Let's go there: Are the unvaccinated the new Trumps?

[Ars Technica] Deep dive into stupid: Meet the growing group that rejects germ theory

Listen up, sheeple: COVID-19 doesn't exist. Viruses don't cause disease, and they aren't contagious. Those doctors and health experts who say otherwise don't know what they're talking about; the real experts are on Facebook. And they're saying it loud and clear: The pandemic is caused by your own deplorable life choices, like eating meat or pasta. Any "COVID" symptoms you might experience are actually the result of toxic lifestyle exposures—and you have only yourself to blame.

As utterly idiotic and abhorrent as all of the above is, it's not an exaggeration of the messages being spread by a growing group of Darwin-award finalists on the Internet—that is, germ theory denialists. Yes, you read that correctly: Germ theory denialists—also known as people who don't believe that pathogenic viruses and bacteria can cause disease.

As an extension of their rejection of basic scientific and clinical data collected over centuries, they deny the existence of the devastating pandemic that has sickened upwards of 200 million people worldwide, killing more than 4 million.

...the rest of the story at the link

Why limit yourself to to just vaccines. The Germ-Industrial Complex has been pushing the big lie for hundreds of years in order to control you!

 

Womp womp?

[Yahoo]Anti-Vax Radio Host Who Called Fauci a ‘Power Tripping Lying Freak’ Dies of COVID

An anti-vaccine right-wing radio host in West Palm Beach, Florida died Wednesday from COVID-19 complications.

Dick Farrel, 65, used his local talk show and social media to rail against Dr. Anthony Fauci, who he called a “power tripping lying freak,” and say that no one should get the coronavirus vaccine. When COVID-19 sent him to the hospital for three weeks, though, he changed his tune, urging friends to get vaccinated, friends told local station WPTV.

Farrel wrote in early July, “Vaccine Bogus Bull Shid!, Two peeps I know, got vaxed, now have Corona, hospitalized critical. Thank you Moderna, FOR NOTHING!” He erroneously told his followers they would not need the vaccine if they had already survived COVID-19. The CDC has advised former coronavirus patients to get vaccinated.

Texas GOP Official Mocked COVID Five Days Before He Died of Virus

Two days later, he wrote, “Why take a vax promoted by people who lied 2u all along about masks.” He called Fauci “FOOT-chee” and said that the infectious disease expert and “power trip libb loons” Democrats were conspiring to make it seem like the pandemic was ongoing so they could grab more power.

In late June, he wrote, “So, u think it wasn’t a SCAM DEMIC? NOT ONE ELECTED DEMOCRAT ever tested positive.” He called masks “face diapers” and “face pantys.”

An ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump, Farrel wrote often about baseless conspiracy theories of election fraud. In June, he penned a fearmongering post about liberals wanting to remove the American flag, writing, “Civil war beckons.”

Amy Leigh Hair, a close friend of Farrel, wrote on Facebook, “COVID took one of my best friends! RIP Dick Farrel. He is the reason I took the shot. He texted me and told me to ‘Get it!’ He told me this virus is no joke and he said, ‘I wish I had gotten it!’”

Hair later told WPTV, “I was one of the people like him who didn’t trust the vaccine. I trusted my immune system. I just became more afraid of getting COVID-19 than I was of any possible side effects of the vaccine. I’m glad I got vaccinated.”

The deep-voiced host, whose real name is Farrel Austin Levitt, also anchored for Newsmax after the radio station where he worked, WFLN, sold in 2016, according to friend and station owner George Kalman, who wrote Farrel’s obituary.

Farrel’s partner, Kit Farley, wrote on Facebook, “He was known as the other Rush Limbaugh. With a heavy heart, I can only say this was so unexpected. He will be missed.”

Farrel is one among several recent deaths of anti-vaccine advocates who have succumbed to COVID-19. Just this week, a Republican city councilman in Texas fought rapid and fatal bout with the virus that saw him hospitalized and dead within three days. He had used his position to advocate against vaccines and face masks.

 

^Did Fauci trip and fall over that dude's ventilator cord and lie there like a freak?





Sorry, I dont know how to process dumb deaths except thru equally dumb jokes...

 

now do masking

 

It's a strawman to narrow down misinformation to recent and deliberate. Trump saying Covid was a hoax, or just a cold, or just a flu, or that it would just go away way before vaccines were available. That's not recent and deliberate or not - who knows. He probably did believe some of that himself, but that's beside the point - it's still misinformation heard by hundreds of millions that was not recent and might not be deliberate.

 

Census household pulse survey track covid-19 vaccine hesitancy. Rich set of data where you can break it down by how much "hesitancy", reasons for them, and characteristics of folks that are hesitant. Overall, vaccine hesitancy has gone from 21.6% (Jan 2021) down to 10.8% (July 2021).

Today, the top reasons for hesitancy are:
1- side effects (51%)
2- don't trust covid19 vaccines (48%)
3- don't believe I need it (35%)
4- don't trust the gov (34%)
5- plan to wait and see if it is safe (27%)

https://www.census.gov/library/stor...d-vaccine-hesitancy-rates-vary-over-time.html

 

It's stuff like this that makes me pessimistic about the future of humanity.

 

evolution optimism will take care of humans one way or another

 

Fauci is scum but that isn't related to whether or not vaccines work... this guy let his emotions control his decisions.

 

The race and education tabs are worth noting. Blacks and Biracial categories have a ~73% vax rate and people who have not attended any form of college are below 75%.

Insurance coverage shouldn't matter as IIRC most states+fed foot the entire cost, but I think there's a two fold explanation behind it. Less likely to be salaried or covered by a company (typically lower wage) and less likely to rely on services that are paid out of habit (i.e. uncovered dental checkups are expensive or tough that sickness out with rest or robitussin rather than a non-copay doctor visit).

Again, it strikes back at the premise that it is not entirely political that the US won't achieve herd immunity through voluntary universal vaccination alone despite having the supplies and resources to hypothetically get there.

I'm sick of talking about whiny Trumpers/QAnoners who generally have the agency and capacity to vaccinate. They do what they want to do, and we do the best to correct/address any potential lies they spread.

I'd rather spend time and resources on the poor or historically discriminated groups whom are rightfully distrustful of novel drugs/healthcare authorities because of documented past abuses.

 

Another interesting bit from the census data is that old boomer demo are 93% vaccinated. 86% for the 55-64 category.

Supposedly this "culture war" over shots is a generational thing or a matter of Freedom and Establishment Skepticism.

I'm sure you can get vaxxed up and b**** about the whole situation, which is presumably how Tucker is raking it in.

 

Probably easily a much higher ROI. That was the outreach program that got politicized. The other good ROI is fighting misinformation. Again, another path that got politicized.

 

I would say "****'em, and let them get sick and maybe die." However, there are children under 12 who cannot be vaccinated yet and children over 12 who need Parental permission to get vaccinated. They are innocent and victims of this stupidity.

 

Evolution is also coming up with ways of killing humans too. New diseases are also a product of evolution.

We've been able to stave off "survival of the fittest" with technology. If we're just going to get collectively stupid and turn against our knowledge base we probably deserve the next evolved super-bug to wipe us out.

 

Come on man, you know he spends a lot of time cherry-picking articles to defend his “moderate democrat” position.

 

[Gizmodo] I Am Legend Screenwriter Forced to Tell Anti-Vaxxers His Zombie Movie Is Fake



The screenwriter who penned the 2007 zombie movie I Am Legend starring Will Smith has been forced to clarify something on Twitter that’s sure to make us all depressed today. The writer, Akiva Goldsman, had to explain that I Am Legend is, in fact, fiction. It’s not a documentary about zombies or something like that.

“Oh. My. God. It’s a movie. I made that up. It’s. Not. Real,” Goldsman tweeted Monday night.

Why on Earth would Goldsman feel the need to clarify something so obvious? It would appear that anti-vaccination advocates who are campaigning against covid-19 vaccines have turned I Am Legend into a meme.

The meme incorrectly asserts that zombies were created in the movie from a vaccination program gone awry, as though that would have some relevance to the real-world covid-19 pandemic which has sickened at least 203 million people globally and killed 4.3 million.

A report from the New York Times about one person who believed the meme might be real went viral, and included arguably one of the weirdest explanations in the paper’s history:

But this is far from the first time that the movie has come up in mainstream news reporting about resistance to the covid-19 vaccine. The Washington Post included a similar anecdote from an anti-vaxxer back in May.

...story continues at the link.

 

Can somebody tell me is this normal?

 

now do trump

 

I feel dumber after reading that.

Wait. Is it because...

Spoiler: Shyamalan twist

...She's already zombie. She just doesn't know it?

 

Yet more stuff to be pessimistic about humanity..