Coronavirus

We never built on what little momentum we had.

And I should've included continue to die.

 

I am surprised that during those first few weeks of lockdown when Trump was doing daily press conferences he didn't say, "and if you want to help me get re-elected, then do whatever you need to do to not come into contact with someone else that has a lot of interaction with the public as an essential worker."

Now, I will say that both administrations are making mistakes in their handling of this. Biden wanted the vaccines to be 100% effective and the powers that the federal government or state governors had aren't there anymore to lockdown. The will of a lot of people is gone too as they want to go back to living their lives. But there doesn't seem to be a plan for what to do over the next 3 months to keep the case numbers going down besides get the kids vaccinated and a few people can get booster shots. But there is very little information from official sources on where the virus is worse, how to best keep from getting sick, where all of these new cases are coming from, what new treatments there are, what research is being done, what people should do at home to improve their health... And what is being done to be better prepared for the next virus.

 

NPD Trump started off saying Corona virus was nothing to worry about, we had it completely under control. He either would not (stubborn and contrary), or could not (NPD), force himself to reverse his position. It's possible he consciously chose Deny & Downplay over the much tougher decision Mask Up & Shut Down. And remember NPD Trump's "business empire" is in the hospitality industry, which absolutely did not want shut downs.

I think what you listed has been mentioned to the point people generally speaking don't want to hear it anymore, and the news media wants something else to report.

People want fast and easy news. Reports of vaccinations are fast and easy. The in-depth news is out there, but you have to look for it.

 

This really should be a moment that forces people to reconsider their support of the modern GOP. I suspect it won't be.

We're seeing Marjorie Taylor-Greene defend the Jan 6th insurrection riots, not even trying to downplay them.

How does that work?

 

We can hope that some of the fringe GOP supporters see what is happening to the party and jump ship. But many of them will be hesitant to support the Democratic party.

I can not understand why people defend the Capitol Building insurgents, and support politicians who do so. If NPD Trump had won a narrow election, and Biden had falsely claimed voter fraud and encouraged his followers to violently disrupt the certification of the Electoral College votes, those "patriots" would be out for blood.

Being POd when things don't go your way is natural, esp when strong passions are involved. Believing lies even after they've clearly been disproven is something else. Taking violent actions is (should be) unacceptable.

 

While this would be better over in the GOP thread, the reason they defend it is because they were trying to win and keep the Democrats from getting power over their supporters lives. There are enough people that hate everything that Democrats do and have been riled up by 40 years of talk radio and propaganda that it is easier to get their support by being "strong" and anti-Democrat/anti-government.

To bring it back to the coronavirus, I could only imagine what would have happened if Hillary had won in 2016 and if she would have had to shutdown events, travel, and small businesses along with mandating masks when the pandemic hit...

 

It would be pleasing, and easy, to blame the NPD Trump Administration for the extremely one-sided Moderna deal. It's not blameless, but under the circumstances at the time, Get It Done was more important than Sweat The Details. How Moderna chose to handle their technology windfall is on Moderna.

Let's be honest, second and third world nations are usually at the end of the receiving line. The vaccination sharing situation is no different. Also it's not really surprising that a small company that had been struggling would want to sock away some money. How they went about it might be questionable, and how much profit is too much profit can be debated.

I do think the government should let Moderna know any future sharing of information, and possible contracts, will be greatly influenced by Moderna's current policies.

 

It appears that there are going to be two pills to treat Covid by Thanksgiving hopefully. But I do hope that treatment options get pushed as we enter the next phase of this virus, and hopefully the elimination of it. Without the Delta variant, I think we would be there.

Getting 5-11 year olds vaccinated will help in some areas. But knowing what the real world efficacy numbers are for the many different vaccines there are would be good to know too. Even if the unvaccinated are still the large majority of new cases.

I do wonder what the success rate of the monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, and other current "treatments" are compared with these two new pills, and how widespread the treatments are for patients (are only the rich and famous getting them because they are rare?). But if dying from Covid becomes a very rare thing, does that change how society and public policy will treat this virus?

 

It sounds, with a large serving of optimism, as though we might reach the point where pure stubbornness and contraryism will be the only truthful reasons not to be vaccinated.

 

Its reaching that time of year when covid symptoms and the flu symptoms are close to the same.
personally i know people ignore them, and that is scary.

 

It seems that flu cases are still really low. The graph of flu deaths compared to Covid deaths makes it clear that the Covid virus isn't just the flu.

Weekly U.S. Influenza Surveillance Report

 

I hear now their is a new variant

 

Yep, out of South Africa and that area.
It's what we get for not mobilizing quickly and getting vaccines all around the world instead of to just t0 the rich countries (that piss and moan about having to take them).

"t is also incredibly heavily mutated. Prof Tulio de Oliveira, the director of the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation in South Africa, said there was an "unusual constellation of mutations" and that it was "very different" to other variants that have circulated."

New Covid variant: How worried should we be?

 

One vital piece of information we don't have : How lethal is this new mutant?
It's possible that it can be more transmissible but less likely to cause severe illness or death. We just don't know yet.

 

I haven't been indoors in public without an N95 mask on in the past 7 months since I got vaccinated. But I will have to wait and see if they will make a new booster or if the booster will protect people from the variants too. (It isn't like I am in a high risk group or do high risk activities indoors so I have no problem waiting for a few more weeks.)