Vaccines, Infrastructure, and Kids In Cages: US Politics April 2021

sorry, I'm just over here enjoying the typo

yeah sorry i've had four hours sleep every night for the past year. every comment i post has them these days.

On Friday I went to happy hour with two fully vaccinated coworkers at a brewery with a formidable outdoor seating section. A couple of us teared up. It felt good. Baby steps, man.

Congrats! At this point I'm just looking forward to booking a haircut (cannot wait until I can get my beard professional trimmed again tho) in mid-May.

we're gonna be travelling to Boston with the kids to meet my nephew who is going to be 1. I'm worried about the kids but the evidence seems to be that even if they get it, it won't be a big deal - afaik most people whose kids caught it didn't even know they had it

sorry, I'm just over here enjoying the typo
yeah sorry i've had four hours sleep every night for the past year. every comment i post has them these days.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, April 19, 2021 3:05 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i've really noticed this in my own writing - on ilx, for work - so many typos, lots of times i miss words in sentences. very disconcerting, i used to be able to write really clean copy and not have many edits.

I used to think that, too, but then I occasionally look at old things I wrote (not just here, everywhere) and there's all sorts of wrong shit, even post-edit.

my partner's sister came up from boston and we've had a house with her and her husband (both vaxed) and her three kids (8, 10, 12) for the past three days. It has been an experience.

I used to think that, too, but then I occasionally look at old things I wrote (not just here, everywhere) and there's all sorts of wrong shit, even post-edit.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, April 19, 2021 3:17 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

nah it's definitely different for me, my brain is dying, it's real specific stuff that i know didn't happen before. and at the magazine stuff used to get edited like 4 times, twice on paper w.pen, so i am pretty conscious of what it used to be like.

I feel like a negative test in the past 4 days or something is a much more useful barometer to fly than a vaccination card. You can be vaxxed and still theoretically contagious, or at least it's possible.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/covid-flight-record-infections-india-b1833655.html

In theory everyone was tested 72 hrs before travel.

Yep, you're not going to catch everyone. But that's true with people who have been vaccinated too, they can still be positive. I mean, my druthers are for everybody to be vaxxed before they get on a plane, and masked in flight. But I also think a negative test before flying is a good idea.

How's your family, tips?

All fine so far. Youngest kid — our first case — gets to go back to school tomorrow. His brother is in isolation the rest of the week, but has been healthy so far. My wife and I tested negative again on Friday, so it looks like our first shot is holding up pretty well. We should all be clear by this weekend, knock wood.

Minneapolis some kids have gone back, it was up to it parents. but the rest of the week everyone's back home in case the Chauvin trial goes the wrong way. fun times. my daughter's been home anyway

I thought a recent study had shown that people who are fully vaxxed are not contagious?

Very small chance.

The B.1.617 variant was first detected in India, but has since been found elsewhere, including California. It has worried experts as it contains two mutations in the spike protein that, it has been suggested, may boost its ability to escape the body’s immune responses. It is thought the variant may also be able to infect the body more easily.

Every single flight arriving in Toronto from India in the last month has had at least one COVID-positive passenger, and one-third of all international flights have carried the virus.

Whether it mutated in the US or mutated in India, I'm sticking to my "bad idea to fly it in and out unchecked" position.

What if you check your covid with your luggage and then just pick it up at your destination?

Or leave your covid at home, then rent a different one when you get there?

I read a lifehack once that said rather than checking your covid, at whatever cost, you can save a few dollars by having it FedEx'd right to your hotel, so that by the time you check in it's already waiting for you there.

Yeah I remember when that lifehack went... viral

this fucken guy
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/nyregion/andrew-cuomo-book-investigation.html

The New York State attorney general has opened an investigation into Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s use of state resources as he wrote and promoted his recent pandemic memoir, the latest inquiry to engulf the embattled three-term Democrat.

The investigation followed disclosures that junior staff members and senior aides worked on Mr. Cuomo’s book, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic,” including editing early drafts, sitting in on pitch meetings, and menial tasks like printing and delivering manuscript pages to the governor’s mansion.

Mr. Cuomo has insisted that any work done by government employees on the book — which garnered a seven-figure advance — was voluntary, allowing that some minor work may have been “incidental.”

The misuse of public resources has led to the downfall of numerous political figures, including a former state comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, who resigned and pleaded guilty to a felony in 2006 after he used a state driver to run errands for his wife.

The investigation was opened after Letitia James, the attorney general, received a formal referral letter from the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, saying that a criminal investigation was warranted.

Hello hubris my old friend.

85 million adults fully vaccinated — fully vaccinated.

90 days ago that number was ... 400,000.

This country can do great things. pic.twitter.com/F99uJRayiK

— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) April 20, 2021

those are rookie first dose percentages, and they're going to stall earlier than in other countries because they're not bribing people to get vaccinated.

https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/images/open-uri20160811-32147-1dm69u9_4c7a4236.jpeg?region=0%2C0%2C600%2C600

Some serious doomposting these past few days.

Chauvin verdict is in

reading it at 4PM central

here we go

quick verdicts are usually very bad news for defendants, as I understand it

xxp haha, sorry. but if we top out at 70% of adults vaccinated we're in trouble. it looks like we might.

put this fuckin guy in jail for a long time

also i think it's fine to call out a member of the administration patting themselves on the back for doing better than literally the worst president in history, but worse than the other two countries that are not supply constrained (i.e. UK/israel).

xxp haha, sorry. but if we top out at 70% of adults vaccinated we're in trouble. it looks like we might.

Yeah, I'm worried about that long term, but I'm trying to stay mindful that even with bumps looming on the road ahead we are still headed in the right direction and much more well positioned than we were in January.

the compulsive need to vocalize the worst case scenario is not the same as actually being able to see the future

If we have 70% of adults in the US vaccinated but a much higher percentage of over 65's vaccinated, then what we're looking at is an epidemic that never really goes away, but keeps on rolling along, driven by local outbreaks, but which never again attains acute crisis level, just kind of persists as a permanent moderate elevation of the American level of sickness and death, i.e. it will be exactly the kind of thing that our society at first makes a conscious decision to live with for the sake of convenience and eventually sees as a fixed and unchangeable feature of existence that never could have been otherwise.

Plus old people outliving the young. Which is always great for a country.

look, there's doomposting, and then there's criticising the administration for failure to act. not sure why covid is special on this thread. feel free to smash that like button on the president's chief of staff's tweets if you prefer.

xp hearing 3.30 CST?

felt confident about guilty verdicts but my heart almost stopped when i heard announcement on radio. very nervous

I'm so worried right now

yeah this is as open-and-shut a case as I think we'll ever see so if it comes back "not guilty" I think things are going to get extremely ugly

Eh, we're a 50/50 country, so 65%-70% full jabs is remarkable (and, yeah, I expect periodic outbreaks).

Just tired of the saw around here that we can't be happy about any incremental progress in anything, lest we be labeled cheerleading shills for the Biden administration.

Biden should try this

Lol someone in Union Square Park who looks like the mayor of marijuana is handing out free joints to people who show their completed vaccine card for 4/20

NYC is undefeated pic.twitter.com/bdXTM3O6nq

— Mike Murphy (@mcwm) April 20, 2021

I wonder how quickly will the Minneapolis police union bare its ass to the world by showing sympathy toward Chauvin over a guilty verdict?

Eh, we're a 50/50 country, so 65%-70% full jabs is remarkable (and, yeah, I expect periodic outbreaks).

the same place this happened managed it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932021_Israeli_political_crisis

it's bribes for shots time.

we are averaging 3M per day, that number probably will drop and we may well get to the point where we have to find ways to compel people to get vaxxed, but we aren't there yet. Painting this as an utter failure doesn't really make sense right now.

if this isn't guilty i'm going to go get high and then fuck shit up but I am fairly confident this is guilty, in which case, I'm just going to get high

Tbh if it comes back not guilty, well...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M99nzyiS830

in caek's defense, this is v dismaying:

Most Americans who haven’t received the coronavirus vaccine say they’re unlikely to get the shots, according to an Axios-Ipsos poll released Monday, indicating the country’s mass immunization campaign could soon reach its peak.

Of the unvaccinated adults, 2 in 3 told pollsters they were either “not likely at all” or “not very likely” to get the injections. That proportion has remained level for more than month, polling shows.

Meanwhile, just 14 percent of unvaccinated Americans said they were likely to get the vaccine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/20/coronavirus-covid-live-updates-us/

we are averaging 3M per day, that number probably will drop and we may well get to the point where we have to find ways to compel people to get vaxxed, but we aren't there yet. Painting this as an utter failure doesn't really make sense right now.

it's dropping. the 7 day average peaked a week ago. the rate is declining. dunno what to tell you. we can wait until it falls more if you like?

groups that have had access for longest and need it the most are topping out around 80%. they topped out in the (high) 90s in the UK and israel.