The Politics of Covid 19, mask wearing and the vaccination process

[raydude]

Florida's new Surgeon General is anti-mask and anti-vaccine mandates. What could go wrong?

Nothing. They're essentially already following his plan.

So, I get that people aren't dying enough to cause Santis to change his mind but what about economic pressure? Each death is one less person in the workforce. At some point, critical businesses are going to feel the hit as there are not enough healthy workers.

[LawBeefaroni]

Florida's new Surgeon General is anti-mask and anti-vaccine mandates. What could go wrong?

Nothing. They're essentially already following his plan.

So, I get that people aren't dying enough to cause Santis to change his mind but what about economic pressure? Each death is one less person in the workforce. At some point, critical businesses are going to feel the hit as there are not enough healthy workers.

Do these "critical" businesses donate to his campaign?

[Octavious]

Blame the shortage on the Dems giving away free money. Which is totally what they are doing. I see countless stories of restaurants going out of business because they can't hire people. The extra benefits ended but that's not stopping them from blaming it.

[Smoove_B]

This can't be real, right? If so, I guess we can expect a shortage of snake bite kits soon? JFC already.

[El Guapo]

uhh, would that do anything? I assume not - seems like the person would wind up vaccinated after this process, right? So maybe we should push this?

[ImLawBoy]

I think the vaccine itself will not be affected, but it should pull out the 5G chip.

[stessier]

uhh, would that do anything? I assume not - seems like the person would wind up vaccinated after this process, right? So maybe we should push this?

Amazingly, the immune system reacts instantly. Like, if you immediately had your arm chopped off, the vaccine would still be effective. It's weird.

[Daehawk]

uhh, would that do anything? I assume not - seems like the person would wind up vaccinated after this process, right? So maybe we should push this?

Amazingly, the immune system reacts instantly. Like, if you immediately had your arm chopped off, the vaccine would still be effective. It's weird.

Could we get them to chop off their arm and have them believe tourniquets are the invention of the DEMs?

[malchior]

She brought it up today but they literally aren't planning for any of this stuff.

If she gets her hands on the work memo that indicated the pandemic is over, I'd like a copy.

Still no memo but they're as of today they are now out of several raw materials from their suppliers. They also manufacture raws for food and cosmetics but Ida remnants flooded/destroyed part of the production facility so....

Maybe unrelated but we've have had a steady drumbeat of cancelled Amazon and Chewy subscriptions for various food products the last month. Our specialty cat food? Unavailable everywhere. I went to Lidl *and* Trader Joe last night to be able to piece together my shopping list. It looks like a lesser version of mid-April. The only reason I'm mentioning this is just now we just sat on the phone with Walgreens while they searched for a prescription. My wife tried to pick it up 3 weeks ago but they only had 1 of 3. She kept chasing them and they just did a wide search and found "a few" 30 miles away. There is some really weird shit happening right now.

[Blackhawk]

This truck drove around Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte before the Panthers game this past Sunday:

Does that building sometimes flip upside down?

[Blackhawk]

This can't be real, right? If so, I guess we can expect a shortage of snake bite kits soon? JFC already.

Given that venom extractors are also psuedoscience, I say to spread this far and wide. The anti-vaxxers can go get 'de-vaccinated' all day long.

[Isgrimnur]

Snake Bite Foundation

The scientific reasons that venom cannot be easily sucked out of a wound are multifaceted but a basic explanation is that:

(a) venom is composed of a range of different sized molecules that rapidly diffuse into various tissue compartments including the intravascular and extracellular spaces and spread away from the site of the bite. They don’t just sit in a perfect and easily accessible chamber waiting to be sucked out again. Careful examination of one of the main studies Sawyer cites as a reason to buy their product revealed that the serosanguinous fluid sucked out of the wound was only 1/10,000th the concentration of rattlesnake venom, meaning that it extracted virtually nothing at all.

(b) fangs are curved and tissues slide back and forth in the body, the combination of which leaves the venom with no open path straight back to the surface where it could be sucked out of. Interestingly, studies have found that there was more venom in fluid allowed to leak from the wound naturally than there was in samples obtained after use of the Sawyer Extractor. It seems that the Sawyer extractor not only fails to suck fluid out of the wounds but actually collapses the wound tracts near the surface by drawing the skin up into the suction cup and may actually force that venom even deeper into the tissues. Oops!

[Max Peck]

(Also, that Boone Oakley sign is annoying, what is that?)

It's the ad agency (literally) behind the "funeral home" vaccination ad campaign.

[Drazzil]

At what point can we conclude that the world would be better off with the Antivaxx crowd? I mean I sorta feel bad for their families, and really feel bad for the people in their orbit that they will take down most of all... But I'm kinda rooting for the virus. Its going to kill a lot of our political enemies.

I know I'm horrid. But with elections getting even closer. I wonder if historians will look back and finger COVID as one of the things that threw the elections our way.

[Isgrimnur]

How's that weeklong break going?

[Drazzil]

How's that weeklong break going?

Yeah I know I should have taken the second weeklong break. Any time I take time away from my computer seems to be a great time in my RL.

[Alefroth]

I mean I sorta feel bad for their families, and really feel bad for the people in their orbit that they will take down most of all...

I don't get that impression.

[Kasey Chang]

Lovely, we have reports of anti-mask store owner in Elk Grove (near Sacramento), California, where father and 8-year-old daughter was told "take off your mask or leave", yes, even for the little girl. This is in direct contradiction of Sacramento County's mask mandate. However, there's currently no enforcement or penalties for violators.

[Sudy]

This truck drove around Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte before the Panthers game this past Sunday:

Does that building sometimes flip upside down?

No, but the only ones who come there for Oakley are bats.

[stessier]

This truck drove around Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte before the Panthers game this past Sunday:

Does that building sometimes flip upside down?

It's slowly rolling down the hill.

[The Meal]

Lovely, we have reports of anti-mask store owner in Elk Grove (near Sacramento), California, where father and 8-year-old daughter was told "take off your mask or leave", yes, even for the little girl. This is in direct contradiction of Sacramento County's mask mandate. However, there's currently no enforcement or penalties for violators.

Gezus. Elk Grove, CA where MHS and I (and my step-mother) were last weekend for my SIL's celebration of life. (My step-mother was born and raised in Elk Grove Village, a Chicago suburb near O'Hare...)

[Max Peck]

Vaccine mandates are getting real in Ontario's healthcare sector.

172 Windsor, Ont., hospital staff suspended without pay for not getting COVID-19 shots

About 172 staff members at Windsor, Ont., hospitals have been suspended without pay for not getting their COVID-19 shots by the deadlines set out by their employers.

Windsor Regional Hospital (WRH) and Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare (HDGH) both have policies mandating that as of Wednesday, Sept. 22, all staff and physicians must have had at least one dose of the vaccine to continue working unless an approved exemption is provided.

WRH confirmed in a news release that 96 per cent of its employees are fully vaccinated, but as of Wednesday, 140 employees plus seven professional staff members had not complied, with 84 of them considered clinical staff. The staff who have not complied are now also placed on a two-week unpaid leave.

An official at HDGH confirmed the hospital has a 96 per cent vaccination rate. However, as of Wednesday morning, 32 employees have been suspended without pay.

Meanwhile, the suspended employees at HDGH have until Oct. 6 to get their first vaccinations, or face "termination with cause," according to a representative.

Staff at WRH have until Oct. 7 to do the same, or face termination or having their privileges suspended.

[gbasden]

Lovely, we have reports of anti-mask store owner in Elk Grove (near Sacramento), California, where father and 8-year-old daughter was told "take off your mask or leave", yes, even for the little girl. This is in direct contradiction of Sacramento County's mask mandate. However, there's currently no enforcement or penalties for violators.

Gezus. Elk Grove, CA where MHS and I (and my step-mother) were last weekend for my SIL's celebration of life. (My step-mother was born and raised in Elk Grove Village, a Chicago suburb near O'Hare...)

Say hi next time! We were probably just a few miles away.

[Smoove_B]

Hell to the yes.

NEW: Delta Air Lines says it has banned 1,600 people from flying and it is calling on other airlines to share their internal no-fly lists of unruly passengers, saying in a memo, “A list of banned customers doesn’t work as well if that customer can fly with another airline.”

[Isgrimnur]

Covid cancel culture!

[El Guapo]

Yeah, but...I'm still nervous about the inevitable abuses that'll happen from airlines having a coordinated "don't fly this person" list.

[Kasey Chang]

In other news, Dutch 12-year old boy has won a court battle to get COVID vaccine so he can spend time with end-stage cancer grandma. His father is antivax, his mother is provax. Dutch law says under-17 needs both parents to consent, but if parents disagree, a judge is allowed to be the tiebreaker.

Meanwhile, in Quebec, Canada, a man walked into a pharmacy and punched a nurse for giving his wife the COVID vaccine without his permission. Unfortunately, there's no surveillance video, and the police needs some help in apprehending this COVIDiot.

[Drazzil]

For all the assholes who don't get vaccinated and then kill themselves and the people around them.




Hope they spend eternity in hell living the last five minutes of their lives, choking in their own broth, thinking about the family members and friends they killed with their willingness to be deceived.

[LordMortis]

Hell to the yes.

NEW: Delta Air Lines says it has banned 1,600 people from flying and it is calling on other airlines to share their internal no-fly lists of unruly passengers, saying in a memo, “A list of banned customers doesn’t work as well if that customer can fly with another airline.”

But that's corporate communism! FREEDOMMM!!!!!

[Isgrimnur]

For all the assholes who don't get vaccinated and then kill themselves and the people around them.

Hope they spend eternity in hell living the last five minutes of their lives, choking in their own broth, thinking about the family members and friends they killed with their willingness to be deceived.

How's therapy going?

[Isgrimnur]

But that's corporate communism! FREEDOMMM!!!!!

The free hand of the market is only good when it benefits meeeeee! (Or those oligarchs I've been told have my best interests at heart.)

[Defiant]

[Isgrimnur]

[Blackhawk]

I wonder if the CDC could put some program in place requiring extensive reporting/tracing/documenting on confirmed cases? Enough so to be a significant burden on schools (and thus giving them a financial incentive to minimize cases, and thus acting as a de-facto mask mandate.) It was essentially what Indiana did that pushed my son's school into mandatory masking.

[Blackhawk]

Yeah, but...I'm still nervous about the inevitable abuses that'll happen from airlines having a coordinated "don't fly this person" list.

I agree. For something like this to be universal there would need to be some transparency, including documentation of the incident plus an appeal/review process. Being completely blocked from flying could end careers, prevent family from being there for loved ones, and have major impacts on the people around that person. If it is completely at the airlines' whims, it would just take a Captain who doesn't like someone's shirt to cause major damage.

[Smoove_B]

I wonder if the CDC could put some program in place requiring extensive reporting/tracing/documenting on confirmed cases? Enough so to be a significant burden on schools (and thus giving them a financial incentive to minimize cases, and thus acting as a de-facto mask mandate.) It was essentially what Indiana did that pushed my son's school into mandatory masking.

States should already being doing enough of this to have excellent data. "Should" is the operative word here.

In other news, we never learn. 19+ months later and part of the plan involves trusting people to do the right thing. JFC already.

"CDC puts faith in ‘self-attestation’ of Americans to not get a booster before they’re eligible". That has as much chance to succeed as the May announcement to drop need for masks except in the unvaccinated

[Daehawk]

My entire town seems to be a Russian roulette wanna be. Ive never seen so many obese people of all ages maskless waddling around. Its like Emperor Penguins strutting their stuff to the beat of a death metal band where death is literal. People aren't afraid or dont seem to care. They dare Covid to get them.

[Kasey Chang]

Hypothetically, I am eligible for a booster now as I'm 51 and diabetic. Right?

[Smoove_B]

Hypothetically, I am eligible for a booster now as I'm 51 and diabetic. Right?

Assuming you did receive the Pfizer vaccination originally (that seems to be a point of confusion), yes.

Individuals 65 years of age and older
Individuals 18 through 64 years of age at high risk of severe COVID-19
Individuals 18 through 64 years of age whose frequent institutional or occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2 puts them at high risk of serious complications of COVID-19 including severe COVID-

Here's the list of "at high risk of severe COVID-19", from the CDC.

[Blackhawk]

I wonder if the CDC could put some program in place requiring extensive reporting/tracing/documenting on confirmed cases? Enough so to be a significant burden on schools (and thus giving them a financial incentive to minimize cases, and thus acting as a de-facto mask mandate.) It was essentially what Indiana did that pushed my son's school into mandatory masking.

States should already being doing enough of this to have excellent data. "Should" is the operative word here.

Data, schmata. I'm not talking about actually gathering information for information's sake, I'm talking about making students getting sick so effing unpleasant for the school that they require masks to lessen their own workload. Appealing to their self-interest, in other words, as that seems to be the only motivator that works.

As a reminder, Indiana laid down policies that required extensive contact tracing (obnoxious, expensive workload for schools.) The Governor then allowed kids who wore masks at all times around the affected student to be exempt as a close contact. Perhaps not the best approach, but the result was that the schools started requiring masks, not to protect the students, but to make their own jobs easier.

The federal government keeps getting their stick taken away. They need to start using the carrot instead. If people are going to be selfish, use their selfishness to control them. *Bond villain laugh*