Ideology kills

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Let me get this straight. So far 600,000 Americans have died of COVID yet Republicans don't think you should have to be vaccinated. So far only 16 instances of alleged voter fraud have been found in the 2020 election yet they've passed 30 laws making it harder for you to vote.

Robert Reich

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Recently surfaced video from a July political fundraiser in Alabama featuring Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) showed attendees cheering when the GOP lawmaker pointed out that the state had one of the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates in the country.  The video, shared on Twitter by progressive political commentator and radio show host David Pakman, showed Greene speaking from a podium at the July 23 fundraiser, which the Alabama Political Reporter noted was held by the Alabama Federation of Republican Women. The footage from the Dothan, Ala., event, which was closed to the media, started with Greene saying, “You lucky people here in Alabama might get a knock on your door because I hear Alabama might be one of the most unvaccinated states in the nation.” 

The remark prompted a wave of laughs and cheers from some in the audience as Greene continued, “Well, Joe Biden wants to come talk to you guys.”  According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Alabama is tied with Mississippi for the lowest percentage of fully vaccinated residents at about 35 percent.  In Alabama, just about 45 percent of the total state population has received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, according to the CDC.  Greene, who has previously compared mask and vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany, continued in the video by arguing that Biden would be “sending one of his police state friends to your front door” to take down residents’ personal information and “whether you’ve taken the vaccine or not.”  “Well, what they don’t know is in the South, we all love our Second Amendment rights, and we’re not really big on strangers showing up on our front door, are we,” she asked the audience, prompting another round of cheers.

Alabama crowd cheers state's low vaccination rate during Marjorie Taylor Greene event | TheHill

• The pro-life party has turned into the pro-death party
  

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A rightwing TV and radio host who was a vociferous critic of Dr Anthony Fauci and who urged his listeners not to get vaccinated against Covid-19 has died after contracting the virus. Dick Farrel, who had described Fauci as a “power-tripping lying freak” who conspired with “power trip libb loons”, had urged people not to get vaccinated as recently as June. He reportedly changed his opinion about vaccines after falling ill and later being admitted to hospital before passing away on 4 August aged 65. “He texted me and told me to ‘Get it!’ He told me this virus is no joke and he said, “I wish I had gotten [the vaccine]!” close friend Amy Leigh Hair wrote on Facebook.

Rightwing radio host and anti-vaxxer dies of Covid | US news | The Guardian

• Many of these anti-vaxers are actually themselves vaccinated (some 100 Republican members of Congress refuse to state in public whether they are vaccinated).
  

[Admin]

Over a year ago, Salon's Andrew O'Hehir described the mad scramble to reopen schools without a vaccine or coherent safety standards as "a 'Deer Hunter'-style game of Russian roulette, played blindfolded under conditions of complete chaos." One year later, Donald Trump is out of the White House but Republican and Democratic executives alike are all rushing to reopen schools — even as children under 12 are still not cleared to be inoculated despite an 84% jump in the number of children contracting COVID-19 last week alone.

On Thursday, the U.S. set a single-day record for the number of children admitted to a hospital with COVID-19, with 261 children, some less than 1 year old, admitted to U.S. hospitals according to updated HHS figures. Anecdotally, Patricia Darnauer, the administrator for LBJ Hospital in Houston, noted that an 11-month-old girl had to be airlifted more than 170 miles away on Thursday because no pediatric hospitals would accept her. "We looked at all five major pediatric hospital groups and none [had beds] available." As of Sunday, there were only six ICU beds left in the 11-county Austin region. Pediatric doctors in Texas have taken to Twitter to vent their concerns about rising cases of COVID in very young children. Dr. Heather Haq, a pediatrician at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, said she and her colleagues have been called on to work mandatory overtime shifts because the hospital also has "winter-level patient volumes of acutely ill infants/toddlers with" respiratory syncytial virus (RSV.)

"We're heading into dark times," Texas Medical Center CEO Bill McKeon said last week. "If children are not masking in schools, it will be a major problem," Dr. Christina Propst told Houston's KTRK in a plea for mask mandates. Recently, Texas overtook New York in terms of total statewide deaths. But Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has banned such mandated precautions — even though we've already seen big camp and daycare outbreaks all summer with the delta variant. And inoculations are severely lagging among teenagers for whom the vaccine is available. "No governmental entity can compel any individual to receive a Covid-19 vaccine administered under an emergency use authorization," Abbott said in an executive order. "No person may be required by any jurisdiction to wear or to mandate the wearing of a face covering.""

The GOP's death cult comes for the kids - Alternet.org

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Twitter has suspended Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) for a week after she wrote that vaccines are “failing.” A Twitter spokesperson told The Hill in a statement that her tweet on Monday “was labeled in line with our COVID-19 misleading information policy.” Her account will be in read-only mode for one week “due to repeated violations of Twitter Rules,” the spokesperson added. Greene said in the tweet that the Food and Drug Administration "should not approve the covid vaccines." "There are too many reports of infection & spread of #COVID19 among vaccinated people," Greene said. "These vaccines are failing and do not reduce the spread of the virus & neither do masks," she added. "Vaccine mandates & passports violate individual freedoms."

Twitter temporarily suspends Greene after she says vaccines are 'failing' | TheHill

• Where do they find these idiots
  

[Admin]

These are all useful indicators of potential vaccine refusal, but researchers have been hampered by the lack of actual data to confirm that yes, watching Fox News does in fact cause people to forego getting vaccinated. Now that more data are coming into focus. a new study appears to confirm what many surmised for themselves long ago: Fox News is a major contributing factor for people refusing the COVID-19 vaccines. Put more succinctly, this research suggests that the conservative media outlet has quite literally convinced millions of Americans to risk their health and even their lives.

In a working paper entitled, "Cable News and Covid-19 Vaccine Compliance," researchers at the ETHZurich Center for Law and Economics not only observed an association between lower vaccination rates among Fox News viewers since May, 2021, but established a causal connection as well. As the authors explain, the specific association between Fox and vaccine refusal is driven by the population of viewers under the age of 65, those the least likely to feel threatened by COVID-19. From the abstract:

We can rule out that the effect is due to differences in partisanship, to local health policies, or to local COVID-19 infections or death rates. The other two major television networks, CNN and MSNBC, have no effect, indicating that messaging matters and that the observed effect on vaccinations is not due the consumption of cable news in general. We also show that there is no historical effect of Fox News on flu vaccination rates, suggesting that the effect is COVID-19-specific and not driven by general skepticism toward vaccines.

Fox News viewership is directly tied to lower vaccination rates: study - Alternet.org

[Admin]

But the U.S. right is, in effect, trying to keep the pandemic going. We talk a lot about misinformation on social media, some of which — surprise! — appears to be the product of Russian disinformation. However, the role of the right-wing establishment has surely been far more important. Fox News serves up anti-vaccine messages almost every day. Republican governors have tried to ban vaccine mandates not just by local governments and school districts but by private businesses. Multiple Republican attorneys general have filed suit to stop federal vaccine mandates.

The expressed rationale for all this activity is that it’s about protecting freedom. In reality, while there are several reasons for vaccine resistance, politics is a significant driver of the agitation. A successful vaccination campaign could mean a successful Biden administration, and the right is determined to prevent that, no matter how many avoidable deaths result from vaccine sabotage. It’s noteworthy that Fox has a very strict vaccination policy for its own employees.

Opinion | No, Vaccine Mandates Aren’t an Attack on Freedom - The New York Times

[Admin]

One predictor of Covid deaths by country is trust in government, according to a recent report in the Lancet: countries with lower levels of trust in government had higher rates of cases and deaths.

Vastly unequal US has world’s highest Covid death toll – it’s no coincidence | US news | The Guardian

• The mindless anti-government stance is taking a tremendous toll in numerous ways. An important article.
  

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More than half of US states have introduced new laws to restrict public health actions, including policies requiring quarantine or isolation and mandating vaccines or masks. Between the new laws and the massive workforce departures during the pandemic, public health in America is now in crisis, experts say. The new restrictions and shortages not only affect responses to the coronavirus but also make it harder to contain outbreaks of the flu, measles and other health crises, and they put the US in a weaker position to combat future pandemics. US public health workers leaving ‘in droves’ amid pandemic burnout Read more “We’re very, very concerned about the rolling back of public health powers,” Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, told the Guardian. “We thought there was going to be a renaissance for public health, and we may be at the cusp of a major decline.”

US public health in crisis as Covid prompts curbs on officials’ powers | US healthcare | The Guardian

• The Nasty Party sees 900K deaths as an opportunity to cripple US Healthcare even more than it already is..
  

[Admin]

A Republican U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania with ties to a racist former Trump official came under fire Tuesday for minimizing the more than 1000 deaths of children who died from COVID-19. “Many of these children had pre-existing – I’m sorry, had underlying medical conditions,” said Rep. Guy Reschenthaler on the House floor, “making them more vulnerable to COVID-19 than the average child, meaning that many of these children died with COVID, not of COVID.” “But again,” Reschenthaler wrongly snarked, “that’s real science, not political science.”

'It’s called eugenics': GOP congressman blasted for 'obscene' minimizing of COVID deaths of children - Alternet.org

• From the "pro-life" party..