The leader of the obstructionist party, the science-denying party, the “let them get COVID & die” party, the party that undermines every attempt to control the pandemic, has rushed to the front of the line to get vaccinated. Him and Rupert Murdoch, even as his networks preach conspiracy theories and denialism.
Just received the safe, effective COVID vaccine following continuity-of-government protocols. Vaccines are how we beat this virus.
Now back to continue fighting for a rescue package including a lot more money for distribution so more Americans can receive it as fast as possible. pic.twitter.com/kSBhI3EzzM
— Leader McConnell (@senatemajldr) December 18, 2020
Every EMT and nurse and doctor who has been risking all to be in the front line of helping people against this disease, and every public school teacher who has been told by their government to get in there and teach potential disease carriers, ought to be infuriated.
Oh, I forgot…the chickenshit party, the draft-dodging coward party, the party of flag-wavers who shoo the cannon-fodder forward.
Also, he’s not working to get relief to the people. His is the party that’s going to whine about the deficit and how they can’t possibly help with college debt relief, or send out emergency aid checks, or make health care available for all, while shoveling cash into the pockets of bankers and lawyers as fast as they can.
In case you were wondering, no, I haven’t been vaccinated, and there isn’t even a whisper on the university email lists about it, yet I’m going back into the student labs in about a month. We did get a video thank you card instead of a bonus, or a raise (no, that’s not happening, the Republicans in the state legislature will make sure of that), or a vaccination.
Yay.
Meanwhile, the defense spending bill sailed through with bipartisan support. The only issue in its passage is whether the military needs to rename bases named after racist traitors. Northop Grumman needs support in these difficult times – after all, the poor can eat eachother but you can’t eat an F-35!
Oh, have some sympathy for the poor man. He and his wife (Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao) can’t even go out to eat in in peace without someone tossing their leftovers out the door. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/mitch-mcconnell-confronted-by-angry-diner-at-louisville-restaurant.html What has happened to civility? People are just so mean. What’d poor old Mitchy ever do to deserve it? (No rush, I’ve got the whole day to listen.)
One silver lining I see about the vaccine is that it’ll have plenty of clinical testing before I even have the option of getting it. I will also take it at the first opportunity.
Last I heard, Mitch et al were demanding that in return for supporting some kind of relief to workers affected by the economic consequences of the pandemic Congress would have to force the Fed to stop buoying Wall Street in late January, so that the collapse of the stock market will appear to be in response to the presidential transition.
anat@3 Probably. But the stock market is supposed to be forwarded looking. If this is conventional wisdom, shouldn’t it be priced in already? (Half joking, because I have given up trying to figure out stock market movement.)
Well, I just read that a Republican MN state senator has died of COVID. I suppose, then, that all the rest of the MN state legislature may jump the line, too. They won’t get around to vaccinating us peons (useless mouths, they used to call it) for quite a while.
Just got the priority list from my state: I’m in the lowest priority level, and they predict I’ll get the vaccine in May to June, which means August to September, at best. And I’ll be back teaching F2F in February, too.
Ah well! Since I’ll be teaching second-semester seniors this spring, I’ll threaten them with not graduating if I get sick (which is true: there’s no one who can cover this required-to-graduate class for me.) That might help, a little.
anat @3: yeah, if there’s one thing that Republicans are actually successful at, it’s utter shamelessness.
Off-topic: is something going on with Dan Arel’s blog? Whenever I go to https://proxy.freethought.online/danthropology/, I get “Sorry, no content matched your criteria.” Did the URL change or something? (It’s still the same in the menu on the left.)
A video appreciation? Bloody luxury.
I worked at a Church of England school a few years ago and was very pleased to get a long envelope just before Christmas. A cheque? No. A personalised prayer.
I got the pfizer vaccine yesterday. Yee haa. I might be able to go back to work in about 6 weeks. BTW Slight pain at the injection site and thats been it for me.
And still no word about why the government is short-changing states 30-40% on the number of doses they were promised while vaccine is sitting in Pfizer’s warehouse waiting to be shipped.
Murdoch got jabbed in UK. “A convoy of Range Rovers delivered the 89-year-old billionaire to a dedicated vaccine centre in Henley, Oxfordshire, where normal hours are understood to have been extended at the last minute. ” (Guardian). Great, the already overworked staff get extra hours. Meanwhile, the medical staff themselves don’t get vaccinated until, maybe, sometime next year. After all, it’s not as though we need medics, and many of them are foreigners anyway.
McConnell has been holding up a second round of COVID relief because the Dems refuse to cave to his demand that no employers can be sued for negligence if their employees get COVID-19, no matter what. Not even those bastards in the meatpacking industry. McConnell finally caved on this, but only because the GOP needs all the votes it can get in order to win the Senate seats in Georgia (they only need one, but the need at least one).
(Cross-posted from poopyhead’s current [Pandemic and] Political Madness All the Time thread, largely in response to Ridana@9.)
More on the confusion about allocated doses of the Covid-19 vaccine and why states are getting less than they understood they would get, ‘I failed’: Operation Warp Speed leader takes responsibility for Covid-19 vaccine distribution confusion (this source, STAT, is unknown to me but seem reliable, and is related to the Boston Globe):
“OWS will not release first doses until it has second doses on hand, Perna said. Determining how to do so has been a challenge, he added. ”
A challenge, huh? Take the available number of doses, divide by two, and send that many total two-packs to the places you’ve already allocated?
Or, how about, buy more of what Pfizer’s got sitting around?
It really takes a general to be stumped by this. Because, lots of vaccines that require two or more doses have been distributed in the past. But, don’t ever look at past successful procedures and extrapolate from there, you might learn someting.
Where’s Radar O’Reilly when you need him? I’m sure he’d know all the right requisition forms.
When I first glanced quickly at the picture, I thought he was standing with a KKK member. But then I remembered there’s only one in the picture and he’s on the left.
I hope you’re sitting down, this is going to raise your blood pressure. TL/DR: Trump effectively veto an effort to mail face masks to every citizen in the US because he was feuding with the Postal service and Bezos.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/politics/trump-covid-pandemic-dark-winter/?no_nav=true&tid=a_classic-iphone
My mom just got vaccinated, but she’s a nurse practitioner with an autoimmune disorder. (She kept working because, in her words, it’s “her duty as a healthcare provider”.) However, many of her colleagues still haven’t gotten the vaccine.
It may cheer you up…or make you more depressed to know Boris Johnson and his merry team of lying, incompetent grifters are every bit as bad…
Britain overpaid for the Pfizer vaccine because negotiating together with the other European countries (They invited Britain to join the effort) but this would have clashed with the “we are better off alone” credo of Brexiteer idiots.
Meanwhile, the government did not see fit to pay money for food to children in impoverished families during Christmas.
They are scum.
They are not completely useless, however.
If climate change ruins food supplies I might consider eating Soylent Green.
@18/@19, Keep in mind teh “U”K wants to retreat back to their historically shite (almost literally!) food safety standards and practices.