So, I have been trying to preach to not be hateful about the rubes and marks who are falling prey to propagandist techniques... be hateful about the hucksters, grifters, and political opportunists who are feeding them.

If so, then...

Bob Enyart, a conservative radio host, has died from COVID.

Enyart recently sued Colorado over the state's mask mandate and more recently encouraged his listeners to not get vaccinated.https://t.co/bCvcKtPR6R

— Travis Akers (@travisakers) September 14, 2021

...this is schadenfreude guy.

What’s the old joke about a priest on a church roof during a flood.

So as I was walking to work this morning, I was noticing how we were just starting to see signs of Fall.

And now I have a very slight scratchy throat. And very slight puffy eyes. And any other year, I'd think "Oh, yeah, change of season allergies."

But now I have to think "Is this a very mild breakthrough case? Is it really worth trying to get tested? I guess I should at least take my temperature?"

So fucking exhausting.

Yep. Every cough, you self-analyse a bit. My allergies are definitely kicking in.

I really don't want to hear anything more about Nicki Minaj's cousins balls.

To clarify:

Nicki Minaj's cousin's friend's balls.

Oh! Well carry on then.

Once you have hit the Nicki Minaj's cousins friends balls part of the simulation I think it is time to start a new game.

There today, too, with what feels like normal cold symptoms. Getting a swab tomorrow morning. Then pacing.

This is no joke. My brother-in-law's half-sister's nephew got the vaccine and look at him now. Do your research people. pic.twitter.com/6VvcKN7TVi

— Karen Kish 🌱🐝🌏 (@asclepiasyriaca) September 15, 2021

The mixture of disgust and hilarity in the family group chats regarding Nicki Minaj has been stunning.

Why even bother with the bike?

Don't understand why its so hard to just say you either get vaccinated or you can't work a job where you are in close contact with the public.

Religious exemption requests surge, including thousands within the LAPD, as vaccine mandates rise | KTLA

pic.twitter.com/wlFWFwt5pL

— Conspiracy Bullshit (@ConspiracyBull1) September 14, 2021

So I had my first confrontation over masks today while I was at Walmart. I let an older man go by me and he said "God Bless you for wearing your mask" :)

Let them eat cake... and... drink their own piss? Well, whatever!

Please let this be the next thing they resort to...

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has issued their vaccine exemption letter, which religiously exempts people from working near the unvaccinated:
Vaccine exemption letters « Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

I swear, between the Satanists and the Pastafarians... (insert "are we the baddies" gif)

SI

Of course I just saw a bumper for a Sinclair show "investigating" if COVID death statistics have been exaggerated. "None of the death certificates had COVID on them."

I’m sure you all know, but The Sunday Sport is a low-brow The Onion. I guess it could be appropriated in other countries, but if you know the Sunday Sport, you know every article is a piss take.

Link is most definitely NSFW!

15 of the best, funniest and most outrageous Sunday Sport headlines (NSFW) - Daily Star

Edit - TBH I didn’t know the Sport was still going - I thought it died a death years ago. But made me look at some of the classic (more SFW) headlines!
Sunday Sport - Classic Headlines | Flickr

Could you have let me know sooner? I've been drinking my own piss all week!

Same thing happened to Kevin Costner in Water World.

So, if Putin himself reports dozens of covid cases within his inner circle he's just preparing cover to murder some folks, right?

And did you get COVID this week? If not, it worked!

FYI.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/17/healt...udy/index.html

That fits with what we've suspected for a while now. It's likely also why the Moderna had a nastier side effect profile than Pfizer

SI

Pleasantly surprising, at least to me, poll showing Americans are basically split on whether booster shots for Americans or getting vaccines out to other countries around the world first are more important.

I want to know quantities that we have at hand first, plans for a worse case (e.g. a Mu, Sigma, Theta etc. variant), and if we have 2022 orders already booked.

But yeah, other than for <12 and some exceptions, the unvaccinated are doing that by "educated" choice, I rather give a large % of excess to the world.

Poll: 73 percent of vaccinated Americans would take COVID vaccine boosters
FWIW, can't find the chart but supports what below Aug 3 article says. The US is #1 in donations for vaccines and $.

The chart showed China far behind which I remember being curious. I'd assume China was pumping it out and donating heavily around their "silk road" countries. Recent article said China has administered 2.15B doses of their home grown stuff which implies most of their pop is already vaccinated.

Article on 5 countries pivoting to "living with Covid"

1) Denmark
2) Singapore
3) Thailand
4) South Africa
5) Chile

Denmark, Singapore, Chile have high vaccination rates. Thailand seems to be doing it out of desperation (and hence, good odds it will backfire) and no vaccination rate reported for SA but assume low also ... so same as Thailand.

The article made me wonder ... aren't the US vaccinated already living with Covid? Other than business & international travel and <12, aren't the majority of us doing what we used to do?

Other than for REI, no other places require masks - didn't see any masks at the football games, didn't see any masks in the drive thru CFA yesterday, there were masks at Costco last weekend but not required etc.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/16/world...ntl/index.html

This feels a little premature to me. I'm good with opening things up (like the contact tracing, pre-flight test etc.) but don't understand the no quarantine period. Some EU countries have required quarantine period depending on where you come from. This is reasonable to me.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/20/polit...ons/index.html

Lower doses for younger kids which makes sense I guess. There's about 48M kids 0-11 and about 25M 5-11. So using 55% vaccination rate, that's another 25M x .55 = 14M vaccinated soon.

Not sure about the 0-4. You would think there is concurrent studies going on for them.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/22/healt...ess/index.html

Sort of. But my kid under 12 isn't. So we aren't really there practically or psychologically.

I think that opening the vaccine to < 12 will have a bigger effect than people realize.

Right now, the horse dewormer set still has a fair amount of leverage over anyone with kids.

Once our kids are protected, the "I'd literally rather die than admit that science works" crowd will have less leverage over us, and I'm not sure that's going to go so well for them.

dola: And if the GOP does shut down the government at the end of the month, and if that shutdown keeps the < 12 approval from happening . . .

There's obviously been a huge divide for a while now between the COVID deniers and the rest of us. People in the latter set have varying degrees of careful but there was no denying it was real or that it was a risk - it was just various degrees of risk tolerance (where to mask, what activities were "safe" enough, getting vaccine, etc).

But my wife and I, and a number of other have observed, the other major divide has been between those with younger kids and those without. Sure, in the COVID denier set, they just pretend it doesn't exist or that it's a cold or whatever so they don't feel there's risk to their kids. But among the rational folks - every decision is fraught with worry and there are no easy choices. There's the hard stuff like do we send our kid to school and risk giving them some long COVID complication for the rest of their life or does someone quit a job or homeschool and risk their social development and/or economic consequences. Do we take that vacation that might be good for all of our mental health or is there too much risk to do it? Right down to all sorts of daily decisions.

Never mind if you have young kids, say, under 6. Then it's just the Stephen Colbert-John Oliver segment early in the pandemic where Colbert, who has older kids, was like "say, watching any new shows or taking up any new hobbies". Oliver, exasperated, looks into the camera and "I'm drowning" in a completely sincere tone that seems to frighten everyone else who doesn't have small kids. And he goes on to open up and try and explain how difficult it is, but Colbert just keeps trying to make jokes and back away from the segment so Oliver just stops trying.

SI

43 out of 43000 healthcare workers in Maine have quit rather than get the vaccine. Turns out hardly anyone is willing to throw away their career just for a higher chance of death.

If you're trying to open up to leisure travelers, in what world does quarantine make sense?

Yea it’s really a silly thing to call a bluff on. You look at something like this:

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-sta...lining-vaccine

Some of the nurses who were fired honestly believed they couldn’t fire them all. I saw it all over social media “they can’t fire us all.” OK, well, how is that working out for you guys? Anti-vaxxers in the medical field are extremely frustrating to work with as they seem completely unconcerned with evidenced based practice.

If you were vaccinated by AZ or Sinopharm or Russian stuff (e.g. the 2nd tier stuff), then you should have greater scrutiny. If your country is still below x% vaccinated and/or infections greatly increasing, there should be greater scrutiny.

And yes, plenty of countries require US citizens to quarantine for 10-14 days. Seems like the smart thing to do.

You are right. Sorry, I should have said

"Other than business & international travel, <12 and families with <12"

That is definitely a big chunk of families.

And nobody goes to those countries

See map. Plenty of red. Some orange also have quarantine requirements.

https://www.kayak.com/travel-restrictions

A friends son is finally heading to Japan to teach English. He has been trying to get over there since the beginning of the pandemic and is just now being allowed to go. He is having to quarantine for two weeks first.

None of those are 2nd tier stuff. They all work.

Depends on your state. The hospitals here had to rescind their vaccine requirements because it left them without enough staff. We're already in a position where healthcare is being rationed and people are being turned away.

Yeah, I noticed that Asia seem to like quarantine. Singapore is like don't come if you are US citizen on business even though they have a high vaccination rate.

BTW - friends son teaching english ... TEFL or CELTA certified? or like a BA in Education/Teaching? Regardless, I envy him, would have loved to do that during a gap year.

Makes total sense. I mean, if your kid feels fine, what else could go wrong by going back to school?

#BREAKING: Florida students exposed to COVID-19 won't have to quarantine if asymptomatic, new emergency order says https://t.co/ZUEwAls5eW pic.twitter.com/ZtVrxtHha3

— WPTV (@WPTV) September 22, 2021

Kids don't vote so no reason to keep them alive!

Our county in NC went even farther last week. They rescinded all current quarantine orders and also eliminated contact tracing so you will not know if you are a close contact going forward. This week, they mostly backtracked due to pressure from the state but FL probably won't put that pressure on this school system.

Edit: I see now that it is the state that issued the order.

Also note that in NC, if you are vaccinated you are not required to quarantine due to a close contact. So quarantines only applied to unvaccinated students anyway.

Florida wants to get rid of measles and mumps vaccines too.

Manny Diaz wants to 'review' existing non-COVID-19 vaccine mandates

They should be evaluating everything that infringes on our rights.

Driver's license requirements, speed limits, clothes, etc.