that's right. so does genetic engineering, selective breeding, plant hybridization, birth control, and thousands of other helpful advances in science. the human race is part of nature, and in a battle with nature. that doesn't mean we should just STOP.

what is with these dark ages motherfuckers?

This is for all vaccines, not just COVID

Tennessee abandons vaccine outreach to minors — not just for COVID-19
BRETT KELMAN

The Tennessee Department of Health will halt all adolescent vaccine outreach – not just for coronavirus, but all diseases – amid pressure from Republican state lawmakers, according to an internal report and agency emails obtained by the Tennessean. If the health department must issue any information about vaccines, staff are instructed to strip the agency logo off the documents.


The health department will also stop all COVID-19 vaccine events on school property, despite ...

https://amp.tennessean.com/amp/7928701002

I thought the idea was to have more wage slaves and taxpayers, not less.

Goddamn, Southern conservatives are so ignorant!

Political ambition trumps common sense

California Woman Arrested For Making Fake Vaccine Cards, Justice Department Says
Nicholas Reimann

A woman licensed as a homeopathic doctor in California has become the first person to face federal charges for giving out fake vaccine cards, with the Justice Department also alleging she sold pills that she falsely claimed would provide lifelong Covid-19 immunity.
close up hand of doctor put label covid-19 vaccine sticker on vaccination certificate card and passport

KEY FACTS

Juli A. Mazi of Napa, California, is facing one count of wire fraud and one count of false statements related to health matters in the case.

According to prosecutors, Mazi provided her patients with oral pills she called “homeoprophylaxis immunization pellets,” which she claimed contained small amounts of Covid-19 and would provide lifelong protection.

She then allegedly gave patients CDC Covid-19 vaccine cards that showed they’d received the Moderna vaccine, while also providing instructions for patients to fraudulently fill out vaccination dates on the card.

Prosecutors also said she exploited misinformation about the authorized Covid-19 vaccines, saying they contained “toxic ingredients.”

Giving out fake Covid vaccine cards expanded on Mazi’s existing scheme of providing pills to children that she claimed would satisfy the vaccine requirement for California schools and working with parents to create false vaccination cards.

Mazi did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Forbes.

CRUCIAL QUOTE

“This doctor violated the all-important trust the public extends to healthcare professionals—at a time when integrity is needed the most,” said ...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasre ... a8e87d4a76

[i]

oskar576 wrote:

[/i]



Look at the bright side. Fewer Republican voters.

In Undervaccinated Arkansas, Covid Upends Life All Over Again
While much of the nation tiptoes toward normalcy, the coronavirus is again swamping hospitals in places like Mountain Home, in a rural county where fewer than one-third of residents are vaccinated.
Sharon LaFraniere

When the boat factory in this leafy Ozark Mountains city offered free coronavirus vaccinations this spring, Susan Johnson, 62, a receptionist there, declined the offer, figuring she was protected as long as she never left her house without a mask.

Linda Marion, 68, a widow with chronic pulmonary disease, worried that a vaccination might actually trigger Covid-19 and kill her. Barbara Billigmeier, 74, an avid golfer who retired here from California, believed she did not need it because “I never get sick.”

Last week, all three were patients on 2 West, an overflow ward that is now largely devoted to treating Covid-19 at Baxter Regional Medical Center, the largest hospital in north-central Arkansas. Mrs. Billigmeier said the scariest part was that “you can’t breathe.” For 10 days, Ms. Johnson had relied on supplemental oxygen being fed to her lungs through nasal tubes.

Ms. Marion said that at one point, she felt so sick and frightened that she wanted to give up. “It was just terrible,” she said. “I felt like I couldn’t take it.”

Yet despite their ordeals, none of them changed their minds about getting vaccinated. “It’s just ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/us/a ... ccine.html

Fauci Says U.S. ‘Probably Would Still Have Polio’ If There Had Been As Much Misinformation As With Covid Vaccines Now
Joe Walsh

Amid sagging Covid-19 vaccination rates and stubborn levels of vaccine hesitancy, Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN on Saturday the United States’ successful campaigns to eradicate smallpox and polio in the last century wouldn’t have succeeded if those vaccines were subject to the same level of misinformation that currently surrounds coronavirus vaccines.

KEY FACTS

[list=]In an interview with CNN, Fauci warned that some unvaccinated adults have been exposed to false information, are often skeptical of objective Covid-19 data and frequently justify their decision not to get vaccinated with “things that are really just not true.”

After anchor Jim Acosta compared the situation to polio, the government’s top infectious disease expert offered a dire warning: Fauci said efforts to eliminate smallpox (which was eradicated worldwide over 40 years ago) and polio (which has been eliminated in almost every country) would have faltered under the current climate of misinformation.[/list]

CRUCIAL QUOTE

“If we had had the pushback for vaccines the way we're seeing on certain media, I don't think it would've been possible at all to not only eradicate smallpox, we probably would still have smallpox,” Fauci told Acosta, “and we probably would still have polio in this country if we had the kind of false information that's being spread now.”

BIG NUMBER

99.5%. That’s the share of U.S. Covid-19 deaths in the first half of 2021 that were among unvaccinated ...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2 ... b2d76f18d6

Poisoning the minds and jeopardising the bodies of so many Republican voters has taken a concerted campaign. Donald Trump is chiefly responsible for it

The Republican anti-vax delusion
America’s vaccination programme is stalling. Populist conservatives are to blame

In early may, with the Food and Drug Administration expected to approve the first covid-19 vaccine for teens any day, Michelle Fiscus found herself fielding questions from Tennessee vaccine dispensers on what this would mean in practice. Could 12- to 15-year-olds be vaccinated without parental consent, for example? Dr Fiscus, the state official in charge of immunisations, sent back the official legal advice on that. Referring to a 34-year-old ruling of the Tennessean Supreme Court, it noted that any sensible 14-year-old could request a vaccine of their own accord. What happened next, according to Dr Fiscus, “can only be described as bizarre”.

Her memo was shared on social media, seized on by angry conservatives and the Tennessee Department of Health duly accused of machinating to destroy families and subvert children. Scenting an opportunity, Tennessee’s Republican legislature summoned the state’s public-health officials to explain why they were “targeting” the young and innocent in this “reprehensible” way. One lawmaker demanded the health department be disbanded.

The department vowed to try less hard to vaccinate Tennesseans against covid-19 and other diseases. According to reports and internal emails shown to Lexington by Dr Fiscus, this has involved ending all vaccine outreach to teens. Any Tennessean adolescent who has received a first covid jab is no longer being sent a reminder to show up for the second; the department has stopped sending information about immunisations—against measles and meningitis as well as covid-19—to schools. This week Dr Fiscus was asked to resign. When the veteran paediatrician refused, she was fired.

America has a long history of anti-vax conspiracy theories. But the vaccine denialism that has gripped the Republican Party in Tennessee and everywhere is unprecedented. Past anti-vax movements have been disparate, fringe and, at least on an individual basis, responsive to patient dissuasion. Their adherents have included rich Californian suburban moms, gulled by misinformation about the risks of immunising babies, and poor African-Americans, with a part-justified suspicion of the medical profession. The results, by and large, have been small measles outbreaks and a marginal contribution to black Americans’ poor health.

Anti-covid vax sentiment on the right, by contrast, is fuelled by the country’s deepest divisions and the conservative entrepreneurs, in media and politics, who aggravate them. It explains why America’s vaccination rate has slowed in recent weeks, despite the availability of vaccines, an uptick in infections and deaths, and the fact that a third of adults have not received a first dose. Surveys suggest this large minority is overwhelmingly Republican. It represents half the party’s voters, predictably dominated by its most pessimistic and conspiracy-prone groups, white evangelicals and rural folk: the Trumpian base.

The problem looks even worse—politically, economically and health-wise—where such voters are concentrated. Vaccination rates are lowest wherever Donald Trump romped to victory last November. In Tennessee, where he won 61% of the vote, 43% have had a first dose. In Ohio, a more divided state with a pragmatic governor in Mike DeWine, it is a slightly more hopeful 48%. But in the most conservative Ohioan counties, the rate plummets. In Holmes County where the former president won 83% of the vote, 15% of people have had a first dose. The chances of succumbing to the virus in such places is correspondingly high; 99% of America’s recent covid-19 fatalities had not been vaccinated.

It is tempting to see this calamity as a predictable development in the politicisation of American identity, whether concerning race, sexuality or attitudes to health care. Yet it was not inevitable. The one thing Mr Trump got impressively right in his handling of the pandemic was his early investment in the vaccines his voters now consider to be unnecessary or part of a Democratic plot to spy on their innards. Poisoning the minds and jeopardising the bodies of so many Republican voters has taken a concerted campaign.

Mr Trump is chiefly responsible for it. Analysis by Shana Gadarian, a political scientist, suggests scepticism about covid-19 vaccines is largely a consequence of his efforts to play down the virus and mitigation measures such as mask-wearing. As so often with Mr Trump, it was an approach that mingled conservative ideology with demagoguery and personal strangeness. Conservatives prize freedom of choice over the common good; demagogues rubbish expert advice in order to propagate their own reality; and Mr Trump, a conservative demogogue but also a lifelong conspiracy theorist, probably believed some of his own misinformation.

Just a small prick

He was once a noted anti-vaxxer—which may explain why he did not publicise his own covid jab until weeks after it took place. By thus minimising his role in the vaccinations he made it easier for like-minded entrepreneurs, such as Tucker Carlson, to denigrate and blame the jabs —one of the biggest successes of Republican government in years—on Joe Biden. Fox News’s biggest star calls a Biden administration effort to step up local vaccination campaigns “the greatest scandal in my lifetime.”

This extreme politicisation has encouraged vaccine-hesitant Republicans to dig in. To be conservative is now to a great degree to be against covid-19 vaccination. And interviews with senior officials in Ohio and Tennessee (including Mr DeWine, who recently completed a statewide tour of vaccine centres) suggested there is little confidence that this can be reversed.

Some public-health experts wondered whether the accelerating Delta variant might tip the balance. But it seems unlikely. Tennessee, like other states, has already seen so much death. “It is a mystery to me why watching your loved ones die of an infectious disease that we can easily prevent doesn’t move more people to reconsider,” said Dr Fiscus, revealing, yet again, the insidious pro-life sentiment that got her fired.

https://www.economist.com/united-states ... x-delusion

Oopsie.

Fox has quietly implemented its own version of a vaccine passport while its top personalities attack them

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/19/media/fo ... Stories%29

According to this reporter anti-vaxx Trump voters are refusing to get inoculated because the former president allegedly did not get enough “credit” for the vaccine.

‘Maybe You Have That Information to Provide?’: Jen Psaki Expertly Dismantles Reporter’s Pro-Trump Anti-Vaxx Claim
David Badash

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Monday politely explained to a reporter insisting anti-vaxx Trump voters are refusing to get inoculated because the former president allegedly did not get enough “credit” for the vaccine.

The reporter wanted to know if the White House would “consider highlighting or acknowledging, in a greater way,” Trump’s “role in creating the vaccines,” as a means “to assure the rural voters who still support President Trump and are hesitant to get the vaccine.”

Psaki was not buying the reporter’s claims, which did not appear to be based on any facts.

“Do you have data to suggest that that’s the issue that’s preventing people from getting vaccinated?” she calmly asked.

The reporter, refusing to let go of a losing argument, offered that, “the communities that have the lowest vaccination rates did seem to vote for President Trump.”

Again, Psaki was unconvinced, and decided to give a lesson in basic logic.

“Okay, but I what I’m asking you is if information related to whether or not the former president got credit is leading people not to get vaccinated, or is it information like ‘microchips in vaccines,’ and it causing fertility issues, causing health issues, because you’re drawing a few conclusions there that I haven’t seen in data but maybe you have that information to provide?”

“I think it’s just it’s an issue,” the reporter continued. “I mean I think it’s a common sense that these are people who supported him. These are people who are hesitant to get vaccinated. I don’t think it takes a lot to draw the conclusion.”

It actually does, and Psaki was not going to go along with ...

https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.c ... axx-claim/

rad

'I'm sorry, but it's too late' - unvaccinated patients beg for shot; new infections nearly triple in two weeks: COVID news

An Alabama physician glumly says she is making "a lot of progress" in encouraging people to vaccinate – as she struggles to keep them alive.

Dr. Brytney Cobia, a hospitalist at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, wrote in a recent Facebook post she is treating a lot of young, otherwise healthy people for serious coronavirus infections.

"One of the last things they do before they're intubated is beg me for the vaccine," she wrote. "I hold their hand and tell them that I'm sorry, but it's too late."

In her post, Cobia wrote that when a patient dies, she hugs their family members and urges them to get vaccinated. She said they cry and tell her they thought the pandemic was a "hoax," or "political," or targeting some other age group or skin color.

MORE----> https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/us/i-m-s ... d=msedgntp

Gary Burgess: The dark and sinister world of the anti-vax brigade
Gary Burgess - Reporter, ITV Channel

“You’re dangerous…”

“Scum…”

“You’re in the pocket of big pharma…”

I experienced what, I believe, is called a ‘pile-on’ this week, where a small but reasonably organised band of people – bolstered by a bunch of clearly-automated social media accounts from the UK and beyond – bombard you in their hundreds with their disgust at my daring to report how Covid-19 vaccines are saving lives.

Let’s be really clear about this: vaccines are making a massive difference and proving *the* key to getting Jersey and the rest of the world through this pandemic.

But the social media onslaught, including whole threads of arguably-libellous comments about me, my character, and my motives weren’t the end of it.

Yesterday, as I returned to the ITV Channel TV newsroom to edit a report I’d just filmed with a group of young people about why they’d chosen to be vaccinated, as well as hearing understandable reticence from some about getting their jab, I was handed an envelope that had been delivered for my attention.

“This legal and lawful notice of liability is designed to be used as evidence in court if needed…” it began.

It was a three-page threat of legal action for, again, daring to report that vaccines are saving lives. Oops, said it again!

I won’t go into any details about who sent the letter as I, frankly, don’t want to offer them the oxygen of publicity, but I thought it worth sharing some of the concerted efforts that a tiny handful of people are going to to spread absolute lies and misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines, about what they’re made of, and about the risks involved.

Of course there are risks with any and all medications – go look at the small print on the leaflet that comes with a packet of paracetamol – but, in almost all cases, the risk of both Covid and Long Covid are greater than the risks of the vaccines.

But, to share facts with the anti-vax lobby, is to waste both time and energy. They have their own counter-factuals from the dark recesses of the internet – the sort of places you could find a perfectly legitimate looking report proving black is white if you looked hard enough. It’s all out there!

Why am I sharing this?

Well, first up, to be absolutely clear about my motives in reporting on the vaccination programme: that vaccines are saving lives. Oops, sorry. Can’t help myself.

But also to personally thank the overwhelming majority of islanders who have turned to actual facts to make their own personal choice as to whether to get jabbed. Most have chosen to, some have chosen not to. And that is what free will is all about.

In the meantime, just in case you were wondering: vaccines are saving lives.

https://www.itv.com/news/channel/2021-0 ... ax-brigade

Live link at source

IMO, #1144 indicates that the anti-vaxxers are losing the war.

Something else for the "No Shit Sherlock" file

As Cases Spread Across U.S. Last Year, Pattern Emerged Suggesting Link Between Governors' Party Affiliation and COVID-19 Case and Death Numbers
STARTING IN EARLY SUMMER LAST YEAR, ANALYSIS FINDS THAT STATES WITH REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS HAD HIGHER CASE AND DEATH RATES

The per-capita rates of new COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths were higher in states with Democrat governors in the first months of the pandemic last year, but became much higher in states with Republican governors by mid-summer and through 2020, possibly reflecting COVID-19 policy differences between GOP- and Democrat-led states, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina.

For their study, the researchers analyzed data on SARS-CoV-2-positive nasal swab tests, COVID-19 diagnoses, and COVID-19 fatalities, for the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. After adjusting for confounding factors such as state population density, they found that Republican-governed states began to have consistently higher rates of positive swab tests in May, of COVID-19 diagnoses in June, and of COVID-19 mortality in July.

The results, published online March 10 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, suggest that policy differences between Republican- and Democrat-governed states, including mitigation measures such as mask mandates and social distancing requirements, may have led to systematic differences in COVID-19’s impact on public health, the researchers say.

“Governors’ party affiliation may have contributed to a range of policy decisions that, together, influenced the spread of the virus,” says study senior author Sara Benjamin-Neelon, PhD, professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health, Behavior and Society. “These findings underscore the need for state policy actions that are guided by public health considerations rather than by partisan politics.”

The analysis covered March 15 to December 15, 2020, and included ...

https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-release ... mbers.html

I pointed this /\ out a year ago, and gopqed had the audacity to contest it.

it probably came from both.
but which first?

Sounds like the PCR test can't differentiate between COVID and the flu.

https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021 ... ing_1.html