Maybe it really is time to run Noam Chomsky* as a Republican candidate. He and liberals have had an adversarial relationship over the years.
* or some other Libertarian Socialist, Chomsky is a bit old at 92.
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Technically, aren’t taxpayers paying for the vaccines? Which is another thing that is anathema to a lot of those who refuse to get vaccinated.
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Odd that we’re hearing this at the two week mark, last exit for normal recovery before complications.
It’s possible that he waited until he was on the mend, and will shortly announce that he was cured by the power of quackery.
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Apparently it’s a thing now for anti-vaccine, pro-Ivermectin, Q-adjacent Facebook groups to recommend not going to the hospital and instead treat themselves at home with dangerous, unproven, ineffective cures like Ivermectin:
Others are turning away from hospitals altogether. In recent weeks, some anti-vaccine Facebook groups and conspiracy theory influencers on the encrypted messaging app Telegram have offered instructions on how to get family members released from the hospital, usually by insisting they be transferred into hospice care, and have recorded those they’ve successfully removed from hospitals for viral videos.
Some people in groups that formed recently to promote the false cure ivermectin, an anti-parasite treatment, have claimed extracting Covid patients from hospitals is pivotal so that they can self-medicate at home with ivermectin. But as the patients begin to realize that ivermectin by itself is not effective, the groups have begun recommending a series of increasingly hazardous at-home treatments, such as gargling with iodine, and nebulizing and inhaling hydrogen peroxide, calling it part of a “protocol.”
I mean, am I wrong in just saying, these people are lost and can’t be recovered? No amount of information will persuade them to just get a vaccine. In fact, the more they’re told about the efficacy of vaccines, the less they want one, because the efficacy of vaccines is at odds with their (1) MAGA/GQP identity; (2) distrust of non-hard-right authorities; and (3) belief in conspiracy theories. If Tucker Carlson told them they could cure Covid by poking their eyes out, they would do it.
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What’s happening there, I suspect, is that rightwing ideologs belatedly realised that their antivax posturing was killing off their voter base. But knowing the stupidity of those voters, they know that they can’t simply proclaim “We were wrong! Go and get vaccinated!” The only way they can persuade the Oppositional-Defiance-Disordered toddlers is by lying to them again… this time, the lie being “Democrats don’t want you to get vaccinated, that’s why they beg you to get vaccinated, so you can totally own them by getting vaccinated after all”. Crucially, it gives the suckers someone else to blame for their own self-injury.
This display of mental gymnastics is not because the RW Thought Leaders have succumbed to their own deception. They know it’s bollocks (which elides the role of the ideologs themselves in monging fear of vaccines), and they know why they have to present a face-saving escape route like this.
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That contribution to self-injury was brought to you by Dr Mercola, one of the most successful monetarisers of stupidity.
Taxpayers are also paying for monoclonal antibody treatment, but that doesn’t stop Republican governators from pimping that treatment for all it’s worth, instead of vaccines (never mind that as soon as casirivimab and imdevimab gained EUA, Regeneron stopped collecting evidence for whether it works or not).
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Well, if he suffers any cognitive impairment as a result… it won’t affect his cartoons any. Having seen them, they seem like they were created by someone already suffering pretty severe cognitive impairment.
Yeah, that and their need to blame the left when they fuck up, but this craziness is ultimately premised on two things: a) the right are all about “owning the libs” above all else, to the point where they have no consistent ideological positions, and b) they project like hell, all the time. So they can’t conceive of “the libs” being motivated by anything other than what motivates them, to get their ideological enemies, so therefore anything the left does is secretly in service of that goal, even if it appears to do the opposite. Especially if it does the opposite, as they just can’t conceive of it.
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Obligatory XKCD:
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No, you are not wrong.
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That keeps them from accidentally being exposed to anyone who might actually know what they’re talking about.
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Drink beet juice or catch COVID? Hmm. Give me a minute to think about this…
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- Alt-right media personalities with books and protein powders to sell latch on to said flawed in-vitro study and push it hard to their followers.
It doesn’t get said often enough that these bonkers ideas (like taking horse dewormer) don’t come from nowhere. They are handed to these people by the authorities they listen to, who feed them said information for the purposes of tribal control, undermining science (necessary for them to get support for irrational policies) and selling woo.
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Well…
Good?
How, exactly, does one go about starting a meme?
I won’t miss him. 
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Thank you! I was wondering if this was the same wingnut but was resisting looking it up. This is was a classic self own. Garrison kept going on and on that we all didn’t “get” his wit and intellect.
Ok I need to talk slowly so the leftist twits can understand.
Yes, I realize that the Don Quixote character from Cervantes’ novel attacked imaginary enemies as represented by the windmill, but Donald Trump Quixote’s enemies are not imagined. I read the book, did you?
“I realize that in the source material it’s about a man making up things to seem important but it’s not that.”
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The in vitro effects of ivermectin on COVID-19–like hydroxychloroquine–make it worth a few clinical studies, and it’s safe enough if used properly. Drugs developed for one purpose can sometimes be useful for other purposes. Hydroxychloroquine itself is an example–it’s used for both malaria and lupus.
Having said that, neither hydroxychloroquine nor ivermectin did jack shit in clinical trials. It’s not unexpected; the vast majority of drugs that work in vitro don’t make it through clinical trials for various reasons (they don’t work, side effects too severe, etc.).
The best treatment for COVID-19 remains prevention with one of the vaccines, social distancing and widespread use of masks.
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these fools make it damn near impossible to feel sorry for them
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