Like it or not, approval is based on actual scientific studies (RCTs), not just the observation that lots of people have already gotten the vaccine and seem to be OK. This is the only reliable way to do things, and that doesn’t change just because we’d really, really like it to.
While it is tempting to have the vaccine’s approved based on observational data and experience, long term credibility is best served by following the process. Given that the FDA has approved expedited review, final approval is likely by year’s end.
Drum is right, if approval is given without following the process the excuse for not taking/opposing the vax will shift from; it only has emergency approval, to the approval is political.
Rex ChapmanHorse racing@RexChapman
I’ve watched this over and over and over again and I still can’t figure out how he doesn’t get his ass whipped immediately.
Quote Tweet
Fifty Shades of Whey
@davenewworld_2
· 8h
GOP city council member in Alabama says “do we have a house n****r in here?” to a Black woman on the council. This racist scum Tommy Bryant needs to resign and Veronica Freeman deserves an apology.
@Sleeping Dog: Agreed. And consider that if the Biden administration could do it, the Trump administration could have also and we would have Hydroxichlorquine approved and no vaccines.
GOP city council member in Alabama says “do we have a house n****r in here?” to a Black woman on the council. This racist scum Tommy Bryant needs to resign and Veronica Freeman deserves an apology.
Turning now to the polls, city council member Tommy Bryant has shot past Rick DeSantis to take the #2 position for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination…
Brick Top: You’re always gonna have problems lifting a body in one piece. Apparently the best thing to do is cut up a corpse into six pieces and pile it all together.
Sol: Would someone mind telling me, who are you?
Brick Top: And when you got your six pieces, you gotta get rid of them, because it’s no good leaving it in the deep freeze for your mum to discover, now is it? Then I hear the best thing to do is feed them to pigs. You got to starve the pigs for a few days, then the sight of a chopped-up body will look like curry to a pisshead. You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies’ digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don’t want to go sievin’ through pig shit, now do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, “as greedy as a pig.”
@OzarkHillbilly: about two decades ago I had a girlfriend who watched that movie so many times that she could understand what Brad Pitt was saying. She later did a PhD in physics at Harvard and I’m not sure the two are unrelated.
Me: what on Earth did he say at the end?
Her: ‘scatter cushions with the matching shag pile covering’.
Like it or not, approval is based on actual scientific studies (RCTs), not just the observation that lots of people have already gotten the vaccine and seem to be OK. This is the only reliable way to do things, and that doesn’t change just because we’d really, really like it to.
Not just clinical tests for efficacy and safety, but engineering analyses on the entire manufacturing and supply chain. Remember J&J tossing 60M doses of their vaccine? They did it because of actual (and possible) errors committed by a contract manufacturer who would never have passed the FDA’s process requirements. No mRNA vaccine has ever been through the full approval process. Much of the manufacturing technology is new. Many of the precursor chemicals are exotic. None of this stuff has been through the FDA supply chain review and inspections.
This same problem dogs some generic drugs. The IP protections have expired, the production process is understood, but the potential profit doesn’t justify the cost of having the supply chain and manufacturing facilities approved.
Assuming the antibody tests are accurate, and that the number accounts for false positive/negative rates, this means that 1) asymptomatic cases must be really high, and 2) India’s testing program leaves a lot to be desired.
Above that, excess death in India are reported to be as high as 4.7 million, of which officially 415,000 or so are attributed to COVID. So either there have been many, many more COVID deaths. It boggles the mind, but 67% of 1.3 billion is around 871 million, so 4.4 million deaths would be a mortality rate of around 0.5%. That’s low, so probably direct excess deaths from COVID are much lower. Still way higher than the official numbers (see above about testing).
It’s very hard to estimate deaths in historical plagues where records of both population and attributed causes of death are spotty at best and nonexistent at worst. One would think in modern times, with good records and above all testing for specific diseases, such things should be straightforward.
Not when governments are busy downplaying things and trying to make their inept management of the pandemic look better than it is.
this means that 1) asymptomatic cases must be really high,
I think this is entirely possible, and it’s sent me down a few mental rabbit holes during the pandemic. In thinking about the prevalence of asymptomatic cases–of which there were many, many reports even prior to the vaccines–I started to wonder how many other viral illnesses have asymptomatic cases.
Several times in the recent past, I’ve been surrounded by people who caught colds, but I did not. I’ve always sort of assumed that it’s been either: a) that I’ve had that particular cold strain before and therefore was able to fight it off; b) my immune system was strong enough to knock it out before it developed; or, c) my hand-washing tendencies protected me.
All of these are possible reasons to not catch a cold. But it also occurs to me that I very well might have had an asymptomatic case. We simply do not have any idea how frequently that occurs because we don’t test for common colds.
As I understand, there are a number of viral diseases, ranging from mild to serious, that produce lots of asymptomatic cases regardless of the severity for symptomatic cases. There are even recorded cases of asymptomatic or mild HIV infections.
We have two toddlers in daycare, and so are subjected to pretty much every contagious disease that hits our city. Its incredibly common for 3 out of 4 of us to get hit hard, and one person to be fine. Until your comment, I had never connected that phenomenon to asymptomatic cases.
@Kathy:
It’ll be difficult, though; I can’t see a way to infect people asymptomatically for clinical trials. You can’t predetermine how anyone will react. And if you’re asymptomatic, you won’t know you’re infected, so you won’t consult a doctor, and your case will go unrecorded.
Many of the HIV cases were investigated by the NIH. I would assume given how many studies were done for COVID, that someone must have studied asymptomatic cases before widespread vaccination.
When a bug is going around, be it serious or mild, one can recruit participants to be tested for that pathogen if they’ve been exposed but have no symptoms. I don’t know what the ethics are for infecting, or even exposing, someone with a mild disease like the common cold. Many mild diseases, like flu, invariably kill some victims.
It worked for the folks on the show Deadwood, so why not. I think pigs are cool but years ago I was clued in that they can indeed nosh on a person until even the bones no longer remain. I know I said to myself Yikes! at the time but pigs still remain cool creatures.
“A few days later when I call time of death,” continued Cobia on Facebook, “I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same.”
“They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just the flu’. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can’t. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine. And I go back to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives.”
@Teve:
Two of the three Republicans Pelosi accepted voted to certify Biden’s election: Kelly Armstrong (North Dakota) and Rodney Davis (Illinois). Troy Davis (Texas), the third member, voted to reject the election results.
@Teve:
Ignorance and stupidity kills. I don’t care if it hurt someone’s feelings or “disrespects” them, a loved one shouldn’t have to die for you to get past the “hoax” or “political” BS. Why does it take death for these idiots to get it?
Sorry doesn’t bring the dead back. Regrets don’t help the people who now have health issues or enormous medical bills they can’t pay. Tears and recriminations and I-shoulda’s seem to do nothing to make the anti-vaxxers see reason. They didn’t listen to the last person who spoke out about how they should have vaxxed and hubby would still be alive – why do they think someone’s gonna listen to them? So, so many of these stories and yet every day there’s more.
“One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.”
People don’t like to accept there’s such a thing as too late when it comes to medicine. I can’t tell you how many cancer patients I had to counsel that demanded someone “fix” their Stage-IV cancer after doing nothing for years. They panic when you tell them they’re past the point of no return, that they lost their chance. They get angry, sometimes violent – I have scars from a patient who didn’t want to hear he had weeks to live since he’d declined treatment years earlier to go climb Mt Everest. He didn’t want to lose his chance, you see and he’d rather try some homeopathic remedies instead. He ended up losing a lot more than that; he could have made it if he’d taken it seriously and followed medical advice. The old adage is true “A ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”; there’s no last minute saves like in the movies and you can doom yourself by waiting too long.
Why does it take death for these idiots to get it?
Do they even get it then? Is there any follow up to see whether or not they take the vaccines now?
BTW, some vaccines are effective after infection, like the rabies vaccine or the smallpox vaccine. I don’t know of any that are effective after symptoms appear. By then, the vaccine won’t do more than the virus is already doing to stimulate the immune system to make antibodies and T-cells to fight off the virus.
I’d like to hear or read progressive explanations of the NYC mayoral primary. Because it seems that rich, white Manhattan was all for the progressive ‘Defund’ candidates because: racism, meanwhile Black and brown voters – you know, the people actually experiencing racism – went strong for the moderate ex-cop.
Looks to me as if the campus wing of the Democratic Party co-opted BLM, turned it into Defund, killed the blue wave in the process and left actual POC rather unimpressed. The very people who endlessly, endlessly repeated that we ‘must listen to. . .’ ignored their own advice, and spent approximately zero hours finding out what the people we were all supposed to listen to actually thought. (I know! Surprising!) The people outraged by ‘appropriation,’ appropriated. The people who lectured on cultural imperialism demonstrated their concern by condemning the Spanish language’s gendered nouns and insisted on substituting a word that cannot be pronounced in Spanish.
The people who lectured on cultural imperialism demonstrated their concern by condemning the Spanish language’s gendered nouns and insisted on substituting a word that cannot be pronounced in Spanish.
Don’t be silly. They can learn to say “La Tinks”. It even has a proper Spanish article.*
========
*Okay… now I’ve got me wondering. If you’re talking about “The Latinx” in Spanish, is it “la Latinx” or “el Latinx”?
On the subject of COVID vaccines, it seems not only that vaccinated people can get breakthrough infections from the Delta variant, and not only that they can transmit it to others, but that they can transmit it to even other vaccinated individuals.
The last is unclear as yet, but of great concern.
Now, this means that your odds of catching COVID Delta are still very low if you’ve been fully vaccinated. But higher than they were prior to Delta. Also most cases among those vaccinated will be mild or asymptomatic, but there have been serious cases and even deaths.
It may not be time for another lockdown, but if you’re vaccinated, you should definitely ignore the premature CDC advice and keep wearing a mask, particularly KN-95, N95, or KF94 masks, which block some viral particles, at all times in public, especially indoors.
The spread of Delta falls mostly on those who are not yet vaccinated. In the US, where vaccines are widely available (and free), it’s unconscionable neglect not to get vaccinated. But keep in mind in most other countries vaccines are not readily available, so Delta was going to have a field day with the world anyway.
The rest of the fault lies with governments and people who have relaxed precautionary measures. Sure, vaccination is very protective, bu Delta had been circulating in India before it spread elsewhere, and we all should have known better than to let our guard down.
At work, BTW, I’m happy to say all who have been elegible for vaccines in my department have taken them, except one person. Alas, most have not yet reached the second dose. Many got AstraZeneca, and that has a longer wait time between shots.
Also, it seems the stocks of Pfizer NioNTech have been largely used up, so in municipalities where those were given prior, are now using Sputnik V.
It’s occurred to me that speakers of gender-heavy languages tend to have much less of a hangup over it–a need to compulsively get rid of the slightest traces of gender. Not just because it’s impossible, but because when you’re routinely processing couches as male and skateboards as female, you have an easier time with the idea that it’s ultimately arbitrary and doesn’t have to be read into. We English speakers are so overwhelmed by gender neutrality in our own language that the exceptions stick out like a sore thumb, and it therefore bothers us more.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’ve heard some rumblings about the Jan. 6 committee subpoenaing Trump, which of course he’ll fight on the grounds of “executive privilege.”
But if it does get to that point, how can anyone keep him from lying under oath? Even his allies know he can’t tell the truth.
I do look forward to the spectacle of him sweating under the lights.
Mark Kelly has a 9-point edge in approval rating over Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona, per @DataProgress poll. Crosstabs a lot more stark:Among Democrats, the Kelly advantage is 53 (!) points. Among Republicans, though, it's Sinema by 33. pic.twitter.com/oRwPtv9KJD— Idrees Kahloon (@imkahloon) July 20, 2021
@Mu Yixiao: The definition of insanity is trying to repeat a bizarre and unlikely string of events from nearly two decades ago and expecting the same results.
A number of people have pointed out that Bezos’s rocket not only looks like a giant erect penis, but that it also very closely resembles Dr. Evil’s spacecraft in Austin Powers.
@CSK: TBH, I expect he would fight it tooth and nail, appealing it all the way to the SC where, if/when he lost, he would just refuse to recognize Congress’s Article I powers, and dare them to arrest him. At which point the DEMs running it would say, “Now what?”
I mean sure, they could have him arrested and thrown into solitary confinement. And then what? The possible bad things that could happen are endless.
If they are smart, they will never subpoena him. They will take testimony from every one and anyone who wants to, and compel it from those who don’t want to but have something to add, and then “invite” trump to testify in his own defense. His lawyers will hogtie him down on the 13th hole at his Palm Beach course so he can’t and Congress will be spared the dog and pony show that would be his incessant lie fest that was never going to add anything of worth to the record and they will get on with the business of issuing a report.
Of course, if they are really smart, they will know better than to listen to an old broke down hillbilly carpenter.
I mean sure, they could have him arrested and thrown into solitary confinement. And then what?
“Gee, sorry, Mr. Cheeto. We seem to have misplaced the key to your cell. Would you mind banging your head against the bars, hard? One of them is bound to give.”
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well, you may be an “old broke down hillbilly carpenter,” but I think you’re right about this. Of course his lawyers would strait-jacket and drug Trump to keep him from testifying. (They’ve prevented it before, haven’t they?) But I’d still like to see him grilled.
Many health-care workers have had enough. Some who took on extra shifts during past surges can’t bring themselves to do so again. Some have moved to less stressful positions that don’t involve treating COVID-19. Others are holding the line, but only just. “You can’t pour from an empty cup, but with every shift it feels like my co-workers and I are empty,” Montgomery said. “We are still trying to fill each other up and keep going.”
The grueling slog is harder now because it feels so needless, and because many patients don’t realize their mistake until it’s too late. On Tuesday, Hill spoke with an elderly man who had just been admitted and was very sick. “He said, ‘I’m embarrassed that I’m here,’” she told me. “He wanted to talk about the vaccine, and in the back of my mind I’m thinking, You have a very high likelihood of not leaving the hospital.” Other patients remain defiant. “We had someone spit in a nurse’s eye because she told him he had COVID and he didn’t believe her,” Edwards said.
Some health-care workers are starting to resent their patients—an emotion that feels taboo. “You’re just angry,” Coulter said, “and you feel guilty for getting angry, because they’re sick and dying.” Others are indignant on behalf of loved ones who don’t already have access to the vaccines. “I’m a mom of a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old, and the daughter of family members in Zimbabwe and South Africa who can’t get vaccinated yet,” says Matifadza Hlatshwayo Davis, who works at a Veterans Affairs hospital in St. Louis. “I’m frustrated, angry, and sad.”
In case anyone wondered, i asked a linguist friend the question, el latinx? La latinx? Los latinx? What? Here’s a paraphrase of what happened:
Him: The Latinx.
Me: No, i mean if people were speaking Spanish, what would the definite article be?
Him: “The”
Me: are you saying it’s never used in spanish conversation?
Him: I wouldn’t say never, but native Spanish speakers generally regard it as a weird anglophone thing that doesn’t really have a place in Spanish.
@CSK:
I am kinda bummed that he pulled Rodney Davis off the panel. Davis is my congressman and, while I am not a fan of most of his politics, it was going to be an opportunity to see if he could really step up. Both an opportunity lost and a bullet dodged for him.
@Kathy: Would you mind banging your head against the bars, hard?
I actually once gave serious consideration to this exact option for escape from one particular hell hole. I remember thinking, “Blood, the more the better and they’ll have to take me to the hospital.” Fortunately the JeffCo deputy they were holding me for showed up before I put that plain of action into motion.
Jail fucks with one’s head in ways a person who’s never been there can’t quite imagine. That was my 3rd or 4th sojourn and even tho it had never bothered me before, after that experience? I swore I would never end up in that situation again. And I haven’t.
@Joe:
Well, he voted to certify the election for Biden, so I assume he would have approached this committee assignment with some degree of seriousness and rationality.
LOL lord only knows why Kyrsten Sinema took the Save The Filibuster At The Expense of Our Entire Agenda position, but recent polls say 2/3rds of Arizona Dems want her primaried, and if it were held today, Mark Kelly would beat her by 53 points.
@OzarkHillbilly: it’s a dysfunction of the editing software here that sometimes it won’t give you Click to Edit, but if you post a second comment, Click to Edit will appear on both. That’s how that got there.
I was concerned early on in the pandemic, that doctors and nurses, with little and unreliable PPE, would flee their jobs en masse out of fear of catching COVID and, worse, taking it home. I was relieved most held on, even as they suffered terribly.
Now that worry is back, more so since these latest patients could easily have avoided it, an option not available last year. Sure, medical staff are at a lower level of risk, but given the availability of vaccines, they should be at a much lower level of risk than they face now. And many have children une 12 who can’t yet be vaccinated.
@Joe:
I suppose McCarthy’s strategy now will be to claim that the Jan. 6 committee will be populated only by partisan witch-hunters, and thus hopelessly biased.
@Kathy: I don’t think so. I know one unvaccinated RN at our local nursing home, she’s pretty adamant she’ll quit her job if they make getting vaccinated a condition of employment.
I say fire them all.
Banner Health in Arizona recently set company policy that everybody will be vaccinated by November 1st if they want to stay employed. They haven’t stated what, if any, exceptions there will be.
Companies setting policy like this is the only way we’re gonna beat this, at least until the vaccines aren’t under an emergency authorization.
@CSK: Authorization and a few months on those unemployment benefits they’ve been saying are “too generous” might. I think health insurance companies refusing coverage for the unvaccinated might be a big push, as well.
A fair number of people have left medical professions or changed jobs to avoid contact with Covid patients already. Certainly a lot of us will be kind fo pissed about caring for people who have Covid who probably could have avoided it. However, a lot fo us are kind of used to this so we get over it quickly. They are still people after all. If you let this bother you too much you have trouble taking care of massively fat people, trauma patients (think of trauma as a chronic disease since it is the same people over and over again), and a to of other people who just ignore their health care.
We all got word today that vaccinations will be close to mandaory to work in film and tv unless you have a medical exemption. Two people on the crew of our new show already have shown their medical records and are exempt from the mandate. But they’ll have to be masked at all times, and socially distant. Alot of Teamsters who refuse to be vaccinated will soon find themselves unemployed, with many others who are vaccinated rushing to fill those $40-$50hr jobs with full benefits, a pension plan, and breakfast, lunch and dinner served every day.
Me: Are you vaccinated?
Crew member: None of your business. I don’t have to tell you.
Me; No problem. So I can put you down as “Chooses not to disclose”?
Crew member: That’s right. Yep.
Me: Cool. Thanks. You’re aware that the new Return to work agreement says you have to be vaxxed to come back to work, right? You’re aware of that?
Crew member: What? No. Screw that. I’m going to my union. You can’t do that.
Me: The mandate is coming from your union.
Crew member: What? No way! They can’t do that.
Me: Actually, they can. And they did.
Crew member: …………………oh.
It’s hard, but not impossible. When the town is super busy, they’ll open up the roster to “Permits”, which means the lowest on the totem pole, but that’s how you get in. Right now is a dead time, so no “Permits”, but around November of this year, assuming Covid doesn’t go crazy, there will be openings for “Permits’. Also in January and February.
Our tiny county (6,000 total full time residents, but we’re on the route to Yellowstone and Jackson Hole) has 20 new cases in the last week, 3 hospitalized (nursing home, I suspect). We can’t test for variants yet.
Men cause more climate emissions than women, study finds
I can see that.
Kevin Drum whacking down those who are calling for the FDA to short circuit the vaccine review process and give full approval to COVID vaccines right away. Money quote:
@MarkedMan:
While it is tempting to have the vaccine’s approved based on observational data and experience, long term credibility is best served by following the process. Given that the FDA has approved expedited review, final approval is likely by year’s end.
Drum is right, if approval is given without following the process the excuse for not taking/opposing the vax will shift from; it only has emergency approval, to the approval is political.
I think it’s a safe bet to happen anyway, not that Drum is any less right for it.
@Sleeping Dog: Agreed. And consider that if the Biden administration could do it, the Trump administration could have also and we would have Hydroxichlorquine approved and no vaccines.
@OzarkHillbilly: @Sleeping Dog: Boy, in my head that was so clear but in print….
To clarify, I’m saying the far right will say the approval is purely political no matter how stringently process is followed.
Turning now to the polls, city council member Tommy Bryant has shot past Rick DeSantis to take the #2 position for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination…
@Teve:
Don’t even joke about it.
@CSK: BRYANT/TUBERVILLE 2024,
@Teve:
You’re making me ill. I just finished breakfast.
@Teve:
@OzarkHillbilly: about two decades ago I had a girlfriend who watched that movie so many times that she could understand what Brad Pitt was saying. She later did a PhD in physics at Harvard and I’m not sure the two are unrelated.
Me: what on Earth did he say at the end?
Her: ‘scatter cushions with the matching shag pile covering’.
@MarkedMan:
Not just clinical tests for efficacy and safety, but engineering analyses on the entire manufacturing and supply chain. Remember J&J tossing 60M doses of their vaccine? They did it because of actual (and possible) errors committed by a contract manufacturer who would never have passed the FDA’s process requirements. No mRNA vaccine has ever been through the full approval process. Much of the manufacturing technology is new. Many of the precursor chemicals are exotic. None of this stuff has been through the FDA supply chain review and inspections.
This same problem dogs some generic drugs. The IP protections have expired, the production process is understood, but the potential profit doesn’t justify the cost of having the supply chain and manufacturing facilities approved.
News report that antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 have been detected in 67% of India’s population.
Assuming the antibody tests are accurate, and that the number accounts for false positive/negative rates, this means that 1) asymptomatic cases must be really high, and 2) India’s testing program leaves a lot to be desired.
Above that, excess death in India are reported to be as high as 4.7 million, of which officially 415,000 or so are attributed to COVID. So either there have been many, many more COVID deaths. It boggles the mind, but 67% of 1.3 billion is around 871 million, so 4.4 million deaths would be a mortality rate of around 0.5%. That’s low, so probably direct excess deaths from COVID are much lower. Still way higher than the official numbers (see above about testing).
It’s very hard to estimate deaths in historical plagues where records of both population and attributed causes of death are spotty at best and nonexistent at worst. One would think in modern times, with good records and above all testing for specific diseases, such things should be straightforward.
Not when governments are busy downplaying things and trying to make their inept management of the pandemic look better than it is.
@Kathy:
I think this is entirely possible, and it’s sent me down a few mental rabbit holes during the pandemic. In thinking about the prevalence of asymptomatic cases–of which there were many, many reports even prior to the vaccines–I started to wonder how many other viral illnesses have asymptomatic cases.
Several times in the recent past, I’ve been surrounded by people who caught colds, but I did not. I’ve always sort of assumed that it’s been either: a) that I’ve had that particular cold strain before and therefore was able to fight it off; b) my immune system was strong enough to knock it out before it developed; or, c) my hand-washing tendencies protected me.
All of these are possible reasons to not catch a cold. But it also occurs to me that I very well might have had an asymptomatic case. We simply do not have any idea how frequently that occurs because we don’t test for common colds.
@Jen:
As I understand, there are a number of viral diseases, ranging from mild to serious, that produce lots of asymptomatic cases regardless of the severity for symptomatic cases. There are even recorded cases of asymptomatic or mild HIV infections.
This is something that should be studied further
@Jen:
We have two toddlers in daycare, and so are subjected to pretty much every contagious disease that hits our city. Its incredibly common for 3 out of 4 of us to get hit hard, and one person to be fine. Until your comment, I had never connected that phenomenon to asymptomatic cases.
@Kathy:
It’ll be difficult, though; I can’t see a way to infect people asymptomatically for clinical trials. You can’t predetermine how anyone will react. And if you’re asymptomatic, you won’t know you’re infected, so you won’t consult a doctor, and your case will go unrecorded.
@CSK:
Many of the HIV cases were investigated by the NIH. I would assume given how many studies were done for COVID, that someone must have studied asymptomatic cases before widespread vaccination.
When a bug is going around, be it serious or mild, one can recruit participants to be tested for that pathogen if they’ve been exposed but have no symptoms. I don’t know what the ethics are for infecting, or even exposing, someone with a mild disease like the common cold. Many mild diseases, like flu, invariably kill some victims.
@Teve:
It worked for the folks on the show Deadwood, so why not. I think pigs are cool but years ago I was clued in that they can indeed nosh on a person until even the bones no longer remain. I know I said to myself Yikes! at the time but pigs still remain cool creatures.
@inhumans99: over on Celestial Alley.
https://www.al.com/news/2021/07/im-sorry-but-its-too-late-alabama-doctor-on-treating-unvaccinated-dying-covid-patients.html
Oh shit Pelosi just rejected Banks and Jordan
@Teve:
That article was unbearably sad. So much needless loss of life.
Pelosi rejects Jordan, Banks for Jan. 6 committee
Nancy Pelosi has rejected Jim Jordan for the Jan. 6 committee. Gee, there’s a surprise.
The Trumpkins will be wild with rage.
@sam:
Beat me to it!
@sam: baller.
@CSK: i posted it, but it wound up in moderation for some unknown reason.
@Teve:
Two of the three Republicans Pelosi accepted voted to certify Biden’s election: Kelly Armstrong (North Dakota) and Rodney Davis (Illinois). Troy Davis (Texas), the third member, voted to reject the election results.
Were there more than 2 links in your post?
@CSK: Classic case of hiring the foxes to guard the henhouse.
@CSK: no. But there was the word shït, so maybe…?
@Teve: I love that movie. Can’t say I’ve watched it so much that I could understand what Brad Pitt was saying, but it has been more than a little.
@Teve:
Ignorance and stupidity kills. I don’t care if it hurt someone’s feelings or “disrespects” them, a loved one shouldn’t have to die for you to get past the “hoax” or “political” BS. Why does it take death for these idiots to get it?
Sorry doesn’t bring the dead back. Regrets don’t help the people who now have health issues or enormous medical bills they can’t pay. Tears and recriminations and I-shoulda’s seem to do nothing to make the anti-vaxxers see reason. They didn’t listen to the last person who spoke out about how they should have vaxxed and hubby would still be alive – why do they think someone’s gonna listen to them? So, so many of these stories and yet every day there’s more.
People don’t like to accept there’s such a thing as too late when it comes to medicine. I can’t tell you how many cancer patients I had to counsel that demanded someone “fix” their Stage-IV cancer after doing nothing for years. They panic when you tell them they’re past the point of no return, that they lost their chance. They get angry, sometimes violent – I have scars from a patient who didn’t want to hear he had weeks to live since he’d declined treatment years earlier to go climb Mt Everest. He didn’t want to lose his chance, you see and he’d rather try some homeopathic remedies instead. He ended up losing a lot more than that; he could have made it if he’d taken it seriously and followed medical advice. The old adage is true “A ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”; there’s no last minute saves like in the movies and you can doom yourself by waiting too long.
Twit for tat.
@CSK: Obviously she’s afraid Jordan will get to the truth.
@KM:
Do they even get it then? Is there any follow up to see whether or not they take the vaccines now?
BTW, some vaccines are effective after infection, like the rabies vaccine or the smallpox vaccine. I don’t know of any that are effective after symptoms appear. By then, the vaccine won’t do more than the virus is already doing to stimulate the immune system to make antibodies and T-cells to fight off the virus.
@Kylopod:
The function to see the comment of mine to which you’re replying doesn’t work for me any longer.
.
@sam:
I love the idea of McCarthy setting up his own committee. Maybe both sides can meet beneath the dueling oak.
I’d like to hear or read progressive explanations of the NYC mayoral primary. Because it seems that rich, white Manhattan was all for the progressive ‘Defund’ candidates because: racism, meanwhile Black and brown voters – you know, the people actually experiencing racism – went strong for the moderate ex-cop.
Looks to me as if the campus wing of the Democratic Party co-opted BLM, turned it into Defund, killed the blue wave in the process and left actual POC rather unimpressed. The very people who endlessly, endlessly repeated that we ‘must listen to. . .’ ignored their own advice, and spent approximately zero hours finding out what the people we were all supposed to listen to actually thought. (I know! Surprising!) The people outraged by ‘appropriation,’ appropriated. The people who lectured on cultural imperialism demonstrated their concern by condemning the Spanish language’s gendered nouns and insisted on substituting a word that cannot be pronounced in Spanish.
@OzarkHillbilly:
The far right is delusional, but you know that.
@Michael Reynolds:
Don’t be silly. They can learn to say “La Tinks”. It even has a proper Spanish article.*
========
*Okay… now I’ve got me wondering. If you’re talking about “The Latinx” in Spanish, is it “la Latinx” or “el Latinx”?
On the subject of COVID vaccines, it seems not only that vaccinated people can get breakthrough infections from the Delta variant, and not only that they can transmit it to others, but that they can transmit it to even other vaccinated individuals.
The last is unclear as yet, but of great concern.
Now, this means that your odds of catching COVID Delta are still very low if you’ve been fully vaccinated. But higher than they were prior to Delta. Also most cases among those vaccinated will be mild or asymptomatic, but there have been serious cases and even deaths.
It may not be time for another lockdown, but if you’re vaccinated, you should definitely ignore the premature CDC advice and keep wearing a mask, particularly KN-95, N95, or KF94 masks, which block some viral particles, at all times in public, especially indoors.
The spread of Delta falls mostly on those who are not yet vaccinated. In the US, where vaccines are widely available (and free), it’s unconscionable neglect not to get vaccinated. But keep in mind in most other countries vaccines are not readily available, so Delta was going to have a field day with the world anyway.
The rest of the fault lies with governments and people who have relaxed precautionary measures. Sure, vaccination is very protective, bu Delta had been circulating in India before it spread elsewhere, and we all should have known better than to let our guard down.
At work, BTW, I’m happy to say all who have been elegible for vaccines in my department have taken them, except one person. Alas, most have not yet reached the second dose. Many got AstraZeneca, and that has a longer wait time between shots.
Also, it seems the stocks of Pfizer NioNTech have been largely used up, so in municipalities where those were given prior, are now using Sputnik V.
@Mu Yixiao: need new non-gendered articles, duh. Combine them and get ‘ella’? Or maybe ‘Lxs’. 😀
It’s occurred to me that speakers of gender-heavy languages tend to have much less of a hangup over it–a need to compulsively get rid of the slightest traces of gender. Not just because it’s impossible, but because when you’re routinely processing couches as male and skateboards as female, you have an easier time with the idea that it’s ultimately arbitrary and doesn’t have to be read into. We English speakers are so overwhelmed by gender neutrality in our own language that the exceptions stick out like a sore thumb, and it therefore bothers us more.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’ve heard some rumblings about the Jan. 6 committee subpoenaing Trump, which of course he’ll fight on the grounds of “executive privilege.”
But if it does get to that point, how can anyone keep him from lying under oath? Even his allies know he can’t tell the truth.
I do look forward to the spectacle of him sweating under the lights.
@CSK:
“Don’t weep for the stupid; you’ll be crying all day.”
So, Kevin can throw tantrums as childish as the Ass.
I think he needs a pacifier now.
Apparently, there are 42 people running for Governor of California.
This oughta be fun!
@Mu Yixiao: The definition of insanity is trying to repeat a bizarre and unlikely string of events from nearly two decades ago and expecting the same results.
A number of people have pointed out that Bezos’s rocket not only looks like a giant erect penis, but that it also very closely resembles Dr. Evil’s spacecraft in Austin Powers.
http://www.Slate.com asked a NASA guy for his take.
@CSK: Fun fact: Fat Bastard is Trump’s maternal grandfather.
@Kylopod:
I can see the resemblance.
@CSK: And he’s from a Scotland. And don’t worry whether the ages or years match up: he’s got a time machine.
@CSK: TBH, I expect he would fight it tooth and nail, appealing it all the way to the SC where, if/when he lost, he would just refuse to recognize Congress’s Article I powers, and dare them to arrest him. At which point the DEMs running it would say, “Now what?”
I mean sure, they could have him arrested and thrown into solitary confinement. And then what? The possible bad things that could happen are endless.
If they are smart, they will never subpoena him. They will take testimony from every one and anyone who wants to, and compel it from those who don’t want to but have something to add, and then “invite” trump to testify in his own defense. His lawyers will hogtie him down on the 13th hole at his Palm Beach course so he can’t and Congress will be spared the dog and pony show that would be his incessant lie fest that was never going to add anything of worth to the record and they will get on with the business of issuing a report.
Of course, if they are really smart, they will know better than to listen to an old broke down hillbilly carpenter.
@OzarkHillbilly:
“Gee, sorry, Mr. Cheeto. We seem to have misplaced the key to your cell. Would you mind banging your head against the bars, hard? One of them is bound to give.”
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well, you may be an “old broke down hillbilly carpenter,” but I think you’re right about this. Of course his lawyers would strait-jacket and drug Trump to keep him from testifying. (They’ve prevented it before, haven’t they?) But I’d still like to see him grilled.
Perhaps the SDNY will fulfill my dreams.
@Teve: The view in the Ozarks: Delta Is Driving a Wedge Through Missouri (Atlantic link)
In case anyone wondered, i asked a linguist friend the question, el latinx? La latinx? Los latinx? What? Here’s a paraphrase of what happened:
Him: The Latinx.
Me: No, i mean if people were speaking Spanish, what would the definite article be?
Him: “The”
Me: are you saying it’s never used in spanish conversation?
Him: I wouldn’t say never, but native Spanish speakers generally regard it as a weird anglophone thing that doesn’t really have a place in Spanish.
@CSK:
I am kinda bummed that he pulled Rodney Davis off the panel. Davis is my congressman and, while I am not a fan of most of his politics, it was going to be an opportunity to see if he could really step up. Both an opportunity lost and a bullet dodged for him.
I actually once gave serious consideration to this exact option for escape from one particular hell hole. I remember thinking, “Blood, the more the better and they’ll have to take me to the hospital.” Fortunately the JeffCo deputy they were holding me for showed up before I put that plain of action into motion.
Jail fucks with one’s head in ways a person who’s never been there can’t quite imagine. That was my 3rd or 4th sojourn and even tho it had never bothered me before, after that experience? I swore I would never end up in that situation again. And I haven’t.
@Joe:
Well, he voted to certify the election for Biden, so I assume he would have approached this committee assignment with some degree of seriousness and rationality.
LOL lord only knows why Kyrsten Sinema took the Save The Filibuster At The Expense of Our Entire Agenda position, but recent polls say 2/3rds of Arizona Dems want her primaried, and if it were held today, Mark Kelly would beat her by 53 points.
Test
@Teve: Passed. 😉
@OzarkHillbilly: it’s a dysfunction of the editing software here that sometimes it won’t give you Click to Edit, but if you post a second comment, Click to Edit will appear on both. That’s how that got there.
@Teve: Yeah, I’ve played that game. Even still, I couldn’t resist.
@Michael Cain mentioned a while back that western Colorado is having a surge of COVID that had the CDC investigating.
The problem is that many staff at nursing homes aren’t vaccinated. 😐
https://apnews.com/article/business-health-government-and-politics-coronavirus-pandemic-3f4435167823b02812adfb668ae32bb0
@OzarkHillbilly:
Good for you.
And for us since we got to know you.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I was concerned early on in the pandemic, that doctors and nurses, with little and unreliable PPE, would flee their jobs en masse out of fear of catching COVID and, worse, taking it home. I was relieved most held on, even as they suffered terribly.
Now that worry is back, more so since these latest patients could easily have avoided it, an option not available last year. Sure, medical staff are at a lower level of risk, but given the availability of vaccines, they should be at a much lower level of risk than they face now. And many have children une 12 who can’t yet be vaccinated.
@Jax:
One wonders if simpler communications means would work:
Fire hot. COVID bad. Water wet. Vaccine good.
@CSK:
Exactly, but he has disappointed before.
@Joe:
I suppose McCarthy’s strategy now will be to claim that the Jan. 6 committee will be populated only by partisan witch-hunters, and thus hopelessly biased.
@Kathy: I don’t think so. I know one unvaccinated RN at our local nursing home, she’s pretty adamant she’ll quit her job if they make getting vaccinated a condition of employment.
I say fire them all.
Banner Health in Arizona recently set company policy that everybody will be vaccinated by November 1st if they want to stay employed. They haven’t stated what, if any, exceptions there will be.
Companies setting policy like this is the only way we’re gonna beat this, at least until the vaccines aren’t under an emergency authorization.
@Jax:
Authorization won’t matter to people who believe that the vaccines alter your DNA, or implant a tracking microchip in you.
@CSK: Authorization and a few months on those unemployment benefits they’ve been saying are “too generous” might. I think health insurance companies refusing coverage for the unvaccinated might be a big push, as well.
A fair number of people have left medical professions or changed jobs to avoid contact with Covid patients already. Certainly a lot of us will be kind fo pissed about caring for people who have Covid who probably could have avoided it. However, a lot fo us are kind of used to this so we get over it quickly. They are still people after all. If you let this bother you too much you have trouble taking care of massively fat people, trauma patients (think of trauma as a chronic disease since it is the same people over and over again), and a to of other people who just ignore their health care.
Steve
We all got word today that vaccinations will be close to mandaory to work in film and tv unless you have a medical exemption. Two people on the crew of our new show already have shown their medical records and are exempt from the mandate. But they’ll have to be masked at all times, and socially distant. Alot of Teamsters who refuse to be vaccinated will soon find themselves unemployed, with many others who are vaccinated rushing to fill those $40-$50hr jobs with full benefits, a pension plan, and breakfast, lunch and dinner served every day.
You can’t fix stupid….
Actual conversation today:
Me: Are you vaccinated?
Crew member: None of your business. I don’t have to tell you.
Me; No problem. So I can put you down as “Chooses not to disclose”?
Crew member: That’s right. Yep.
Me: Cool. Thanks. You’re aware that the new Return to work agreement says you have to be vaxxed to come back to work, right? You’re aware of that?
Crew member: What? No. Screw that. I’m going to my union. You can’t do that.
Me: The mandate is coming from your union.
Crew member: What? No way! They can’t do that.
Me: Actually, they can. And they did.
Crew member: …………………oh.
@EddieInCA: is there maybe a website where those jobs could be applied for…?
@Teve:
It’s hard, but not impossible. When the town is super busy, they’ll open up the roster to “Permits”, which means the lowest on the totem pole, but that’s how you get in. Right now is a dead time, so no “Permits”, but around November of this year, assuming Covid doesn’t go crazy, there will be openings for “Permits’. Also in January and February.
https://www.ht399.org/
Best of luck.
Our tiny county (6,000 total full time residents, but we’re on the route to Yellowstone and Jackson Hole) has 20 new cases in the last week, 3 hospitalized (nursing home, I suspect). We can’t test for variants yet.
County fair is next week.
I ain’t going. 😛