The epsilon variant of #SARSCoV2, first detected California, carries three spike protein mutations that confer resistance to neutralizing antibodies generated by mRNA vaccines or by #SARSCoV2 infection, according to new research in Science. https://fcld.ly/luev9bg #WeekendReads
#EpsilonVariant—1st detected in California—has 3 spike protein mutations, allowing the virus to elude neutralizing antibodies produced as a result of mRNA vaccination or previous SARSCoV2 infection
Missouri’s Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) released a ‘hotspot advisory’ for Camden, Morgan, and Miller counties, where the Lake of the Ozarks is. Gov. Mike Parson tweeted Friday the state’s health care system remains stable, but Cox Health in southwest Missouri disagrees.
“I do not think I would describe it [the state’s health care system] as stable, no,” Usery said. “Our nurses are getting tired of zipping up body bags.”
Research suggests vaccines are less effective against Epsilon, but variant is no longer prevalent worldwide
In February, Epsilon accounted for 16 per cent of all of America’s Covid samples tested, but this proved to be the peak for this variant.
Shortly afterwards the Alpha variant (first identified in Kent and known to be as much as 70 per cent more transmissible than previous Covid strains) took hold in the US and began to squeeze out Epsilon in the process.
By late June, just 1 per cent of samples tested in the US were of the Epsilon strain, prompting the CDC to downgrade it to a Variant of Interest.
Perfect example of today’s GOP leadership…they root for the country to fail because they think it will help them politically, even if it means harm and possible death of their fellow citizens.
I have relatives in Southeast Missouri. Dexter, Essex, Poplar Bluff. They’re all Democrats and are vaccinated. Every one of them is complaining about their “Trump friends who won’t get vaxxed.”
I’m heading to Arkansas this week to meet with many of them for a golf tournament, and I’ll be masked and keeping my distance as much as possible.
You should also consider posting seriously important comments on today’s forum instead of yesterday’s where some readers may not see them.
EddieInCA says:
Sunday, 11 July 2021 at 10:50
@Stormy Dragon:
I’m just this side of a socialist.
I’m Latino. Who know what pisses me off? LatinX. WTF? Why? Just why?
I have had a contentious relationship with Police my whole life. You know what pisses me off? Progressives using phrases like “Defund the police” without even considering, for a second, how many people will be turned off by that phrase. Its the worst branding, maybe ever. Yeah, yeah, I know doesn’t mean actually de-funding them, but that’s irrelevant. Words mean things to most people.
I work in entertainment. You know what pisses me off? Television writers using phrases like “I’m glad she’s allowed to find own truth” or ‘I want you to share your truth.” WTF? There is truth. And there is not truth. There is no “your truth”.
I’m a progressive, proudly so, but damn, too many progressives don’t even think for a moment how their rhetoric and actions could be perceived by people who think differently. Those people also vote. I have a whole lot of Latino family members who are Republicans. They don’t like Trump or Trumpers, but people like Bernie Sanders, and Ayanna Presley scare the crap out of them. My family members in Miami all voted for Obama, and Clinton, but many voted for Trump in 2020, because “socialism”. These weren’t Republicans. They still consider themselves Democrats, but Socialism scares them because they have lived under socialist dictators.
I listen to the news. Alot of it on the AM and FM radio.
You know what pisses me off?
Newscasters saying that they are “on the ground” in Bumfuck, Idaho.
Just once I want to hear “I’m reporting from up a tree…” Cub reporter.
Week 2 of Jim Brown’s transition to the Coastal Panhandle of Florida is in the books. We got a place on the water in an area that felt familiar from my years growning up on the panhandle as “Southern Genteel”. In other words, these are the people that would call you a n1gg3r in ‘quiet rooms’ but were otherwise polite and non-confrontational. The area is currently flipping from the older generation who built there in the 70s to middle aged couples wanting to upsize one last time before the retirement downsize.
At any rate, I hired some yard men (black men) to do some work to get the lawn up to Ms Browns standards before she joins me full time. I drove up to inspect while they were still working and thanked one of the men for coming out so fast and working so quickly. He said (with a nervous stammered) “Sir, it is an honor for me to serve you.” This response made Jim Brown puzzled and embarrassed at the same time. But I rolled with it…gave him the black power hand clasp/man hug and moved on.
The next day, I was discussing some landscaping the wife wants with the foreman and he told me several extras he wanted to do–no charge. After haggling with him over payment for the extras, he cut me off sternly. “Sir, you don’t understand–I have been in this town for over 30 years. I have NEVER, EVER, seen a Black homeowner on the water or in this neighborhood. EVER….You are the 1st. This is so motivating to us…like the start of Black Wallstreet.
We HAVE to be sure you represent here for us. So the extras are No Charge. ”
Well, Ole Jim Brown had to fight his occasional eye allergies, after being put in his place, but managed to keep it together. The response from the other worker the day before now made sense. It hadn’t dawned on me that here it is, 2021, and I had just integrated a neighborhood .
There is family lore that my Grandmother integrated a Washeteria like Rosa Parks…went in to wash and dared people to kick her out. They didn’t. I guess Ive taken up her mantle.
@charon: Wyoming will start rising quickly. It’s county fair season, plus Cheyenne Frontier Days on the 23rd. Then we’ll have round 2 of the annual Sturgis Super Spreader Event next month, with everybody traveling through. I haven’t seen a mask on anyone in a month, at least.
@Jim Brown 32:
I just want to say to the contributors here that this comment and the subsequent reactions to it are what makes OTB so special.
Beth’s discussion of what she, as a trans, feels in her gut (soul) and in her reality was another amazing deeply personal revelation this week.
Thanks to all of the commentariat who help to expand my understanding of what humanity means.
Deepest gratitude
@Mister Bluster: Thanks! I know how to handle Lower Alabamians. After I field strip, clean, and re-oil my percussive instruments on the porch. They’ll understand how much I value freedom and the 2nd Amendment. We’ll all be kindred spirits
@charon: DeUseless has stopped daily reporting on COVID in FL. Releasing data weekly, on Friday, document dump day. But Worldometer is getting data somewhere and say we’re back up to 4,000 new cases per day, up from 1,500 a couple weeks ago (7 day moving averages). Deaths are still declining slowly, but the lag has seemed to be deaths go up four to six weeks after cases go up. 38,000 dead so far, but no one seems to care.
Got a drive thru Starbucks this morning. They’ve been fully masking, this morning about half the crew not.
@Jim Brown 32:
Used to live in Niceville back in late Jim Crow days. We had some Black kids visit for tutoring with my mother and received a very strong suggestion that we not do that. So we moved more Air Force adjacent.
@CSK:
Not good — Mesa County is the most populous out there and is at about 15 percentage points lower than my county at the north end of the Front Range urban corridor, and we’re another 5 points or so behind Denver.
It’s tempting to say, “Yeah, it’s Boebert country” but the counties with the highest vaccination rates are rural mountain communities and in the SW part of the state that are also in Boebert’s district. I haven’t looked at the details, but suspect those high-rate counties are ones that depend very much on having the summer tourist traffic back to normal.
A lot of high population FL counties are showing high new cases – Miami-Dade, Broward, Orange, Duval – this sends the statewide totals high.
Other states are having intense outbreaks in rural areas (e.g. Texas near Texarkana, Boebert country in CO) that leave the statewide totals still pretty low.
@EddieInCA:
The explanation for “Latinx” that I, as an academic website editor, was given 4-5 years ago was that “Latina” and “Latino” excluded non-binary persons.
WSIU Public Television
July 11, 2021 1pm
COMMUNITY UPDATE: After closer review, and in consultation with SIU Administration, Longbranch Cafe will not be recognized at today’s awards ceremony and will not be in attendance. We want to ensure today’s award ceremony highlights the many individuals, businesses, and youth who’ve gone above and beyond to demonstrate kindness and compassion over the past year.
WSIU is the PBS outlet at Southern Illinois University. Four days ago it was announced that a local organic/vegetarian restaurant would be awarded the “Neighborly” Award for Unending Support of Local Community.
Today just hours before presentation the award was withdrawn.
Apparently everyone in town except those at WSIU who made the decision to present the award in the first place were aware of this lawsuit that was filed as a result of complaints by former employees of the Longbranch Cafe.
There have also been FB posts on the matter claiming that Dayemi Organization is some sort of cult.
I have not checked that out yet.
All I know for sure is that the store front pictured in the above link was the Longbranch Tavern 50 years ago when I drove the Yellow Cab here in town. The place had tables and chairs but it was a stand up bar with no stools. The bottles of hootch were right there on the bar so you could pour your own shots and there was a coffee can next to the bottles where you dropped in your cash to pay for the drinks.
The good old days.
@Gustopher:
Prior to Latinx, “Latino” and “Latina” (very often rendered as “Latino/Latina”) were the preferred designations, which is why I included “Latina” in my comments. I’m well aware that “Latino” excludes women. I was reporting on what my editorial experience was, and what the rationale for the change to Latinx provided to me was. To repeat, that it excludes the non-binary.
Since we’ve been urged to carry over crucial conversations from previous open forums:
“Do you remember a short-lived SF TV series from the 70s called The Immortal? A man whose blood can cure almost anything — and so The Very Bad Guys and The Government are both after him, as he moves from town to town trying to stay under the radar, but not willing to not help when he can… Sound familiar?”
Of course I remember that! I lived for the ABC Tuesday/Wednesday Movie of the Week — and all the series that spun off from them. What a glorious period for high-concept television. And at the time (I must have been around eleven or twelve), I thought the three greatest actors in the world were its mainstays Christopher George, star of The Immortal, James Franciscus and Monte Markham.
Alas, George died before I got into the business, and Franciscus had stopped acting by then (and died a couple years later), but I did finally get the chance to work with Monte Markham — first on Baywatch, where he was the only character any fun to write for, then on an episode of Diagnosis Murder where he saved the day — we had a director who was incapable of making a decision and we were falling way behind. Normally our DP could have stepped in and pushed the guest director around some, but he was also a director and the DGA really frowns on that. Fortunately Markham, who had his own production company and had been producing and directing for years, just stepped up and started telling everyone what to do… and the guest director just let him.
@CSK: Also, I think part of the issue is that there really isn’t a single Latino community. LatinX is preferred by a “gender-forward” Latino community, a subset of the broader Latino communities — younger, more liberal, more queer.
Their desire to rename the broader set of communities would be sort of like using the experience of Black trans women to define the Black experience in America. The Black trans community is a valid community with issues that overlap the Black communities and the Trans communities, but… they don’t really speak to the life of our fellow commenter Jim Brown 32 (or not that he has shared with us, anyway…)
Plus, it’s just kind of dumb. It sounds like something white progressives would come up with (I think they just really latched onto it).
@Mister Bluster: White privilege.
Me knowing that I have never needed to own a firearm for self protection.
That’s not white privilege. White privilege is owning a hundred firearms with thousands and thousands of rounds of ammo because even tho one has never been the victim of an actual crime there was that one time a black man walked thru the neighborhood, smiled and waved at them, so he just might have been casing the house and you never know so better safe than sorry.
@OzarkHillbilly:..That’s not white privilege. White privilege is owning a hundred firearms with thousands and thousands of rounds of ammo because even tho one has never been the victim of an actual crime there was that one time a black man walked thru the neighborhood, smiled and waved at them, so he just might have been casing the house and you never know so better safe than sorry.
Well, 70% of Colorado residents have received at least one shot, so that’s hopeful, I suppose.
With the Front Range urban corridor doing most of the heavy lifting on that number. My wife and I have been fully-vaccinated for months and I’m pretty comfortable going unmasked in most local settings. If I had to go spend a week in the NW part of the state, I’d mask up all the time.
Edit to add… We have the first draft of the redistricting commission’s maps. Colorado outside of the urban corridor is going to be really unhappy with how much smaller their voice is going to be.
@EddieInCA: The argument is that ‘Latino/a” are inherently gendered in ways that ‘Black/AA’ and ‘Asian-American’ are not. So I understand the coinage. But I agree that it’s unlikely to catch on and likely to piss more people off than it helps.
“This isn’t something we say ‘no we don’t need a boost right now the story has ended forever’. There’s a lot of work going on to examine this in real time to see if we might need a boost,” Fauci said. “But right now, given the data that the CDC and the FDA has, they don’t feel that we have to tell people right now you need to be boosted.”
Pfizer has been following the phase III trial subjects, and they can measure antibody levels and such, so I’ll take their concerns seriously. But they’re not disinterested. Keep in mind the market for these shots is measured in billions of doses. So, their concerns need to be checked.
The other thing, is that no outbreak has ever been ended by a vaccine. Recent pandemics, like H1N1, outbreaks of Ebola and SARS, burned out because they were far less contagious. vaccines for H1N1 were developed, since after all we have flu vaccines down cold, but weren’t available until the outbreak was over.
Given the insufficient vaccine uptake, however, I’ll take a booster when they are available.
Son in law, Puerto Rican, says Latinx is kind of stupid. I try to avoid using any of the terms since I will probably be wrong.
The most prominent place I’ve seen Latinx used was in the title of a section of the LA Times. After they stopped using it, they took a poll. Interesting for a number of reasons, the term preferred by a large majority of those responding was “Mexican-American”.
When I was a kid in NW Iowa in the 1960s the population was still largely second- and third-generation descendants of Scandinavians recruited by the Great Northern Railway to grow grain on the northern Great Plains that would have to be shipped by rail. There were still a few small-town weekly newspapers published in one of the Scandinavian languages. The town where I lived was a mixed bunch: there were, IIRC, seven different Lutheran churches. The local newspaper’s “apologies for errors” column on page 2 regularly included things like spelling someone’s name “Paulson” rather than “Paulsen”. Using the Swedish instead of the proper Danish was considered a significant insult.
Son in law, Puerto Rican, says Latinx is kind of stupid. I try to avoid using any of the terms since I will probably be wrong.
Seems to most be an eye-rolling “no, no, I prefer that other term…” rather than an angry “how dare you!”
Between Latino, Chicano, Hispanic, LatinX… it feels like a trap though. Too many words all meaning about the same thing (I think Latino is the broadest and most accepted?)
I’m waiting for the Latinos to start trolling us with a dozen variations.
– Latino/Latina
– LatinX
– Latine
– Latin@
– LatinXX, LatinXY, for when genetics is important
– Adding “con pene” or “sans pene” when the plumbing is important
– Latinot, someone who is not Latino
Imagine a huge collection of increasingly convoluted words that only white progressives use, and a secret network where new words are created and strategically deployed by Latinos/latinas/Latinothers on college campuses. It could happen.
Just look at the micro labels for sexuality — is an aromantic semi-sapio-sexual demi-boy a real thing? (This is why I just prefer queer… it’s so much less exhausting.)
Polio wasn’t that long ago. Smallpox was a bit longer ago, but effectively managed through vaccines.
In those cases, further outbreaks were prevented by the vaccines. Less so with smallpox than with polio, because the smallpox could protect people who were already infected.
To my knowledge, there has never been a global outbreak or pandemic that ended with massive, herd-immunity level vaccination. Largely because such things tended to burn out before vaccines could be developed.
@Kathy: Fair. I think we would quibble over polio and the start stop of epidemics, but it comes down to transmissiveness as well — polio had the ability to taper down to lower levels between waves. Covid tapers down to high levels from very high. Same with Smallpox.
We pretty much went around the world vaccinating everyone to wipe out those two. Massive achievement. Took a lot of time, and a lot of waves of infection.
But, we are also at the first point in human history where we can create a vaccine in a year and start distributing on massive scale within 3 months after that — and we can probably speed it up if there’s a mutation that breaks through.
Plus, Covid shows no signs of burning out, because it is pretty much perfectly situated for maximum damage — airborne, up to 14 days of presymptomatic, AND asymptotic transmission? AND not killing so many that everyone realizes they need to lock down? AND support from a major political party?
Not even close. Common cold viruses, rhinoviruses and coronaviruses, are the hands-down winners. Highly contagious, almost never kill the host, mutate over a range that means everyone gets infected every few years but never develops a sufficiently-broad immunity to break the chain. My own measure would be when Covid mutates to the point that it joins the pre-K and kindergarten disease of the month club. F*ck, I hated that every couple of months my young children brought home another virus that made me ill enough to be unpleasant, but not so ill but what I took it to work and gave it to a bunch of other people.
One of the really cool possibilities with the mRNA vaccines is the chance to have a vaccine broad enough to be effective for common colds. Or even that we acquire the social habit of wearing masks when we’re sick.
Plus, Covid shows no signs of burning out, because it is pretty much perfectly situated for maximum damage
There’s no set duration for an outbreak or a pandemic.
But if we vaccines still took years to develop, we’d be seeing over a billion infections and tens of millions dead worldwide, over the course of several years. It can be contained without vaccines. See New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and South Korea. Few countries bothered to even try.
How did no one remind me that driving from Vegas to LA on a Sunday is a dystopian horror show? Less than a 4 hour drive took 7.5 hours. Fortunately it wasn’t until the last hour that I realized we were sitting stock still in 119 degree heat amidst highly flammable grasses. Imagination: great for writing, not great for thinking about what a single flicked cigarette butt can do to cars frozen in traffic.
OTOH the drive on the way there we took back roads from Palm Springs. Empty desert, no CHP, and I truly bonded with my car. It’s the first time I’ve taken it out for an extended drive. I loved my E350, but the 450 is better, no question. Bump from 60 to 90? Effortless. A bit too effortless.
Vegas is a mess. Understaffed in every position. The whole time there was spent standing in taxi lines, followed by losing patience and spending $150 to get a fucking bus/limo to drive us to Caesar’s. Stayed at the Mandaly thinking our youngest and her boyfriend would like the wave pool. . . in 116 degrees. Not a fan.
We gambled exactly zero dollars. Never went to the pool. Saw Penn and Teller for a second time, and they looked heat-drained, too. Fuck Vegas. Never going there again. Until at least 2022.
@Gustopher: I suspect that the virus is probably devoid of desire and intent. Once it has split–or whatever it does to replicate–it’s achieved whatever “goal” it might have had. From there, the virus is sanguine about it’s destiny. (And does an individual virus replicate more than once? Asking for a friend.)
@DrDaveT: “Oh, man, James Franciscus. We just loved Longstreet in my family”
Me, too. And while I never met Franciscus, at the home of a TV writer I did get to meet Harry and Renee Longstreet, the TV writers for whom the character was named…
https://twitter.com/hashtag/WeekendReads?src=hashtag_click
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/06/30/science.abi7994?utm_campaign=SciMag&utm_source=Social&utm_medium=Twitter
https://twitter.com/DelthiaRicks/status/1413956706623688717
Southwest Missouri health care system is not stable as COVID cases continue to rise, says hospital
Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Parsons is the guy who has one foot on the dock and one foot on the boat he just unhitched as it drifts away.
Right-wing Twitter clone Gettr becomes Gottu
What a lash-up.
@sam: conservative social media networks keep making the same mistake
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/epsilon-variant-covid-california-explainer-b1878909.html
These folks were only exercising their 2nd amendment rights when state actors moved in and short circuited their plans.
https://twitter.com/AmyMcGrathKY/status/1413996465416982533
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1414218804268257284
@OzarkHillbilly:
I have relatives in Southeast Missouri. Dexter, Essex, Poplar Bluff. They’re all Democrats and are vaccinated. Every one of them is complaining about their “Trump friends who won’t get vaxxed.”
I’m heading to Arkansas this week to meet with many of them for a golf tournament, and I’ll be masked and keeping my distance as much as possible.
Internet: “You can’t fix stupid”.
Covid 19: “I can.”
You should write comedy.
You should also consider posting seriously important comments on today’s forum instead of yesterday’s where some readers may not see them.
I listen to the news. Alot of it on the AM and FM radio.
You know what pisses me off?
Newscasters saying that they are “on the ground” in Bumfuck, Idaho.
Just once I want to hear “I’m reporting from up a tree…”
Cub reporter.
Week 2 of Jim Brown’s transition to the Coastal Panhandle of Florida is in the books. We got a place on the water in an area that felt familiar from my years growning up on the panhandle as “Southern Genteel”. In other words, these are the people that would call you a n1gg3r in ‘quiet rooms’ but were otherwise polite and non-confrontational. The area is currently flipping from the older generation who built there in the 70s to middle aged couples wanting to upsize one last time before the retirement downsize.
At any rate, I hired some yard men (black men) to do some work to get the lawn up to Ms Browns standards before she joins me full time. I drove up to inspect while they were still working and thanked one of the men for coming out so fast and working so quickly. He said (with a nervous stammered) “Sir, it is an honor for me to serve you.” This response made Jim Brown puzzled and embarrassed at the same time. But I rolled with it…gave him the black power hand clasp/man hug and moved on.
The next day, I was discussing some landscaping the wife wants with the foreman and he told me several extras he wanted to do–no charge. After haggling with him over payment for the extras, he cut me off sternly. “Sir, you don’t understand–I have been in this town for over 30 years. I have NEVER, EVER, seen a Black homeowner on the water or in this neighborhood. EVER….You are the 1st. This is so motivating to us…like the start of Black Wallstreet.
We HAVE to be sure you represent here for us. So the extras are No Charge. ”
Well, Ole Jim Brown had to fight his occasional eye allergies, after being put in his place, but managed to keep it together. The response from the other worker the day before now made sense. It hadn’t dawned on me that here it is, 2021, and I had just integrated a neighborhood .
There is family lore that my Grandmother integrated a Washeteria like Rosa Parks…went in to wash and dared people to kick her out. They didn’t. I guess Ive taken up her mantle.
Happy Sunday
@Jim Brown 32:
This story makes my Sunday. Thanks for sharing it here. I wish you and Ms. Brown the very best in your new house and neighborhood.
@Jim Brown 32:..It hadn’t dawned on me that here it is, 2021, and I had just integrated a neighborhood .
Stay safe.
If you look at the tabulation of states here
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
the rate of new cases is growing very rapidly in these states:
AR. MO, FL, LA, AL, MS, KS
Growth but much more moderate in NV, WY, UT, AZ, CO, TX
@charon:
Mostly the states with high rates of increase are already at high per capita new case rates.
The states with low rates of increase or declines are also at low per capita rates still.
@charon: Wyoming will start rising quickly. It’s county fair season, plus Cheyenne Frontier Days on the 23rd. Then we’ll have round 2 of the annual Sturgis Super Spreader Event next month, with everybody traveling through. I haven’t seen a mask on anyone in a month, at least.
@CSK: Thank You CSK!
@Jim Brown 32:
I just want to say to the contributors here that this comment and the subsequent reactions to it are what makes OTB so special.
Beth’s discussion of what she, as a trans, feels in her gut (soul) and in her reality was another amazing deeply personal revelation this week.
Thanks to all of the commentariat who help to expand my understanding of what humanity means.
Deepest gratitude
@Mister Bluster: Thanks! I know how to handle Lower Alabamians. After I field strip, clean, and re-oil my percussive instruments on the porch. They’ll understand how much I value freedom and the 2nd Amendment. We’ll all be kindred spirits
@charon:
CO is having a serious Delta outbreak on the Western Slope. Enough so that the CDC has people there to try and figure out why it’s so bad.
@Michael Cain:
What’s the vax rate for that area?
@EddieInCA:
Fine, fine. LatinY.
@charon: DeUseless has stopped daily reporting on COVID in FL. Releasing data weekly, on Friday, document dump day. But Worldometer is getting data somewhere and say we’re back up to 4,000 new cases per day, up from 1,500 a couple weeks ago (7 day moving averages). Deaths are still declining slowly, but the lag has seemed to be deaths go up four to six weeks after cases go up. 38,000 dead so far, but no one seems to care.
Got a drive thru Starbucks this morning. They’ve been fully masking, this morning about half the crew not.
@Jim Brown 32:
Used to live in Niceville back in late Jim Crow days. We had some Black kids visit for tutoring with my mother and received a very strong suggestion that we not do that. So we moved more Air Force adjacent.
So, very cool. Life gets better (occasionally).
@Jim Brown 32:..We’ll all be kindred spirits…
White privilege.
Me knowing that I have never needed to own a firearm for self protection.
@CSK:
Not good — Mesa County is the most populous out there and is at about 15 percentage points lower than my county at the north end of the Front Range urban corridor, and we’re another 5 points or so behind Denver.
It’s tempting to say, “Yeah, it’s Boebert country” but the counties with the highest vaccination rates are rural mountain communities and in the SW part of the state that are also in Boebert’s district. I haven’t looked at the details, but suspect those high-rate counties are ones that depend very much on having the summer tourist traffic back to normal.
@gVOR08:
A lot of high population FL counties are showing high new cases – Miami-Dade, Broward, Orange, Duval – this sends the statewide totals high.
Other states are having intense outbreaks in rural areas (e.g. Texas near Texarkana, Boebert country in CO) that leave the statewide totals still pretty low.
@Michael Cain:
Well, 70% of Colorado residents have received at least one shot, so that’s hopeful, I suppose.
@EddieInCA:
The explanation for “Latinx” that I, as an academic website editor, was given 4-5 years ago was that “Latina” and “Latino” excluded non-binary persons.
@CSK: Latino, as the default, excludes women. If you treat Spanish gender rules as English gender rules.
Dateline: Sleepytown Scandal
WSIU is the PBS outlet at Southern Illinois University. Four days ago it was announced that a local organic/vegetarian restaurant would be awarded the “Neighborly” Award for Unending Support of Local Community.
Today just hours before presentation the award was withdrawn.
Apparently everyone in town except those at WSIU who made the decision to present the award in the first place were aware of this lawsuit that was filed as a result of complaints by former employees of the Longbranch Cafe.
There have also been FB posts on the matter claiming that Dayemi Organization is some sort of cult.
I have not checked that out yet.
All I know for sure is that the store front pictured in the above link was the Longbranch Tavern 50 years ago when I drove the Yellow Cab here in town. The place had tables and chairs but it was a stand up bar with no stools. The bottles of hootch were right there on the bar so you could pour your own shots and there was a coffee can next to the bottles where you dropped in your cash to pay for the drinks.
The good old days.
@Gustopher:
Prior to Latinx, “Latino” and “Latina” (very often rendered as “Latino/Latina”) were the preferred designations, which is why I included “Latina” in my comments. I’m well aware that “Latino” excludes women. I was reporting on what my editorial experience was, and what the rationale for the change to Latinx provided to me was. To repeat, that it excludes the non-binary.
Since we’ve been urged to carry over crucial conversations from previous open forums:
“Do you remember a short-lived SF TV series from the 70s called The Immortal? A man whose blood can cure almost anything — and so The Very Bad Guys and The Government are both after him, as he moves from town to town trying to stay under the radar, but not willing to not help when he can… Sound familiar?”
Of course I remember that! I lived for the ABC Tuesday/Wednesday Movie of the Week — and all the series that spun off from them. What a glorious period for high-concept television. And at the time (I must have been around eleven or twelve), I thought the three greatest actors in the world were its mainstays Christopher George, star of The Immortal, James Franciscus and Monte Markham.
Alas, George died before I got into the business, and Franciscus had stopped acting by then (and died a couple years later), but I did finally get the chance to work with Monte Markham — first on Baywatch, where he was the only character any fun to write for, then on an episode of Diagnosis Murder where he saved the day — we had a director who was incapable of making a decision and we were falling way behind. Normally our DP could have stepped in and pushed the guest director around some, but he was also a director and the DGA really frowns on that. Fortunately Markham, who had his own production company and had been producing and directing for years, just stepped up and started telling everyone what to do… and the guest director just let him.
@CSK: Also, I think part of the issue is that there really isn’t a single Latino community. LatinX is preferred by a “gender-forward” Latino community, a subset of the broader Latino communities — younger, more liberal, more queer.
Their desire to rename the broader set of communities would be sort of like using the experience of Black trans women to define the Black experience in America. The Black trans community is a valid community with issues that overlap the Black communities and the Trans communities, but… they don’t really speak to the life of our fellow commenter Jim Brown 32 (or not that he has shared with us, anyway…)
Plus, it’s just kind of dumb. It sounds like something white progressives would come up with (I think they just really latched onto it).
That’s not white privilege. White privilege is owning a hundred firearms with thousands and thousands of rounds of ammo because even tho one has never been the victim of an actual crime there was that one time a black man walked thru the neighborhood, smiled and waved at them, so he just might have been casing the house and you never know so better safe than sorry.
@OzarkHillbilly:..That’s not white privilege. White privilege is owning a hundred firearms with thousands and thousands of rounds of ammo because even tho one has never been the victim of an actual crime there was that one time a black man walked thru the neighborhood, smiled and waved at them, so he just might have been casing the house and you never know so better safe than sorry.
My bad…
@Gustopher:
According to Pew Research (August 2020), 76% of Hispanics haven’t even heard of “Latinx,” and only 3% use it.
I agree that the enthusiasm for the term seems to be mostly on the part of white progressives.
@CSK:
With the Front Range urban corridor doing most of the heavy lifting on that number. My wife and I have been fully-vaccinated for months and I’m pretty comfortable going unmasked in most local settings. If I had to go spend a week in the NW part of the state, I’d mask up all the time.
Edit to add… We have the first draft of the redistricting commission’s maps. Colorado outside of the urban corridor is going to be really unhappy with how much smaller their voice is going to be.
@Jim Brown 32:
Congratulations, that is heartwarming.
“I agree that the enthusiasm for the term seems to be mostly on the part of white progressives.”
Son in law, Puerto Rican, says Latinx is kind of stupid. I try to avoid using any of the terms since I will probably be wrong.
Steve
@Bob@Youngstown:
Thanks. Your comment made my day.
@CSK: @Gustopher:
What’s the non-binary term for Asians?
What’s the non-binary term for African Americans?
Why a separate term for Latinos?
@EddieInCA:
I assume the people who invented “Latinx” figured that “Asian American” and “African American” already covered all the gender bases.
@EddieInCA: The argument is that ‘Latino/a” are inherently gendered in ways that ‘Black/AA’ and ‘Asian-American’ are not. So I understand the coinage. But I agree that it’s unlikely to catch on and likely to piss more people off than it helps.
Dr. Fauci had this to say about boosters:
Pfizer has been following the phase III trial subjects, and they can measure antibody levels and such, so I’ll take their concerns seriously. But they’re not disinterested. Keep in mind the market for these shots is measured in billions of doses. So, their concerns need to be checked.
The other thing, is that no outbreak has ever been ended by a vaccine. Recent pandemics, like H1N1, outbreaks of Ebola and SARS, burned out because they were far less contagious. vaccines for H1N1 were developed, since after all we have flu vaccines down cold, but weren’t available until the outbreak was over.
Given the insufficient vaccine uptake, however, I’ll take a booster when they are available.
@EddieInCA:
In Mexico, “Latin@” is a popular choice.
@steve:
The most prominent place I’ve seen Latinx used was in the title of a section of the LA Times. After they stopped using it, they took a poll. Interesting for a number of reasons, the term preferred by a large majority of those responding was “Mexican-American”.
When I was a kid in NW Iowa in the 1960s the population was still largely second- and third-generation descendants of Scandinavians recruited by the Great Northern Railway to grow grain on the northern Great Plains that would have to be shipped by rail. There were still a few small-town weekly newspapers published in one of the Scandinavian languages. The town where I lived was a mixed bunch: there were, IIRC, seven different Lutheran churches. The local newspaper’s “apologies for errors” column on page 2 regularly included things like spelling someone’s name “Paulson” rather than “Paulsen”. Using the Swedish instead of the proper Danish was considered a significant insult.
@Kathy:..“Latin@”…
Is that supposed to be the letter “0” and the letter “a” combined?
How is this pronounced?
In English…
In Spanish…
@Kathy:
Polio wasn’t that long ago. Smallpox was a bit longer ago, but effectively managed through vaccines.
Was there an antivax movement with polio? I have no idea, but I do know that it was a very different world then.
@Jim Brown 32:
Alas that I only have one upvote to give.
@steve:
Seems to most be an eye-rolling “no, no, I prefer that other term…” rather than an angry “how dare you!”
Between Latino, Chicano, Hispanic, LatinX… it feels like a trap though. Too many words all meaning about the same thing (I think Latino is the broadest and most accepted?)
I’m waiting for the Latinos to start trolling us with a dozen variations.
– Latino/Latina
– LatinX
– Latine
– Latin@
– LatinXX, LatinXY, for when genetics is important
– Adding “con pene” or “sans pene” when the plumbing is important
– Latinot, someone who is not Latino
Imagine a huge collection of increasingly convoluted words that only white progressives use, and a secret network where new words are created and strategically deployed by Latinos/latinas/Latinothers on college campuses. It could happen.
Just look at the micro labels for sexuality — is an aromantic semi-sapio-sexual demi-boy a real thing? (This is why I just prefer queer… it’s so much less exhausting.)
@Mister Bluster:
I guess it’s a classic case of “both and neither”.
If you find out, please make sure to let me know.
@Gustopher:
In those cases, further outbreaks were prevented by the vaccines. Less so with smallpox than with polio, because the smallpox could protect people who were already infected.
To my knowledge, there has never been a global outbreak or pandemic that ended with massive, herd-immunity level vaccination. Largely because such things tended to burn out before vaccines could be developed.
@Kathy: Fair. I think we would quibble over polio and the start stop of epidemics, but it comes down to transmissiveness as well — polio had the ability to taper down to lower levels between waves. Covid tapers down to high levels from very high. Same with Smallpox.
We pretty much went around the world vaccinating everyone to wipe out those two. Massive achievement. Took a lot of time, and a lot of waves of infection.
But, we are also at the first point in human history where we can create a vaccine in a year and start distributing on massive scale within 3 months after that — and we can probably speed it up if there’s a mutation that breaks through.
Plus, Covid shows no signs of burning out, because it is pretty much perfectly situated for maximum damage — airborne, up to 14 days of presymptomatic, AND asymptotic transmission? AND not killing so many that everyone realizes they need to lock down? AND support from a major political party?
This virus won the genetic lottery.
@Gustopher:
Not even close. Common cold viruses, rhinoviruses and coronaviruses, are the hands-down winners. Highly contagious, almost never kill the host, mutate over a range that means everyone gets infected every few years but never develops a sufficiently-broad immunity to break the chain. My own measure would be when Covid mutates to the point that it joins the pre-K and kindergarten disease of the month club. F*ck, I hated that every couple of months my young children brought home another virus that made me ill enough to be unpleasant, but not so ill but what I took it to work and gave it to a bunch of other people.
One of the really cool possibilities with the mRNA vaccines is the chance to have a vaccine broad enough to be effective for common colds. Or even that we acquire the social habit of wearing masks when we’re sick.
@Michael Cain:
Oh, I assume the virus wants to kill a lot of people.
I should stop projecting.
@Gustopher:
There’s no set duration for an outbreak or a pandemic.
But if we vaccines still took years to develop, we’d be seeing over a billion infections and tens of millions dead worldwide, over the course of several years. It can be contained without vaccines. See New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and South Korea. Few countries bothered to even try.
How did no one remind me that driving from Vegas to LA on a Sunday is a dystopian horror show? Less than a 4 hour drive took 7.5 hours. Fortunately it wasn’t until the last hour that I realized we were sitting stock still in 119 degree heat amidst highly flammable grasses. Imagination: great for writing, not great for thinking about what a single flicked cigarette butt can do to cars frozen in traffic.
OTOH the drive on the way there we took back roads from Palm Springs. Empty desert, no CHP, and I truly bonded with my car. It’s the first time I’ve taken it out for an extended drive. I loved my E350, but the 450 is better, no question. Bump from 60 to 90? Effortless. A bit too effortless.
Vegas is a mess. Understaffed in every position. The whole time there was spent standing in taxi lines, followed by losing patience and spending $150 to get a fucking bus/limo to drive us to Caesar’s. Stayed at the Mandaly thinking our youngest and her boyfriend would like the wave pool. . . in 116 degrees. Not a fan.
We gambled exactly zero dollars. Never went to the pool. Saw Penn and Teller for a second time, and they looked heat-drained, too. Fuck Vegas. Never going there again. Until at least 2022.
@wr:
Oh, man, James Franciscus. We just loved Longstreet in my family.
@Gustopher: I suspect that the virus is probably devoid of desire and intent. Once it has split–or whatever it does to replicate–it’s achieved whatever “goal” it might have had. From there, the virus is sanguine about it’s destiny. (And does an individual virus replicate more than once? Asking for a friend.)
@DrDaveT: “Oh, man, James Franciscus. We just loved Longstreet in my family”
Me, too. And while I never met Franciscus, at the home of a TV writer I did get to meet Harry and Renee Longstreet, the TV writers for whom the character was named…