Today's Tweet

It's a heartbreak

Alabama doctor says this about her Covid patients, some of whom are dying: “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.” https://t.co/WEgAhHW2hf

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) July 21, 2021

COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   555,846 (⬆︎ .29%)
New Deaths:      8,640 (⬆︎ .21%)

USA

New Cases:   56,525 (⬆︎ .16%)
New Deaths:       416 (⬆︎ .07%)

Yesterday, July 21, 2021

8,640 people were killed by COVID-19

99.5 % of them were not vaccinated

USA Vaccination Scorecard

At Least One Dose: 186.8 million (56.3%)
Fully Vaxxed:           161.9 million (48.8%)

We've been averaging down around 8,000 - 15,000 New Cases per day for a pretty good stretch.

And now we're up at 42,000 - almost exclusively among the Un-Vaxxed, and just as almost-exclusively among those who support Republicans and watch too much DumFux News.

With everything Qult45 has done to minimize the monster, and with the continued bullshit being spread pretty much every fucking day by Wingnut Media and the simpish GOP, we need to start calling this thing what it is: The Red Plague.

We can always count on Republicans to be upside down and backwards, and to start catching up with Problem 1 just as we're slamming headlong into Problem 5 - or Problem 37, or Problem 962. 

Axios:

Lambda COVID variant found in Texas hospital

A Texas hospital reported its first case of the Lambda COVID-19 variant as cases rise across the state, ABC News writes.

The big picture:

The Lambda variant was first detected in Peru last August. From this April through June, the variant made up 81% of COVID-19 cases in Peru, according to the World Health Organization.

WHO categorizes it as a "variant of interest." It has been detected in 29 countries.

Driving the news:

• Houston Methodist Hospital reported its first case of the Lambda COVID-19 variant on Monday.
• The hospital had a little more than 100 COVID-19 patients across the eight hospitals in its network last week, but that number rose to 185 as of Monday. The majority of the infections are in those who remain unvaccinated.
• 85% have been diagnosed with the Delta variant, per ABC News, which is the top concern across the U.S. as it accounts for 83% of nationwide cases.

So here's your basic Day-Late-Dollar-Short piece:

Growing number of Republicans urge vaccinations amid delta surge

A growing number of top Republicans are urging GOP supporters to get vaccinated as the delta coronavirus variant surges across the United States, marking a notable shift away from the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorizing that has gripped much of the party in opposition to the Biden administration’s efforts to combat the virus.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was part of the rising chorus on Tuesday, stressing the need for unvaccinated Americans to receive coronavirus shots and warning that the country could reverse its progress in moving on from the pandemic.

“These shots need to get in everybody’s arm as rapidly as possible, or we’re going to be back in a situation in the fall that we don’t yearn for, that we went through last year,” McConnell said during his weekly news conference. “I want to encourage everybody to do that and to ignore all of these other voices that are giving demonstrably bad advice.”

The remarks from McConnell followed comments in recent days from other top Republicans and from conservative voices urging people to get vaccinated, even as other members of the GOP continue to sound notes of skepticism and spread misinformation about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.

Among the most notable voices was Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican in House leadership, who received his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine over the weekend and urged others to follow suit. Scalise had long resisted vaccination, claiming protection from antibodies and saying earlier this year that he wanted to ensure his constituents had a chance to be vaccinated first.

In an interview Tuesday, Scalise said that “there shouldn’t be any hesitancy over whether or not it’s safe and effective.” He said that he was compelled to get the shot in light of the recent spread of the delta variant and the associated spike in cases — and that politics was not a consideration.

(more)

Right, Steve - I'm sure you've received no info from your pollsters telling you the GOP's numbers are going completely in the shitter. And I'm just as sure none of your big-dollar donors have told you to knock off the bullshit and get with the fuckin' program.

And just so we're clear on this: No - you don't get any credit when you breeze in at 11:30 for a 9 o'clock meeting. People who show up and do the work are the ones who get the donuts - no donuts for you, Steve.

And then:

Nation’s largest hospital group supports mandatory coronavirus vaccines for health workers

The nation’s largest hospital association called Wednesday for all health workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus as case numbers surge again.

“To protect all patients, communities and personnel from the known and substantial risks of COVID-19, the American Hospital Association strongly urges the vaccination of all health care personnel,” the organization said in a policy statement. “The AHA also supports hospitals and health systems that adopt mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policies for health care personnel, with local factors and circumstances shaping whether and how these policies are implemented.”

“The evidence is clear: COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective in reducing both the risk of becoming infected and spreading the virus to others,” said Richard J. Pollack, the AHA’s president and chief executive, in an accompanying statement.

(more)

When AHA "urges" you to do something, you shut up and fucking do it.

Jon Stewart Rides Again

"Launching" soon - The Problem With Jon Stewart.

Assholes In Space

Who did it better?

Today's Political Sideshow

Dear AG Garland,

This Fauci guy humiliated me on national TV by exposing my propensity for political grandstanding, as well as my inexplicable ignorance of science and the peer review process.

And even though he's about my size and a hundred years older than me, we all know I'm not worth a shit in a fist fight, so I need you guys to beat him up for me, OK?

Sincerely,

Senator (and "Doctor") Rand Paul

PS) We're in the same gym class, and today it's dodge ball, so you have to get him before 5th period. Thanks.

"Conservatives" are a buncha whiny-butt pussies

Today's Pix

click a pic

Today's Tweet

Q: What kind of asshole laughs when asked about children dying?

A: (see video below)

Reporter: There are children, skinny people who have died of the coronavirus…
Greene: *laughs* pic.twitter.com/bunG07Hg4e

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 20, 2021

COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   511,513 (⬆︎ .27%)
New Deaths:      8,282 (⬆︎ .20%)

USA

New Cases:   44,232 (⬆︎ .13%)
New Deaths:       256 (⬆︎ .04%)

Yesterday, July 20, 2021

8,282 people were killed by COVID-19

0.0004% of them were fully vaccinated

USA Vaccination Scorecard

At Least One Dose: 186.5 million (56.2%)
Fully Vaxxed:           161.6 million (48.7%)

I'm still not gonna pull any punches - we have to lay this all directly at the feet of Republicans who spent 2020 denying the pandemic, and all of this year continuing to drag their feet as Americans have suffered and died.

Republican policies that ignore the multiple public health problems in USAmerica Inc, and their insistence on letting the "market correct itself" are (IMO) the main reasons we find ourselves teetering on the brink of Autocracy.

It's what their project has been working towards for decades, and they've been trying very hard to take advantage of these crises in order to advance their ambitions of power and control.

The GOP is literally killing us in service to their political aims. We have to drive them out.

WaPo:

Driven by covid deaths, U.S. life expectancy dropped by 1.5 years in 2020

Life expectancy in the United States dropped by a year and a half in 2020 — a continuation of a worrisome decline that was observed in the first half of last year as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the country, according to federal data released Wednesday.

The decline, which is the largest seen in a single year since World War II, reflects the pandemic’s sustained toll on Americans, particularly the disproportionate impact of covid-19 on communities of color. Black Americans lost 2.9 years of life expectancy while Latinos, who have longer life expectancy than non-Hispanic Blacks or Whites, saw a drop of three years. There was a decrease of 1.2 years among White people.

‘I just pray God will help me’: Racial, ethnic minorities reel from higher covid-19 death rates

“It’s horrific,” said Anne Case, a professor emeritus of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. “It’s not entirely unexpected given what we have already seen about mortality rates as the year went on, but that still doesn’t stop it from being just horrific, especially for non-Hispanic Blacks and for Hispanics.”

The provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows that life expectancy at birth — a generally reliable measure of the nation’s health — for the total population declined from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77.3 years in 2020. Almost three-fourths of that decline is attributed to deaths from covid-19, according to the report. The report did not include data for Asian Americans or other racial groups.

Lead author Elizabeth Arias, a health scientist at the National Center for Health Statistics, said mortality tends to be fairly stable from year to year, which is why 2020 was “very unusual.”

“From 1943 till now, the changes in life expectancy annually have been very small,” she said.

The drop in life expectancy also reflects the pandemic’s broader impacts on health, including a record-high number of deaths from drug overdoses. In 2020, there were more than 93,000 overdose deaths — a staggering increase largely driven by opioids, primarily illegal fentanyl, though deaths from methamphetamine and cocaine also rose. According to the NCHS, an estimated 11 percent of the decline in life expectancy is due to increases in deaths from accidents and unintentional injuries, and more than one-third of all unintentional injury deaths were drug overdoses.

“There are other festering problems going on here,” Case said. “The one that’s most obvious would be the drug overdose epidemic that continues to blaze.”

Other contributing causes of death include homicide, diabetes, and chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, the report noted. All told, the numbers tell a “pretty dark story about what’s happening in the U.S.,” Case added.

The outlook for Americans wasn’t always this grim. Since the middle of the 20th century, life expectancy has steadily climbed, with some small, albeit concerning, annual decreases in recent years. But in 2018, life expectancy improved by a small increment, from 78.6 to 78.7 years, which was the first time since 2014 that the number had gone up. A similar increase was recorded in 2019, the CDC reported.

Then came the coronavirus.

Life expectancy for the general population in 2020 was the lowest it has been since 2003, according to the latest report. “That’s pretty sobering,” said Noreen Goldman, a professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, who has published research on U.S. life expectancy during the pandemic.

Experts agree that one of the most significant findings of the report was the disparities among various populations. The virus was responsible for 90 percent of the decline in life expectancy among Latinos, 68 percent among the non-Hispanic White population and about 59 percent among the non-Hispanic Black population, according to the data.

Death in the prime of life: Covid-19 proves especially lethal to younger Latinos

Myriam Torres, a clinical associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health, called the data on Latinos “discouraging.”

“We Latinos have had a mortality advantage for some time,” said Torres, who referenced what academics refer to as the Hispanic or Latino paradox. “It was one thing going well for us.”

The fact that Latinos had a much higher life expectancy pre-pandemic but in 2020 experienced a decrease similar to non-Hispanic Blacks highlights “persistent structural inequalities” that can make certain minority populations more vulnerable to covid, Goldman said.

“Even a group that, in terms of health status, has been doing relatively well … that’s not enough to protect themselves given all of the kinds of social and economic inequalities that exist in society,” she said, referring to Latinos. “And when an infectious-disease killer comes around, those vulnerabilities are exposed.”

Many Latinos, Torres noted, have not been able to work remotely during the pandemic and are often in jobs where their risk of exposure to the coronavirus is increased but they don’t have adequate resources to protect themselves from infection. They rely on public transportation and tend to live in large, multigenerational households, both of which are factors that can increase the chance of infection.

It’s also possible Latinos were disproportionately harmed because many are undocumented, do not have access to federal pandemic relief aid or unemployment benefits and have to report to work during the pandemic, Torres said. Additionally, there may have been obstacles related to accessing coronavirus tests, treatments and vaccines, she said.

“These disparities have been there in general and particularly in African Americans,” Torres said. “It’s serious.”

The pandemic’s unequal effect on Black Americans is rooted in systemic racism, said Camara Phyllis Jones, a family physician, epidemiologist and past president of the American Public Health Association.

“The differences in life expectancy are structural racism revealed — just the baseline differences — because there’s no difference in our protoplasm,” she said. “There are only differences in our life experiences and life opportunities and how we are valued in this country.”

How U.S. cities lost precious time to protect black residents from the coronavirus

Some say the U.S. pandemic response may have also played a role in affecting life expectancy. Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, recently published similar research that compared data in the United States to other countries and found a much steeper decline here.

From 2018 to 2020, the United States saw a drop in life expectancy that was 8.5 times the average decrease in 16 other high-income countries, such as France, Spain and the United Kingdom. And the drop among Latino and Black populations in the United States was 18 and 15 times higher than in peer countries, respectively.

He said it is at least in part because other countries — particularly those that saw increases in life expectancy during the pandemic — were quick to mount a national response, and “the population got the message and hunkered down and adopted social distancing and other procedures that allowed them to open up their economies sooner. Needless to say, that did not happen in this country, and there was a large loss of life as a consequence.”

Alison Gemmill, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said she is concerned about what the delta coronavirus variant, vaccine holdouts and the phenomenon known as long covid will mean for life expectancy going forward.

“Is this covid effect in life expectancy a one-time, one-year thing?” she said. “Not only is mortality going to be affected in the short term, but there may be many long-term effects that we don’t understand yet.”

'Tis The Season

I remember summer being a pretty fun time. Swimming & Tubing. Concerts. Camping. Fishing. Drive-in movies. Hangin' on the patio or in the park. Good stuff like that.

Now it's just kinda fraught with the rising probability of shitty things happening.

Scientific American:

Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Killed More Than One Billion Sea Creatures

The massive loss could destabilize local marine ecosystems

More than 1 billion sea creatures along the Vancouver coast were cooked to death during a record-breaking heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, according to preliminary data.

The maritime massacre surprised even the experts. Christopher Harley, a professor at the University of British Columbia, said the death toll kept climbing as his team investigated area beaches.

“I was on a shore just as the tide was falling on the first of the three hot days. I was not thinking to myself, ‘All of these things will probably be dead by Monday afternoon,’” Harley said. “I didn’t realize that I would spend most of the next few weeks madly dashing around the province to document such unprecedented impacts.”

After a four-day period in June when temperatures in the Pacific Northwest shattered records and broke 100 degrees Fahrenheit, Harley and his team visited shorelines to count the damage to sea creatures such as mussels and rockweed. Those species are typically the first to wash ashore as they die.

Last week, they estimated 1 billion dead sea animals. This week, they’re saying it could be more than that.

The team estimated that on one site—Galiano Island, a strip of land between Vancouver Island and the lower mainland of British Columbia—1 million mussels died in an area the size of a tennis court.

A 1-kilometer area near White Rock is estimated to be a graveyard to 100 million barnacles, Harley said.

“The Strait of Georgia and Puget Sound have thousands of kilometers of coastline. Not all sites are as bad as the two I described, but you can fit a lot of tennis courts into a thousand kilometers,” he said.

Harley said they’ve found more dead sea species in the weeks after the rare heat wave. A species of snail called dogwhelk already has started washing up.

“The more shorelines I visit, the higher my estimate becomes,” he said. “The system is already responding.”

As they log more dead species across a greater number of habitats, Harley warned of the potential collapse of the region’s maritime ecosystem.

Losing a good number of mussels, he said, could destabilize local parts of the ocean, since they filter the water and provide food for other species such as starfish, crabs and birds. Rockweed also provides important habitat for other species.

Losing just those two species would cause biodiversity to decline, he said. And they aren’t finished counting yet.

“I also worry about the little things that most people—including biologists—don’t pay much attention to,” Harley added. “For most of the strange and wonderful creatures that call the mussel bed home, we don’t even know enough about them to know how many were lost and if and when they will recover.”

Harley said he’s received observations of die-offs from other researchers, shellfish growers and beachgoers as far south as Hood Canal in Washington and as far north as Klemtu in British Columbia.

This heat wave seemed to have hit the Salish Sea particularly hard, he said. But as global temperatures continue to rise, he expects more areas to feel the heat, too.

It could foreshadow a grim future.

“So far, my students and I have recorded dead animals on beaches that span hundreds of kilometers of shoreline,” he said. “Eventually, parts of the British Columbia coast may become more like Hong Kong and other hot parts of the world where many of the intertidal species die off every single summer.”

Today's Reddit

Security guys do their job, cuz banners aren't allowed. The crowd's reaction is the payoff.

Yeah - we're about done with that Trump shit now.