In the culture wars, conservatives are totally fine being for and against something, even in the same sentence. “Keep big government out of my Medicare!” Donnie Dumb Dumb filtered vaccines and everything else about the pandemic through the only lens he knows - the narcissist lens: does this make me look good and if not who can I throw under the bus and how can I leverage this to manipulate people. He is neither pro nor anti vaxx.
6 Likes
He was very pro-vaccine when it was something he thought would win him votes and if he’d been able to strongarm the FDA into issuing the EUA in October he probably would have tried signing an EO making them mandatory. The second he lost the election he stopped caring about anything other than getting credit for Operation Warp Speed.
3 Likes
Yeah, it’s tough. I just sent my youngest (7th grade) back to school after holding him out Friday and Monday. He still has a cough and stuffy/runny nose, but he had a negative home COVID test Friday and Sunday (plus a PCR test on the 13th when we got a close contact notification), so I feel confident he only has a cold. I don’t WANT him to go to school sick, but a cough can hang on for a couple weeks and I’m not keeping him home that long just for a cough. He actually felt well enough to go to school yesterday, but we didn’t want his cough to be a distraction. No fever, no other symptoms.
My wife caught the kids’ cold, too, and she decided she was going to get a COVID test. The line at our nearby testing station was longer than it’s ever been. Probably 5-6 hours. Thus, she did an at-home test and it’s negative.
I’ve had one of those little throat tickle coughs for two weeks, but somehow I’ve avoided really getting sick with a cold going through my house. So far.
We actually just got an e-mail from our school system saying they are thinking of having optional in-school COVID testing. They want us to respond to a survey to get our input. Curious how all that will work.
APS does this. Reports are that it’s definitely not the brain-tickling kind of test–I hear that it tickles a little. The last I heard, participation was dispiritingly low (like 25%), but I haven’t heard in a while, and hopefully it’s increased some.
This is even worse than the original version. It’s reductive, insulting, and honestly just a bullshit strawman. You’d think you’d have a bit more humility after pushing the kids can’t spread covid at school for months. That has completely fallen apart, which is unsurprising to anyone ever.
No one wants schools to shutdown first. Schools are just one of the few institutions that seem to give a shit about the people inside of them. Meanwhile the ‘online right’, enabled by the people you cite like Oster, kneecap basic precautions that would make schools a little bit safe.
5 Likes
I think it’s pretty straightforward. We all understand why we want to get vaccinated right? We don’t know the long term consequences of covid, we don’t like dying, we know that there aren’t really any good treatments, we know we could spread it to loved ones and have them die. We want to get vaccinated because we want to prevent those things.
So let’s put ourselves into the mind of someone who is a trumper. They think that covid is the flu, it’s nbd. If you do get sick, you can take meds like HCQ, ivermectin, monoclonal antibodies. Why prioritize getting vaccinated if covid is no big deal in the first place, plus all these magical treatments will save you if you do get sick?
6 Likes
Bosses have just announced what’s effectively a 10% raise for ER physicians for the next month. There’s still a ton of unfilled shifts. I appreciate the cash but I’d much rather be able to put my septic UTI patient in a room in less than 5 hours instead.
The hospitals I work at have about 135 in patient beds between the two of them. ~75 of them are confirmed covid positive. An additional ~25 of them are people who either had covid and are now swabbing negative or have typical respiratory symptoms concerning for covid with a negative swab.
One hospital has 8 ER beds with things like doors. 6 of them have covid patients in them. The other has 36 beds with doors. 12 of them are closed due to nursing shortages. 12/24 beds were filled with admitted patients with covid last night. 2 are code rooms that we keep open in case shit hits the fan. 5 more with admitted patients. 5 more with psych patients who were awaiting transfer for a psych facility.
That math ain’t good.
6 Likes
Even if you concede that Trump is partly to blame for people being anti vaccine lack of institutional trust is a bigger issue. That was an issue before Trump ran for president.
It seems like a convenient place to lay blame rather than looking yourself in the mirror and wonder why people don’t trust you (institutions in general)
A core Democratic constituency that has emerged, particularly among Gen X and Millenials, is, to borrow a term from another article here, Smart America. These are the kids who grew up getting told that the way to get ahead in America was to get good grades, go to college, get a good degree esp. in STEM fields, and leverage that to a cushy, well-paying, white collar job. These are the sorts of people who have signs like this outside of their nice suburban homes:
If I had to guess how these people, not to mention people here, would respond to a pandemic in an alternate reality where Hillary Clinton is president in 2019, I think they’d respond largely the same: with an abundance of caution, with paying attention to what Fauci and the CDC have to say, with staying the fuck at home because that’s a super obvious and scientifically sound way to keep you and your family safe, etc. To think that people like us would be out packing the bars while Real 'Muricans would be cowering at home if only Hillary were president is laughably out of touch. You think Fauci gets up in front of a President Clinton to say stay home and wear a mask, and conservatives are inclined to do exactly that? Conservatives have been fed a steady diet of distrust of science and expertise for decades now. It’s not just Trump that did that. The dividing line between believing what scientists say and not believing them is so distinguishing that a former exec at my biotech company, a rich white male boomer from a deeply conservative state, was nevertheless vocally anti-Trump. So, yeah, I think Nate has been smelling too many of his own farts.
30 Likes
You only need to listen to the red state anti vaxxers go on an on and on about the Great God Of Personal Choice to know that this not a Trump-specific phenomenon, it’s pure American Consumerism through and through.
The details are even more infuriating.
The outbreak of 27 cases aboard the ship was discovered on the fourth day of an eight-day cruise, shortly before the ship docked in Belize. Twenty-six of those who tested positive were crew members and the other was a passenger.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law banning businesses from requiring proof of vaccination, but more than 96% of passengers and all but one crew member aboard the Carnival Vista were fully vaccinated, according to the Belize tourism board. It wasn’t clear if the woman who died was vaccinated or not.
People don’t generally die from covid when they’re vaccinated. They also don’t die four days after exposure generally. This woman was sick when she got on 100%.
Seemed to me like Trump was anti-vaxx because that is what his looney fringe constituency loved, until he saw the covid vaccine as a vehicle towards ceaseless adulation for literally saving the world. Now, he seems doubly bitter that the people who love the vaccine don’t give him any credit, and that his supporters will throw their adulation at him for anything but that.
So I logged in to the EMR to complete a thing in a note I forgot about and see that our ICU capacity is now at 110%.
Overflow ICU is now in our ER, meaning two more beds are gone in the ER. Haven’t done an overflow ER ICU since April in NYC.
Just fucking hell. So mad.
11 Likes
So discouraging. Idiots won’t take shots or wear masks
This didn’t work yesterday; you need better bait.
1 Like
This is 100% key to understanding the phenomenon. RWNJs don’t think like us.
If Biden or another politician we generally support says something we don’t like, we tend to hold him to that. It bothers us. We remember it.
As long as Trump says the thing derpers like some of the time - then the rest is just Charlie Brown teacher wanh wanh wanh, Trump’s just playing 8D chess, all part of the master plan, etc.
It even works with the R moderates, who just ignore the crazy stuff.
1 Like