The GOP wave

[billvon 2,379]

We are starting to see the start of the next wave of COVID infections.  It's very clear in places like Missouri (see below) but Missouri, and several other states, are having such outbreaks that it's pushing national averages slowly higher.  

So what to call this wave?  It's either the fourth or fifth wave, depending on how you count them.  There was the first initial wave which subsided with a big push for NPI's (shutdowns, masking.)  Then there was the second wave in June of 2020 where people largely said "fuck this" and went back to bars.  Then there was the huge third wave which represented the holiday season in 2020 where people went to Halloween parties, traveled for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and partied on New Years.

The fourth wave started in March of this year as the first vaccines started to affect both policy and immunization.  Many states ended all restrictions - but this time the peak wasn't as high because vaccines started to reduce new infection rates and deaths.  (You could also call this part of the third wave, I guess, because they didn't decline much between New Years and March, and it was really just a short reversal in the decline after New Years.)

So now we are increasing again.  Rather than try to figure out whether this wave is the fourth or the fifth, perhaps it makes more sense to call it by its cause - the GOP wave.

The newest variant - the Delta variant - is a lot more infectious.  Vaccines still work, but not as well; the Pfizer vaccine, for example, is around 60% effective in preventing Delta infections, although it remains 90+% effective in preventing serious illness and death.  What that means is that whereas previously we might have needed ~70% of the country to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, now it's closer to ~80%.

We are at 47%.  And slowing.

Countrywide, the strongest predictor of what eligible people are getting the vaccine is their political party.  93% of democrats either have gotten the vaccine or plan to get it; only 49% of republicans are going to get it.  (Note that this gets us to 70% - barely - but that's no longer enough for herd immunity.)

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/vaccine-hesitant-americans-reject-delta-variant-risk-posing/story?id=78609691

When it is Trump supporters vs. non-Trump supporters the difference is even more stark.  The graph showing vaccine hesitancy vs. how a state voted in the presidential election shows a very obvious straight-line correlation.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/17/us/vaccine-hesitancy-politics.html

And again, Missouri, which overwhelmingly went for Trump in the 2020 election, is seeing a rapid rise in infection rates, due to their low vaccination rates.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/960901166/how-is-the-covid-19-vaccination-campaign-going-in-your-state

And if you look at the lowest vaccinated 18 states, 17 of them voted for Trump.

So why is this?  In some ways it's puzzling.  Trump claimed he was responsible for the vaccine; if you took what he says at face value you'd think he made it himself in the White House kitchen.  He has often complained that he doesn't get enough credit for it.  So why aren't republicans getting vaccinated?

Primarily because Biden is pushing for it, and republicans lately don't really have any positions other than "oppose Biden."  Some snippets:

Dr. McCullough, FOX News commentator: "Overall, the equation is very unfavorable for vaccination of anyone below age 30 . . . Unless we really have a compelling case, no one under age 30 should receive any one of these vaccines."

Trump: "But the vaccine on very young people is something that you’ve got to really stop."

Marjorie Taylor Greene filed an act that "gives you permission to tell Biden's [vaccination team] that’s gonna show up at your door, you know, that intimidate you — they probably they probably work for Antifa by night, and then they come and intimidate you to take the vaccine by day — Well, you get to tell them to get the hell off of your lawn."

She also compared vaccine workers to Nazis.  "People have a choice, they don’t need your medical brown shirts showing up at their door ordering vaccinations."

So there's a clear political message out there - if you are a Trump supporter, don't get the vaccine because then that Nazi Biden wins.

There's also the misinformation angle.  A University of South Florida survey found that most people who weren't getting the vaccine were refusing due to concerns that came from vaccine misinformation: "All those concerns are based on falsehoods."  These include:

COVID-19 vaccines contain 5G microchips
COVID-19 vaccines will be mandated by the CDC
COVID-19 vaccines modify people’s genes and alter their DNA
COVID-19 vaccines may cause infertility
COVID-19 vaccines were designed to reduce the world’s population 
COVID-19 vaccines were created before the pandemic started in order to increase vaccine sales
The daughter of the Russian president died from the COVID-19 vaccine

https://www.usf.edu/arts-sciences/departments/public-affairs/documents/news-items/spa-covid-vaccine-survey-results-2021.pdf

https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2021/06/19/misinformation-is-keeping-floridians-from-getting-vaccinated-usf-survey-shows/

Note that most of these have come from GOP sources - FOX News, GOP senators and representatives, and GOP activists.

And now that we see that all that effort put into misinformation and fearmongering - is working.  The percentage of people vaccine hesitant in GOP states is rising, and infection rates are rising along with it.  Vaccination rates are slowing drastically, and the GOP is fighting to keep it that way.  Deaths will follow, as they have in every other wave.

So a message to republicans - cut it the fuck out.  You are killing people with your lies.  That overrides any benefit you think you get by making Biden look bad.  If you don't want the vaccine, don't get it.  But stop with the lies and the misinformation programs and the fearmongering.

[kallend 1,619]

14 minutes ago, billvon said:

 So why aren't republicans getting vaccinated?

Primarily because Biden is pushing for it, and republicans lately don't really have any positions other than "oppose Biden."  

"Dog bites man".

[tonyhays 86]

50 minutes ago, billvon said:

In some ways it's puzzling.

Not in any way shape or form

[ryoder 1,380]

And that jackass Rand Paul is pitching in to help:

Rand Paul vows to introduce public transportation mask mandate repeal

It's getting impossible to believe he really graduated from medical school.

[gowlerk 1,901]

In Canada we don't have a GOP. I would say that the vaccine resistant portion of the population here is about one half of what the US is having to deal with. The US had about a 30 day advantage in the vaccine race, but has squandered it and we are now pretty much tied with Canada pulling into the lead. There is talk of opening the border to fully vaccinated US citizens soon, but no one can work out how they will be able to produce reliable proof of their vaccine status.

[JerryBaumchen 1,046]

3 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

In Canada we don't have a GOP. I would say that the vaccine resistant portion of the population here is about one half of what the US is having to deal with. The US had about a 30 day advantage in the vaccine race, but has squandered it and we are now pretty much tied with Canada pulling into the lead. There is talk of opening the border to fully vaccinated US citizens soon, but no one can work out how they will be able to produce reliable proof of their vaccine status.

Hi Ken,

I carry a copy of my vax record in my wallet.  Just make people show it.

I've been in a fair number of foreign countries in my life; I've never had a problem carrying or showing my passport.

Jerry Baumchen

[wolfriverjoe 1,339]

1 hour ago, JerryBaumchen said:

Hi Ken,

I carry a copy of my vax record in my wallet.  Just make people show it.

I've been in a fair number of foreign countries in my life; I've never had a problem carrying or showing my passport.

Jerry Baumchen

Hi Jerry,

Very true about carrying and producing the passport. 

However, the very simple vax cards would be equally simple to forge.

The idiots have been totally resistant to the idea of a database, or any sort of verifiable vax certification.
Some of them have gone so far as to prohibit even asking for it.

Without something reliable, I don't expect anyone to let US citizens in any foreign country.
And I don't blame them.

[wmw999 2,114]

My sister in law and nieces are visiting relatives on a farm in Brazil right now. Even though Brazil is a Covid basket case, they had to show proof of a PCR test within the previous 72 hours. I don’t know about the vaccine — but that didn’t matter, they wouldn’t have gone if they had t had them. 
I doubt that many people who think Covid is overblown would think twice about forging a vaccine card. 
Wendy P. 

[yoink 321]

4 hours ago, billvon said:

So a message to republicans - cut it the fuck out.  You are killing people with your lies.  That overrides any benefit you think you get by making Biden look bad.  

[yoink 321]

As you told me in the gun thread, a leftie asking a Republican to do something is only likely to result in a ‘fuck you’, for no other reason than it annoys you.

 

At this point I’m starting to hope for a highly infectious variant with a massively increased lethality.

Chances are that right now the vaccines we have will still prevent serious conditions, but if we start killing off those vectors that can generate new variants then eventually it stabilizes.

 

Remember - no virus WANTS to be lethal, it only wants to be infectious. If a virus quickly killed everyone it infected then pretty soon it would die out itself.

Thats probably the reason this WON’T happen - over time the virus is likely to become more infectious but less lethal, but hey, here’s hoping.

Edited July 10, 2021 by yoink

[wmw999 2,114]

Just send them thoughts and prayers when you find out they’re sick.

Wendy P. 

[obelixtim 100]

6 hours ago, billvon said:

We are starting to see the start of the next wave of COVID infections.  It's very clear in places like Missouri (see below) but Missouri, and several other states, are having such outbreaks that it's pushing national averages slowly higher.  

So what to call this wave?  It's either the fourth or fifth wave, depending on how you count them.  There was the first initial wave which subsided with a big push for NPI's (shutdowns, masking.)  Then there was the second wave in June of 2020 where people largely said "fuck this" and went back to bars.  Then there was the huge third wave which represented the holiday season in 2020 where people went to Halloween parties, traveled for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and partied on New Years.

The fourth wave started in March of this year as the first vaccines started to affect both policy and immunization.  Many states ended all restrictions - but this time the peak wasn't as high because vaccines started to reduce new infection rates and deaths.  (You could also call this part of the third wave, I guess, because they didn't decline much between New Years and March, and it was really just a short reversal in the decline after New Years.)

So now we are increasing again.  Rather than try to figure out whether this wave is the fourth or the fifth, perhaps it makes more sense to call it by its cause - the GOP wave.

The newest variant - the Delta variant - is a lot more infectious.  Vaccines still work, but not as well; the Pfizer vaccine, for example, is around 60% effective in preventing Delta infections, although it remains 90+% effective in preventing serious illness and death.  What that means is that whereas previously we might have needed ~70% of the country to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, now it's closer to ~80%.

We are at 47%.  And slowing.

Countrywide, the strongest predictor of what eligible people are getting the vaccine is their political party.  93% of democrats either have gotten the vaccine or plan to get it; only 49% of republicans are going to get it.  (Note that this gets us to 70% - barely - but that's no longer enough for herd immunity.)

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/vaccine-hesitant-americans-reject-delta-variant-risk-posing/story?id=78609691

When it is Trump supporters vs. non-Trump supporters the difference is even more stark.  The graph showing vaccine hesitancy vs. how a state voted in the presidential election shows a very obvious straight-line correlation.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/17/us/vaccine-hesitancy-politics.html

And again, Missouri, which overwhelmingly went for Trump in the 2020 election, is seeing a rapid rise in infection rates, due to their low vaccination rates.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/960901166/how-is-the-covid-19-vaccination-campaign-going-in-your-state

And if you look at the lowest vaccinated 18 states, 17 of them voted for Trump.

So why is this?  In some ways it's puzzling.  Trump claimed he was responsible for the vaccine; if you took what he says at face value you'd think he made it himself in the White House kitchen.  He has often complained that he doesn't get enough credit for it.  So why aren't republicans getting vaccinated?

Primarily because Biden is pushing for it, and republicans lately don't really have any positions other than "oppose Biden."  Some snippets:

Dr. McCullough, FOX News commentator: "Overall, the equation is very unfavorable for vaccination of anyone below age 30 . . . Unless we really have a compelling case, no one under age 30 should receive any one of these vaccines."

Trump: "But the vaccine on very young people is something that you’ve got to really stop."

Marjorie Taylor Greene filed an act that "gives you permission to tell Biden's [vaccination team] that’s gonna show up at your door, you know, that intimidate you — they probably they probably work for Antifa by night, and then they come and intimidate you to take the vaccine by day — Well, you get to tell them to get the hell off of your lawn."

She also compared vaccine workers to Nazis.  "People have a choice, they don’t need your medical brown shirts showing up at their door ordering vaccinations."

So there's a clear political message out there - if you are a Trump supporter, don't get the vaccine because then that Nazi Biden wins.

There's also the misinformation angle.  A University of South Florida survey found that most people who weren't getting the vaccine were refusing due to concerns that came from vaccine misinformation: "All those concerns are based on falsehoods."  These include:

COVID-19 vaccines contain 5G microchips
COVID-19 vaccines will be mandated by the CDC
COVID-19 vaccines modify people’s genes and alter their DNA
COVID-19 vaccines may cause infertility
COVID-19 vaccines were designed to reduce the world’s population 
COVID-19 vaccines were created before the pandemic started in order to increase vaccine sales
The daughter of the Russian president died from the COVID-19 vaccine

https://www.usf.edu/arts-sciences/departments/public-affairs/documents/news-items/spa-covid-vaccine-survey-results-2021.pdf

https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2021/06/19/misinformation-is-keeping-floridians-from-getting-vaccinated-usf-survey-shows/

Note that most of these have come from GOP sources - FOX News, GOP senators and representatives, and GOP activists.

And now that we see that all that effort put into misinformation and fearmongering - is working.  The percentage of people vaccine hesitant in GOP states is rising, and infection rates are rising along with it.  Vaccination rates are slowing drastically, and the GOP is fighting to keep it that way.  Deaths will follow, as they have in every other wave.

So a message to republicans - cut it the fuck out.  You are killing people with your lies.  That overrides any benefit you think you get by making Biden look bad.  If you don't want the vaccine, don't get it.  But stop with the lies and the misinformation programs and the fearmongering.

 Its called natural selection. Natures way of weeding out the terminally stupid. The GOP should become extinct in the next year or so.  

[kallend 1,619]

6 hours ago, obelixtim said:

 Its called natural selection. Natures way of weeding out the terminally stupid. The GOP should become extinct in the next year or so.  

We can only hope.

[billvon 2,379]

12 hours ago, obelixtim said:

 Its called natural selection. Natures way of weeding out the terminally stupid. The GOP should become extinct in the next year or so.  

Nope.  Even the delta variant isn't going to be more than a few percent fatal.

[kallend 1,619]

13 minutes ago, billvon said:

Nope.  Even the delta variant isn't going to be more than a few percent fatal.

Compared to last year's numbers it will *appear* less fatal if just looking at raw numbers, because the most at-risk segment of the population is also the highest % vaccinated.  

[yoink 321]

16 minutes ago, billvon said:

Nope.  Even the delta variant isn't going to be more than a few percent fatal.

Those are rookie numbers! We gotta pump those up. 40 or 50% should do it.

 

Maybe there's a lab in China that can help us?

[billvon 2,379]

6 minutes ago, kallend said:

Compared to last year's numbers it will *appear* less fatal if just looking at raw numbers, because the most at-risk segment of the population is also the highest % vaccinated.  

Even if you had a completely unvaccinated population you wouldn't see more than a few percent fatality rate.  Keep in mind that the original strain, acting on an unvaccinated population for a full year, resulted in a .1% fatality rate.  If this is ten times more fatal (which it most likely isn't) we'd only see a 1% fatality rate in an unvaccinated population.

There's no conceivable scenario where you get any significant fraction of the unvaccinated population dead.  And shame on you for hoping for that.

[kallend 1,619]

Shame on those who refused to be vaccinated in order to deprive Biden of achieving his stated goal. They deserve what they get.

[headoverheels 291]

7 hours ago, billvon said:

Even if you had a completely unvaccinated population you wouldn't see more than a few percent fatality rate.  Keep in mind that the original strain, acting on an unvaccinated population for a full year, resulted in a .1% fatality rate.  If this is ten times more fatal (which it most likely isn't) we'd only see a 1% fatality rate in an unvaccinated population.

There's no conceivable scenario where you get any significant fraction of the unvaccinated population dead.  And shame on you for hoping for that.

You slipped a decimal point there.  If you assume that the US has actually had twice the number of confirmed cases, that would be about 70 million cases.  622k deaths is a fatality rate of 0.89%.  Even if all 332 million of us actually have had covid (we haven't) that would still be about 0.2%

I haven't seen any reporting yet that the delta variant is definitely more deadly, just that it is ~2.3x as transmissible as the original version.

[billvon 2,379]

On 7/10/2021 at 4:41 PM, headoverheels said:

You slipped a decimal point there.  If you assume that the US has actually had twice the number of confirmed cases, that would be about 70 million cases.  622k deaths is a fatality rate of 0.89%.  Even if all 332 million of us actually have had covid (we haven't) that would still be about 0.2%

I'm not talking about fatality rate of the infected, I am talking about the fatality rate caused by COVID acting on the entire unvaccinated population for a year.  This takes into account the fatality rate per infection AND the rate of spread.  And that's (500K/330m) = .1%.  Those are the odds that any one person in the US, as an unvaccinated person taking an average amount of precautions, had of dying last year.

Now, if the Delta variant is 10x more infectious, that would translate into a 10x increase in fatalities across the population per year, all else being equal.  That would be 5 million people.  If you are just talking about the unvaccinated (which is ~50% of all republicans, and republicans very simplistically make up about half of the US) then that's 1.2 million people who would die.  That, in turn, is a tiny fraction of republicans.

Now, the Delta variant is not ten times as infectious.  It is significantly more infectious but not 10x.  In addition, the vaccinated will provide a small amount of herd immunity to the rest of the unvaccinated population.  So the numbers will be even smaller than my above estimates.

The above was not an attempt to accurately predict what will happen next.  It was in response to Kallend's pipe dream that lots of republicans will die, thus giving the party its just desserts and giving the democrats control for the forseeable future.  Not going to happen no matter how bad the Delta variant is, and no matter how resistant republicans are the to the vaccine.

[kallend 1,619]

The GOP cure:

Go ahead and defend them, Bill.

[wmw999 2,114]

OF COURSE it’s been deleted. 
Wendy P. 

[kallend 1,619]

1 hour ago, wmw999 said:

OF COURSE it’s been deleted. 
Wendy P. 

People actually voted for that moron.

[billvon 2,379]

11 hours ago, kallend said:

The GOP cure:

Go ahead and defend them, Bill.

WTF are you talking about? 

[kallend 1,619]

I see that those wonderful Republicans at CPAC cheered when a panelist mentioned that Biden's vaccination goal had not been met.

Meanwhile over 99% of COVID deaths are now among the unvaccinated.

The GOP has become a death cult willing to kill its own in order to own the Dems.