COVID-19 Update

World
New Cases:   372,492 (⬆︎ .33%)
New Deaths:      8,493 (⬆︎ .34%)

USA

New Cases:   69,617 (⬆︎ .24%)
New Deaths:    1,907 (⬆︎ .38%)

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations:          42.8 million
Total Priority Population: 35.1%
Total Population:             12.9%

More than 1 out of every 3 clinicians (eg), and more than 1 out of every 8 Americans in the general population have gotten the vaccine - at least the first shot.

We have a lot of good people working pretty hard to beat the clock on this thing.

When voters make smarter better decisions, we get smarter better government out of it.

It may be a little premature, but it's never really a bad idea to think about a time we can put all this shit behind us.

WaPo:

If we had a communal pandemic time capsule, these items would go in it

A bird feeder.

A vase of paper flowers.

A collection of tiny ceramic llamas.

These are just a few of the objects that people have created or collected during the pandemic and know, even as they stand in it, will long remind them of what they have experienced during this time.

Several days ago, I told you about the stuffed panda my 6-year-old son persuaded me to sew, despite my lack of sewing skills, and posed a question: What tangible thing, whether it be sentimental or funny or practical, will represent your mile marker for this moment?

I recognize that we are far from over this global crisis. Too few people have received the vaccine (my 78-year-old father is among those who haven’t), and too many people will remain on unsteady ground even after they get those shots.

So, when I tossed out that question, I wasn’t asking anyone to look back. I was asking people to look around them.

And many of you did.

In recent days, I have heard from people across the country about objects that didn’t exist in their lives before the pandemic and that now occupy a prominent place in them.

They described things they made by hand, for themselves and for others, and things they purchased to get through days of boredom and months of mourning.

They told of things they have tucked away in drawers, and things that sit unmissable in their living rooms.

In a home in Gaithersburg, Md., a tree covered in butterflies stands near one filled with ornaments that represent different holidays. Gail Fallon calls the latter a “tree for all seasons” and the one with butterflies “an expression of hope.”

She explains in an email their significance: When she realized her family couldn’t get together for their annual Christmas Eve gathering, she decided not to decorate a tree. Later, she felt sad about not bothering, so she decorated two trees and decided to leave them up until her children and grandchildren could safely visit.

“They’ll be amazed and delighted,” she writes. “In the meantime, we have a nightly smile when the trees light up and we anticipate happier times.”

Outside a home in Philadelphia hangs a bird feeder that Theresa Conroy bought in June, a time she describes as coming “after three months of lockdown, the agonizing death of my mother from cancer, the closing of my yoga studio and the continued longing for my dead dog.”

In an email, she tells of throwing herself into researching which feeder to buy, where to place it and what to put in it. Within days of hanging it, she says, birds swarmed. She has seen sparrows, cardinals, nuthatches, chickadees and, on occasion, a woodpecker her family has nicknamed Woodrow.

“We steeped ourselves in bird behavior, bird songs, seed preferences and their imagined conversations. For hours. And hours,” she writes. “So, a plexiglass tube filled with black sunflower seeds is what’s getting me through a deadly pandemic.”

We have all experienced this past year differently. Many of us have lost someone, and some of us have felt lost. Others among us have discovered new skills and goals.

The items people chose as marking this moment for them are unique in that each carries a different story, yet many strike at universal sentiments. In emails, social media posts and the comments section of my earlier column, people describe items born of grief, isolation and longing.

They tell of graves they now visit, “plague year puzzles” they have completed and letters from children who feel too far away, not because of distance, but because of circumstances.

An Anthony S. Fauci bobblehead.

A tandem kayak.

A “love notes” sweater.

A homemade Santa cutout.

A TV journal created by someone who used to rarely watch shows.

If we had a communal time capsule for the pandemic, those are just some of the items people would toss in it.

Mary Ann Heavey of Fairfax, Va., picked as her pandemic item “Corona” the cat. She made the mask-wearing stuffed feline for her grandson, who was “feeling the pangs of the pandemic and the need to wear a mask.”

Judy Walsh of Maine chose as her object a quilt she made using leftover fabric from the more than 1,000 masks she sewed as she “cried and hollered.” The quilt contains nods to the Black Lives Matter movement, the pandemic and that fly that landed on Vice President Mike Pence’s head. “As I worked on it,” Walsh says, “it became a record of all we had lived through in 2020 — all the mess.”

Mary Schaller keeps a vase of crepe paper flowers in her Springfield, Va., living room. On March 13, she was in Dominica, celebrating her 77th birthday, when her husband bought three from a woman standing on the shore. Later, at dinner, her tablemates gave her two more. Nearly a year later, she says, they have not faded, and they remind her of “the last day of ‘Normal.’ ”

“I’m looking forward to our next day of ‘Normal,’ ” she writes in an email, “but in the meantime, I have these lovely flowers to remind me of a happy time before the pandemic and the promise that happy days will come again.”

I don’t have the space to tell you about all the items people described, and it’s a collection that unfortunately will only grow larger as the pandemic grows longer. But one item seems particularly poignant for a pandemic time capsule. It involves a lot of figures that were broken but not destroyed.

In February, Liz Jimmerson-Alaeddinoglu of Seattle was pursuing her master’s degree in teaching. In the spring, she started creating small ceramic llamas by hand, making one each day she went without seeing her first-grade students in person.

By the time the season ended, she had created 108.

“I finished the project in the summer as I completed my master’s and graduated by myself in my living room,” she writes in an email. “I installed a shelf in my living room to keep the finished llamas. That night, when I was out at the grocery store, the shelf fell and all the llamas broke. I sobbed for days.”

She glued them back together, she says, because there was nothing else she could do.

“I’m still heartbroken,” she says.

She also still hasn’t seen any of her students in person.

Some objects will remind us of the pandemic long after it’s over

Today In History

On this day in 2003:

A fire at a concert in a Rhode Island, nightclub kills 100 people and seriously injures almost 200 more . The cause was traced to a pyrotechnics display which which set fire to the soundproofing foam on the ceiling.

Thanks a lot, Green New Deal.

Today's Tweet

Republicans run away and leave the mess for somebody else.

Democrats work the problem, trying to help people.

Both sides my dyin' ass.

How come @BetoORourke and @AOC work to raise money for struggling Texans, many of whom didn't vote for Beto and think AOC is a she-witch, doesn't count as a UNITY story?

How come the media isn't spinning it that way? How come "unity" can only mean "giving the GOP what it wants"?

— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) February 19, 2021

Podcast

And the question remains: 

Will Republican voters in Texas, at risk of freezing to death &/or dying from contaminated drinking water, &/or facing bankruptcy because their homes are totally fucked up by frozen plumbing that they can't fix - will those Republican voters be able to pull their heads outa their asses and start working to elect people who aren't always pimping for private benefits at public expense?

Voters put those idiots in office - voters have to fix it.

Mail a check payable to:

The Professional Left Podcast

PO Box 9133

Springfield, IL 62791-9133

COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   403,503 (⬆︎ .36%)
New Deaths:    11,046 (⬆︎ .45%)

USA

New Cases:   78,640 (⬆︎ .28%)
New Deaths:    2,428 (⬆︎ .48%)

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations:          42.4 million
Total Priority Population: 34.8%
Total Population:             12.8%

There's something of a debate going on now that centers around the supply chain problem - ie: Biden has a lock on another 300-400 million doses, but the makers are still in the process of ramping up production, so the question is: Do we stay with the schedule and jab a "limited" number of people twice, or do we stretch the supply and jab a lot more people once, anticipating an increase in availability of injections down the road?

NYT

When Could the United States Reach Herd Immunity? It’s Complicated.

With the vaccine rollout underway and coronavirus cases declining after a dark winter surge, it may seem as though the end of the pandemic is in sight. In reality, how soon could we get there?

One answer lies in herd immunity, the point when enough people are immune to the virus that it can no longer spread through the population. Getting there, however, depends not just on how quickly we can vaccinate but on other factors, too, like how many people have already been infected and how easily the virus spreads.

This chart shows the current path to herd immunity in the United States, based on a model developed by PHICOR, a public health research group. It looks at the number of people who have been fully vaccinated and combines that with an estimate of the number of people who have been infected and have recovered to measure total immunity.

When the orange line crosses into the blue area, that means we have entered the herd immunity range. The exact threshold for herd immunity for the coronavirus is unknown, but recent estimates range from 70 percent to 90 percent.

At first, this looks like pretty good news — under these assumptions, we could reach herd immunity as early as July. But a lot could happen between now and then. The speed and uptake of vaccination, and how long immunity lasts are big factors. The rise of new virus variants and how we respond to them will also affect the path to herd immunity.

In most scenarios, millions more people will become infected and tens or hundreds of thousands more will die before herd immunity is reached.
What if we speed up vaccinations?

More than 15 million people have been fully vaccinated, and the U.S. is currently administering about 1.7 million shots per day. Some experts say we could nearly double that pace by April as new vaccines are approved. (Because the current vaccines require two doses spaced weeks apart, the number of people fully vaccinated each day is smaller.)

The more people we vaccinate, the faster we could reach the threshold for herd immunity.

It’s important to note that the orange line for total immunity relies on an estimate of who has already been infected, including people who have immunity from undiagnosed cases. We can be more certain of reaching herd immunity when the pink line for vaccinations crosses into that range. But in a scenario where a new but less effective vaccine arrives, we might not reach the threshold through vaccination alone.

And the model comes with some other caveats. Much is still unknown about how long immunity from vaccines will last, or how well the vaccines will protect against new variants of the virus. The estimates also assume that the vaccine prevents infection rather than just reducing the severity of coronavirus symptoms.

“There are still key pieces of missing information that could substantially affect what may happen to the pandemic over the ensuing months,” Dr. Bruce Y. Lee, a professor of health policy at City University of New York who leads the research effort for PHICOR, said. “Should many people lose immunity over the next several months after having recovered from infections, that would make many more people susceptible to the virus again.”

Some experts argue that reducing deaths and severe illness is a better and more achievable goal than full herd immunity, and ramping up vaccinations is still the best way to do that.

The piece goes on to line out different scenarios for relaxing the requirements on masks and distancing, and some more what-ifs regarding variants and such - if you can get past the pay wall, it's kinda interesting.

Our best bet right now is pretty much the same as always - keep telling people to behave, so as to buy the time we need to scale up the vaccinations, and to press forward as hard as possible.

COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   398,494  (⬆︎ .36%)
New Deaths:     11,412 (⬆︎ .47%)

USA

New Cases:   68,924 (⬆︎ .24%)
New Deaths:    2,761 (⬆︎ .55%)

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations:          42.3 million
Total Priority Population: 34.7%
Total Population:             12.7%

Gotta hand it to Ron Klain (WH Chief of Staff and Biden's Rona Wrangler) - that bunch is focused and pluggin' away.

NYT:

Covid-19 Live Updates: ‘Double Time’ for U.S. Vaccinations After Storm Delays

Brutal winter weather held up the delivery of hundreds of thousands of doses across the country. Yet the global vaccination drive is expected to get a significant boost.

With vast swaths of the United States pelted by heavy winter storms that brought Covid-19 vaccinations to a near-halt over the past week, health officials say a daunting task has become even more difficult.

But not impossible.

“We’re going to just have to make up for it: namely do double time when this thing clears up,” declared Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a top pandemic adviser to President Biden.

Jennifer Psaki, the White House press secretary, said the Biden administration was working closely with manufacturing and shipping partners to assess weather conditions, and would have more updates on delivery issues on Friday.

The brutal winter weather delayed the delivery of hundreds of thousands of doses across the country just as vaccine distribution was beginning to gather steam in the United States. Part of the problems is that the storms affected a FedEx facility in Memphis and a UPS facility in Louisville, Ky. — both vaccine shipping hubs.

Shipment delays have been reported in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Utah and Washington, among other states, forcing vaccine sites to temporarily shutter and coveted appointments to be rescheduled.

In Texas, where millions of residents lost power during the powerful storm, a delivery of more than 400,000 first doses and 330,000 second doses was delayed. A portion of those shots, roughly 35,000 doses of Pfizer’s vaccine, were sent to North Texas providers on Wednesday, but shipments will continue to depend on safety conditions.

Chris Van Deusen, a spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said on Thursday that the state was “asking providers that aren’t able to store vaccine due to power outages to transfer it elsewhere or administer it so it doesn’t spoil.”

On Monday, health officials in Texas scrambled to give people more than 5,000 doses after a power outage in a storage facility where they were being kept. But Mr. Van Deusen said that “reports of vaccine spoiling have been minimal.”

The Houston Health Department said on Thursday it would restart vaccinations for second doses this weekend and schedule additional first- and second-dose appointments next week. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said that more than 2,000 vaccine sites were in areas with power outages.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference that “a vast majority of the resupply” the city was expecting for this week had not yet shipped from the factories.

The city has had to hold off on scheduling upward of 35,000 appointments for first vaccine doses because of shipment delays and vaccine shortages. The opening of two new distribution sites was also postponed.

In Los Angeles, the city said that appointments for about 12,500 would be delayed.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said that while 136,000 Pfizer doses had arrived this week, the state had not received its shipment for the week of 200,000 Moderna doses. He said the shipment could be delayed as late as Monday.

“Because the storms we are seeing in the rest of the country, it’s basically sitting in the FedEx warehouse — and I don’t think they can even get into it because of everything,” Mr. DeSantis said at a news conference, encouraging those who had appointments rescheduled to “hang in there, the doses are going to get here.”

Dr. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, called the weather delay “significant.”

“Obviously it’s an issue,” he told MSNBC on Thursday. “It’s been slowed down in some places, going to a grinding halt.”

Dr. Fauci said, “We’re just going to have to make up for it as soon as the weather lifts a bit, the ice melts and we can get the trucks out and the people out.”

As of Thursday, the C.D.C. said that about 41 million people had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, including about 16.2 million people who have been fully vaccinated.

Making progress in a race against time, and the arrival of new strains of the monster, and the not inevitable spread of the disease if we do what we know will work to minimize the effects of this fucking thing.

Cold AF

The plains states - a full dozen of them - the middle third of this country has been stomped on by a storm and near-polar temperatures, and funnily enough, Texas is the only one reporting the kind of monumental problems that catch the fancy of the news cycle for a solid 72 hours.

Partly because they're just not used to that level of horrendous weather down there, and partly - mostly IMO - because the radical right decided to go all "fuck it, I can do what I want", and ignored the warnings from the Climate Science folks, and the warnings from the designers and engineers that the gear they were counting on for all that grandiose energy independence would crap out if it wasn't "winterized" properly - and gee, guess what happened.

The people in charge - ie: Republicans - decided low price was more important than the safety and wellbeing of the people paying the bills.

Of course, "low price" is coded political language which translates to serve two basic purposes

1. profit for the big shareholders
2. rationale for continuing the shitty anti-people policies that Republicans have been peddling for decades

Anyway, not even my enjoyment of watching Ted Cruz take it in the shorts because of his little jaunt down Mexico way can make this massive failure anything but bitter when we see the real cost being tallied.

And of course, it's not just Texas, and it's not just dumbass Republicans.

WaPo:

A boy who fell through ice, a woman who lost power: 47 deaths tied to winter storms — and counting

The cold has killed the young and the old. It has claimed lives from southern Texas to northern Ohio. And authorities expect the toll to rise in the coming days, with frigid weather lingering, hundreds of thousands without electricity and millions without clean water.

The two major winter storms that have plunged most of the United States into an Arctic chill have killed at least 47 people since Sunday, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. More than half of them — 30 — lived in Texas, where persistent power outages have exposed residents to bitter temperatures.

The Post’s data includes deaths confirmed or suspected to be linked to the weather and its attendant hardships, and the true number is undoubtedly higher than what is known so far. Some first responders worry about what they’ll find in their next week’s worth of wellness checks.

In Taylor County, Tex., Sheriff Ricky Bishop said his officers have been checking on residents for days, delivering food and water and following up with them later to make sure they’re all right. Already, they’ve found three people dead.

“There’s definitely that possibility that over the next week or two we could find some more that we don’t know about right now,” Bishop said.

The identities of most victims still aren’t known. Authorities have confirmed the ages of fewer than half, but of those, 18 were 50 or older and five were 85 and older. Seven states have at least one confirmed death.

Where the weather is coldest, some have resorted to risky, last-ditch attempts to keep warm, using gas grills indoors or running cars inside closed garages. At least five people have died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said in a news conference this week, tallying hundreds of 911 calls about gas poisoning. “This carbon monoxide poisoning is a disaster within a disaster.”

Others seem to have frozen to death. At least 17 people died of hypothermia or “exposure to the cold.” Some of them were among society’s most vulnerable.

Early Thursday, a man was found lifeless in a parking lot north of Houston. He was wearing a jacket with no shirt beneath, authorities said. He had no shoes and no socks.

About 350 miles northwest, in Abilene, another person was found dead whom the local fire chief described as “a transient” who had been sleeping outside.

Even those with shelter succumbed.

In rural eastern Kentucky, two elderly women from Ashland — a city of 20,000 on the banks of the Ohio River — died in 48 hours, both of hypothermia. One woman, age 77, lost power in her home, Boyd County Coroner Mark Hammond said. Her family, blocked by ice and felled trees, couldn’t reach her and couldn’t contact her. She was found on Wednesday.

Still others have died in cold weather accidents — in cars and on foot.

In Louisiana, a 77-year-old man in Calcasieu Parish, where Lake Charles is located, slipped, fell into a pool and drowned. And in Lafayette Parish, a 50-year-old man died after slipping on ice and slamming his head on the ground.

A 10-year-old boy died in Shelby County, Tenn., after falling through ice into a pond with his 6-year-old sister, who is in critical condition. When authorities arrived at the scene, it was just 14 degrees.

That boy is one of three known victims under the age of 12. Another, identified by Univision as Cristian Piñeda, was 11. His mother had just managed to get Cristian from Honduras to Texas so the two could live together, she told the outlet. With no electricity, she tried to cover him with blankets as best she could.

It was 12 degrees when Cristian’s mother put him to bed Monday night. He never woke up.

We'll always have bad weather, and we'll always see people die because of that weather. The point here is that we have to be better at assessing the risk, and being as prepared as possible, so we can mitigate that risk.

But mostly, we have to be better at holding politicians and their benefactors accountable when they fuck up like this.

Private profit and socialized risk and externalized cost. That shit has to stop.

Today's Video

Big brothers

Crazy Weather

This is like the beginning of a scary movie where the narration will eventually turn to frogs raining from the sky and giant spiders crawling out of volcanoes or something. Weird shit that the Climate Science guys have been telling us we can expect, and that will be actively deliberately ignored by "conservatives" - many of whom are already claiming these reports are false, and just part of the global conspiracy to keep us from compensating for our small wieners by driving big stoopid trucks and SUVs.

ABC net:

A powerful storm bringing sub-zero temperatures has transformed parts of the Saudi Arabian desert into a winter wonderland.

Residents of Tabuk, 193 kilometres from the Red Sea, awoke to see the region's dry desert coated in white snow, leaving many in awe.

Tabuk, one of the coldest regions in Saudi Arabia, typically dips to 4 degrees Celsius at this time of year but it is usually dry, according to AccuWeather senior meteorologist Eric Leister.

Videos began circulating online showing camels shuffling through snow instead of sand, as residents enjoyed some snow play.

And it did not take long for the higher areas near Tabuk which were blanketed by the snow to become popular with locals and tourists in the area, local media reported.

Images of the unusual scenes quickly went viral, with people across the kingdom and in neighbouring countries clamouring to view and share them.

Rush Limbaugh Is Dead

I'm not celebrating the death of Rush Limbaugh. I just don't do that. I didn't celebrate when the SEALs nailed bin Laden, and I'm not going to do that even now when one of god's great asshole-ish fuckups suffers greatly and dies in pain.

You may have noticed, I'm not exactly sad about it either.

Rolling Stone:

When Rush Limbaugh, the Great Bloviater of the AM dial, signed off from the “Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies,” two days before Christmas, he warned the faithful in the raspy remains of his famous trumpeting baritone: “The day is gonna come, folks, where I’m not going to be able to do this anymore.”

For 13 terrible days in Trumpland — while the mad president that Limbaugh helped make possible was flailing for survival, while the­ faithful were trying to “stop the steal” of the election, and even while the Republicans blew their Senate majority in the Georgia runoffs — the loudest voice in the right-wing echo chamber remained silent. By the time January 6th rolled around, even the millions of fans praying for a miracle cancer cure had to figure: If Rush had passed up the chance to fearmonger about Raphael Warnock’s old sermons and mock Jon Ossoff’s hair, well, he must be finished. At least with his trademark golden microphone, if not with this earthly realm.

But then, a miracle: The president incited a white riot on Capitol Hill, and like a mortally wounded superhero detecting cries of distress from his people, Limbaugh got himself to his Palm Beach studio by noon the next day, and unleashed a master class in state-of-the-art conservative disinformation. He knew the drill. He’d pretty much invented it.

First, a signature move: Belittle the story as partisan hysteria from the lamestream media while sneaking in a big, exonerating lie. “All of a sudden, protesting Congress is being called the end of the world!” Limbaugh sneered, making use of his rested voice. “A bloody coup attempt! Even though the only blood spilled was that of an unarmed Trump supporter.”

Rioting? Looting? Blue Lives lost? Uncle Rush was here to remind everyone that those are things that the left, especially the “anti-American” Black Lives Matter, does all the time. “They’ve burned down political federal courthouses, after barricading people inside of them. They’ve taken over freeways. They’ve taken over entire cities,” Limbaugh said. Contrast that with the harmless shenanigans at the Capitol. “Yeah, I know they breached the doors and took some selfies.” But, folks, really — just look at who was in Washington on January 6th! “These are Republicans, they don’t raise mayhem,” Limbaugh scoffed. “They don’t know how. How many times have we sat here over 30 years bemoaning the fact that this is not what Republicans do?” A master touch there: So far were the “rioters” from actually rioting, one can only wish they had raised just a little hell while they were there, like the blacks and antifa do.

Then, of course, after he dramatically made the case that there was no violent insurrection on January 6th, Limbaugh justified and praised the violent insurrection on January 6th. “We’re supposed to be horrified by the protesters,” he said, feigning perplexity. “There’s a lot of people out there calling for an end to violence” — even, can you believe it, “a lot of conservatives, social media, who say that any violence or aggression at all is unacceptable regardless of the circumstances.” Pause for effect, here it comes: “I am glad Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, the actual tea-party guys, the men at Lexington and Concord, didn’t feel that way.”

As Limbaugh surely hoped and expected, social media lit up with both “dittoheads” — shorthand, in Rush World, for 100 percent agreement with the host — and denunciations, as headlines quickly sprouted: “Limbaugh Compares Capitol Hill Riot to American Revolution,” “Limbaugh Dismisses Calls to End Violence After Mob Hits Capitol.” (On the next day’s show, he humble-bragged: “I did it on purpose. … I wanted to take the hit yesterday. I was attempting to take the flak and the incoming for Donald Trump.”)

So there: That’s how it’s done. The plain, observable events of January 6th had not merely been denied and deflected, but transcended — wafted into the bubble of alternative right-wing reality that Limbaugh first began blowing up 32 years ago. Of course, this new narrative (or narratives — you can choose Republican innocence or justified violence, as you please) had absolutely no contact point with reality. And of course, Limbaugh spun his tale (as always) from the flotsam and jetsam of post-riot rumor and innuendo, subreddits, and Gateway pundits. Inside the bubble, sources matter as little as facts or logic. What makes sense in this parallel universe is whatever distracts and absolves white, non-liberal Americans from blame, guilt, or responsibility. It’s whatever reminds them of both their supremacy and their victimhood. It’s whatever emboldens them to strike back at the evil left-wing empire that is always busy plotting to subjugate them and destroy America As We Knew It.

And that is what Limbaugh delivered, once again, for Republican America in the wake of the insurrection. It was a final command performance of its kind, especially given the host’s condition. But it’s what Limbaugh had done, while dying, for a whole year. This incredibly wealthy super-patriot used his life’s last energies to do his damnedest to recast a pandemic as a deadly, partisan culture war. To paint a lawless and lunatic president as a wronged and heroic savior of the republic, a symbol of all the myriad wrongs done to Team White America. To call the first woman of color nominated for vice president a “ho” and a “mattress,” to depict racial-justice protests as signs of a coming Armageddon, and to stir up hysteria about a Democratic plot to steal the election. And, ultimately, to lead the cheers and comfort the troops as Republicans turned against democracy itself.

He did it all so well, in fact, that Limbaugh — despite frequent absences — shot back to the top of the Power 50 radio rankings for audience and influence. It was the strangest sort of comeback-slash-curtain call. And it should be career-defining now that Limbaugh, who died on Wednesday, has had his final say. Limbaugh might have begun as a ratings-obsessed provocateur, but he became one of the most influential subversives in American history. If we didn’t fully recognize that before 2020, or January 6th, we ought to know it now. No single person — not Reagan, not Cheney, not McConnell, not Trump, not Q — has contributed more than Limbaugh to the mass derangement of white America.

The piece goes on to describe Limbaugh's rise, and I don't give a fuck about that. I was there to watch it - it disgusted me then, and since, and that fucker's dead now, and I'm not the least bit interested in recounting the details of what a complete asshole he was.

Sometimes a man's death is a net positive.