Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Breccia]

The Miami Herald heard what DeSantis said about vaccines being a choice that doesn't hurt anyone else and they are not happy about it.

On Friday, Gov. DeSantis actually uttered these incredible — and incorrect — words about the vaccine: “It’s about your health and whether you want that protection or not. It really doesn’t impact me or anyone else.”

Doesn’t impact anyone else? Talk about a profile in selfishness. Almost 46,000 have died of COVID in his state since the pandemic began. Too bad we can’t ask the thousands who have died since vaccines became available if they wished everyone around them had gotten vaccinated.

This governor already has gone to war against school boards and parents who want to keep kids safer in schools with mask mandates. He’s fought against cruise lines that want to preserve their businesses by making sure their customers can stay COVID-free on ships, by requiring vaccines. Now he’s dismissing the role of vaccines in reducing community spread.

And it’s the opposite of what he says. COVID’s spread actually is a community problem, and solving it starts with vaccines.

Getting the vaccine certainly helps the person who gets the shot — the governor’s not wrong about that. It vastly reduces the chances of being hospitalized or dying of the disease. But it also reduces the spread of the virus to others. That’s the critical point that DeSantis is disregarding in his zeal to appeal to the freedom-at-all-costs far-right of his party as he heads into reelection and eyes the White House.

Yes, there are breakthrough cases, when vaccinated people still become infected. And, yes, there are some legitimate medical and religious reasons for not getting vaccinated. But by all others getting the vaccine, you cut down on the chances that you’ll get COVID and then pass it on to others.

That means you, as a vaccinated person, are helping to safeguard people who can’t get the shot, like children under 12 and the immunocompromised, such as those with transplanted organs. You’re also helping to protect seniors whose immunity often isn’t robust enough even they are vaccinated. You might even be saving the life of someone who simply refuses to get the vaccine.

That bolded part, that deserves its own round of applause right there.

If that’s not enough reason, spare a thought for healthcare workers. We called them heroes a year ago, banged pots and pans at the end of their shifts, sent them lunch and dinner.

Now, 18 months in, they’re exhausted. They’re battling burnout and a feeling of futility. This latest wave of delta-variant infections has broken all the previous records for cases and for deaths. Those who are hospitalized are younger, too, and almost all of them are unvaccinated. People under 20 made up nearly one in three of all new COVID-19 cases during the week ending Aug. 26, the Miami Herald reported.

Imagine the emotional toll — the feelings of powerlessness and frustration — for healthcare workers who are seeing people die day after day knowing so many of the deaths could have been prevented with a free, widely available shot.

I could keep quoting but I think the point is made. DeSantis is a risk to his own state's residents by not just claiming vaccines only help the person who gets the shot, but also fighting mask mandates applies by schools filled with children too young to get vaccines.

- - - Updated - - -

Possibly inspired by Texas' stroke of luck, South Dakota imposes new restrictions on abortion, specifically that abortion-inducing medication can no longer be mailed and must be handed over by a doctor.

Honestly that doesn't sound like the worst thing at first glance, but it was done by E.O. which means it'll immediately be challenged as unConstitutional. Not that I've read SD's lawbook or anything, but I'm not sure this is the sort of thing a governor can really do. It doesn't strike me as "Texas passed a law" counts as a public health emergency literally across the country.

- - - Updated - - -

In the ongoing effort to admit they're the Party of Trump, the NRCC moved its December get-together from NYC to Tampa and made Trump the headliner.

They're claiming that NYC has too many COVID-related restrictions, which is 100% true. Florida won't have that at all. So, place your bets: how many of these Republicans will catch COVID, and how many will die?

[Blur4stuff]

I'm sure outlawing delivery of abortion drugs will work about as well as outlawing hard drugs/weed. If non-wealthy women need to get an abortion and can't travel then one of the first things they're going to do is ask a friend/check the internet for drugs.

I'm disappointed, but not shocked, that republicans learned nothing from the previous several decades of a failed war on drugs.

[Masark]

I'm disappointed, but not shocked, that republicans learned nothing from the previous several decades of a failed war on drugs.

They learned they can drum up wide support for imprisoning, enslaving, and disenfranchising millions of black people and leftists.

[Benggaul]

As expected, numbers for Tuesday are still wildly inaccurate following the Monday holiday so there's not much point in me doing my normal report yet. What I will say is that Tennessee is in the top spot (thanks largely to an absence of full information from California, Texas and Florida) with a new record of 13,422 new cases and it doesn't appear to be much of a correction given their trajectory for the past week.

The national total was 107,060 new cases and 815 deaths, bringing the total to 669,022, but I expect that to be updated over the course of the week.

Related news:

Nearly 252,000 children in US test positive for COVID amid back-to-school season--*obligatory "That Escalated Quickly" meme here*

WHO says Covid will mutate like the flu and is likely here to stay--I think several of us have already said as much, but yeah, we'll likely be getting regular COVID vaccinations from here until the end of time now and that's partially because we as a people were unable to beat this early. You know which people contributed in fucking it up for the rest of us. Deaths overall should continue to decline as better vaccines and treatments are developed, but I guess Trump's GOP finally fucked things up enough so that one of their talking points became true--COVID is now much like the flu. Endemic.

Stay safe, folks.

[Xyonai]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/histo...an-washington/

In which Republicans still don't know a fuckin thing about history, and Gym Jordan decides to decry mandatory vaccines as "un-American", ignoring that it's been so American that it was American before America was even America.

Which I guess makes sense given that historical ignorance and revisionism seems to be a requirement for being a Republican nowadays.

Vaccine Mandates can't be American if they were in place before we were America. Checkmate Liberino.

[PhaelixWW]

Vaccine Mandates can't be American if they were in place before we were America. Checkmate Liberino.

Actually, we were already America. We just hadn't beaten the British, yet.

In all honesty, America probably wouldn't exist were it not for the mandatory inoculations in 1777.

[Benggaul]

It's been, what, a month since schools in Florida started opening?

13 Miami-area school staffers die of COVID-19 since start of new academic year

It's just going to keep happening. Too much misinformation around vaccines has been pumped into the community, not least by the fearmongering GOP.

[Breccia]

DeSantis is finally taking action against his state's biggest problem.

"Oh, he's issuing a mask mandate?"

Fuck, no. He's bribing out-of-state people to become Florida police, $5,000 and waiving the exam fee. He's also lowering the amount of red tape for someone to move to Florida to become a police officer.

The Lakeland shooting was Sunday. This is three days later. Meanwhile Florida has yet to issue a mask mandate as @Benggaul and @PhaelixWW and others point out that Florida is losing hundreds of people per day.

"Wait, didn't you also post that DeSantis was bribing nurses the same way? You did it right here."

I...don't remember saying anything about signing bonuses. Neither did the article I linked, in which DeSantis said he was removing restrictions (like with cops) but letting hospitals handle the rest on their own.

But I'd also like to point out that that article was dated Aug 26th, and Florida started lying about their numbers August 10th. At the minimum, that's 16 days between "knowing there is a problem" and "finding a solution". Not only did DeSantis decide cops were important enough to hand $5,000 in cash, but he also moved at least five times faster.

There should be a term for a leader who not only uses his power to ensure that the sick stay sick, but also, brings in mercenaries to keep people in line. Does Florida have a staffing issue? I imagine they do, I imagine most states do. But even if he's not a murderous tyrant, he's 100% showing his priorities more on keeping people under control than keeping people safe.

EDIT: The NYTimes COVID tracker, while it admits like @Benggaul knows that nobody reports on holidays, says Florida's 7-day rolling death average is 345. This is +52% from 14 days ago.

[unfilteredJW]

DeSantis is finally taking action against his state's biggest problem.

"Oh, he's issuing a mask mandate?"

Fuck, no. He's bribing out-of-state people to become Florida police, $5,000 and waiving the exam fee. He's also lowering the amount of red tape for someone to move to Florida to become a police officer.

The Lakeland shooting was Sunday. This is three days later. Meanwhile Florida has yet to issue a mask mandate as @Benggaul and @PhaelixWW and others point out that Florida is losing hundreds of people per day.

"Wait, didn't you also post that DeSantis was bribing nurses the same way? You did it right here."

I...don't remember saying anything about signing bonuses. Neither did the article I linked, in which DeSantis said he was removing restrictions (like with cops) but letting hospitals handle the rest on their own.

But I'd also like to point out that that article was dated Aug 26th, and Florida started lying about their numbers August 10th. At the minimum, that's 16 days between "knowing there is a problem" and "finding a solution". Not only did DeSantis decide cops were important enough to hand $5,000 in cash, but he also moved at least five times faster.

There should be a term for a leader who not only uses his power to ensure that the sick stay sick, but also, brings in mercenaries to keep people in line. Does Florida have a staffing issue? I imagine they do, I imagine most states do. But even if he's not a murderous tyrant, he's 100% showing his priorities more on keeping people under control than keeping people safe.

EDIT: The NYTimes COVID tracker, while it admits like @Benggaul knows that nobody reports on holidays, says Florida's 7-day rolling death average is 345. This is +52% from 14 days ago.

External screaming intensifies.

[Breccia]

Fake vaccination cards are becoming a problem, as they're being promoted by everyone from Tucker Carlson to three Vermont state police officers, what the fuck?

Carlson, of course, was vocal on the subject.

It’s not even close to a serious crime. Buying a fake vaccination card is an act of desperation by decent, law-abiding Americans who have been forced into a corner by tyrants

First of all, um, if they're breaking the law they're not law-abiding. That's just the definition. Law-abiding people don't run red lights, even if The Man needs them to be at their desk by 8AM, because running a red light is illegal.

But secondly...didn't Carlson say something about

Government IDs are not racist. They’re mandatory. You can’t live here without one.

Pretty much every person in America has a government ID. So why are they continuing to say it? Because voter ID laws stop voter fraud. Democrats encourage voter fraud because it helps them win elections.

Leaving aside that voter fraud is virtually nonexistent (and most people caught were Trump supporters) let's apply the same logic. Why couldn't I just use a fake ID to vote? Wouldn't I be backed into a corner by a tyrant?

It's both-or-neither time. If you support voter ID laws that require government ID to vote, you must also oppose fake vaccination cards and condemn them as a crime. One could argue, and in fact I am arguing, that whether or not you vote doesn't directly put someone in the hospital, so the fake vaccination cards should even be the more serious offense. But anyone pushing for voter ID must also push against fake vaccination cards. Failure to do so will be self-admitted hypocrisy, which we're talking about Tucker Carlson here, no big surprise.

[Edge-]

Fake vaccination cards are becoming a problem, as they're being promoted by everyone from Tucker Carlson

It's not a 'serious' crime? Well then fuck...what is, Tucker? Should we decriminalize "not serious" crimes? Man, the absolute lack of any intellectual depth with these fuckin assholes continues to blow my mind.

[Lenonis]

It's time to really ramp up the penalties for owning a fake vaccination card and REALLY ramp up the penalties for those making and distributing them. Let's force them to be vaccinated then toss them in jail for a few years. Let them out when COVID is over.

[Endus]

It's time to really ramp up the penalties for owning a fake vaccination card and REALLY ramp up the penalties for those making and distributing them. Let's force them to be vaccinated then toss them in jail for a few years. Let them out when COVID is over.

Just in general.

Like, you're in a country where black kids get tossed into prison for 5 years for a small amount of weed, that'd be legal in some states. But invading the Capitol in the worst attack on that building in the nation's history, let's go with time served and a stern finger wag. Using a fake vaccination card should be prosecuted as bio-terrorism. And not "attempted"; if you were out-and-about with faked documentation, you're in the midst of engaging in the crime.

It's not that the US has strict laws that really bother me. It's the absolutely wild injustices in how those laws are applied.

[Breccia]

So let's talk about Texas.

It's fucked.

1) Let's start with the really ugly shit. Texas pediatric COVID hospitalizations hit a new record over the holiday weekend.

The number of Texas children hospitalized with COVID-19 hit an all-time high over the weekend, with 345 on Saturday and 307 on Sunday, the highest two-day stretch recorded during the pandemic, according to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services.

The data follows a national trend of rising pediatric COVID hospitalization rates. A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday shows the highest rate of increase among teenagers and children 0-4 years old. The study, which tracked cases from March to mid-August, also found unvaccinated adolescents were 10 times more likely to need hospitalization than their vaccinated peers.

School reopenings and “pandemic fatigue” are two primary reasons for the statewide increase, said Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist at UTHealth School of Public Health in Dallas and author of the popular blog “Your Local Epidemiologist.”

The state health department on Aug. 29 recorded 51,904 COVID cases among Texas students since the 2021-22 school year began.

I will admit "pandemic fatigue" is a real thing, but it doesn't sound like an excuse to risk the lives of your children or complete strangers.

2) You might know the name Pete Lopez as it's been in the news. On July 30, he was diagnosed with COVID and went to the VA, and a doctor there prescribed horse dewormer. By Aug 4th he hadn't started taking it yet, and his symptoms put him in the hospital. This is why the name might be familiar: the hospital refused to give him horse dewormer.

The case went through several courts as Lopez's 74-year-old body weakened, being put on a ventilator Aug 19th. The case was supposed to continue yesterday, but it didn't, because Lopez died of COVID.

His family is on record of saying that they wanted ivermectin because the doctors had tried everything that actually works, and it didn't help, so, well, why not try horse dewormer? The family is not on record as to trying Hormel No-Beans Chili, Southpaw Antifreeze, or bowling ball to the head.

Here's the lesson: Texas, Florida, and other places have hid behind "we can't require a vaccine because it's not FDA approved yet" which, okay, I at least understand that argument. Ivermectin is also not FDA approved to treat COVID in humans. Sorry, it's both or neither.

The Lopez family have refused to say on record as to whether Pete Lopez was vaccinated, which means I'm going to say "he wasn't". And yes, the same reasoning applies here. If they're worried about the vaccine being unsafe, they should have worried about ivermectin being unsafe for 100% the same reasons. Pick a lane.

I'm sorry for their loss -- dude was clearly a fighter with a family that loved him. I just wish they had loved him enough to tell him to get the vaccine.

3) There are 1029 school districts in Texas. At least 45 have shut down in-person classes due to the COVID...I want to say "spike" but spikes come back down, and this hasn't yet. Mesa? Plateau? Mountain?

4) This line:

COVID is kicking humanity's ass

is from a Texas ER doctor.

I don't have anything to add to that. It's about the best summation of the situation so far.

5) Central Texas is out of ICU beds. Yes, that includes pediatric ones.

Yes, that's basically a record.

Related: Connally school district inn central Texas closed because COVID killed two teachers, aged 59 and 41. They both taught social studies.

6) Cases in Texas have tripled in the last three weeks. The first day of school in Austin's school district was Aug 18, which is...yep, looks like three weeks ago to me.

While the nation overall is on an upwards trend, it did not triple in the last 3 weeks. This weekend's numbers aren't valid, but if you use the CDC's case tracker, you see the upwards climb is far more mild. Aug 18 the nation had 142k rolling 7day average, but the peak since then was Sept 1 and that's 156k. For Texas to triple while the country overall is only slightly increasing, means that Texas is doing something wrong.

7) This quote from Gov. Abbott:

Today Texas posted the lowest 7-day Covid positivity rate in more than a month. It has steadily declined for 20 days. Lower positivity rates often lead to a lower number of Covid positive cases. And fewer cases lead to reduced hospitalizations. Tx Covid trends are improving.

It should be noted that, between the time he said that and now, the state of Texas "revised" its positivity numbers. It's still down, but the positivity was from 18.72% at the start of August to (revised) 14.88% at the end of August. Both numbers fucking suck. Nobody should be bragging about that.

His claim that lower positivity leading to lower cases and hospitalizations is just flat-out not happening, either. Since he said it Aug 30, the 7day rolling average of cases was 16,500 and was 19,000 by Friday. Hospitalizations have risen since then, too. Granted, Aug 30 was a week ago and COVID doesn't necessarily put you in the hospital instantly, but considering all those posts I've made and others have made about Texas running out of ICU beds, even if there was a reversal trend, it didn't happen soon enouugh.

But that's just lies and damn lies. Here come the statistics.

Testing in Texas has increased eleven hundred percent over the last two weeks. Why? School started, duh, more parents/teachers/kids are getting mandatory testing. That's throwing a lot of people with no symptoms into the mix -- and the positivity rate dropped, but not by all that much.

8) And finally, an entirely family went without vaccinations and now three of them share a hospital. Their ages are 37, 30, and 21. Yes, 21, he's on a ventilator. They are all three children of the same mother and all lived in the same house -- draw your own conclusions, no I don't know if the father(s) is/are there -- and their mother is, yes, saying "get the vaccine". Oh, and she's positive and she's quarantined.

That hospital says 92% of their patients are unvaccinated, which based on other headlines sounds low, but they have the info.

Texas is simply doing everything in its power to show how to handle the situation badly.

"What about Florida?"

This was enough for one day.

- - - Updated - - -

My big worry at this point is that the same people who won't get a covid jab are even less likely to get flu shots.

I thought of that too. I don't know if such feelings were the case in, say, 2019-2020's winter, but yes I worry that the rabid fanbase will just chose not to get any shots at all, screaming about MUH FREEDUMB until the doctor intubates.

[Benggaul]

4) This line:

COVID is kicking humanity's ass

is from a Texas ER doctor.

I don't have anything to add to that. It's about the best summation of the situation so far.

I would amend that to "it's kicking a certain subsection of humanity's ass". The unvaccinated. Vaccinated folks are, by a huge margin, faring far better.

[Gorsameth]

I'm still waiting for the first health insurer to say they will no longer cover Covid treatment if the person is not vaccinated or unable to be vaccinated for medical reasons.

[Breccia]

I'm still waiting for the first health insurer to say they will no longer cover Covid treatment if the person is not vaccinated or unable to be vaccinated for medical reasons.

I'm waiting for it too. I just don't know if it will happen -- it might be illegal. In 1996 the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act began prohibiting charging more based on health status. And that's just one of several laws basically designed to stop people who happen to be born with health issues from being punished for having them. Yes, it also takes some from personal responsibility, someone who eats themselves to 600 pounds and someone who has a genetic disorder that does the same thing are both protected. Better to let 10 guilty bla bla bla tis of thee.

But that's not what you're asking. You're saying "pay anything at all" aka not fulfiliing a contract, based on (I'm putting words in your panda mouth) the customer breaking the contract. If the health insurance provider does, in fact, have fine print that says "get the vaccine" they might have a way out. If not, federal laws likely prohibit this.

I'm no expert, but if I had to find a solution in the next 30 seconds or a nun explodes, it would be
a) reduce the copay for vaccinated people to $0
b) increase everyone's rates due to increased costs
c) say "Trump did it, it's clearly legal".

[Benggaul]

find a solution in the next 30 seconds or a nun explodes

Ah, Happy! season 2. Smoothie you little imp.

I worry what precedent it would set if/when health insurers start weighing in on this, though. I imagine it's going to be a fight.

[Breccia]

I worry what precedent it would set if/when health insurers start weighing in on this, though.

Actually that reminds me of another issue: if, just for the morbid hypothetical nature of it, what if it was illegal but health companies, you know, did it anyhow? By the time someone sues, they might literally be dead. They really do hold a lot of cards here, and are asked to pay a bunch of money from people who basically shot themselves in the Touse.

[Poopymonster]

Ah, Happy! season 2. Smoothie you little imp.

I worry what precedent it would set if/when health insurers start weighing in on this, though. I imagine it's going to be a fight.

I'm still waiting on life insurance to start not paying out for unvaccinated people dying from covid. Or better yet, from taking Ivermectin. Clear case of suicide, we won't pay.