Y'all come into the hospital with Covid we will know you don't have worms...

This is from Athenahealth one of the largest providers of outpatient EMR's

90k orders!

[malchior]

Here's what happens when patients berate tired doctors.

I didn't think this was anything new. I thought one of our big cost problems pre-pandemic was that Doctor's often just overprescribed everything to keep patients happy. And that was driving direct advertising of drugs. In this case, you have Fox, OANN, and Joe Rogan.

[Smoove_B]

Yes, it was a problem for antibiotics, but at least there they could argue it was "preventative" in making sure there wasn't going to be an infection complicating a viral illness...barely. For ivermectin? They have no ground to stand on - they just want people to stop calling them.

In better news:

Walgreens will require all U.S. workers to be vaccinated.

[Smoove_B]

Would not have guess Alabama was going to be first, but here are:

Three state lawmakers have filed a bill that would allow workers to sue their employers for any “adverse reaction” they receive from COVID-19 vaccines mandated by their job.

The bill, prefiled Sept. 1 for the 2022 legislative session beginning in January, “would provide a private right of action against an employer for any adverse reaction, injury, temporary or permanent disability, or death of an employee arising from an employer mandate that the employee receive a 13 COVID-19 vaccine,”

NOTE: In CDC parlance, there is not "adverse reaction" language to describe what happens after a vaccination. We have Adverse Events and Side Effects. The way this law is being proposed I'm guessing someone could sue if they get a headache or their shoes fall after after getting the COVID-19 vaccination.

I guess you could argue "Side Effects" are "adverse reactions" but that still doesn't help anything.