COVID-19: Chapter 8 - Ongoing source of viral information, and a little fun

I hear ya. I don’t begrudge anybody reacting that way. Sorry, wasn’t trying to open up this conversation again about how we react to these folks’ deaths. Part of my brain says “f 'em” too - there’s just another part that says, ugh, that’s terrible, as I read a guy basically tweeting that he’s about to die. So I always feel weird when reading these stories.

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How many people are dead because these willfully ignorant assholes keep spreading their medieval idiocy?

This is where I am.

These people have made everything worse over the past year+. I try to be a decent person, but I’m completely out of fucks to give for these assholes.

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I agree and I dont think its just us. The whole “personal choice” BS is even more BS when they are spending all this time spreading anti vaxx lies on social media to discourage others from getting vaccinated. If they’re allowed to hate The Government for “pushing a vaxx agenda” then I’m allowed to hate them for pushing their (objectively harmful) anti vaxx agenda.

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Really impressed by the dedication to tweeting at the end there.

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Eh sadly I think it’ll be closer to a 1:1 ratio of deplorables and poor minorities that couldn’t get a damn day off of work to get the shot or get a ride somewhere to get one.

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https://mobile.twitter.com/stephenharmon/status/1416960927312728066

Religion and COVID is a deadly combo

Honestly though reading his recent timeline just saddens me. He was so fucking scared. I didn’t go all the way back but from the posts Fatboy added it doesn’t seem like he was spreading a bunch of disinformation. He was just a fucking idiot.

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Yeah, I’m kind of in this camp. I don’t think it will be 1:1, but I think it will be a lot closer to that than everyone thinks.

This is why I wanted the government to force people to get vaccinated. This is going to get extremely ugly and a sizable number of the people who died will have died simply for being stupid or a minority.

I’m probably an out of touch white guy but are there really that many poor people working 24/7 that aren’t within a mile or two of a Wal-Mart or chain pharmacy? The vaccine is everywhere, available most hours of the day, takes under half an hour and free. I have a hard time seeing how anyone’s financial state would prevent them from getting it. Now is it harder for a poor person with no vehicle working two jobs to get vaxed? Of course.

slammed a door into a patients face today who was being a demanding dickhead demanding all sorts of meds for their mild covid pneumonia. They, um, did not appreciate me telling the only medicine we have for this is the vaccine. Fucker.

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It’s not them working 247 and more of a general social determinant of health thing, but there’s a fair number of poor minorities who aren’t vaccinated in my area at least.

Out of touch white guy here. I think there is probably a big percentage of the working poor that are just not making it a priority. They probably know several people who have had it and they didn’t die or they have probably already had it themselves.

They are to busy worrying about work and bills and just haven’t done it yet.

They are not anti vax per se but they probably just don’t think it’s a big deal.

Just pure speculation on my part here. No data to support this.

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I agree with all this.

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I assume there’s also some general skepticism of government within minority communities, Black especially, given the history there. Plus maybe an assumption that it will actually cost money, because life-saving medicine in this fucked up country is usually expensive as shit.

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Of course that’s not what’s driving low minority vaccination rates. More likely is that minorities and trump fans share a mistrust for elites and the narratives they’re pushing. Like the Tom Hanks black jeopardy sketch on snl except killing hundreds of thousands of people. Obviously that’s a stereotype of both groups, as tens of millions of Trump fans and minorities got the vaccine.

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I think for the people I know who are from the “working class” or “not college educated” or “poor” (the people I’m thinking of have debt, not money, but it’s not really about money) who either haven’t gotten the vaccine or were very slow to get it, it had more to do with a collective sentiment among the people they knew the best and identified with. There was not social pressure to get vaccinated. No pressure against either.

I don’t think college educated rich liberals would have done significantly better as a class if they were not expected to want to be vaccinated by their peers. And the origin of the expectations is partly about science and reason, but not entirely and it’s just a small difference in initial conditions that has a large effect.

imo

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Very true. I think the one event that could have changed everything is when Donnie Dumb Dumb got covid. If he had died, it would have saved thousands of lives. Although some of us may have been exposed to covid at the resultant parties.

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It’s the Stalinism about tragedies and statistics. A story about an individual dying is good at activating the lizard brain. Maybe it triggers your satisfaction-at-just-outcome neurons, or maybe it triggers your empathy neurons, or maybe both at the same time, but it’s hard to just gloss over. That said, we should be glossing over these stories. Delta is going to be terrible here, but the real story is in places that don’t have 50% vaccination rates concentrated among the most vulnerable groups.

I mean I’d think people are smart enough to figure out that he only recovered so quickly by getting treatments nobody else could afford, but yeah I guess the thing that average Joe took away from it is that hey look an old out of shape dude in his 70s got it and it was fine, it’s just the flu.