This is just the classic moving goalpost argument. “We don’t have any experience” moves to “we haven’t given enough shots” moves to “we haven’t given it long enough.” By this logic, we cannot use a vaccine until we have given hundreds of millions of doses a year for decades. Which sounds great! Except, of course, that if we can’t use it prior to this, how do we ever institute any new therapeutic at all ever? Of course, we don’t. We just let the poors die. Which is the goal, after all.
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One can’t find common ground with self-destructive idiocy. Either you make efforts to get vaccinated and stem the tide of this pandemic or you are promoting spreading plague and you are actively trying to harm others. There is no halfway. Either you support getting people vaccinated or you are trying to kill people with plague.
I for one, don’t give a flying fuck about the feelings of people who are actively trying to kill others with plague.
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My wife’s family lives on the Couer d’Alene reservation. The tribe was bit pretty hard by COVID. Their casino was kept open since it is a large source of income for the tribe, and the visitors never stopped coming from all around so infections were rife…
The funeral traditions involve large gatherings, which of course led to more spread among a population already underserved with medical facilities.
ETA: spelling
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Sorry, Covidaho has already been reserved for it.
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No, thanks. Not when people can have such callous and willing disregard for the lives, health, and safety of others.
None of the reasons you outlined are good enough and read more like Fox News talking points than anything.
Their rhetoric isn’t Christian - and Christ certainly wouldn’t approve of his name being used to justify the things these people are doing.
This requires action, not words. And those on the right are unwilling to make the first move. They are the ones threatening the lives and liberties of others. They are in the wrong here. They need to be the ones to atone.
Or, to paraphrase the words of the unfortunately named Michael Bolton in the film Office Space, why should I need to change when it’s the other guy who sucks?
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Welcome to the new 2021 game that everyone is raving about!
The guessing game of “Maskless Person: Vaccinated or Republican?”
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There are a lot of “twin” cities that straddle the border with WA; Coeur d’Alene/Spokane, Moscow/Pullman, Lewiston/Clarkston, etc. Was just up there in April, I was surprised at the stark variance in mask customs between the two states considering that it’s all one region in terms of local culture. Further up north a buddy near Bonner’s Ferry said some businesses specifically posted that masks were forbidden 
Still, having said that, we were never given so much as a side-eye much less harassed for wearing them.
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Argh,
My younger brother (Trumper) moved his family from Los Angeles to Idaho this year. He is anti-mask and very deep into conspiracy theories. I’m in Los Angeles.
It’s ironic that he was the one warning all of our families about the dangers of the virus back in Feb 2020 when we were celebrating his birthday. He was saying that we all needed to take it very seriously. He waffled on that plan.
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I wouldn’t think it’s that clear cut. The vaccines have been effective against variants that came into existence after their development and while I’ve heard that the vaccines have been more effective at preventing infection than being previously infected, I would expect previous infection to make some difference, some of the time.
This Idaho stuff isn’t that important, more dunking on ignorant, selfish people. If the delta variant is infecting a lot of people fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine, that’s important. Yesterday a Pfizer official in Israel said their vaccine is highly effective against the delta variant.
data from those places where the Indian variant, Delta, has replaced the British variant as the common variant, point to our vaccine being very effective, around 90%
The WSJ article did only say half the people infected with the delta variant were fully vaccinated, it didn’t mention how many were symptomatic or hospitalized. This other Reuters article says a study found Pfizer’s to be 96% effective at preventing hospitalization due to the delta variant.
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Not just in Idaho. I was in Utah a few weeks back. No mask wearing there.
Guess where Covid is on the rise?
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Well we can’t know precisely, but we can make some boundary guesses. The virus is completely novel so the baseline immunity without exposure is functionally zero. According to the state’s Covid data, there have been 194,609 cases, both confirmed and presumed. According to the Census bureau the state’s population last year was 1,787,065. Another 713,134 are to some degree vaccinated. If we take the most generous (and rather unlikely) estimate and assume that there is no overlap between exposed and vaccinated people you still fall well short of any kind of herd immunity figures. You sit at just over half, still making the no mask no vaccine people idiots. If you assume that the state’s positive numbers are a 50% undercount and just double the exposed rate, you still fall far short of herd numbers. Getting the undercount to missing 2/3 of all cases would get close to, but still fall short of even the optimistic herd needs of 75%. So basically, even if we take the most generous assumption, then grant allowances on top of that, the no mask no vaccine crowd are a high risk disease vector choosing to kill their neighbors. At some point the numbers force you to pick a side, because in public health the failure of one group to do the right thing puts the lives of other people at risk.
As for the long term concerns, others have said it better, but we actually do know. The vaccines don’t remain in the body as others have noted, but we also are almost a year since the phase 3 trials have begun, and six months since a massive rollout. The side effects have been tracked and are negligible. In contrast, we also have been tracking the long term side effects of Covid and they are bleak.
So we have a situation where a political media ecosystem has turned a sizable chunk of people are choosing to spread a disease and you have the gall to police the people saying that is unacceptable? That is rich.
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FTFY. Heaven only knows most reservations have the short end of the stick on lots of things that should be readily available.
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The variants of SARS-CoV-2 have only small, localized changes in their genomes with corresponding small changes in the spike protein and other proteins in the virus. Your immune response is based on recognizing portions of viral proteins like the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and since most of the protein remains the same, the antibody and T-cell response is likely to be effective against multiple variants because those will recognize the parts that are unchanged. Being infected with one variant will confer at least partial immunity to other variants, and vaccines are still effective (but often slightly less effective) against other variants than the one they were developed for.
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There is strong evidence that the vaccines increase your chances of dying from old age.
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I live in Washington pretty close to the Idaho border and I rock climb. I have friends who wanted me to climb with them in Idaho but until I became fully vaccinated (which I now am) I refused to go to Idaho because of the blatant disregard for science and basic human decency.
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Myyyy dear fellow… people should listen? Listen to this then:
it’s DO or DIE. Talking won’t cut it.
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I swear I had it correct previously. Oh well, my phone seems to think it knows better than me.
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The fascists in the Republican party (and they are fascists, Umberto Eco would agree if he were still alive) are introducing bills to try to strip people like me of their rights multiple times a week. How can I find common ground with those who see me as subhuman?
The Zentrumists will be the death of us, just like they were in the 1930s.
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If we were to find common ground with the American Right
- I would be severely negatively affected
- People I care about would be severely negatively affected
- Neither I or anyone I care about would be severely negatively affected
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