The LA Times reports on the latest outbreak of COVID-19 in California:
The Delta variant surge reached critical levels in parts of the Central Valley this week, with some hospitals overwhelmed by a crush of COVID-19 patients and Fresno County officials warning they might take drastic action if conditions continue to deteriorate.
....In a sign of how severe the crisis has become, Fresno County‘s health officer said Friday that hospitals may be forced to ration healthcare — choosing who receives lifesaving measures — because of dwindling resources.
I assume no one is in doubt about what's going on here, right? But just in case, here's a map of vaccination rates:
In Silicon Valley, 73% of residents have been vaccinated. In Tulare County it's 41%. To steal James Carville's old saw about Pennsylvania, California is San Francisco on one end, Los Angeles on the other, and Alabama everywhere else.
Better watch out there Kevin. Your Alabama dig is pretty insulting to voters in the center of the state, and you’ve told us repeatedly that we need to be less condescending and more conciliatory to conservative voters.
Even Kay Ivey uses Alabama as a slur.
I’ve been reading a little bit about George Wallace’s first run for governor and the road not taken. It really does seems to have been a crossroad for Alabama. Wallace offered a clear choice for a better future for all Alabamans. Things would be a lot better today if he’d won in 1958.
I remember writing a paper about George Wallace (my choice, I found him interesting since I knew some of his history) in high school. I was surprised to find someone who was much more moderate on racial issues that the caricature of the guy who said that he "...got out niggered and wouldn't be out niggered again". In 1958 he refused to be endorsed by the KKK and wouldn't embrace the more divisive aspects of the white racial backlash.
His personal tragedy was that he embraced such chicanery in his 1962 campaign, giving up his true beliefs by turning into a racial demagogue. In his later years he repented. He was a complex man and an interesting figure in American politics.
I agree. It was really an astonishing transformation to go from the candidate of the NAACP to “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” in a single electoral cycle.
I’ve often wondered whether it is more evil to be a racist or to be a non-racist at heart but to allow your all consuming ambition to do evil and promote the worst in people.
FDR wouldn't be outniggered either.
Sure. FDR totally opposed letting Marian Anderson sing at the Lincoln Memorial, but under the constitution there was nothing he could do to stop first lady Eleanor Roosevelt & Harold Ickes from organizing the concert. (S)
Didn't Spiro Agnew also follow that path?
Especially when the issue is all the Okies who fled to California in the 1930s.
You might find this to be interesting:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-mar-09-me-then9-story.html
Hell, Steinbeck wrote about this in The Grapes of Wrath. Couple that novel with Tortilla Curtain for a couple of great stories about the failure of the American Dream. Novels don't get much better than these two.
A group can be both victims and victimizers. The Okies were treated terribly back in Oklahoma, kicked off the land they had rented for decades and then blockaded when they attempted to find a new place to live in California. Eventually the Okies mostly settled in the Central Valley and influenced the culture there much as the great migration to Los Angeles in the late 1930s through today changed Los Angeles from a sleepy small town to the huge city it is today.
Merle Haggard was the villain of the story. Twice over.
My friend who lives there bc her Navy husband retired there is from the south, but she calls it "Aladambama."
Her daughter has continued to work through the pandemic & has known coworkers & customers who died of COVID-19- the whole family has been scrupulous about mask use, social distancing, & washing.
Few there seem as concerned as my friends.
And it does seem that many people who scoff at COVID-19 facts are the same people who have not only been insulting the rest if us, but risking our lives, as well as their own. I don't want them to die, but would like them to show some common sense & respect for everyone.
People might reconsider using Alabama as a slur if they repealed the provision of their state constitution that continues to require segregated schools.
Since voters rejected that in 2004 and 2012, they can’t really expect any respect from the rest of us.
Tulare County is 65% Latino, and 30% white. The citizen voters might be Republicans, but the vast majority of the area are either undocumented or temporary workers, and a huge chunk of them are among the unvaccinated.
I hope you have more to go on than just Latino=undocumented. Vast majority of Hispanics are citizens, and in that part of the country, many families were there before Americans took the land.
No, I'm going by Kevin's map, which shows that the area is red, and the demographics, which are 65% Latino who vote about 65% or higher Dem normally. So either a lot of Latinos are voting Republican, or a lot of Latinos can't vote. Or a lot of Latino citizens don't vote. But the middle one is the most likely.
The only saving grace is that the Valley doesn't have a population big enough to do any real damage electorally. And, if many are dying off there it will only be less relevant to CA as a whole.
You may not know but Kevin McCarthy is a rep for Bakersfield, the lower end of the valley. He will certainly lose many constituents. Not enough to get rid of him, sadly.
I was about to say -- the response to a substantial upswing in California MAGA Rona is to vote out Gavin Newsom & vote in Rona denialist Larry Elder.
👍👍👍
Probably not
Elder is a con man of the elite who mutters dialectical nonsense. That is the point I stress time after time. If Democrats actually had real populists/Leftists like Sam Watson or Marion Butler still in the party, the gig would be up for them.
As his predecessor in GQP Black friendship Herman Cain (RIP) would say, "Aw, shucky-ducky!"
T-shirt:
I'm wearing a mask
Because too many Republicans won't
Amen! Even with two Pfizer vaccines since April 8 - I wear my mask. Now I guess those MAGA hat wearers think their stupid hats fight off this virus.
Objection, use of "think" is unsupported by evidence.
That's cuz pfizer is the shittier version of Moderna.
It does appear that Moderna's higher dosage and longer interval (which is it, hard to tell) are paying dividends.
Western Penn is called Pennsatuckey.
Philly variant: Pennsyltucky, and it includes the entire "T", ie, all but Philly and (most of) its suburbs on one end and ditto Pitt on the other.
Let's give Alabama a break. At least their governor is trying - unlike certain Congressmen from Cali's farmlands. California's governor is also trying and for this the MAGA crowd wants to replace him?
No, she's not really trying. She made one well-publicized remark that a lot of the problem was the fault of the unvaccinated, but since then she has reverted to Confederate form with "over my dead body" -type nonsense about vaccination regulations. She's basically as bad as the rest of them.
And even we she made the comment, she has literally supported no measures that would have mitigated the rise of Covid-19 hospitalizations and in fact supported measures that are obstacles to that goal, such as banning businesses and schools from mandating vaccinations, meaning we have been at negative ICU beds for weeks.
No, she deserves no credit.
Drum, the stupid limo liberal. That area is heavily hispanic. It's education fool. Look at ultra red Nebraska vs ultra red Alabama. The difference is education.
Keep on spouting biased polls and dialectics.
Kevin Drum isn't a liberal. He's an Orange County Rockefeller Republican (so he votes Democrat since the OC GQP is otherwise Bobs Dornan all the way down).
The new Limousine Liberals are the Champagne Brocialists at Jacobin, theintercept, Chapo Craphouse, & Defector, et. al.
That's because yesterday's Rockefeller Republicans are today's radicalsocialistantifa liberals.
I’m old enough to remember when Republicans weren’t all a bunch of lunatics. Here in California we had a Republican Senator named Thomas Kuchel. Here’s a quote from him:
During the 1966 California gubernatorial primary, Kuchel was urged by moderates to run against conservative actor Ronald Reagan. Citing the hostilities of the growing conservative movement, Kuchel decided not to run. He instead issued a negative statement about the conservatives: "A fanatical neo-fascist political cult of right-wingers in the GOP, driven by a strange mixture of corrosive hatred and sickening fear that is recklessly determined to control our party or destroy it!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuchel
Kuchel was very popular state wide but he was primaried by (Mad) Max Rafferty who then lost the seat to Alan Cranston. The seat has been held by a Democrat since then.
Is Dianne Feinstein really a Democrat?
/jacobin mode off
Shorter Spadesofgrey: "No more buttered butter scones for me mater, I'm spouting about dialectics".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy6ph_tSPdU
First the la times story is, as you might expect, somewhat exaggerated and alarmist. No, covid is not "surging " in the central valley of CA. It was going up fast weeks ago and then peaked and is coming down fast now ( and should adjust for extra testing due to school reopening catching more cases) . The hospitalizations are peaking around now as that is after some delay after cases peak , but they will be starting down soon as cases have been dropping. In Fresno County, hospitalization just started leveling off a few days ago and icu usually follows a few days after. Icu looks to be peaking below 100% usage so should avoid any real disaster.
But I do notice one thing that is confusing. If you look at winter wave as compared to current wave in Fresno and some other places, you would expect hospitalizations, icu and deaths to be a lower share of cases because we are picking up a higher % age of infections and of course some are breakthrough cases . But icu and hospitalizations looking higher per case ( not yet deaths). Cannot explain that easily.
Icu usage peaking in Fresno at about the same % as winter peak, which males no sense as winter was far worse . Did they change the definitions?
Check the test positivity rate, and the test rate in general. A larger fraction of positive tests now represent serious cases, and more people who are asymptomatic or with mild symptoms aren't being counted as cases since they're forgoing tests.
But that was likely even more true in winter wave so does not explain that.
And what's going on around Reading and east?
my bad, "Redding and east?"
PA roots are showing...
It's all on fire. That's where the Dixie fire is.
That's the part of the Great Basin that leaks into California. There are few people there, and the ones who are there are libertarian ranchers and the like (think Bundy et al.).
Looks like case numbers may be plateauing and even dropping in more places now. Hospitalizations and deaths still going up. Some of those plateaus are at high levels. Still need a couple of weeks to see if grade schools and colleges starting up will lead to a bump up in cases. And Labor Day is probably still affecting the numbers....
Oh yeah, overall CA numbers now dropping. TX bouncing around low to mid 60's; FL is down a lot from the extremes highs (>110) and may be pausing in the mid 60's too, NY holding in the low 20's, PA and IL near 30 and still going up slowly, OH in mid 50's and rising, GA in mid upper 60's and maybe falling...
Actually looks like deaths too might be peaking and starting to drop. But like you said labor day makes it hard to tell so maybe just nearing peak. Of course that is for reported deaths. I would guess actual deaths per day have already peaked but will not see stats for a while.
On cases, another distortion is extra testing due to school reopening picking up more cases, especially kids. That depends on when they reopened ( south tends to reopen earlier, how much testing schools require and what they do after ( how often after).
Here in LA, found out they are continuing to test each week . Every student supposed to be tested each week. So any bias up is a one time permanent thing and trend in case change should no longer be affected.
I think that can be detected by looking at positivity--it seems to lead to more cases by lower positivity.
Oh, I dunno. FL finally reported something to the JHU system and they had a 25,000 7 day average, which is pretty epically bad. They haven't been reporting testing results so we don't really know the extent of spread. And their death numbers seem mighty fishy too: for some reason the peak on almost the same day as cases peaked.
I am just not sure that you can trust the numbers that Ron DeathSentence and his health department are reporting.
Shhhh.
Florida will sue and try to imprison you if you say their numbers don’t add up.
Rebekah Jones is literally worse than Nikolas Cruz.
And it is just not correct to say the central valley of CA is Alabama. They are quite different.
The minority population in Alabama is mostly African American and in Central valley it is heavily over 50% Hispanic. And many are very poor farm laborers with little education ( poorer and less educated than Alabama blacks).
And whites in central valley CA are different than Alabama whites too.
But does it being heavily Hispanic explain covid today re vaccination. I am not sure it does. Cannot find central valley stats but have been following la county.
And, at least in LA, Hispanics are NOT the problem today . They were in earlier waves and got hit hard. Today, Hispanics have higher natural immunity by far . And they are not lagging in vaccination. Adjusting for Hispanics being younger ( so less need to be vaccinated) and way more natural immunity ( less need to be vaccinated by far), I think Hispanics are doing BETTER than whites in vaccinations.
Not quite true. Whites in California are vaccinated to their total population level. Hispanics are 10% behind.
Why are younger people less in need of vaccination just because they get milder cases of COVID? They are still likely to spread the disease to others. Also, those who did get COVID get a certain level of natural immunity, but milder symptoms mean fewer antibodies, and natural immunity wears off just like vaccine induced immunity.
If we are going to turn COVID into something like the flu, the total case load has to go way down. Natural herd immunity requires getting enough people infected in a short enough time so that just about all of the survivors are immune. COVID doesn't spread fast enough given the relatively short life of natural immunity. Vaccinating everyone would give us a chance.
The alternative is to live with periods of mild infection alternating with periods of virulence, and we've seen how quickly COVID can ramp up. Unlike Ebola or the flu, it can spread before symptoms appear. Unless we pass laws requiring people to attend football games, dance parties, movie theaters and take summer vacations, the economy is going to tank when COVID flares up, and it is likely to flare up once or twice a year.
Yes, they are less in need for themselves. If anything, younger persons getting vaccinated might be more helpful than older for community spread ( because they are more active and have more contacts).
But I was trying to be fair in comparing vaccination rates across ethnic groups. Younger people have less of an incentive to get vaccinated than older as their risk is so low. Even if many did care about the community, it is reasonable to expect less vaccinations the younger the age group. Plus of course those under 12 cannot get vaccinated.
To fairly compare vaccination rates between Hispanics and non Hispanic whites, you have to take into account that a higher percentage are under 12 and of the others , they are quite younger.
But , even more, in places like California, where Hispanics had much higher infection rates prior to vaccine availability, their natural immunity was higher. Many more Hispanics than non Hispanics knew they already had covid . And there you know that vaccination will not be as needed BOTH for themselves and for the community.
And spades mentions education a lot . True that less educated get vaccinated less. And lower income has a correlation there too.
I am quite confident that , in California at least, if you could do a full regression analysis, being Hispanic would NOT be correlated with being less vaccinated as compared to Anglo whites . If you control for age, having had covid before, education and income, the disparity in vaccination would disappear. And, spades, it is a 9% absolute difference now not 10%. And dropping.
To the contrary, fairly sure that being black does correlate with being unvaccinated somewhat even after controlling for other things.
Talking with most Hispanics, they often are hostile to covid restrictions like masks but not vaccines . With blacks, the opposite.
And I still am disappointed with many liberals reactions re the increasing evidence of solid natural immunity being better than vaccine.
Seems like the supposed party of science just refuses to consider the evidence when it contradicts what is their new tribal belief. And why so wed to the idea that you have to downplay natural immunity. That does not really greatly reduce the case for getting vaccinated anyway.
And so far looks like natural immunity holds up reasonably well over time. Yes, it does decline over time as that almost always happens somewhat. But the Isreali study showed natural immunity was 13 times better at preventing infection than the vaccine when comparing recent for both but still 6 times better comparing recent vaccine to older natural immunity. Even if final numbers come out a bit lower, pretty good.
And let me point out one thing many miss. Our estimates of how good vaccine immunity is itself comes from comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated largely, right? But both groups have some who have natural immunity anyway. And natural immunity will of course boost immunity more in someone unvaccinated than vaccinated. Plus certain that a higher percentage of unvaccinated have been infected.
This means that the vaccine effectiveness is being underestimated due to this factor and the bias is getting greater and greater as more unvaccinated get infected .
Consider if reality was that vaccinated have 10 times less chance of being infected if never had covid and 4 times less if have had covid . Let's say during period x the chance of being infected is 40% if no immunity, 4% if vaccinated with no natural immunity , 1% if unvaccinated and had covid and. 25% if double immune. I actually think these might be fair relative %ages ( note giving natural a 4 to 1 advantage which is my best estimate from real world numbers).
Now say you compare 100,000 unvaccinated with same number vaccinated. Of 100,000 unvaccinated 20,000 have also had covid so cases are 80,000 * 4% or 3200 plus 20,000 * .25% or 50 = 3250. For unvaccinated, 90,000 of 100,000 had covid . So cases are 10,000 * 40% or 4000 plus 10,000 * 1% or 100 = 4100.
Well, my God, disaster, looks like vaccine barely works at all - only reduces cases from 4100 to 3250. Except not reality- vaccine reduced cases by 4 or 10 times depending
.that was just hidden because natural immunity works so well and was more a factor with unvaccinated.
It frustrates me that nobody seems to be making this point. That the comparisons might be significantly underestimating the value of the vaccine. Because you insist on ignoring natural immunity
.
And I still am disappointed with many liberals reactions re the increasing evidence of solid natural immunity being better than vaccine.
Seems like the supposed party of science just refuses to consider the evidence when it contradicts what is their new tribal belief. And why so wed to the idea that you have to downplay natural immunity. That does not really greatly reduce the case for getting vaccinated anyway.
And so far looks like natural immunity holds up reasonably well over time. Yes, it does decline over time as that almost always happens somewhat. But the Isreali study showed natural immunity was 13 times better at preventing infection than the vaccine when comparing recent for both but still 6 times better comparing recent vaccine to older natural immunity. Even if final numbers come out a bit lower, pretty good.
And let me point out one thing many miss. Our estimates of how good vaccine immunity is itself comes from comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated largely, right? But both groups have some who have natural immunity anyway. And natural immunity will of course boost immunity more in someone unvaccinated than vaccinated. Plus certain that a higher percentage of unvaccinated have been infected.
This means that the vaccine effectiveness is being underestimated due to this factor and the bias is getting greater and greater as more unvaccinated get infected .
Consider if reality was that vaccinated have 10 times less chance of being infected if never had covid and 4 times less if have had covid . Let's say during period x the chance of being infected is 40% if no immunity, 4% if vaccinated with no natural immunity , 1% if unvaccinated and had covid and. 25% if double immune. I actually think these might be fair relative %ages ( note giving natural a 4 to 1 advantage which is my best estimate from real world numbers).
Now say you compare 100,000 unvaccinated with same number vaccinated. Of 100,000 unvaccinated 20,000 have also had covid so cases are 80,000 * 4% or 3200 plus 20,000 * .25% or 50 = 3250. For unvaccinated, 90,000 of 100,000 had covid . So cases are 10,000 * 40% or 4000 plus 10,000 * 1% or 100 = 4100.
Well, my God, disaster, looks like vaccine barely works at all - only reduces cases from 4100 to 3250. Except not reality- vaccine reduced cases by 4 or 10 times depending
.that was just hidden because natural immunity works so well and was more a factor with unvaccinated.
It frustrates me that nobody seems to be making this point. That the comparisons might be significantly underestimating the value of the vaccine. Because you insist on ignoring natural immunity
.
There is though still the small matter of the “cost/consequences” involved in obtaining said “natural immunity” versus via vaccination.
There is no SOLID information indicating the natural immunity is stronger or better than vaccine immunity
Why is Israel pushing 3rd shots?
You also said thsi:
"And natural immunity will of course boost immunity more in someone unvaccinated than vaccinated. Plus certain that a higher percentage of unvaccinated have been infected."
Prove it. The Israelis haven't sent out clear indications that this is the case
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628471/highly-vaccinated-israel-is-seeing-a-dramatic-surge-in-new-covid-cases-heres-why
{snip}
2. The delta variant broke through the vaccine's waning protection.
It was a perfect storm: The vaccine's waning protection came around the same time the more infectious delta variant arrived in Israel******* this summer*******. Delta accounts for nearly all infections in Israel today.
"The most influential event was so many people who went abroad in the summer — vacations — and brought the delta variant very, very quickly to Israel," said Siegal Sadetzki, a former public health director in Israel's Health Ministry.
{snip}
Also this:
The country jumped out ahead of all other countries on vaccines, and 78% of eligible Israelis over 12 years old are vaccinated.
But Israel has a young population, with many under the eligible age for vaccination, and about 1.1 million eligible Israelis, largely between the ages of 12 and 20, have declined to take even one dose of the vaccine.
That means only 58% of Israel's total citizenry is fully vaccinated. Experts say that's not nearly high enough.
{snip}
Israel does a great job with stats but publish nothing that indicates their younger population had asymptomatic or mild cases in great abundance PRIOR to this summer when the more infection Delta variant took hold.
We based everything we knew on Alpha Beta variants and kids just didn't get it - OR - the MOST LIKELY event was we didn't test them enough to determine if they had it and therefore had natural immunity from later rounds.
Delta changed the game and future variants will do the same until we get enough people vaccinated world wide and all within a shorter time frame
But there is NO INDICATION yet that natural immunity is as you put if FAR BETTER than vaccines.
In a Aug 6, 2021 CDC report, they posted this about some new research: "Among Kentucky residents infected with SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, vaccination status of those reinfected during May–June 2021 was compared with that of residents who were not reinfected. In this case-control study, being unvaccinated was associated with 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with being fully vaccinated."
I think many people downplay natural immunity because many on the right see it as a substitute for a vaccine. So just skip the vaccine. Most don't realize it really just means perhaps you could delay getting it. But the CDC doesn't want to suggest delays since we already have a crisis of vaccine hesitancy.
Below the line is what the CDC website officially recommends.
*************
Yes, you should be vaccinated regardless of whether you already had COVID-19 because:
- Research has not yet shown how long you are protected from getting COVID-19 again after you recover from COVID-19.
- Vaccination helps protect you even if you’ve already had COVID-19.
Evidence is emerging that people get better protection by being fully vaccinated compared with having had COVID-19. One study showed that unvaccinated people who already had COVID-19 are more than 2 times as likely than fully vaccinated people to get COVID-19 again.
If you were treated for COVID-19 with monoclonal antibodies or convalescent plasma, you should wait 90 days before getting a COVID-19 vaccine. Talk to your doctor if you are unsure what treatments you received or if you have more questions about getting a COVID-19 vaccine.
Biden beat Trump in Fresno County, so not exactly Alabama.
Just drove down I-5 from San Francisco to LA. Many signs on the Freeway supporting the recall and supporting Larry Elder. My feeling is that Elder, who is Black, let’s Republicans claim they aren’t racist. Elder, in case you don’t know, says slave owners should have gotten reparations when their slaves were freed.
Larry Elder is just a man who knows his value.
If a slaveholder had a Larry Elder working the land, he would deserve a lot of coin to give him up.
(Also, beware the campaign sign phallusy: if true, Peggy Noonan would have enjoyed eight years of Rmoney in the White House.)
Eight years of sucking on Romney's toes.
+1 brown leather shoe dangling languorously off a presidential foot
The other signs you see a lot of are ones indicating the water shortage is false and that all that is needed is for more dams to be built. Ironic since part of my drive passes a reservoir that is currently at 12% of capacity.
Checked some numbers from Covid Act Now.
Alabama state is at 51% having had at least one dose of vaccine.
There are indeed some big counties in California that are in the neighborhood of 51% having had at least one dose:
55% Riverside
55% Fresno
51% San Bernardino
47% Kern
Just these four counties amount to a population of more then six million, which is more than Alabama's total population of around five million. So it's not just a few little fringe counties. It's a comparable number of people in a comparably-sized region.
I should have noted that these are not all Central Valley, or "red counties" if you go by presidential vote. But redder than the coast, might be fair to say.
Hell, you didn't even look at the counties that want to be part of the free state of Jefferson (or is that Jackson?) up in the northern tier.
Yeah, Kevin’s little red bubble is a problem. And I thought he lived in California. This post reads like he’s an East Coaster who has never been here.
Yeah, I know. The list I looked at only had the highest-population 100 counties in the United States, but I thought I'd find enough vaccination laggards in there to be interesting. California's northern bunch don't pack as many people in.
Come on, Kevin, surely you can do better than that oblong red circle that includes Sacramento County - a relatively blue county. California actually has two red zones. The inland area between Sacramento and the Tehachapis and the inland area north of Sacramento to the Oregon border.
Yet LA still seems to trail the SF area on vaccination… no, not as badly as the Central Valley but still noticeably.
Yes.
But somehow los angeles metro has just a few more cases than sf metro and has been coming down faster recently. And I am not sure that sf metro really has fewer cases- numbers in some counties there jump around a lot and have just had a few impossibly low days for cases.
And San Diego metro is even further ahead in vaccination than sf metro but their cases are higher than Los Angeles.
Cases and spread rate just do not correlate that directly with vaccination rate. You also have to look at natural immunity . At this point , I think true total immunity is a bit higher in Los Angeles metro as compared to sf metro. Sf does have better compliance with restrictions which leaves them probably around even overall for net R.
Kevin did cherry pick out central valley for comparison with vaccination. Looking all over , the vaccination correlation is not as clear. I would note that right now central valley has a weather disadvantage as most of sf and LA areas are less hot and thus people can ventilate easier. Actually central valley has weather disadvantage pretty much year round .
You ever get caught in a tule fog? Ugh.
Yeah, that was what I was talking about . In the summer, stay indoors due to heat. In winter due to smoggy fog . And , if near kettleman city, all year round due to the stink of cattle. Anyone who drives the I 5 knows what I mean there.
But I do exaggerate. I actually like Fresno somewhat as a city.
OT: Am I the only one who was expecting news about Hopper today? How's she doing?
Excellent question! Lot's of us folks out here want to know if Hopper gets to keep all of her tail.
Doings Coloradan and elsewhere: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/09/12/health/us-coronavirus-sunday/index.html
The issue in the Central Valley is two main groups: right-wing ranchers who believe not dying of Covid is what Nancy Pelosi would want, so they're going to pwn the libs by slowly dying in an ICU of Covid if that's what it takes. The other is (mostly undocumented) Latino laborers, many of whom listen to a lot of the horseshit about vaccines being peddled in their churches, and/or are scared of signing up for anything government-related, including vaccines, lest they end up on ICE's radar screen or something. Between those two groups, you're not going to get a lot of vaccination.
While I think you have identified the two groups in the central valley that might be driving down vaccination disproportionately as compared to coastal California, there are of course a sizable group found everywhere. Which are the young people who feel their covid risk is low enough that the need to get vaccinated is minimal personally. And either do not care about the community or just have not thought about that aspect ( yes they do exist). There are some of them everywhere - liberal and conservative .
But your presumed motivation is ridiculous. I hope you are not so deluded as to really believe that some conservatives are deliberately taking a risk of dying just to own liberals. That just does not exist .
And, if you do think that , you are much more beyond reality than those who do not believe vaccines work .
Nope, it exists. Most Ranchers are government contractors anyways. Should have been bankrupt years ago without government support. Vaccination rates in suburbs has stopped growing as much. There you have people influenced by "traditional" left wing anti-vax beliefs.
You think that there are conservatives who knowingly risk their lives and the lives of their family and friends so they can " own" liberals? That is such complete crap and anyone who thinks that obviously has no concept of how someone who does not agree with them thinks.
You say then they are innocent of knowledge?
They have not eaten that bitter fruit and cannot be held accountable?
To blame them is to insult who they are as people?
Like they're an ethnic group of stupid?
Well, I think you're on to something.
I am not saying that you cannot blame them.
There are things you could say re ascribing motives to which I would disagree but not say are just deluded.
For example , some have said that young conservatives are just being selfish as they think that getting the vaccine is not worth it because they knowingly do not care about others. That position is mostly incorrect, although there certainly are some such conservatives and liberals too ( I might guess more such liberals but rather not get into that argument- really that selfish motivation has little to do with politics ). But it is not bat shit insane.
Thinking that there are any sizable number of people who are knowingly endangering their own life and the lives of their family and friends to " own" the liberals is so ridiculous that it really says more about the person who can believe that .
The vaccine resistors who come to it due to right wing political beliefs are , from what I can see,
A) some due to a belief that vaccines do not work and/ or that covid itself is mostly fake
Why they believe that is often due to just general distrust of the liberals in govt and how they have used covid to advance liberal goals
B) there is some religious that simply believe it is God's will whether they get covid and just best to leave it up to God.
C) there are some that are just general conspiracy kooks . And some from what I have seen are not solidly right wing or left. They drift between left and right based on what is the trendy conspiracy theory. Some were also all into being 9/11 truthers and Bush planned it.
While you can break down their imagined rationales along those lines is certainly, but almost the whole motivating force of conservative political appeal on any topic is the harm that can be inflicted by the force of insisting on doing nothing.
e.g. 'pwning the libs'.
When nothing can't be done they think they're being subjected to tyranny or somebody else's selfishness.
So, yes, they will subject themselves and everyone else to almost any spectacle of themselves acting out to 'prove' one crazy thing or another in the interest of furthering the only conversation they will actually have with anyone else, which is fuck you.
Everything we have ever heard from any conservative politician in any situation for at least the past thirty years, and probably a lot longer, can be summarized in it's entirely by those two words in that order.
Though I will admit there will sometimes be an abnormal circumstance, as often as about once a year, where that won't be literally the case, and which will more often than not be roundly denounced by other conservatives.
One of the problems we are having here is that we are basing vaccine efficacy on ALL cases going back to the start of the pandemic
Delta changed the pandemic itself
We were so caught up in A & B variants that we designed and manufactured the vaccines based on those variants and measured their effectiveness by the people MOST affected by those versions of the virus which were older folks with related health issues
Israel has a younger population than we do. They also use fewer different vaccines than we do (or the UK for that matter)
We didn't test everybody when A&B were around. We tested only when suspicious of an infection or when exposed to someone who "may" have tested positive.
Delta changed the narrative and incorporated a whole NEW section of our species in the target zone - younger folks
Delta also changed the effectiveness of ALL Vaccines due to it's very nature - but thats what we had - the AB vaccine that happened to work, but not as well against DELTA and the studies on that are STILL inconclusive because in some case, like Israels Delta only took off in late spring early summer of THIS year
We know who got vaccinated through records
We know, although not reliably enough who got tested.
What we don't know is who got sick with a mild case of A OR B or even Delta who never tested - and THAT is the key to determining how effective natural immunity would be compared to vaccines
Think of each wave a separate disease
Delta overwhelmed everything but if its a disease of the unvaccinated then anyone in THAT group that had A or B and got Delta is a break through case against natural immunity but they can't be counted because we just don't know.
We do know that the vaccines are preventing serious illness and death
We can twist numbers to facilitate a pro or anti vaccine side but its a twisted argument at best
We didn't test - especially those who were LEAST affected by A & B. We now know that the vaccines developed for A& B are not good enough but we have the records of those that DID test and DID get the vaccines
We don't know who had, or has natural immunity if they never tested
The problem, of course, is that we have the national economy, healthcare system, etc. of an actual nation, but the mindlessness of right-wing county and state governments acting like meth junkies on a spending spree.
If we weren't all enabling right-wing states and counties with federal aid, they would have collapsed into the failed states they are, long ago.
Again, this post is a waste. Right wing this, right wing that. You see your problem?. It's just dialectical nonsense. Your saying nothing. You don't break down the politics, unilaterally make assumptions. Your a failure at analysis.
2/3's of all adults are vaccinated. 70%+ of all white adults . Raw numbers show Republicans higher vaxxed then Democrats. White Democrats are modestly higher vaxxed than white Republicans. The adult rate of vaccination in adults via Europe and the US is either worse, the same, or better.
As "Rational" has explained 5 million times to you, natural immunity is a better controller of spread than vaccinations. But vaccines have value as a prepper and it does reduce spread somewhat. Why he complains by liberal media bias against this science, most Dem Govs have gotten the message.
Raw numbers show more Republicans vaxxed than Democrats?
How inane.
Stopped reading at this breathtaking ludicrous statement.
I would say that what spades says there is not clearly 100% false. You cannot prove that vaccination rate in democrats is higher than Republicans. Because we have no such hard data . There is a very small possibility that Republicans are more vaccinated than democrats. But I would say extremely small.
Spades I think is basing his idea on something he thinks he knows about the vaccination rates of white Republicans vs democrats ( he concedes democrats are somewhat higher among whites) and then adding in minorities for which we have hard data to come out with final result . But I have no idea where spades can be getting any actual data or facts showing democrat vs republican vaccinations in whites . There is no such data to my knowledge. Plus, even if you had that , you also need to know how to split each minority re vaccination rate by party ( cannot just assume all minorities are democrats).
I think I can get to an estimate of higher vaccination rate among Republicans, just barely, by using starting assumptions on the most generous but possible side for Republicans at every step.
Spades, you have said this many times but never explained what you are basing it on. Can you actually provide what facts and analysis support your conclusion? Does it have to do with age ?
I would agree that the common assumption here that polls accurately show the difference is wrong. They clearly overstate it. But I do think there is still a difference in the democrats favor. Note that some of these same polls show blacks at or higher than whites. And that we know is wrong.
I might add that one thing spades said is absolutely 100% undeniably true .
Yes, the adult rate of vaccinations in Europe vs. Usa is either worse, the same or better . It has to be one of those as they are the only options. I assume you were trying to make some point but not sure what it was.
This is like Matt Bruenig explaining that over half of El Jefe's 2016 support was from women & minorities (46% of his vote was white women & 7% was racial minorities of any gender presentation).
'To steal James Carville's old saw about Pennsylvania, California is San Francisco on one end, Los Angeles on the other, and Alabama everywhere else.'
The sad part is, that this applies to most states now. Do you really think that rural counties in New York are dominated by liberals?
We have an urban vs. rural divide, and guess who doesn't control the majority, but seems to control many of the states?
Looking at the vaccination map, rural ny is among the most vaxxed low density areas in the us. Once again, look at Education.
There’s a reason Trump and the GQP love the poorly educated. They and their trash-spewing right-wing media supporters make hundreds if millions from scamming them.
It's absolutely true that the American system of apportioning political representation (and power) mainly on the basis of land mass or artificial political constructs like counties disenfranchises the majority of the people and artificially empowers a small, rural minority. And yet, the Democratic Party is simply genetically incapable of changing that system in any way that would empower the party's voters, who also happen to constitute significant majorities in every election in this century and nearly every election in the later half of the 20th century.
That's the fundamental and most elemental problem of contemporary politics and it's something that has absolutely nothing to do with Trump or the awfulness of the contemporary Republican Party.
It's hard to abolish the electoral college. Many people don't realize this almost happened around 1970 (see link). But now Republican completely oppose this because they know it will cause them to lose elections. They go on and on about how brilliant the Constitution is for establishing the electoral college. But if it was Republicans losing elections because of it, they would be all for abolishing it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_abolition_amendment
It would be difficult to abolish the Electoral College but less difficult to blunt some of its negative effects. Just as it is within easy grasp for the Democrats to begin a campaign against gerrymandering and passing legislation to force states to apportion representation more on the basis of population instead of through land mass.
The anti-democratic effects of the Senate could be reduced by making PR and DC states. There's lots of things that could be done but the Democrats are doing exactly none of them.
Nope. PR is run by Republicans. DC was never intended to be a state. Your point is a waste and irrelevant. Campaign like Obama did to swing voters. They are the key.
I will respond to the three posts above from rick, vog, and progress
1) of course there are cost and consequences re getting covid instead of being vaccinated. But it is not necessarily an either or due to breakthrough.
One way to look at it is that vaccination reduces the cost and consequences for when you get infected. It is likely covid becomes endemic and also seems that vaccines do not reduce chance of infection enough so chance of avoiding infection forever through vaccination is small. Pretty much everyone may need to get the stronger natural immunity for real long term protection and to get to long term herd immunity. But vaccinations are still very valuable in making that inevitable infection a mild one.
And all this really has nothing to do with my point that denial of natural immunity is just wrong and unscientific.
2) yes, some on the right do talk about natural immunity as a substitute for vaccine immunity so why get the vaccine. Which misses the point that vaccination greatly reduces the chance of illness. But say for a young person who is fearful of the vaccine ( rightly or wrongly ) but thinks there covid risk if infected is miniscule ( rightly), what if they could deliberately get infected and then be forced to quarantine in a covid hotel? Honestly, I would be satisfied with that for community risk as natural immunity breakthroughs seem rare . If they want to really substitute getting covid for a vaccine, bad personal choice but their choice - as long as reasonably protecting the community.
But what you seem to be saying is that liberals are justified being stupidly unscientific in one way because conservatives are making a misjudgement the opposite way? Then maybe conservatives are justified in refusing vaccines because liberals deny natural immunity.
Stop the games. It is all the lying and misleading to try to get people to behave the way they want that resulted in such deserved mistrust so that many believe no evidence on the subject.
And are you saying that all the comments denying natural immunity here are just a knowingly false response in reaction to conservatives?
3)vog,
Can I PROVE that natural immunity boosts immunity more in unvaccinated than vaccinated? Maybe not absolute proof, but do you really disagree with this ? To disagree seems to be saying that vaccines do not work. Natural immunity cannot boost immunity as much in vaccinated as they already have vaccine immunity which is still pretty good - not as much more to go.
You seem to just react unthinkingly to everything screaming no no without thinking of the point I am making . This point is not comparing natural to vaccine immunity. It is comparing how much natural immunity increase immunity in those unvaccinated ( from zero base ) vs. Those vaccinated ( from base vaccine immunity). Not sure why you would disagree with that.
4) why is Israel going with boosters? Because vaccines with two shot were just not effective enough in stopping covid and they do not want to let natural immunity by infection in unvaccinated substitute. And also concerned with waning vaccine protection for illness if a breakthrough.
It is not a case of choosing between whether vaccines are worthwhile and whether natural immunity is even better. Best is BOTH.
5) progress,
That Kentucky study is being misrepresented in a serious way , including by the cdc perhaps deliberately. It was not comparing rates in those with only natural immunity vs. Those with only vaccine . It looked at those who were previously infected and either were also vaccinated ( double immunity) vs. Unvaccinated ( natural only ).
So vaccine did boost natural immunity even further. I think but not sure this was vaccination after being infected and not the reverse but expect result would be the same ( I hope as then vaccine breakthroughs are boosting immunity too).
This was an important result showing that vaccination does help even after infection. So still useful to be vaccinated afteer infection. And, to me, the 2.34 times factor would indicate it was more than just restoring natural immunity to its peak after waning.
But it is being misrepresented by the natural immunity deniers as meaning that vaccine immunity is better than natural. Shame on the cdc for this unless they are just stupid.
6) and nobody is responding to my example and point that the evidence that natural immunity works well and even better than vaccine means that we are actually underestimating the effectiveness of the vaccine !
I think the vaccine is working better then it seems just comparing current rates in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated .
This is the answer to
'Who was the most traumatized cat in the world?'
https://twitter.com/DannyWQAM/status/1436835559264202759
Nazi comedy,
https://i.redd.it/hub8xohnr5n71.jpg
RT-
"Maybe not absolute proof"
"To disagree seems to be saying"
"Honestly, I would be satisfied with that for community risk as natural immunity breakthroughs ****seem rare*** ."
See the problem?
By NOT KNOWING who had covid in A&B rounds we can not even come close to determining how effective natural immunity is.
We can determine how effective vaccines were by checking records
We know the vaccines were effective for the A& B rounds of COVID. WE know they were nowhere near as effective against Delta
So we have two different things going on here. Round A&B were targeting older folks and those with poor health. We developed vaccines for THEM.
Delta came along and the vaccines did not perform as well down as low as 65% against Delta - depending on WHICH vaccine was used. Israel tended to use the vaccine that was most available. The UK study considered ALL vaccines and they came up with something different - a much higher immunity provided by vaccines in general.
But because we didn't test at first we are relegated to "maybe's" - "seems" and "seem rare" NOW to make the case about natural immunity.
That's not science - you are twisting insufficient facts to make a point
THATs what I have a problem with
To clarify
We can measure, fairly accurately how good a vaccine is against a PARTICULAR variant of COVID. Both A & B variants had several common traits so the vaccines developed were effective against both variants. Depending on the studies it ranged from 86% to 97%.
Delta, due to it's very nature posed a different virus - BUT - since the vaccines were already being manufactured they kept making those vaccines IN THE HOPES that it would work against Delta. They DID work but the effectiveness of ALL the vaccines taken as a group was lower than their effectiveness against A&B.
Why are we NOT developing a variant specific vaccine against Delta? The CEO of Pfizer said they could tweak a vaccine to be variant specific and have it in mass production within 90 to 120 days. What is the status of the new vaccine?
CNBC indicated recently that NO ONE wanted to throw out current stocks of vaccines which is why they have not manufactured them.
I am registered as non-affiliated. I am white and a male. I don't give a DAMN if you are a republican, democrat, black, white nor do I care what your ancestry looks like. I DO understand that some, SOME religions get very upset about the "intrusion" of vaccines in their perceived "natural order" of things or of them being protected by their supreme being. In the past this group has accounted for a minuscule percentage of the population.
This viruse can be caught and dealt with by people who might not even know they had it - but they can still spread it. THIS is what makes dealing with it so hard. It is no longer a personal choice because YOU can be affecting others - totally without your knowledge.
Because you can be a carrier w/o getting ill you probably never had the urge or need to get tested. Good for you
But Delta is far different than the disease you MAY have carried before - so you may get it. So, once your body detects it - it started producing antibodies. Once you produce antibodies you can no longer determine if these are new, or existing antibodies.
We can only measure what we know. We know who got vaccinated. We know what vaccines were used. We can measure break through cases AGAINST each individual vaccine.
Anything else is an estimate, a guess, a "what can I do to justify my position on vaccines versus natural immunity argument' type thing.
The vaccine of choice in Israel seemed to have been the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine.
Israels studies have been geared towards that vaccine in particular because it is the one predominantly used in that country. We are finding out that each vaccine is a little different and that the date of rollout and first use is critical in the subsequent studies. Pfizer was FIRST, and therefore used primarily in Nursing homes and those with other complications
https://news.yahoo.com/data-emerge-showing-more-differences-090042596.html
[snip}
Pfizer was the first vaccine authorized for use in the U.S. and began being administered several weeks before the Moderna vaccine.
"Because of the way the rollouts happened, the oldest and most vulnerable and sickest people, like nursing home residents, got Pfizer," said Cornell virologist John Moore.
That means it's possible that some of the effectiveness gap showing up in some studies is a result of Pfizer being administered earlier and in more vulnerable populations.
However, the large CDC study that found a significant difference in the vaccines' effectiveness found that Moderna's was higher across all ages
{snip}
Because it was first in use and the primary vaccine in Israel we have to take their studies for break throughs for effectiveness etc with a grain of salt. The UK study included a more robust sampling of vaccines. The Israeli situation is understood by the article I referenced above:
{snip}
There's a lot more data — particularly from other countries, like Israel — on Pfizer's waning effectiveness, and the effect of booster shots on restoring effectiveness to original levels.
But if that data isn't applicable to Moderna, regulators may not yet have much data to work with when making booster decisions — a process that is already highly controversial.
"We won't know the real Moderna-specific data for some time now, about restoring effectiveness and how durable that is," said Eric Topol, executive vice president of Scripps Research.
Topol said there have been signs Moderna's effectiveness wanes over time to some degree. "It just may be longer and it may be less," Topol added.
{snip}
Clearly NONE of us knows what is going on and confirmation bias is very strong for everyone.