One of Biden’s declared goals was to see 70% of the population vaccinated by July. He didn’t quite make it. The states that did reach the goal are in green.
Compare that to the electoral map.
Huh. Wonder what that means.
A finer-grained analysis might be interesting. My county went for Trump; it also has a vaccination rate currently around 50%.
See https://acasignups.net/21/07/04/happy-independence-day-heres-us-covid19-vaccination-levels-county
Umatilla County in Oregon, where my parents live, is stuck at 38%. They only made it that far thanks to the people living on the Indian Reservation. They get federal socialized medicine and guaranteed personal income so they jumped on board immediately. Socialism is looking pretty damn good right now.
It’s the 2016 map, except with NV traded for PA.
Also see CNN’s Rates of new Covid-19 cases are almost 3 times higher in states with low vaccination rates, new data shows, which has a map showing every county in the States and its vaccination rate. (Hat tip to SC in the current [Pandemic and] Political Madness All the Time thread.)
Hell of a brilliant vote suppression scheme.
First off, I wish everyone that is able to get vaccinated would. Number two, I’m curious if this will have concrete consequences in the 2022 midterms. If it does, there will be so much talk of rigged elections (there will be anyway, of course) if not as many R’s are around to vote. I’m foreseeing a lot of shocked Pikachu faces.
Something similar happens when you break California counties down by blue-vs.-red data in the 2020 general election. The bluest also have the highest vaccination rates. The story gets tweaked a bit when you go to Covid incidence, because some red counties have been spared the worst of the pandemic. They like to brag about it, but it’s mostly because they are minimally populated rural counties. Viruses naturally prefer closely-packed populations in urban centers.
The same factors are providing fodder for the innumerate right-wingers in the state. Health officials have sounded a warning that red counties used to account for 6% of new Covid cases, but in recent weeks it’s risen to 11%. Haw-haw, jeer the MAGA heads, that means 89% occur in blue counties! But when one factors in the reality that Biden romped through California and defeated Mr. 45 by two-to-one (and did it by carrying all of the big counties with big populations), most Covid cases have to be in those counties. The fact that red counties have nearly doubled their share of the new infections? Obviously fake news. Let’s have another super-spreader party! Masks forbidden!
There’s real resistance by those who are professed Republicans to get vaccinated, with an NPR-PBS-Marist poll back in May finding that 41 percent of Republicans said they aren’t going to get vaccinated, compared to just 4 percent of Democrats.
The GOP base is characterized by the same mindset you’d expect out of a defiant toddler who deliberately shits his pants specifically because it inconveniences his mother.
I’m not exaggerating either: it’s pure, stupid, selfish, “fuck you” rebel-without-a-clue contrarianism. The problem is, the shitted-up britches are contagious in this case.
Be fun to try to pass legislation that you can’t wait in a voting line unless you have your shots. If people can’t distribute water for health reasons it only seems to make sense.
Of course, democrats will probably never be able to pass legislation again, let alone voting legislation so it’s a moot point.
Time to dust off your Pearson correlation coefficients, y’all!
Over in the UK, where Boris Johnson has evidently decided to remove all possible impediments to the accelerating Delta variant wave in a couple of weeks, vaccine uptake has been mostly bipartisan, but the high demand and limited supply has left a large majority of under 25s vulnerable in infection, along with all children, since the vaccine has not yet been approved for under 18s.
Given they’re now saying they’re pushing ahead with removing all laws and regulations, despite warnings of a massive wave incoming, I fear for those among the vaccinated who are still vulnerable to any serious infection, like my 90 year old parents. Cancer patient advocacy groups are likewise appalled, and recent surveys have shown large majorities in favor of keeping mask and social distancing rules in place until the wave subsides.
Given how fast Delta is spreading in the UK, it’s currently outpacing what Alpha managed at the start of the previous wave even with 67% of the population at least partially vaccinated (vs 0%), I am not that optimistic about the immediate future over here, given the far greater numbers of unvaccinated and the fact that there will be no mandates at all this time around.
There’s going to be an endless stream of reports of large local outbreaks from churches, bible camps, high school and college campuses, high school and college sports teams, exacerbated by unvaccinated people greatly underestimating their chances of catching the virus because they managed to avoid it until now.
I assume this is a genius plot by George Soros and Bill Gates to use reverse psychology to wipe out the opposition.
I live in Missouri where only about 40% are fully vaccinated. Only about 46% have gotten even one dose.
My home is in St. Louis County where about 48% are fully vaccinated; but there are still lots of folks who won’t get vaccinated because Jesus…or something. The only other Missouri county approaching half of the folks fully vaccinated is Boone County, the home of the main campus of the University of Missouri in Columbia, MO, along with the smaller Stephens College and Columbia College.
Even though this boomer got his second Pfizer jab back in April, and Missouri is now totally opened up (because Jesus…or something), I still wear a mask and try to maintain social distance, principally because I could still get a viral load that I could pass on to somebody else. When I go to the grocery store, it looks like about a quarter of shoppers are wearing masks. At least some folks around here give a damn about somebody other than themselves.
The county I live in has the lowest vaccination rate in the SF Bay Area, at 68%, as a couple of weeks ago.
In Iceland 90% of the population has gotten at least one shot. Sorely tempted to move…
The states marked in green are good and all, but when you start looking at the rates including people under 18, who may not be eligible for vaccination but sure as heck are eligible for infection, the picture isn’t so nice — most of the blue states are only around 60%. (The only bright spot is that since blue states have most of the population, the national average is higher than you might expect otherwise. But since nobody lives in the entire US at once that won’t help stop a Delta Variant wave from hitting the areas with low rates.)
Vicar (not generic):
But better than the red states. That’s the point.
Sadly, nothing can be done since no one with power is willing to be as ruthless with the far right cancer that has been killing all of our nations as the far right has been with everyone else. People are just going to have to do what they can to protect their own and hope the far right doesn’t do fatal damage.
@#17, John Morales:
One of the major points of trying to get the vaccination rates up is to create herd immunity, so the damn thing stops spreading with all that that entails in terms of death and further nastier variants. (If we weren’t trying for that, for various good reasons, very few people would care whether Republicans chose to play russian roulette with their health, after all.) Most of the estimates I’ve seen say that you need 70% of the local population vaccinated for that, at a minimum, so a total that’s stalling at around 60%, as it is in most blue states, isn’t helpful.
Imagine the losses and their outrage if Delta runs rampant and vaccination is the only defence. I’m NOT wishing ill upon nor mocking them, but they’ll look for someone else to blame for their own decisions, right until their (literal) dying breath.
Not all of the unvaccinated are refuseniks.
One of the problems that have come up is that a lot of people can’t really access vaccination. People who can’t get to a vaccination center, or whose work schedules don’t allow them to stand in line for hours during their working hours.
At least in NY, the rollout of vaccines was very disorganized, especially during the spring, and the system for getting an appointment was so complicated and inconsistent (and unreliable) and the eligibility rules so obscure and constantly changing that a lot of people just couldn’t figure out how to get one (and you couldn’t get vaccinated without an appointment, or without appointments for both shots.) And some areas were very poorly served — e.g., for a long time, Rockland County, NY had no vaccination sites at all. I can’t help thinking that part of the problem is that our governor (Cuomo) has apparently more interested in making sure that he is seen as being in control of all aspects of handling the crisis than in actually making things work. (It’s the characteristic New York “Godfather syndrome.”)
Not that there haven’t been problems in other states. A friend of mine, a teacher in Maryland, wasn’t allowed to get vaccinated in any of the local sites because teachers had to get it through their school, but the school district hadn’t gotten around to arranging for vaccinations for its employees. (She hunted around and eventually found a site further away that would vaccinate her anyway.) I guess it’s the USAan “free market” way of life, a.k.a., “let 10,000 weeds grow” (and leave to chance whether you get a flower.)
What has been helping (some) around here is having mobile vaccination teams who set up in some spot (mall, school, etc.) for a day or so and vaccinate all comers. But I don’t know to what extent they have been coordinated or focussed on hitting areas with low vaccination rates.
Every damn time I get one of these people, specifically the ones that are old enough to have been around “during” WWII, telling me its all BS, and asking, “Ain’t you glad you don’t have to wear a mask any more, I sure am?”, I feel like asking them, “So… You are telling me that, back in the day, when we where worried that the German’s or Japanese might drop chemicals on US cities, you would have been one of the idiots that died, had it happened, because you also didn’t believe in gas masks? Oh, and, while we are at it, when did you throw out your ideals of doing what was necessary for the country, not just yourself, doing your part to help, even if you where not a soldier, and all the other ‘BS’ you, I assume, once believed in back then?”
Because… I don’t f-ing comprehend these people. I mean, in know that its all due to them voting Rethuglican, and the Rethuglicans having spammed them with anti-covid-defense propaganda, but seriously, where the F did they lose every damn things they once stood for, with respect to their fellow citizens, and replace it with this, “Mine, mine, mine, mine!!!!”, mentality? Was it really that easy to let themselves get snowed by the GOP and their “new” message of, “Its all about you, screw everyone else!”?
@Kagehi, Absolutely. If this had happened back in the Eisenhower years, or even the Reagan years, Republicans would have been first in line to get the shots. I’m old enough to remember the latter, and back then they were all about civic duty and making sacrifices for the greater good, and it was the Democrats who were all about resisting authority (mostly because they remembered Vietnam). The total reversal of philosophies between the parties will be studied by social scientists for years, I’m sure.
@12 johnson is a turd ,the whole cabinet are turds .A minister of health was forced to quit because he was caught on camera snogging his aide ,his replacement ,a former banker (in all the meanings of that word ) is a great fan of ayn rand and would dearly love to scrap the NHS ,bastards .
I mentioned the minister of health who resigned ,found this bit about him on faceache .
Matt Hancock was doing an annual visit to a hospital. As always, he was looking for something to beat the NHS with to show how badly run and loss making things were there.
Hancock checked all the books and then did his tour. While on the tour he turned to the ward manager and said, “I notice you buy and use a lot of bandages. What do you do with the plastic middle out of the roll?” “Good question”, noted the ward manager, “we save them up and send them back to Johnson and Johnson and every once in a while, they send us a free bandage roll. We like recycle whenever possible.” “Oh” he said somewhat disappointed that his unusual question had a practical answer. But on he went in his tour to the next ward. “What about all these coloured casts you dispense. They seem to be rather a waste of money?”
“Ah, yes”, replied the ward manager realizing that Hancock was trying to trap her, “we ask that any patient wishing a coloured cast donates £1 which is far in excess of the 10p the colouring actually costs”. Hancock was determined to fluster the ward manager. So on they went to the next ward. “Well, what do you do with all the remains from the circumcision surgeries?” “Here too we do not like wasting”, said the manager.
“What we do is save all the little foreskins and send them to the government in London and about once a year, at this exact time, they send us a complete prick”. 🤣
I wonder if the map would be reversed had Trump won the election.
No, because Trump made opposition to vaccines political.
That is true, but by now there aren’t very many of those left. It is 3%.
The latest survey from June 2021 (Voa.news) has:
As Soon As Possible 3%
Wait and See 10%
Only if Required 6%
Never 14%
The rollout for the vaccines was chaotic to say the least.
I tried 4 times to make appointments and lost every time.
I called it the Hunger Games for old people with literally (possible) death for the losers.
I never did manage to make an appointment. A friend found some openings and signed me up.
It’s different now though. I could walk into 5 places or so around me and get vaccinated with no problems. The big problem now is expiring vials of vaccine that they can’t even give away and end up throwing out.
We don’t have to imagine this.
It’s here today and we are watching it in real time.
Today there will be 12,000 or so Covid-19 cases in the USA and 206 deaths.
99% of those deaths will be people who are unvaccinated and most of them will be Red State residents.
The vast majority will be antivaxxers rather than just unvaccinated. Many of them will also be Covid-19 virus deniers as well.
The health care workers see dozens of Covid-19 virus deniers die of…Covid-19 virus every day.
They come in sick, weak, and having trouble breathing.
The health care workers are covered head to toe with Personal Protective Equipment and all they see are their eyes..
They often panic when it starts to dawn on them that they could well die here.
They start screaming at the health care workers and often accuse them of being crisis actors who will kill them so the hospital can make money.
They sometimes attack the health care workers.
And many of them go on to die of a virus that they don’t believe exists.
I ain’t worrying as much about the “new delta variant” as I am about the “E” and “F” … that are coming next. This virus seems very capable of infecting humans and of adapting to do that easier and easier. it only just started on us a little while ago and is already everywhere and doing nothing but getting better at using us to reproduce itself and killing off a fair number in the process.
It is not like we have never heard of a virus that is immune to our immune system before.
We are plagued by obstinate ignorance and misdirected paranoia
hold on this ain’t over yet.
@30 Man, had one twit, in AZ, tell me that their own freaking doctor told them that, “As long as you have a strong immune system, you should be safe.” Their own freaking doctor… But then, this is in a city with new, skyrocketing, numbers of cases from Delta, and a 13% vaccination rate, so… If my parents where not recently deceased I would be asking them, “Why the F did you ever move us here, and why was it, again, that you made me come with you, when it now seems I would have been safer living in a flipping homeless shelter, in one of the only freaking states taking this shit seriously?” I know this is unfair, because both of them, if they had lived long enough to see Trump in office, and Covid hit would have a) called everyone in this city nuts for supporting the freak, and b) gotten vaccinated as soon as they could. But… so, so, so, so, many of the idiots that live here moved “from” California, to “get away from stupid politicians and the other bad things there.”, and now support utter morons, in a city that has throughout 100% of the Covid pandemic, even when the state had orders to limit businesses, had some places catering to other morons, specifically rich ones, who came here BECAUSE the mayor, and other people in the city government, owned businesses that where NEVER following any of the rules.
Its like the characters from Dumb and Dumber got elected to a city council, then somehow got rich, and immediately bought a dozen “resort” style businesses and, when the pandemic hit, decided, “Wow! This would be a great time to make money by encouraging stupid people, who won’t stay home, to come here for vacations!!!”
I so need to win the f-ing lotto and move… almost any place else, but I am stuck with no savings, a job I can’t afford to give up, no marketable skills outside that job, and a looming point, some time in the next few years, in which I might no have a place to live, because the house I am in is owned by a sister who “may” retire early, and my freaking brother is yapping about selling his house and also going some place else (leaving me with no place I can stay, at either location), in a city that has, to be frank, been recently selling off every property that is sellable to idiots who are doubling, or even tripling their rents – so as to gouge “vacationers”, while leaving shit all for residents to live in (and also, at the same time, patting the politicians who not only refuse to support a national $15/hr minimum wage, but have derailed attempts to increase it more than it has already in the state – among other things the freaking voters passed, but the state legislature has since countermanded – because, being Rethuglicans, what the “voters” want only counts if it reflects what the party wants, and if they get it wrong, well then.. its up to the Rethuglicans to “correct it” for us (i.e., tell us to F ourselves, deny the results of our voting, and do the exact opposite).
Seriously.. WTF has my life become?
kagehi @ 31
Life boat places: Norway is a good option- their economy is even more solvent than the other Scandinavian countries. Just make sure you have some speciality that is in demand.
If you want to communicate with the natives in English, choose Sweden.
If you are not intimidated by german grammar and having to learn gendered nouns, Germany is nice, especially if you can get an apartment in Berlin (unfortunately very difficult, these days).
Canada: high points for proximity, but pick a state in the East, where the summers are not (yet) apocalyptic.
Yeah.. Specialty that is in demand isn’t exactly what I have. Also.. again, no real money to speak of, but.. I suppose the advantage to any place but the US is that I don’t have to keep working “purely due to having good healthcare, via not the business of course, but the hamstrung union”. Sigh… But, its getting damn tempting and one of the few down sides being whether half the shit I do online would be blocked, or need a VPN to get to, due to greedy “restrictions” on who gets to view it.
@30 Delta is so yesterday ,over here in GB ,Lambda is the new one ,that twat faced twat johnson is preparing to drop all measures in a fortnight .And because England are in the final of some sporting crap ,people are going along with it
Bread and circuses =beer and football .
The Vicar@9,
I’ve seen estimates as high as 95% for the Delta variant, although I recently spoke to a expert (a UK professor of virology working on Covid) who expressed some doubt about that variant’s supposed higher transmissability – it’s difficult to disentangle the effects of variation in the virus, and of the places where it’s spreading. (Vaccine uptake in the UK is high, but lower among some ethnic minorities, who have an understandable distrust of the authorities, and also tend to be living and working in places where distancing, and isolation of the infected, are particularly difficult.)
davidc1@34,
There are very few Lambda cases in the UK as yet. It was first detected in Peru, and has so far spread mainly in South America, but also the USA and Germany.