The Least Surprising Headline of the Day
Can you guess?
(Well, actually, it is from yesterday).
Via NPR: Where Are The Newest COVID Hot Spots? Mostly Places With Low Vaccination Rates.
New, localized hot spots are emerging, especially in stretches of the South, the Midwest and the West. And, according to an analysis NPR conducted with Johns Hopkins University, those surges are likely driven by pockets of dangerously low vaccination rates.
“I think we should brace ourselves to see case increases, particularly in unvaccinated populations,” says Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Maps and details at the link.
Doncha hate it when headlines are just “Master of the Obvious” stories? It’s like the classic “Man who bought face-eating tiger surprised after tiger ate his face”.
I mention to my vaccinated (because she’s not an idiot) and masked (because she has two kids not yet eligible for vaccination) that I have a sinking feeling this summer will be only brief respite and then we will back to full on masking and distancing protocols, all due the Trump states.
The dangerously rising numbers are almost exclusively in those areas controlled by Republicans, who simply no longer have the competence to deal with the real world. Instead they seek to deflect and distract with critical race theory and transgenderism.
@MarkedMan:
Much as I hate to absolve Trump of responsibility for the current situation*, I think it’s advanced well beyond his sphere of influence. The anti-vaxxers seem to grow more and more convinced every day that the shot is dangerously experimental at best, and, at worst, a sinister attempt to alter our DNA or implant a microchip so that we can either be tracked or rendered compliant to the imminent Communist takeover spearheaded by the Democrats. There’s no reaching these people.
*I don’t know how pro-Trump anti-vaxxers rationalize the fact that Trump himself got the vaccine and made a few token efforts to encourage others to do so. Since they seem to ignore the subject, perhaps that’s how they handle it.
As I linked in the Forum thread, Fox/Murdoch have been lobbying hard against vaccination.
I believe Murdoch’s top priority is ratings, getting eyeballs on screens, and he sees getting people stirred up, angry as an efficient effective way to do this.
Getting people angry at Biden works, so if Biden is advocating vaccination, Fox will oppose that.
The line of least resistance for GOP politicians and fundie churches is to go with the flow, so they slide into being an echo chamber reinforcing the Fox claims.
@CSK:
Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson seem to be reaching them just fine.
Let’s not fall into the trap of thinking that this is at all like the usual anti-vaxxer nonsense about autism and precious bodily fluids. This isn’t be driven by loons on the fringes of society, this is being driven by the heart of the mainstream right.
I would also not be surprised if some of our foreign adversaries were helping push this, as a weak America is good for them. (Is that a conspiracy theory? Maybe! But given the Russian goals of a weak America, and the methods we have seen them employ during our elections, I think it’s more of a jump to assume they stopped sowing dissent than to assume they altered their strategies slightly)
@Gustopher:
I hoped it would be clear that by “reaching these people,” I meant reaching them with sane arguments by sane people, which excludes Hannity and Carlson.
@CSK: I think we need to just pay off Tucker Carlson. It’s always about money on the right.
The vaccine refusal — it’s not hesitancy at this point — is just another example of our first amendment protections being weaponized against America. I don’t think you can look at it in a bubble of isolation.
And I don’t know how to fix it.
But which is a more free society: one where anyone can promote wildly inaccurate and dangerous conspiracy theories about public health issues, or one where enough people are vaccinated that you can go about your life and don’t have to worry about infection?
Same question can be asked about guns (which is ultimately why we have some limits, and why your neighbor is not stockpiling weapons of mass destruction), health insurance, etc.
Cases are beginning to rise in Seattle, despite a high level of vaccination. If things continue, I expect we will be featured on Fox as evidence that vaccines don’t work.
What I would love to see is if we started reporting two sets of graphs — vaccinated and unvaccinated.
Make sure no one can miss the story of numbers rising scary high for the unvaccinated while the vaccinated living among them are mostly fine. And get the vaccinated folks hesitant to re-engage the economy to relax, if the data shows they should.
@Gustopher:
Me too, but it wouldn’t work. It would just be more deep state, Lame Stream Media, pointy headed “expert”, fake news. Proof of how deep the conspiracy is and how desperate they are to get you to take their experimental, gene altering, ineffective vaccine for a fake condition. And why don’t those libturds thank Trump for inventing it?
@CSK: I agree. I use “Trump” as an adjective meaning something like “belligerently stupid and self destructive”. I’ve always felt that Trump was just a symptom of a greater malevolence and decay amongst certain sections of the populace. Trump himself has no particular magic or significance. There are always figures like Trump bloviating on the fringes and if it wasn’t him it would have been another just like him.
@MarkedMan:
Trump is indeed a symptom. And there are many bloviating fringe figures. But there was something about Trump’s unparalleled churlishness that really appealed to some people’s worst instincts.
It’s interesting to me that despite all evidence to the contrary, some Trumpkins still try to paint him as a devoted husband, loving father, and a devout Christian (even if he came to Jesus a little late in life). Others see him for exactly what he is: an oaf. And both groups glory in their disparate images of the man.
@CSK:
Well, thus far they’ve been right about everything. Remember when Obama took away their guns in his illegal third term? Didn’t they warn you it would happen?