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10 thoughts on “Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: July 8 Update”

    1. Mitch Guthman

      I know you’re being sarcastic but it does seem to me that the Biden administration has chosen to ignore the obvious consequences of a laissez-faire attitude towards vaccination, mask wearing, and vaccine passports. The idea seems to be that it’s impossible to impose upon people in red states or people who are MAGA nuts so we just sort of muddle through and hope that people will do the right thing on their own.

      The messages are mixed and confusing. The vaccines are simultaneously effective and vaccinated people aren’t contagious. But vaccinated people should wear masks anyway. The people who are resisting mask wearing and the vaccines can be trusted to continue wearing masks. Vaccine passports are bad because they would embarrass and discriminate against people who are neither vaccinated nor wearing a mask. And so on.

      1. golack

        Have Obama tour red states telling them he doesn't want them to wear masks or get vaccinated. That would slow the spread of Covid and increase vaccination rates.

        1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

          Reverse psychology. Like J.D. Vance deleting his pro-MAGA tweets as a show of love to El Jefe.

  2. golack

    4th of July holiday still skewing numbers a bit, but....they are going up, albeit slower overall than early outbreaks, but still fast in certain hot spots.
    Biden has set up rapid response teams to help with outbreaks, and the MO governor asked for help. Then tweets out utter nonsense. Apparently setting up mobile vaccination clinics and offering in home service, i.e. make it easier for people to get vaccinated, is now wrongly being labelled as forced vaccination. Truly bizarre.....

    1. rational thought

      Yes, 4th of july makes any sort of conclusions for short term trends dubious until we get further away from it.

      What happens is you have an artificial decline right during and after the holiday and then an artificial increase when the reporting backlog is made up, which can take weeks.

      Look at the chart for early june. Last time we had a brief spike up and was right after memorial day. And I expect the skew to be a bit larger for the 4th.

      We also had a new juneteenth holiday pop up last minute, before some entities could adjust. Have no clue re that.

      Note that the death reporting should not be changed long term by holidays. But case counts might not ever fully catch up as there the issue is not just delayed reporting of positive tests, but less tests themselves catching real cases.

  4. Justin

    At this point only republicans are dying. Yippee! Missed this one, though.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/florida-republican-james-ring-covid_n_60e77808e4b0b9a790b70f84

    A Florida Republican official has urged people to get vaccinated and wear masks after he got badly sick with COVID-19 last month and feared he “wasn’t going to make it out of the hospital alive.” James Ring, president of the Republican Party of Lakeland, Florida, said he had grown complacent about remembering to wear a mask and hadn’t gotten around to getting vaccinated yet.

    Really now…. I don’t care. He’s the enemy. Wish the outcome were different.

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