COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   430,993 (⬆︎ .23%)
New Deaths:      8,194 (⬆︎ .20%)

USA

New Cases:   11,612 (⬆︎ .03%)
New Deaths:       202 (⬆︎ .03%)

Yesterday, July 6th, 2021

0 Vaccinated people

and

8,194 Un-Vaccinated people

were killed by COVID-19

182.7 million vaccinated

Including more than 157.6 million people who have been fully vaccinated in the United States.

In the last week, an average of 865.9k doses per day were administered,

a 2% increase over the week before.

So, basically, we've got about 50 million Americans who say they don't want to - or will never - get a vaccination, and what the rest of us have to do is sell 'em on the idea.

Fine - let's start with a little peer pressure:

There's 50 million people out there making it harder for you to get a job, get a meal, get a beer and get laid.

You ain't vaxxed yet? You're an asshole - step up .

WaPo: (pay wall)

A third of White conservatives refuse to get vaccinated — a refusal shown in polling and the real world

Two elected officials have weighed in over the past several days on the effort to vaccinate as many Americans as possible.

The first was President Biden. During a July 4 speech at the White House, he again encouraged the country to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, referring to covid-19, the disease it causes.

“Covid-19 has not been vanquished,” he said. “We all know powerful variants have emerged, like the delta variant, but the best defense against these variants is to get vaccinated. My fellow Americans, it’s the most patriotic thing you can do. So, please, if you haven’t gotten vaccinated, do it — do it now for yourself, for your loved ones, for your community and for your country.”

The second official to offer thoughts was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who weighed in on Twitter.

“No one cares about the Delta Variant or any other variant,” she wrote. “They are over covid & there is no amount of fear based screaming from the media that will ever force Americans to shut down again.”

According to analysis from Harvard University’s Geographic Insights team, Greene’s district is one of the least densely vaccinated in the country. It seems safe to say that Greene is among those who’ve rejected a dose of the vaccine.

But that the vast majority of the least-vaccinated districts are represented by Republicans, often far-right Republicans like Greene, is not a surprise. There’s a strong correlation between politics and vaccination rates — stronger than any other metric.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released over the weekend shows a stark divide in vaccination hesitancy by political group. Overall, about a fifth of Americans say they definitely won’t get vaccinated. That’s about the percentage for independents and Whites overall. But among Republicans and White conservatives, the figure is more than a third.

- more -

Y'know what, though - on second thought - fuck 'em.

What We're Up Against

At the risk of inadvertently helping the freakazoids spread their shit, I want to be sure we're at least a little mindful of the kinda thing these assholes are up to.

Mike Lindell - the My Pillow guy - recently put up a whole podcast or some such, during which he referred to his "evidence board":

Maybe I'm thinking about it all wrong, but when everything points to one guy - isn't that when the cops bust down his door and haul him away in handcuffs and shit?

Moving along ... then, my Reddit feed planted this one on me, via r/QAnonCasualties:

Science.News

New report stuns the world: The vast majority of those now dying with covid are people who were VACCINATED against it

07/01/2021 / By Ethan Huff

I won't put the link up and I won't bother you with the bullshit they're putting out.

Here's the take from Media Bias Fact Check:

Daily KOS on "Ethan Huff":

Ethan Huff is a Prolific (Fake News) Reporter. But Does He Actually Exist?

By the looks of it, Ethan A Huff is a very busy reporter. Or, rather, a very busy poster. Content under his byline appears across various conspiracy, climate denial and anti-vaxx blogs like the Epoch Times, Natural News, NewsTarget, Climate.News, Science Clowns, Propaganda.News and elsewhere.

In just the past week Huff published stories about how climate alarmists are working with the LGBT community to depopulate the planet, how vaccines are causing polio and YouTube and other online giants are covering up this vaccine-caused polio outbreak, how 600,000 Mexicans were protesting abortion and “LGBT indoctrination,” as well as stories on Greta Thunberg, white people not being allowed to speak anymore, Hillary Clinton threatening Ronan Farrow, a Chinese bitcoin farm catching fire, Blizzard appeasing China, Johnson and Johnson facing lawsuits, vaping, Trump claiming Big Pharma is behind the impeachment hoax, climate scientists lying, and real scientists declaring there’s no climate emergency.

Aside from his prolific posting, there doesn’t seem to be any indication that he actually exists. Unlike most reporters, including others at some of his outlets, we couldn’t find a Twitter account associated with his name. There’s also no LinkedIn accounts or Facebook profiles that fit the bill.

What’s more, only one of the many sites he posts to list any contact info, such as an email address or phone number for readers to send tip. CriticalStudies.org, where he posted two stories in 2015, has a profile for him with both his picture and a contact email (ethan@huff.com). We found a picture associated with his name, and a reverse image search comes up empty, so maybe he is real.

But Huff.com is a real estate website, and an email sent to that address asking if he is indeed a real person bounced back, indicating the account doesn’t exist.

- more -

So there's today's little shit scramble. 

Remember - "The Big Lie" is not just one thing. It's a whole metric fuck ton of distortions and deflections and straight up lies, and the desired effect is to make us doubt everything except what the Daddy State tells us in the moment.

Happy Anniversary

We can have a long hot vociferous discussion about his presidency - whether or not he did OK, or if the fact that he didn't start any shit with any other countries was a good thing or a weak thing, or if he deserved the blame for this or that, or credit for something else, or whatever.

But there's no debating the fact that Jimmy Carter is a good and decent man.

...or that he got lucky and married well.

Today's Proverb

Every story glorifies the hunter 

until the lion learns to speak.

Today's Pix

click to embiggen

COVID-19 Update

note: The holiday lull hit with a particular vengeance this weekend - I guess everybody needed some time off for USAmerica Inc's birthday party.

The good news is that new cases and new deaths are down significantly.

The bad news is that there's a better than even chance that either it's only because no one's been around to report on it, or we're in a trough and there's another surge on its way as people get lax with it.

It's also likely that if another wave hits, it'll be ameliorated by the vaccinations already in place.

But...

We are not outa the woods yet - not with the Delta variant - and now possibly a Lambda variant as well.

     as of yesterday:     

 4 million dead worldwide 

Anyway, today's numbers -

World

New Cases:   339,792 (⬆︎ .18%)
New Deaths:      6,217 (⬆︎ .16%)

USA

New Cases:   4,405 (⬆︎ .01%)
New Deaths:       23 (⬆︎ .004%)

Yesterday, July 5th, 2021

0 Vaccinated people

and

6,217 Un-Vaccinated people

were killed by COVID-19

182.4 million vaccinated

Including 157.3 million people who have been fully vaccinated in the United States.

In the last week, an average of 884.3k doses per day were administered,

a 4% increase over the week before.

CNN Philippines:

Today I Learned

Dr William Beaumont: Army Surgeon, Clinical Researcher, fuckin' maniac.

November 21, 1785 – April 25, 1853 

Father of Gastric Physiology

Beaumont began to perform experiments on digestion using the stomach of St. Martin. Most of the experiments were conducted by tying a piece of food to a string and inserting it through the hole into St. Martin's stomach. Every few hours, Beaumont would remove the food and observe how well it had been digested. Beaumont also extracted a sample of gastric acid from St. Martin's stomach for analysis. In September, St. Martin ran away from Dr. Beaumont and moved to Canada, leaving Beaumont to concentrate on his duties as an army surgeon but Dr. Beaumont had him caught to continue to exhibit him.

hat tip = Reddit - u/Salsal_Azar

Too Stoopid Twice

Bob Cesca: "Trump always makes things worse for Trump."

45* was too stoopid or too stubborn - or too stubbornly stoopid - to get after COVID, making it nearly impossible for him to get re-elected, which made it even more nearly impossible for him to make the money he needs now to keep his sorry ass afloat.

So...

CNN:

Trump's personal Boeing 757 was always the crown jewel of his wealth -- the ultimate sign that he had made it. He's used it as a backdrop for sleek photo shoots, campaign rallies, VIP tours, for shots of him eating his Big Macs and KFC, plated, with a knife and fork. Trump loved to show it off -- the customized cream-colored leather seats, gilded bathrooms, the seat buckles layered in 24-karat gold.

But today it sits idle on an airport ramp in Orange County, New York, about 60 miles north of Manhattan.

One engine is missing parts. The other is shrink-wrapped in plastic. The cost to fix and get it flyable could reach well into the high six-figures, a price-tag Trump doesn't appear to be dealing with right now. Though the current state of his finances aren't public, the Covid-19 pandemic has taken a toll on the hospitality industry home to so many of his businesses.