The Right wing love themselves some plague (by Matt Blaze)
I guess we should retire the expression “avoid it like the plague”, given how little effort people seem to be willing to go to avoid plagues.
Here in England we are opening up on Monday — all Covid rules swept away, with the government instead asking people to use their common sense — the same people who voted for economic and cultural suicide with Brexit and then putting BoJo in number 10… of course they are going to go to face licking parties as soon as they can, they have no sense of community responsibility at all. All the while we currently have the largest infection rate on planet and media reports today fans rocked up to Wembley to watch the Euro’s final having tested positive, spreading it about and sending the newly infected off to all corners of the country.
America is just as bad with the anti-mask and anti-vaccine wing nuts and hot spots popping up all over under vaccinated populations. Surprise! (Editor’s note : President Biden calls it the “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”)
Putting whole communities at risk. Selfish f…… the lot of them. We need to avoid the lot of them like the plague.
Plagues are not just for the middle ages anymore… as BoJo reportedly said, let the bodies pile high in their thousands.
While I share this sentiment, it is a profoundly dangerous outcome.
The rub is that the world’s unvaccinated population is a “Virus SDK”. It is literally a petri dish that will amplify and accelerate the mutation and selection rate, so that new and potentially even more dangerous variants will emerge. It is inevitable that the current generation of vaccines will prove ineffective at suppressing at least one of those.
The result will be perpetual race between new variants emerging from the unvaccinated population and new vaccines created to block those variants. That outcome is dangerous and expensive for all of us.
This anti-vax anti-science disinformation is criminally wrong. It is, quite literally, killing people. Between climate change and COVID, the willfully ignorant masses are killing all of us.
I think it is time for the US government to use its resources to identify the specific individuals — twelve people accounted for 73% of all anti-vaccine content — responsible. I think the government should take steps needed to allow insurance companies to collect covid-related claim expenses from those 12.
“Free speech” does not and has never meant that anybody can say whatever they like without consequences. The First Amendment says only that THE GOVERNMENT shall not block speech.
Every platform that exercises editorial control over its content — and that includes every social media platform (including this one!) — should be liable for publishing content that a reasonable person knows is false or slanderous. Those damaged by such speech should be able to be compensated for their harm by those outlets that published those falsehoods.
I was surprised Biden called out Facebook. At least every FB post I see that even makes a passing reference to COVID is tagged with a link to accurate information about the virus and vaccines.
Common sense as opposed to mandates was my wish all along, and Johnson despite coming in with some thinking he was a Trump clone hasn’t been that bad from what I can tell. “Let bodies pile high…” doesn’t sound like him. I assume the UK has access to vaccines. At this point it’s your own risk.
Sadly, this just isn’t so. The virus can mutate in an unvaccinated host into forms that evade the current vaccines. As one wag put it — “We do not want go through the entire Greek alphabet of variants.”
Everything I’ve heard indicates the vaccines are resistant to the delta variant. I fully expect it will mutate more, but am also prepared for this to become something we get an annual shot for like the flu to account for that. Sure beats the strategy we employed before there was a vaccine. It’s really outrageous that anti-vax is such a common attitude now. It used to be as fringy statistically as it is on the merits.
Each mutation risks becoming markedly more contagious and more deadly than previous ones. By necessity vaccines will always come after each variant has emerged.
The flu vaccines vary enormously in effectiveness from year to year because researchers must guess at what strains will be prevalent in the upcoming season. Fortunately none of the variants have proven as lethal as the COVID virus and its variants.
Allowing a large pool of unvaccinated people amounts to playing Russian Roulette for all of us.
This is aside from the hugely disproportionate health care costs this population will cause for everybody. People in those areas will not have access to needed health care for other health issues because hospitals and care providers are over capacity dealing with COVID. Those increased health care expenses will be passed on to all of us in the form of escalating health insurance premiums.
I have the same emotional reaction as you to these vax-deniers. I would dearly love to let them be a case study in Darwin’s law — it might prove instructive for those elements of the Evangelical community who still claim that it too is a “hoax” (or a Satanic plot).
There are large regions (such as the African continent) where this pandemic is taking a horrific toll and where the population is desperate to obtain vaccinations. Those populations are just as much a breeding ground for new variants as southwestern Missouri.
I find it obscene that “Vaccine Lotteries” are being held in a bizarre attempt to pay people to get vaccinated. I believe that each and every truckload of doses that isn’t spoken for in the US should be air-freighted to places like Africa with the being covered by the funds currently allocated to these vaccine lotteries. It is disgusting that selfish and willfully ignorant Americans are being offered money for a vaccine they refuse for POLITICAL reasons while billions of people are taking enormous risks to obtain the same vaccine.
I don’t want my grand-daughter to be unnecessarily threatened by virulent and deadly strains of a dangerous virus because a group of superstitious ignorant bigots have been persuaded that vaccines are some sort of plot against them.
This is true lunacy — genuine collective insanity.
I think it’s appropriate to require vaccinations. To my great surprise and disappointment I learned this morning that RFK Jr. is among the “dirty dozen” promoting the vast majority of anti-vax messaging. I too rolled my eyes at the lotteries. I understand folks thinking their own risk isn’t super high, but you would think wanting to get back to normal would be enough incentive.
Surely that’s not the same RJK Jr. that strives to be a political leader? I thought it was a different member of the Kennedy clan.
If it is, then he has lost my vote FOREVER.
Yeah, and he’s even good on the environment as I recall, but I don’t recall him nodding in the direction of elective office.
RFK has been on an anti-vax kick for awhile now, buying into the erroneous autism link. Also was very anti wind power, so not sure how serious to take his environmental credentials. New York State can keep him.
Republicans are modern day flagellants demonstrating their devotion to Trump and seeking atonement for his loss by refusing to be vaccinated and intentionally exposing themselves to the plaque in public displays of penance.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
As I explained to someone on this point….you have the right to take your own life and leap from a ten story building into the vacant alley below, but you do not have the right to leap into a crowded boulevard and risk hurting or killing someone else.
Jacobson v. Massachusetts gives wide latitude for a mandate. I wish Biden had the power to do what Macron is and lockdown areas with low vaccines. If always said widespread vaccination is the key to taking off masks and ending lockdowns. Just as social distancing and quarantining was before the vaccine became widely available. My hope is my students don’t bring new variants over their summer travels. Revere is now ahead of the state and county for vaccinations. 72% which is just sufficient enough for herd immunity. Summer school has been an unexpected joy with students excited to be back in a school setting with their friends and nothing conducted over zoom. I might even venture to in person movies and church soon enough.
I do not want these hard fought gains to be eroded by the ignorant masses. I will mask up visiting my in laws in KY since I don’t trust their state and my sister in law is pregnant. Her denomination is very pro-science and only recently resumed in person gatherings, My expectation is the baby shower will include only vaccinated individuals and masked young children.
I’d add Macron is also enforcing a mask mandate for the unvaccinated. Proof of vaccine card in order to go into public spaces maskless. Seems reasonable enough to do here,
although I’d hate to have employees bare the brunt of enforcement.
Seriously, explain this:
Why do YOU feel the need to mask for your trip to KY despite their lag in vaccines? If YOU are vaccinated you have almost zero chance of either contracting it from the unvaccinated or being the person to transmit it to others. If they are exposed it’s not you they have to worry about.
There seems to be some twisted logic and people just can’t seem to quit being scared. DOES. NOT. COMPUTE. I’m tired of the virtue signaling and so help us if we go backwards. I’ve gotten vaccinated almost entirely out of civic duty and wanting others to get it so we can go back to normal, not because I’ve ever been that concerned about getting it myself. I have no desire to be punished because others refuse to do the same.
The science does not support this. The vaccine effectiveness is a measure of the likelihood of being hospitalized or dying from COVID. The current generation of vaccines do NOT prevent (in an absolute way) infection — they instead buttress the recipients immune system so that any infection is kept at bay.
We don’t yet have data about whether those who have been vaccinated can infect others. What we do know is that at least the Delta variant is significantly more infectious than others, and may be more lethal (I’m not familiar with mortality data for the Delta variant).
Similarly, the case count reported each day is a record of hospitalization, doctor visit, or positive test result. There are likely to be MANY (10? 100? 1000?) people with minor or non-symptomatic infections for each case reported.
Mask are required in Mass General Hospital (and I assume others) today because the risk of infection to a vulnerable population is still very real.
The only “twisted logic” I see in this comment is the connection between your personal feeling and what James should do with his family and specifically with a pregnant woman.
You, James, and I have almost zero chance of being hospitalized or dying from COVID. The masking guidelines have been relaxed in MA because so many of us are vaccinated that the public health emergency has passed, at least for the moment, in most Massachusetts counties.
I note that the vaccination rate in Barnstable, Dukes, and Nantucket counties are SIGNIFICANTLY lower (4.4%, 3.16%, and 1.06% respectively) — those three are among the worst rates in the nation. There is also a surge in new infections in both Barnstable and also Dukes county. The daily death rate in Barnstable county (Cape Cod) is significantly higher than the rest of the state.
James is being responsible. The behavior you advocate is aggressively irresponsible.
I’ve heard both yes and no on delta being more deadly. It may depend on exactly which ratio is being used. I believe mask mandates remain in place in MA for health facilities like MGH and it does make sense to be more careful in such environments. I’m not sure there will ever be absolute guarantees, but if that were the standard we’d never make progress. I want to finally leave the paranoia behind and take a more balanced approach. What we don’t know should not automatically make us react to the worst case scenario.
I agree that we don’t yet know about the mortality of the delta variant. We do know that it is dramatically more contagious and that alone means that more people will die, even a smaller portion of those infected with it die.
You accused James of “twisted logic” because he doesn’t want to protect a pregnant woman (and her unborn child).
That just is not “twisted” and it is not paranoid.
I do think it’s likely unnecessary. He can do what he wants of course; it doesn’t hurt anyone else if he chooses to be extra cautious. It’s just that I really do not want pressure to build for us to step backwards on restrictions. For all the constitutional, statistical, and philosophical arguments I have made over the past year plus, which I certainly stand by, my ultimate from the gut primal scream is that I find it extremely stressful to watch society go into full panic mode. So even as my rational side is saying he can make that decision, my emotional side is going NOOOO! WHY?
I’m choosing to be extra cautious on behalf of my pregnant family member and the fact that the majority unvaccinated population means I have a higher chance of getting the virus than I do here. It’s certainly a far lower chance than I would have if I was not vaccinated, but it’s still a higher chance. I don’t even think we put our masks at all during our spring trip to Vermont and I largely don’t wear them now, other than at summer school and if I think I’ll be in a public indoor space for a long period of time. Even that I’ve been getting lax about. My mom is fully vaccinated and still masks up when she shops, I think that makes sense for someone with her preconditions.
I won’t judge anyone who is vaccinated on their mask choices. Those who are vaccine hesitant who comply with masking and social distancing. I can respect that too. What I don’t understand is the people who refuse to wear masks and refuse to be vaccinated. They seem to be deliberately endangering themselves and others.
Wait, are you really saying that the effectiveness of one’s own vaccinated status is dependent on how many others around are also vaccinated? I thought the point of herd immunity was to protect the remaining few who for whatever reason can’t get vaccinated, but your own status is pretty much binary. That is you’re either vaccinated and thus protected or you’re not, the only caveat being that we can’t absolute guarantee 100% effectiveness of the vaccine itself.
There are very few binary choices in nature.
The effectiveness of a vaccine is a measure of the likelihood that an exposure will infect you. If you are exposed more often, then you are more likely to be infected.
A fair coin has a 50% chance of coming up heads. Knowing the result of a first toss does not change the outcome of the second toss.
If you have a fair coin, then you have a 50% chance of getting heads after 1 toss. You have a 97% chance of getting at least one heads after five tosses.
The more frequently a vaccinated person is exposed to COVID, the more likely they are to become infected.
Apparently 5100 breakthrough cases and 80 deaths in a state with 64% of residents are fully vaccinated and 71% have at least one dose. KY is closer to 45% fully vaccinated. Now Metro Cincinnati may be a little better, but it’s no Metro Boston. So I do have a higher risk of contracting it even with a vaccine and I also don’t want to carry it to pregnant family or my in laws. Although my mother in law thankfully already got and recovered from Covid earlier in the pandemic before Delta became the predominant variant.
Oh and where I got that info. It’s unfortunate we seem to be backsliding.
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/more-than-5100-breakthrough-covid-cases-reported-in-mass-at-least-80-have-died/2435719/
Yeah, I heard that too:(
It’s not virtue signaling. It is statistical reasoning. There is basically a 94-98% effectiveness of the vaccine. So there’s between a 2-6% chance I get the virus if I’m exposed to someone who has it. I certainly have already been exposed to people who’ve been exposed on account of my work in a high Covid district and my spouse having near daily contact with the virus as recently as May of this year. That risk will increase when I go from a state with 71% vaccination rates to one with 46%. Also from a state that has been masking and taking this seriously since day 1 to a state that like you values a maximalist conception of personal freedom over science and public health. It’s a mask. It’s annoying but it won’t kill me and if wearing it protects my unvaccinated relative in utero, all the better. Like I said, vaccinated people can make their own choices without my judgment. I will judge the unvaccinated and unmasked as a threat to public health.
The federal government and all fifty states now essentially force a “RealID” for each person who wants a driver’s license — a mandate forced by the right wing during the early stages of their sick and disgusting antipathy towards immigrants.
In an earlier time, opposition to such a universal identifier was a bedrock principle of the right wing. Every “conservative” opposed it as a “communist” tactic that signaled a tyrannical police state. For decades, a Social Security card carried a message saying that it could not be used for identification because of this policy.
Now that RealID is with us, it should be used as a key for a nationwide registry of antibody test results. A reliable antibody test for the variants we know about costs under $100. It is a reasonable measure of COVID immunity, whether that immunity comes from a vaccine or from a previous infection.. It is NOT triggered by an ongoing COVID infection.
I think that every person who wants to board any public conveyance should be required to show their RealID so that the boarding agent can confirm, using the national registry, that the individual is currently immune (according to recent testing). Updates to those tests should be required as current science dictates. Those who lack current immunity should be prohibited from boarding.
I think that the same verification should be required in most retail establishments and at restaurants, bars, and similar venues — exactly the way people are required to show ID in order to purchase alcohol or tobacco.
Massachusetts should not allow any person without such an ID to enter or remain in the state. The public should be protected from those who knowingly and willfully endanger it.
I think that health insurance companies and health care providers should be allowed and encouraged to deny coverage for those who lack this ID. I think that people who knowingly and intentionally spread false information about COVID should be held financially liable for the expenses their lies cause.
This issue will be with us for the foreseeable future, and we should take steps accordingly.
I think some requirements are reasonable, but some of your suggestions above sound awfully draconian. Not allowed to remain in the state – REALLY?!
Really.
We’re still a free country, right?
It makes more sense to disallow a person who is not vaccinated then to disallow an undocumented immigrant.
We are still a free country. Every person who wants a vaccination should be able to get it, and every person who has a vaccination should be able to go where they want.
Actions have consequences, and a person who chooses to remain unvaccinated should accept that they are therefore unwelcome in some states. If I had my way, they would be unwelcome everywhere.
Setting requirements on who may enter and stay is well within the legitimate authority of every state. It is a marked improvement over the statement, for the past year, that residents of EVERY other state must quarantine/isolate for 14 days after arrival.
I am OK with a requirement that an unvaccinated visitor be quarantined for 14 days, so long as that quarantine is in a regulated and controlled environment.
I think you are betraying anger at what kind of people politically these folks tend to be. Hopefully that will change as we are starting to hear more voices on the right encourage vaccines. My read of the Constitution is that interstate travel is the sole purview of the federal government. The US government would be within its rights to disallow threats to public health from entering, but Americans have every right in the world to settle wherever they please in this country. I never liked quarantining – that was always another fear-based action in my mind considering how small the likelihood of having it was. Your own view seems to have radically shifted. I recall when you objected to simple testing and tracing on privacy grounds, but now you want to go full “papers please” regarding vaccination status and remove people from the state? Exactly how is that not the very definition of a police state? I think much more reasonable is to require it in certain circumstances to the point that it becomes widespread. Schools certainly should like they already do for other vaccines (and hopefully it can be approved for as young as 5 years soon), and employers would be within their rights to require it for their employees. Keep in mind though even pre-vaccine the chances of one getting it were low and the chances of it being severe/deadly were tiny.
I’m fine with a 14-day quarantine.
I never objected to testing. My concerns about privacy have been alleviated by the approach taken by automated contact tracing.
The various contact-tracing apps work by using cell-phone proximity to identify a nearby contact without identifying the identity of the contact. The data collected from the infected individual is a blind ID that contains no information about the identify of the individual, only the location. The notification provided by the contact tracing app says only that a contact is nearby — it provides only the anonymous case ID. Since no personally identifiable information is available to any of the servers involved, there is no privacy risk.
Even with the vaccine, COVID was the leading cause of death in the US from May of 2020 through April of 2021. More people died from COVID than from heart disease or cancer.
Your criteria for “low” and “tiny” are, well, indefensible.
I’m comparing COVID deaths to COVID cases and the latter to general population. I’m not comparing COVID deaths to other causes of death.
You’re cherry-picking numbers to suit your prejudice.
I’m answering the appropriate question, which is how likely is it to survive COVID. The answer is quite a bit more likely than the Black Death we’ve been treating it like. It’s not as if we’re being asked to choose between getting COVID or getting something else.
And show the ID when they go to vote.
Don’t want to hijack the thread on the merits so I’ll just say that seems to be a bit of a non sequetor.
Tom wants them to show their ID standing in line to get on a bus, why not standing in line to go in a voting booth? Thinking about it he wants to stop people coming over the border (no not That one, the border from Conn to Mass).
Those who don’t want to show their ID to enter a polling place can do early or mail-in voting.
When the pandemic has passed — when enough Americans are vaccinated that the public health risk from Covid is comparable to the flu — then these restrictions can be relaxed.
In the meantime, having done my part by getting vaccinated, I don’t want to be punished for the actions of others. The overwhelming majority of COVID cases DO play out in a way that is comparable to a few days with the flu.
I don’t see how you would be punished by a requirement to mask if you were not vaccinated or show proof of vaccination to enter a public space mask free. This honor system works in Massachusetts because we have a high degree of mask compliance and vaccination. The problem as Tom alludes to, is travel from other states and other countries without such high degrees of civic participation and compliance will reintroduce deadlier strains into our population and catch us when we are off guard. That seems to already be what happened to Provincetown where masking and vaccinations rates were surely even higher than the MA average.
It’s a shame this issue has become politicized, especially by Fox News which hypocritically mandated vaccines for its own employees (all of whom have been vaccinated and are now peddling real BS) and even they pulled back once they realized they were killing the economy and their own voters.
Just because a policy doesn’t work 100% of the time, does not mean it’s effective. The same personal freedom arguments used to defend unfettered individual access to weapons of war are also being used to defend not wearing masks or taking a vaccine. Same people use the same logic to deny climate change. It’s really an anti-empirical epistemological worldview that we are fighting an uphill battle against.
I never intended to suggest they were not effective. I have if anything argued that 100% effectiveness is not a reasonable standard, but we need to move along anyway.
I haven’t been asked to show it yet, but I do carry a vaccination card in my wallet. Vax or mask seems like a fairly reasonable tradeoff at this point, but my reference to being punished wasn’t about not being vaccinated. What I’m saying is that as some who HAS done my part I don’t want to be stuck forever in a not-fully-normal society because others refuse to do their part.
Ah okay. On that we are in agreement, unfortunately I’m starting to fear we are headed in that direction. P Town, Nantucket, and Cambridge are resuming the indoor mask mandate. Boston seems awfully close to it and will resume it for schools in the fall.
What has to be done to get those communities more vaccinated so they can ditch the masks? I’ve appreciated being able to go around with a free face lately and really don’t want to return.
Then make getting an ID free and painless.
And fast.