The Latest Round of COVID Isn't Biden's Fault
An upsurge in cases brings doom, gloom, and misinformation from the usual sources
Look beyond the trials and tribulations of the current class of Republican candidates for president, and you’ll see things aren’t going well for the MAGA class.
Sure, they’ve banned some books and passed some draconian laws about abortion, but as far as Joe/Jane undecided voters are concerned, there isn’t much coming from the right unless you’re already committed to the cause.
Threatening rhetoric and promises of mob rule are front and center in the GOP these days, based on logic derived from a seemingly never ending stream of made up stuff. Some of those fantasies are outright lies, some are spin, and still others have been crafted to further a specific agenda.
The next Big Falsehood Fear on the horizon has to do with COVID. Righties did win over some crunchy granola folks with their past campaigns of vaccine denial based on the premise of Big Government coming to take away freedoms.
So it looks like we’re going to have to suffer through another propaganda plague.
Locally, the early assaults on reality meant it was necessary to call out the County Government as fascists and for “patriotic" church leaders to hold maskless services. This ‘resistance’ also gave us Mama Bear Amy Reichert as the new face of election-minded Republicans.
Already on social media there are repetitive messages ‘reminding’ readers that President Biden was the person responsible for pandemic lockdowns. The fact that the waves of COVID infections and government mandated restrictions started before Biden was elected are of no consequence.
In MAGA-think it’s obvious that Democrats went back in time to impose restrictions on Americans in the hope of accelerating whatever United Nations agenda people are supposed to be afraid of.
There is a new variant of COVID making the rounds: SARS-CoV-2 aka BA.2.86. It has multiple genetic differences from previous versions of the virus, with mutations responsible for a new spike protein, the appendage the virus uses to enter our cells.
Scientists aren’t sure if older vaccine boosters will have an impact on this version of the virus. They are exploring whether or not mutations on the spike protein could allow it to evade our immune systems despite prior vaccinations and having had COVID-19.
A new booster is expected to be available in mid-September. President Biden has asked for more funding for vaccine research, adding that it’s “tentatively” recommended “that everybody get it,” once the shots are ready. Wowser! Sounds like communism to me.
From the Associated Press:
The White House’s $40 billion funding request to Congress on Aug. 11 did not mention Covid. It included funding requests for Ukraine, to replenish U.S. federal disaster funds at home after a deadly climate season of heat and storms, and funds to bolster the enforcement at the Southern border with Mexico, including money to curb the flow of deadly fentanyl. Last fall, the administration asked for $9.25 billion in funding to combat the virus, but Congress refused the request.
For the week ending July 29, Covid hospital admissions were at 9,056. That’s an increase of about 12% from the previous week. But it’s a far cry from past peaks, like the 44,000 weekly hospital admissions in early January, the nearly 45,000 in late July 2022, or the 150,000 admissions during the omicron surge of January 2022.
Fox News Sean Hannity and other talking heads at the network have already gone into full panic mode.
“Straight ahead, COVID madness coming back,” he said, teasing a Monday night segment. “More draconian measures and a new vaccine that I'm sure they're going to tell you is absolutely safe. Like the last one? Straight ahead.”
After the break, he introduced Biden’s comments by saying, “Here we go again,” then asked Fox contributor Tomi Lahren, “Isn't this the same Joe Biden, same government that said that if you got the vaccine, that you'd never get COVID, you'd never transmit COVID and that were proven dead wrong? Isn't that the same government?”
Lahren replied that “if the Biden administration and leftists everywhere were that concerned about a new COVID strain, a new COVID variant, that southern border would be closed,” adding, “If the American people are ever dumb enough to fall for this again, we deserved to fail as a country. But I don't believe we are dumb enough to fall for it again. Not this time.”
Here’s Matt Gertz at Media Matters pointing out the ongoing culpability of Fox News.
Fox could have responded to the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines, which were developed under then-President Donald Trump and are remarkably effective in preventing serious COVID-19 cases (with rare side effects), by urging viewers to get the shots. But the network instead ran a multiyear campaign against the vaccines while relentlessly hyping ineffective drugs popular among right-wing influencers. Any moral responsibility its hosts felt for their audience was apparently overrun by their reflexive opposition to Biden and their recognition that antivax commentary was “great for ratings.”
These attacks on the vaccination campaign had deadly consequences. Polls routinely show the network’s viewers were less likely to say they were, or planned to get, vaccinated than people who get their news from other sources. One recent study found that “excess mortality was significantly higher for Republican voters than Democratic voters after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults, but not before."
The lies about Biden making promises and associated suppositions about what was promised with earlier vaccines are just part of the daily stream of misinformation at Fox. Disproving all the fake claims about COVID can be discouraging, especially when those spreading them aren’t inclined to hear opposing arguments.
Here is a comprehensive list of facts about COVID, with 300 sources for verification.
Our local outlet for misinformation, KUSI, has responded to reports of steadily increasing rates of COVID hospitalizations by inviting denier Dr. Kelly Victory to sum up the new variant as “24/7 BS.”
Here’s the conclusion about her expertise at Quackwatch, a site that investigates suspicious medical claims.
Colleen Victory, M.D. (a/k/a Kelly Victory) asserts that (a) concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic are overblown, (b) wearing a mask does more harm than good, and (c) it is safe to “fully return to your lives, without fear and without limitations.” Her ideas were being spread primarily through a YouTube video that was filled with false information and poor medical reasoning. Following her advice might kill you.
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For rational people, questions about what needs to be done in the face of surging infections need to be asked. Implicit with anti-vaxxer logic is that government is involved in a plot to “take” something from you.
What they (anti-vaxxers) would like to take is any sense of empathy. Yup. It’s Me! Me! Me! time again.
One way of looking at your personal approach involves thinking of others.
From NPR:
Andrew Pekosz, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health, says "it's still very, very clear that the hospitalizations and deaths from COVID — currently on the rise — are being driven by certain portions of the population: those over the age of 65, those with underlying medical conditions, individuals on cancer treatment, solid organ transplant recipients and people who are immunocompromised. "In my opinion, if you are in those groups that should more than justify taking a few extra precautions if you want to minimize your risk," he says. "And I think we as a society needs to be a little bit more accepting of those individuals who feel the need to take those steps to protect themselves."
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From the Post-It Notes on My Wall
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A desperate appeal to newsroom leaders on the eve of a chaos election By Dan Froomkin at Press Watch.
None of our newsroom leaders could possibly have imagined 10 years ago that fascist appeals to violence and racial hatred would be so common and effective, that the political discourse would be so awash in misinformation and disinformation, that homophobia and misogyny would make such a dramatic comeback, or that a con man who engineered a failed coup could be a front-runner for the presidency, posing a dire threat to the country’s future as a democracy.
But even as the nation faces another potentially cataclysmic election in 2024 — arguably the most perilous in American history — the mainstream news industry continues to engage in the same business-as-usual that got us here in the first place.
Maybe it’s time to change things up?
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The Christian Right's Masculinity Problem- Forging an army of manly warriors By Talia Lavin at Substack’s The Word and the Sandwich (Which also really has good articles about stuff between slices of bread.)
Among some fundamentalist sects, the notion of “manly men” — what the scholar Kristin Kobes du Mez describes as the John Wayne model of cowboy Christian masculinity — takes on darker tones. In her book Jesus and John Wayne, du Mez explores a model of fierce, authoritarian masculinity that has permeated evangelical communities for decades, expanding exponentially in the reactionary, militarized atmosphere of post-9/11 America, when a society-wide sense of civilizational warfare made evangelical men look back to models of militant Christianity, the Crusaders of the Medieval world chief among them.
Along the way, preachers began emphasizing that a man of God is a warrior, not just in the spiritual, but sometimes in the literal sense. You can see it in the ways the evangelical right embraces law enforcement — a cross and a Thin Blue Line flag are common lawn companions — and a military-first foreign policy; you can see it in the ways evangelical movements are often married with showy acts of violence, as when homophobic Christian commentators videoed themselves shooting up cases of Bud Light.
You could see it on January 6, 2021, when a crowd, spurred on by the rams’ horns preachers were blowing, bum-rushed their way into the Capitol, and the foundations of the country rocked and swung and trembled like the hemp-rope gallows that had been set up on the Capitol Hill lawn. You could hear it in the chants in that very loud crowd — the ones that, having objected to the results of a democratic election, chose to fill the air with a new chant: “Christ is King!”
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US Health Officials Urge Moving Pot to Lower-Risk Category Via Bloomberg. Finally! This will enable research previously hindered by Drug Enforcement.
US health officials are recommending easing restrictions on marijuana, a move that sets the stage for potentially expanding the cannabis market.
A top official at the Department of Health and Human Services wrote Drug Enforcement Agency Administrator Anne Milgram calling for marijuana to be reclassified as a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act, according to a letter dated Aug. 29
I still to this day fail to understand why people tell outrageous lies and how can people believe them. I don't think I ever will. I don't think I ever want to.