Unvaccinated America in 5 charts

[Jolly]

Then ask the black population.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

I wonder to what extent the Trumpist subset of the antivaxx crowd will start becoming distrustful of other vaccines.

Do you think "Trumpist" is a better description than "Republican" for this subset?

[jon-nyc]

@jolly said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

Then ask the black population.

Again, different category. Their hesitance probably comes more from a general distrust of the medical system.

I doubt they'd have any particular insights to share on the Trumpists.

[Copper]

"What is going on now is both entirely predictable, but entirely preventable," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday, saying the outcome of the model is possible. "We know we have the wherewithal with vaccines to turn this around."

Somebody should tell Anthony what entirely means.

Words have meaning, just another reason not to trust this clown. He wants to create anti-vaxxers

[Doctor Phibes]

'Blame Fauci'. It's like an episode of South Park.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

@jolly said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

Then ask the black population.

Again, different category. Their hesitance probably comes more from a general distrust of the medical system.

I doubt they'd have any particular insights to share on the Trumpists.

What's your insight into "Trumpists" and why they are more likely than average to not get vaccinated?

[jon-nyc]

That’s not the question I’m asking. It’s whether their covid vaccine hesitancy will spill over into other vaccines.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

That’s not the question I’m asking. It’s whether their covid vaccine hesitancy will spill over into other vaccines.

Oh, I'm sorry for diverting the discussion into something totally unrelated.

[Jolly]

@jon-nyc said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

That’s not the question I’m asking. It’s whether their covid vaccine hesitancy will spill over into other vaccines.

About 66% of people over 60 in Louisiana have received at least one dose. IIRC, whites lead all minorities in percentage in that age group.

Now given that more than 70% of those folks voted for Trump, doesn't that kinda knock your argument into a cocked hat?

[Aqua Letifer]

@jolly said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

@jon-nyc said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

That’s not the question I’m asking. It’s whether their covid vaccine hesitancy will spill over into other vaccines.

About 66% of people over 60 in Louisiana have received at least one dose. IIRC, whites lead all minorities in percentage in that age group.

Now given that more than 70% of those folks voted for Trump, doesn't that kinda knock your argument into a cocked hat?

No. We're talking about the politics of the unvaccinated, not the politics of the vaccinated and over 60 in Louisiana.

[LuFins Dad]

Why is this about Trump? Trump fast tracked the vaccines, Trump took a vaccine, Trump promoted the vaccines and was booed for it roundly.

[Aqua Letifer]

@lufins-dad said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

Why is this about Trump? Trump fast tracked the vaccines, Trump took a vaccine, Trump promoted the vaccines and was booed for it roundly.

It's not about Donald Trump. It's about Trumpists and conservatives of a certain demographic generally. Also, quite obviously and as I predicted, this is very much about wagon-circling.

[LuFins Dad]

No, sorry, but when it comes to the vaccines, you are a Trumpist. Jon is a Trumpist. Phibes is a Trumpist.

[LuFins Dad]

Unless you are saying that people shouldn’t take the vaccines, and it’s not good?

[Jolly]

@aqua-letifer said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

@jolly said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

@jon-nyc said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

That’s not the question I’m asking. It’s whether their covid vaccine hesitancy will spill over into other vaccines.

About 66% of people over 60 in Louisiana have received at least one dose. IIRC, whites lead all minorities in percentage in that age group.

Now given that more than 70% of those folks voted for Trump, doesn't that kinda knock your argument into a cocked hat?

No. We're talking about the politics of the unvaccinated, not the politics of the vaccinated and over 60 in Louisiana.

As I said, the demographic I pointed to, has the highest vaccination rate in the state. They voted for Trump in overwhelming numbers.

Biden took 81% of the vote in Orleans Parish, which means he probably took close to 90% of the black vote in that parish. He also took East Baton Rouge and Caddo, and I bet he won a similar percentage of the black vote.

Now since blacks have not been vaccinated at the same rate as whites, wouldn't the better question be why there is vaccine hesitancy among the Biden voters? Is is because of Biden's and Heels-up's hesitancy and criticism of the vaccine?

[Horace]

Using the word "Trumpists" is clearly a failure of language. Aqua, shame. Shame! Jon can't help it; he has TDS and must service it. You, on the other hand, should serve language.

[Aqua Letifer]

@horace said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

You, on the other hand, should serve language.

The written word is dead. All hail augmented reality.

[jon-nyc]

@jolly said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

Now given that more than 70% of those folks voted for Trump, doesn't that kinda knock your argument into a cocked hat?

And what argument might that be? All three of your responses to me in this thread indicate a misunderstanding of my actual post. Perhaps you should re-read it.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

@jolly said in Unvaccinated America in 5 charts:

Now given that more than 70% of those folks voted for Trump, doesn't that kinda knock your argument into a cocked hat?

And what argument might that be? All three of your responses to me in this thread indicate a misunderstanding of my actual post. Perhaps you should re-read it.

If we disinfect your original question by removing the TDS from it, it sounds like you wonder whether rural white Republican voters will take a general anti vax turn, going forward. I don’t know. What do you think?

[George K]

Sort of related: The Bitter Truth: There’s Still No Rhyme or Reason to COVID-19

The stats defy the spin: This pandemic does not hinge on whether the governor is a Democrat or Republican, whether restrictions are tight or loose. It does not care.

Two presidents. Fifty states. One-hundred-and-ninety-five countries. A multitude of different approaches. And still, there’s no rhyme or reason to this pandemic.

Vaccines help a great deal. That much we know. Beyond that, though, the coverage of the virus has mostly been partisanship and witchcraft. Here, current as of today, is the per-state death chart per 100,000 people in the United States:

Confusing, isn’t it? Try as you might, you will not find a plausible way of blaming this on that party or region or policy that you hate.

A few days ago, the New York Times ran an excellent piece on the terrible spike in Florida. “Even a state that made a major push for vaccinations . . . can be crushed by the Delta variant,” the paper observed, while noting that “Florida ranks 21st among states and Washington, D.C., in giving people of all ages at least one shot.” Indeed, the Times noted, nobody is quite sure why this is happening. “Exactly why the state has been so hard-hit,” it concluded, “remains an elusive question” — not least because “other states with comparable vaccine coverage have a small fraction of Florida’s hospitalization rate.”

Many of the Times’s readers were frightfully upset by this blunt assessment of the facts. On Twitter, MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin put his fingers in his ears and screamed, “This is not true.” “And,” he added, “you know it. Do better.” Soledad O’Brien, meanwhile, went so far as to describe the piece as “journalistic malpractice.” What a strange, neat little world some people have made for themselves.

What Griffin, O’Brien, and others wanted the Times to say was that Red States Are Bad and Blue States Are Good — or, perhaps, as Paul Krugman argued over the weekend, that the North Is Good and the South Is Bad, Just Like During the Civil War. But this simply isn’t correct. If it were, what could possibly account for the death-rate pairings of New York and Mississippi? Of Alabama and Connecticut? Of Michigan and Arkansas? Of Texas and Delaware? Of Idaho and Colorado? For months, many in the press have banged on and on and on about Florida’s governor and then been shocked to learn that, even after a terrible spike — a spike that, mercifully, is beginning to fade — Florida’s record remains better than those of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Michigan, and Illinois; that the number of children who have died in Florida (per capita) is not only exactly in line with the national average, but around five times lower than D.C.’s number, and just over half of New York’s; that, far from lagging behind, Florida’s vaccination rate is above the national average; and that, despite having a disproportionately old population, Florida sits in the bottom half for deaths among senior citizens. The state of Louisiana, which seems to get hit around the same time as Florida each time there is a wave of COVID-19 infections, currently boasts many policies that Florida does not — among them, an ongoing indoor mask mandate that applies even to the vaccinated, a statewide school-mask mandate for all students over the age of five, and, in the city of New Orleans, a system of vaccine passports. Despite this, Louisiana’s death rate is the fourth worst in the nation, while Florida — which has a much older population (as of 2020, Florida has the largest senior population in the union; Louisiana’s is 42nd) — sits in 20th place. What gives?

Last night, ABC News reported that there is bad news coming out of Oregon — yes, the same Oregon that’s home to Governor Kate Brown, she of the innovative outdoor mask mandate for the vaccinated. “The death toll from COVID-19,” the outfit noted, “is climbing so rapidly in Oregon in some counties that the state has organized delivery of one refrigerated truck to hold the bodies and is sending a second one.” What, within our Good/Bad dichotomy, can have caused this, one must wonder? Has Governor Brown not frowned enough? Have Oregonians failed to burn a sufficient number of dead radio hosts in effigy? Does the state’s health director sport a bad haircut? Or could it be, perhaps, that this is a terrible virus, that it prompts unpredictable results, and that our present political hysteria is as poor a frame for understanding what is happening in New Jersey and Oregon as it is for understanding what is happening in Texas and Alaska?

Israel, which has done everything that the loudest critics on the Left wanted America to do, is nevertheless stuck in the throes of a devastating surge. Israel has instituted repeated and draconian lockdowns (enforced by drone, no less); it has used nationwide mask mandates; it has vaccinated everyone early — and even added booster shots into the mix; and it has even instituted a system of vaccine passports. And, right now? Well, it’s getting crushed. Per NPR, despite becoming “the first country on Earth to fully vaccinate a majority of its citizens against COVID-19,” it now “has one of the world’s highest daily infection rates. . . . Nearly one in every 150 people in Israel today has the virus.” I wonder: Is Israel a Red State or a Blue State?

Much as they would hate to hear this, it remains the case that the most vitriolic voices in our COVID debates are little more than glammed-up conspiracy theorists — the sort of narrow, monomaniacal, quackish people who, in an era not that far removed from our own, would have been selling leeches by the ton. The journalist David Aaronovitch argues that such people tend to fall back on their ideas because the volatility and complexity of the real world is simply too scary for them handle. It is much easier to believe that George W. Bush ordered 9/11 than to accept that America is vulnerable and life is unpredictable, because if George W. Bush ordered 9/11 you can prevent it from happening again by imprisoning him; whereas if 19 guys with box cutters carried out 9/11, it could probably happen again. So it is with COVID-19. It is much easier to believe that, if we put the people you like in charge of everything and make them say the right words on TV, the worst pandemic in a century will bend to their will than it is to accept that human beings are alarmingly susceptible to chaos.

The uncomfortable truth is that, beyond developing, encouraging, and providing inoculation, there’s not much that any government can do to guarantee success — and, even when it does what it can, a lot of people are going to resist for reasons bad and good. In their transparent attempts to draw attention from President Biden’s disastrous performance in Afghanistan, certain pundits have begun shouting loudly that we should be paying more attention to the 1,000 or so COVID-19 deaths we’re seeing here in America each day. Well, okay then; let’s do that. While running for president, Joe Biden said he’d “shut down the virus.” It’s been seven months since he took over, and, after a lull, we are now back in crisis. The obvious question, then, is: Why is Biden failing so badly?

And here’s the thing: If that’s an unfair question because it’s a little more “complicated” than that for Biden, then it’s an unfair question because it’s also a little more complicated than that for Phil Murphy, for Ron DeSantis, for Gretchen Whitmer, for Greg Abbott, and for everyone else who has had the misfortune to become a talisman during this terrible time. Given how polarized we are at present, one can easily comprehend why, in its early days, so many political obsessives thought it might be efficacious to use the pandemic as a stick. But now? Eighteen months in? It’s beyond time for them to shut the hell up.