COVID-19 Update

Daily Beast:

Anti-Vax Flat Earth Preacher Dies of COVID-19

Rob Skiba, an influential figure in flat earth and Christian circles, has died of COVID-19, colleagues announced on Thursday. He had been fighting the virus since at least late August, when he began exhibiting symptoms after “Take On The World,” a biblical flat earth conference. “He has been sick since coming back from TOTW,” a Facebook friend posted in early September, adding that Skiba had been hospitalized for low oxygen levels. One of the country’s most prominent advocates of Flat Earth Theory, Skiba was also skeptical of COVID-19 vaccines and some of the illness’ treatments. On the first day of the Take On The World conference, Skiba authored a Facebook post suggesting that the COVID-19 vaccines were dangerous.

‘To those who disagree with my position on our current situation... One of us is right,” he wrote. “Unless YHWH miraculously intervenes, based on what I’m seeing/hearing, the one scenario that really does appear to be coming into focus is the likelihood that within I’d say 2 to 3 years or so... one of us will probably be dead. Truly, I take no joy in saying this, nor will I if I'm the one still standing.”

Skiba’s community memorialized him on social media. “Whether you agree or disagree with him on a particular subject, you can’t help but love his genuine, authentic, loving, disarming, comical approach to very polarizing content,” a friend wrote in tribute. “What a great teacher.”

Today's Tik Tok

(the sharing thing confuses me sometimes - shut up)

Anyway. Less than 20 seconds, and I'm plumb tuckered out just watching it.

pic.twitter.com/KTYVLUTNVb

— ordure (@ordurebizarree) October 7, 2021

From A Different Angle

It's easy to see how a growing affinity between Millennial youngsters and (eg) Boomer Progressives could be seen as a real threat to a "conservative" scheme aimed at installing a plutocracy.

So what's a good little fascist to do?

Divide-n-Conquer.

So how do I drive a wedge between two very important factions in order to keep them from joining forces and kicking my autocratic ass to the political curb?

The Young Turks take a crack at Cancel Culture as a kind of False Flag ploy - another example of how we can be manipulated by people who turn everything upside down and inside out.

Jan6 Stuff

The most ardent supporters - the ones who'll go anywhere and do whatever they think they've been told to do no matter what, without thinking it through, and with no regard for anything, including themselves or anyone else - those are the guys who personify Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil".

Chris Hayes, MSNBC

Don't Forget

Let's be checkin' those ta-tas

COVID-19 Update

WaPo Live Update: (freebie)

Vaccination could have prevented 90,000 deaths over four months, study says

Approximately 90,000 covid-19 deaths could have been avoided over four months of this year if more U.S. adults had chosen to be vaccinated, a new study finds, as the disease caused by the coronavirus became the second-leading cause of death in the United States.

The estimate from the Peterson Center on Healthcare and the Kaiser Family Foundation focused on deaths of U.S. adults from June 2021 — when the report says coronavirus vaccines became widely available to the general public — through September.

Around half of the deaths it deemed preventable occurred in September, due to the spread of the more contagious delta variant, the easing of social distancing rules and the lower vaccination rate among younger adults, the study says. That month, covid-19 was the leading cause of death for adults between ages 35 and 54, superseding heart disease and cancer.

Coronavirus cases in the United States are falling again, but the virus is not yet under “control,” Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, said Wednesday. More than 1,600 people died of covid-19 every day on average in the first week of October. The large majority of those deaths were “preventable,” the study’s authors wrote.

Un-Fun Fact, per Officer Down:

For all of 2020, and so far in 2021, COVID-19 is the leading cause of death among On-Duty Law Enforcement Officers.

In the meantime, we're beginning to see something of a slow decline in cases and deaths, indicating the Delta Wave is receding and that the pandemic may be less of a threat in the coming few months - if we can stay committed to vaccinations and masks.

Today's Tantrum

Let's just say the guy's bag is short a coupla marbles. And while we've known that for a long time now, it's always good to get a brisk and bracing refresher on it.

HuffPo, via Yahoo:

Donald Trump Has An Election Take That Democrats Would Probably Support

Trump’s statement followed a Georgia state judge dismissing a lawsuit alleging that officials in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, had counted fraudulent ballots during last November’s election.

Still, Trump’s words may not be an empty threat, according to NBC News correspondent Sahil Kapur, who noted on Twitter that “the same fabricated claims of fraud arguably depressed GOP turnout in the Georgia runoffs and helped Democrats win the Senate.”

"Save America PAC" - SAP - there has never been anything more aptly named. Ever.

So confident in his bluster, he's sure that all he has to do is snap his fingers and the GOP disappears.

Please, Mr Trump - whatever you do, don't throw us into the briar patch.

Today's Manchin Malarky

Joe Manchin is not as stupid as he has seemed these last several months.

Joe Manchin is however feeling the heat, and starting to crumble under the pressure.

Which makes Joe Manchin look kinda stupid.

Business Insider:

New study blows a hole in Joe Manchin's argument that the revamped child tax credit discourages people from working

A new study released Tuesday indicated that the revamped child tax credit hasn't kept people from working, blowing a hole in an argument championed by Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia as Democrats grapple with extending the credit as a key part of President Joe Biden's domestic agenda.

The analysis from researchers at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, Barnard College and Bocconi University found "very small, inconsistently signed, and statistically insignificant impacts of the CTC" on employment and participation and the workforce.

It relied on data from the monthly Current Population Survey from earlier this year as well as the Census Household Pulse surveys that were collected from April 2021 through August 2021, the second month that the child tax credit checks were sent.

The child tax credit was overhauled in Biden's stimulus law earlier this year. From July to December, families will get a $300 monthly benefit per child age 5 and under, amounting to $3,600 this year. The one-year measure provides $250 each month per kid age 6 and 17, totaling $3,000. Half of the benefit will come as a tax refund next year.

Families with little or no tax burden can also receive the federal cash now, a sharp change from how the credit was originally structured. The latest research challenges Manchin's assertion that federal aid will keep people from seeking work as he argues against the US economy slipping into an "entitlement mentality."

Some experts cautioned against drawing definitive conclusions early in the credit's rollout. Scott Winship, a poverty expert at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, wrote in a tweet that "research finds that the labor supply response takes years to fully manifest, not days or months."

A strong majority of Congressional Democrats support making the changes permanent in their safety net package, citing research that it could cut child poverty by up to half and particularly among Black and Latino kids. Early research has indicated that it helped feed 2 million kids in its first month and kept 3 million out of poverty.

But Democrats are running into resistance from Manchin who wants people to work as a condition to receive the credit.

The West Virginia Democrat has been the chief advocate for imposing a work requirement on the expanded child tax credit. He argues the generous federal assistance would keep people from working.

"There's no work requirements whatsoever," he told CNN on September 12. "There's no education requirements whatsoever for better skill sets. Don't you think, if we're going to help the children, that the people should make some effort?"

He doubled down a few days later, telling Insider that "tax credits are based around people that have tax liabilities."

Some Senate Democrats shot back, including Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, one of the architects of the expansion. "I think raising children is work," he told HuffPost.

Brown's comeback was OK, but it's a little outdated and misses the point. The Child Tax Credit is what allows a huge majority of parents' the "luxury" of rejoining the workforce.

Which shows up Manchin's "argument" as the usual conservative double bind claptrap:

without the tax credit, I can't afford to go to work

without the work, I can't get the tax credit

all done - gotta go

COVID-19 Update

The naked aggression towards expertise and knowledge and intellectual integrity coming from the authoritarians has to be countervailed at every opportunity.

The Daddy State lies as a means of demonstrating their power.

The lies have practically nothing to do with the subject of the lies.

Lying about everything is a way to condition us - to make us accept the premise that they can do anything they want.

THEIR GOAL IS TO DICTATE REALITY TO US.

WaPo:

Parents love their kids. That doesn’t make them experts on masks and vaccines

Letting parents use their fears as a weapon has consequences for public health

I came late to parenthood. While it was something I had always desired for my life, it didn’t happen until my mid-30s, after I had completed my pediatric training. People have asked me over the years whether it was harder to become a parent after understanding intimately all the ways a child’s body could falter or fail — during pregnancy, during those precarious newborn days, during all the rest of their lives through adulthood, with injury and illness lurking around every corner. Love and fear, it always seemed to me, were the two halves of every parent’s heart. Love in its most intense and all-encompassing form, married to an equally intense fear that something terrible could happen at any moment. It mattered little to me that I had my children after I had become a pediatric emergency physician: I knew these two truths existed in every parent, regardless of age or stage in life.

What I did worry about was what it meant to become a parent, how it would change me, and whether that change would be for the worse.

Once, when I was in my pediatric emergency fellowship, I was called into the room of a patient I had not yet met because the child had started seizing. As I ran into the room, trying quickly to get a handle of the situation to determine whether her movements were in fact a seizure, I was met by an immediate barrage of insults from the patient’s father. Before even being able to complete my quick assessment and start ordering medications, a litany of vile invectives was hurled my way, ending with, “Do you even know what you’re doing? Do you even have children?” I understood, of course, that this was the father’s stress reaction, that he was blinded by the intense love and fear he had for his child in that moment, and that I was the outlet where he could unburden those feelings. And however hurtful and off-putting it was, I had to prioritize care of her at that moment.

Later, I reflected on his question — it's one that is asked of young pediatric physicians almost universally at some point in their training. The standard answer given is that it doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter whether a doctor has children to be an expert in the care and advocacy of children. This is true. Some of the best pediatricians I know are not parents. And yet, it is also true that I became a better pediatrician after I became a parent. This is not because I can now advise a parent on what kind of swaddle to buy, or which vitamin drop is most palatable, but because I can bear witness to a parent’s confusion and worry for their child and feel the reflections of those same feelings in my own parenting journey. Because I can lean into a parent’s spoken and unspoken fears and understand deeply that the root of those fears is love, that they’re driven by the same feelings I have for my own children. Because I have lived many of those same challenges, it has broadened my capacity for empathy. I am a better pediatrician because parenthood, I hope, has made me a better person.

Yet while parental love can be expansive and capacious for some, causing them to think and act in ways that are more compassionate and understanding than in their pre-parenting days, that love can be a force of destruction for others.

What I say to persuade parents to vaccinate their kids — and what I hold back

That’s all the more starkly obvious during this moment in the covid-19 pandemic. Young children across the country have gone back to schools before they’re eligible for the coronavirus vaccine, and many of them have gone into school systems that have de-emphasized the science on masking in favor of parental preference. I keep wondering why, as a society, we have allowed parental feelings to outweigh the good of the general public.

Historically, exceedingly few examples of public health mandates have invited as much parental involvement as the question of masking in schools has. With the exception of vaccination (whether to vaccinate one’s child at all or put them on a spaced-out or delayed regimen), no questions in recent history approach the level of debate we are still having about masking.

While pediatricians are adept at researching and strategizing ways to help vaccine-hesitant parents understand the benefits of protecting their children against vaccine-preventable illnesses, the furor around masking has revealed a whole different paradigm. In this world, school boards, parent-teacher associations, and local and state governments have given an equivalent platform to “anti-mask” parents as they have to scientists and health-care workers on the front lines. And a false narrative is set up asking us to consider the “two sides” of this debate before we decide on policies.

This is the weaponization of parenthood: where parental preference (based largely on fear) outranks other, more pressing priorities (such as the health of teachers and staff, of more vulnerable students or their family members, of the general public).

Yes, it’s true some children may find that masks irritate their faces, fog up their glasses or cause headaches, and that accommodations should be made for children with hearing disabilities who rely on lip-reading or those with other intellectual disabilities. And yes, enforcing masking in very young children is challenging indeed. But the majority of school-age children have no difficulty complying with mask mandates, and the arguments against them (that they provoke anxiety, promote mouth-breathing disorders, obstruct language development or increase inhaled Co2 levels) have never been proven to be caused by masking in any significant way. The benefits of masking, however, have been proven repeatedly.

Some parents won’t vaccinate their kids against covid. Here are their reasons.

As the authorization for use of coronavirus vaccines for younger children looms, so does the question about how much weight we should give to parental preference, especially when it’s largely based on fear. If we are ever going to find our way out of this pandemic, most of our population must be vaccinated, and that includes our children. As a pediatrician, I commit to continuing to discuss the benefits of vaccination to all my patients and families who are willing to engage, and as a parent I plan to vaccinate my kids as soon as they are eligible, while continuing to advocate for masking in their schools.

When I think back to that child having a seizure and her irate father, I remember how our conversation went after his child had stopped seizing and things had stabilized. When we finally had a calm moment, we talked. “You are the expert on your child when she is healthy and well,” I told him. “And I am an expert in protecting your child’s health in an emergency and preventing her from getting sick. We need to use our expertise together to best care for her — to make sure she recovers and lives a healthy life. Let’s commit to that together.”

I can only hope, as a society, that we can commit to holding each other accountable for the ways in which we protect our most vulnerable, our very young and our very old, and to using every strategy at our disposal to minimize what is already an inconceivable amount of loss.

Today's Tweet

42 US Code § 264 - Regulations to control communicable diseases

BTW - the feds can arrest your dumb ass if the docs have reasonable cause to think you're carrying a communicable disease. 

Title 42 of the Public Health Service Act gives authority to the Federal Government over states to stop communicable spread by ANY measures necessary. Signed into US Federal Law in 1944.

— H43 (@H486572676574) October 12, 2021