Covid 19

Another anti-masker influenced by online monetized disinformation, harassing an ELDERLY WOMAN who is wearing a mask on a subway train. 27 year old Ryan Bartels from New Jersey, shouts “1776” and “because…..freedom” while engaged in the abusive bullying. He then tried to physically restrain the woman, who was doing nothing but sitting on the train. This is our America now, bullying an elderly woman under the the confused guise of “freedom”.

 

I will agree with Jesse that we had a great economy under Clinton. I have said many times to many people, it all went downhill after the 90s. The problem is, we haven't had any true leaders since him that anyone feels worthy of following. Hello 2000 hanging-chad-Gore-won-popular-vote-and-SC-handed-Dubya-the-win. All shite since then. Before that, it was only Limbaugh and Gingrich who were all considered far-right by mainstream America - at least after they showed their hand after 94. Everybody knew they impeached because they hated Clinton being so popular. Trump was never popular - he won with weak minorities (mid-40s) of the popular vote - the same popular vote he lost with. You remember how contentious everything became because W. was in the White House. Then we all got distracted and torn apart by 9/11 and overlooked W's incompetence for the next 7.5 years. By the time we elected a black president, the latent conservative hysteria came running back in various forms, from the likes of Dr No "I will do anything to stop us from having a black president for another 4 years" McConnell to various Nazi-nuts, and the Russians who saw it all fomenting and then decided to prod Trump's ego and have him start a race war by calling Obama a muslim with a fake birth certificate. Biden is GHWB-style gentility at the right time, which is why he won. Anything for decades past, a break from 20 years of turmoil in this democracy. That's the last 25 years of our presidential politics.

And if COVID had come in the 90s, Bill Clinton would have told everyone they need to inhale the vaccine, and they would have done so, willingly. And we wouldn't have ever seen year #2 of a pandemic.

Bill's politics will come back around. History will be kind to him. The AOC-nut wing of the party who wants to cancel everyone and say we can't honor their achievements because of personal transgressions will be the pot that comes back to haunt their own black kettles once they are older, and the same personal issues pop up in their own lives, due to their own actions.

 

https://dangoodspeed.com/covid/total-cases-since-june

 

What is all this genuflecting on the altar of Bill Clinton today? The 90s, and Clinton’s ratification of the NAFTA agreement, hollowed out WHOLE INDUSTRIES in this country. I used to get quality, American-made clothing in wonderful fabrics for very reasonable prices in the late 80s and early 90s, until NAFTA came along. Now we get cheap, polyester clothing made in foreign countries that fall apart after the first wash, and Americans seem to live 24/7 in those crummy, foreign made, t-shirts. That’s practically the national wardrobe these days. Americans lost their jobs because of Clinton’s NAFTA, while the tech industry rose, and later predominated. And most of the money that was made by average Americans (if they were the enterprising sort) happened in the real estate market of the 90s, in which Americans began to view their homes, more like “commodities” to be bought and sold like anything else. This newly commodified view of home ownership was very different from prior years, when a home was just a place to hang your hat, and raise your family. I mean, don’t y’all remember all those new “home flipping” shows that started to pop up all over the place, as home prices escalated during the 90s? A lot of money was made during that time in real estate, and Americans borrowed heavily from their equity, and speculated on the housing market just like the stock market.

Those were the lucky ones, but most Americans were not that lucky, especially those who lost their livelihoods because of NAFTA. I think Southerners could see that better than anyone, since many mill jobs in the South at that time were lost forever as these jobs were transferred to foreign countries. As the economy began to shift to “service” and “high tech” jobs, the 90s can be considered the “last hurrah” of American manufacturing, and definitely the last decade of job security in this country. While Bill Clinton is probably the “saint” of the “technocrats” and the “investor class”, he was hardly the friend of the American working class.

 

He was the last President to have a balanced budget.

 

Texas governor issues order banning local vaccine mandates

TERRY WALLACE
August 25, 2021, 7:12 PM
Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order on Wednesday banning any state or local mandates requiring people to be vaccinated against COVID-19, and he called on Texas legislators to vote it into law during their current special session.

The move came as Texas reported the most COVID-19 patients in its hospitals since the pandemic began.

Abbott issued his ban in an executive order to fill a loophole left by the full authorization of the Pfizer vaccine. He had previously banned the requirement of vaccinations under emergency use authorizations. He also has banned state and local government mandates for wearing masks.

“Vaccine requirements and exemptions have historically been determined by the Legislature, and their involvement is particularly important to avoid a patchwork of vaccine mandates across Texas,” Abbott said on the governor's office website.

Nine counties, dozens of school districts and the city of El Paso have defied the Abbott mask mandate ban, and some of the state's most populous counties have asked for court orders to overturn or block enforcement of the ban. On Wednesday, Dallas County became the latest to obtain a court order blocking enforcement.

“Although this is an important victory, it’s really not a victory against a person or an entity,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, the county's leading elected official, said at a news conference. “It’s a victory for humans who live in Dallas County against the virus.”

A new wave of COVID-19 cases has been sweeping the state, fueled by the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus, prompting the wave of defiance of the Abbott order.

The Texas Supreme Court has declined to block restraining orders against Abbott’s mask mandate ban. Also, the Texas Education Agency has, for now, suspended enforcement of the mask mandate ban in the state’s public school systems.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported 79% of the 85,874 Texas intensive-care unit beds are full, about 30% of them with COVID-19 cases. Overall COVID-19 hospitalizations were a record 14,255 Wednesday, beating the Jan. 11 record of 14,218 reported by the Texas Department of State Health Services.

 

Cases in South Dakota rise nearly sixfold after annual Sturgis motorcycle rally

BEN KESSLEN AND JOE MURPHY
August 25, 2021, 11:26 AM
Two weeks after the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, reported Covid infections in the state have risen nearly sixfold.

South Dakota counted 3,819 new cases in the past two weeks, including seven deaths, up from 644 cases in the 14 days preceding it. That makes it the state with the largest percent increase in Covid cases in the past two weeks.

The state's rate of Covid-19 infections per capita in the past two weeks is in the bottom half of the country, but it's the sharp and sudden increase in case counts that sets it apart.

Meade County, home to Sturgis, has counted 330 new cases in the last two weeks, up from the 20 reported in the two weeks before the rally, according to Johns Hopkins University's case count. The 1,550 percent increase comes after the motorcycle rally, which usually draws around half a million people, possibly had its biggest year ever, according to County Sheriff Ron Merwin.

Dr. Shankar Kurra, the vice president of medical affairs at Monument Health, which operates hospitals serving western South Dakota, including one in Sturgis, said the events at this year’s rally feel like “a replay of last year.”

In June, Monument Health had three Covid patients, a pandemic low for hospitalizations, and Kurra said he thought that number might drop to zero. Now, the number is up to 58, about half of what it was at its peak in the winter. The people in the hospital are younger and “almost 99.9% are unvaccinated,” he said.

“It’s not the highest it has ever been but is definitely at a number that puts us at a disadvantage,” Kurra said. “You have a strain on resources and a lot of stress on the health system to give timely care to non-Covid patients.”

It’s too soon to know if the Sturgis rally, which began on Aug. 6 and ended Aug. 15, had a direct effect on the increase or can be classified as a “superspreader” event, but Meade County is now reporting a 36 percent positivity rate, with about 1 in every 3 Covid tests returning a positive result. The 82 cases the county reported Tuesday was its highest daily number yet, eclipsing the 68 cases it reported on Aug. 27, 2020. (Meade County has reported 3,168 cases and 31 deaths since the start of the pandemic, one of the lowest Covid case counts, when adjusted for population, among the state's 66 counties).

From the onset of the pandemic, South Dakota has seen a higher per capita rate of infections than all but two states, North Dakota and Tennessee, per an NBC News tally.

Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, has been firm in keeping South Dakota open throughout the pandemic, shunning mask mandates, criticizing public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, and insisting on holding mass gatherings against CDC recommendations. On Monday, after the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s two-dose Covid-19 vaccine for people ages 16 and up, the governor tweeted that if President Joe Biden “illegally mandates vaccines, I will take every action available under the law to protect South Dakotans from the federal government.” Currently, 48.4 percent of South Dakota is fully vaccinated, according to an NBC News tally.

In an email Tuesday, a South Dakota Department of Health spokesperson, Daniel Bucheli, said the spikes in Covid cases in the state "are following a national trend being experienced in every state."

"Regarding cases surrounding the Sturgis Rally, our Department has only been able to link 16 cases directly to this event," Bucheli said. "It is important to mention that Meade county currently has a lower vaccination rate than other counties in SD."

A post-mortem of the 2020 Sturgis rally showed it led to “widespread transmission” and Covid-19 cases in at least 25 other states.

“Although the number of cases identified is sizable — 140 cases per 100,000 attendees — it is likely that the true national impact of the Sturgis event is underestimated,” said the study, written in part by the CDC, citing asymptotic cases, visitors not reporting rally attendance and difficulties with contact tracing.

While much of the rally is outdoors, another study was conducted on how the rally affected caseloads in neighboring Minnesota showed that the primary infections that could be traced appeared to occur indoors, in a restaurant setting.

This year, the city of Sturgis took steps to prevent indoor transmission, like allowing outdoor wine and beer consumption if attendees bought a special cup. A spokesperson for the city did not respond to a request for comment.

Now, however, the number of cases is not where Kurra and his colleagues want it to be.

“It didn’t help that you had a mass gathering event like the rally," he said.

 

Some bigger breakthrough numbers being reported:

https://www.wwlp.com/news/massachus...s-in-massachusetts-3098-reported-in-one-week/

A total of 15,739 breakthrough COVID-19 infections in people fully vaccinated against the virus have now been recorded in Massachusetts, the Department of Public Health reported Tuesday.
The new total, as of Aug. 21, represents an increase of 3,098 from the previous week’s report and accounts for 0.35 percent of the more than 4.4 million fully vaccinated Bay Staters. Of those 15,739 cases, 571 people have been hospitalized and 131 have died.


https://www.denverpost.com/2021/08/26/colorado-breakthrough-covid-infections-delta-variant/

The state recorded an average of 1.14 breakthrough infections per 100,000 residents on June 9 and saw a nearly eightfold increase in three months, with an average of 9 breakthrough cases per 100,000 people on Aug. 9, according to the latest data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.


https://www.northjersey.com/story/n...-nj-bergen-hospital-exec-positive/5592436001/

Everyone at Bergen New Bridge, as at other hospitals, wears a mask indoors, she said, and she is “hyper-vigilant” about wearing a mask in public places. When she holds in-person meetings, participants sit 6 feet apart. She doesn’t know where she was exposed.


https://www.politico.com/newsletter...-struggles-to-track-breakthrough-cases-797341

CDC STRUGGLES TO TRACK BREAKTHROUGH CASES — For the last several weeks, Biden officials and the public alike have puzzled over a key question: Just how many fully vaccinated Americans are getting infected with Covid-19?

It’s a question with no precise answer, thanks to a piecemeal public health system that’s left the CDC to sift through reams of outdated and unreliable data — even as the agency is confronted with decisions that could determine the pandemic’s course, POLITICO’s Erin Banco reports.

The CDC long ago ruled out tracking all breakthrough infections, in favor of focusing only on closely monitoring the most severe cases. But even with that limited scope, the information the Biden administration collects from 49 states has often proved inaccurate or absent key details.

 

Is anyone all that surprised that there are breakthrough cases with the Delta variant right now? Epidemiologists have already warned people that the Delta variant is far more transmissible than the original Covid virus, and presents differently in the population. We’ll probably never know the full extent of this variant because data has been deliberately underreported in many states. That’s been an ongoing issue for some time, which would negatively impact the accuracy of the data, if large chunks of information are missing entirely - especially from those Southern states most infected with Delta right now, but withholding their data.

 

Alpha (B.1.1.7) was the smaller UK Variant, it never really got that big in the US.

 

https://news.yahoo.com/u-reportedly-approve-booster-shots-104158849.html

The U.S. will reportedly approve booster shots for all 3 COVID-19 vaccines at 6 months, not 8
U.S. officials said last week that adults vaccinated with the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines should start getting booster shots eight months after their second dose was administered, starting in mid-September. Now, a person familiar with the plans tells The Wall Street Journal, federal regulators will likely approve boosters for all three approved vaccines — Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson — starting six months after inoculation.

 

3 states where Delta hit 1st may have peaked. Missouri, Arkansas, Florida
Arkansas, but the way they reports to cdc is strange looking, thats why 7 day avg is good to look at.

 

Missouri

 

Florida , leveled off not much decrease yet.

 

If I were vaccine-hesitant, I would see this as more proof that the vaccine does not (cause magnetism, GPS-tracking, remote mind-control) do "long-term permanent damage" to the body. The ONLY hesitation I had in spring was with trying to understand the idea of "RNA manipulation to cause DNA to create spike proteins." Well, obviously it doesn't do so forever......more evidence that it's about as worrisome as an annual flu shot (read: why are sane people worrying about getting it?)

 

Delta receded as fast and furious(ly) as it hit in India nd the UK - let's hope it does so here. Still leaving a crap ton of human, economic and psychological damage in its wake.

 

Health experts are projecting that we will likely lose 100,000 more people by December:

 

And even LARGER numbers of unvaccinated cases, but you only want to cry about the very minority of the cases .... go figure.

 

The only bright spot is the Darwin aspect .... more of those dying are the ones who do not make a positive addition to the gene pool now.