Like Amanda Marcotte, I’m tired of the WATBs who have decided to perpetuate the pandemic as a political game.
…who I am mad at is the willfully unvaccinated, people who, out of irrationality and often raw Republican tribalism, got us into this mess in the first place. I am incandescent with rage that millions of Americans are putting it on the rest of us to protect them from COVID-19, just so they can avoid a simple, free shot that is available at every pharmacy.
Republicans, always ready to destroy lives for some perceived political gain, aren’t even hiding anymore that they think being pro-COVID is good politics. As CNN reports, there’s “a GOP-wide effort to use the fears and frustrations of Americans worried about another round of school closures and lockdowns as cudgels against their Democratic opponents.”
But, of course, the return of restrictions is the direct result of Republican efforts to dissuade Americans from getting vaccinated and keep those COVID-19 case rates high. It’s important to remember that this is still a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Case rates are rising rapidly among the unvaccinated, who tend to reject other prevention measures along with vaccines. There are also breakthrough infections, though they affect fewer than one-third of 1% of the vaccinated.
It’s not just the inconvenience of wearing a mask these awful people are rejecting — it’s the vaccine, which is incomprehensible to me. It only takes a few minutes, you walk in to a pharmacy, you fill out a little paperwork, and you walk out with greatly enhanced resistance to the virus. Why would you not do that? The right-wingers have to invent all kinds of nonsensical excuses about microchips and imaginary serious side-effects to justify their recalcitrants. Meanwhile, the rest of us get to suffer the larger inconvenciences, and the pandemic continues on.
Or worse. Here’s a professor at Texas A&M who had the experience of a student dying.
Our first student has died of covid… and I feel horrible. No masking rules, no vaccination rules. How is this ok?
— Amy Earhart (@amyeetx) September 11, 2021
It’s not worth it if even one student has to die to get an education. And Texas is one of the worst.
In Texas, Republican leadership and right-wing ideology has led to low vaccination rates and subsequently to hospitals overflowing with COVID-19 patients. Gov. Greg Abbott, being a Republican, refuses to do anything to mitigate the spread of the disease. So instead, he’s leaning on hospitals to deprive other people of necessary medical care, such as delaying surgeries, to keep hospital resources free to tend to the waves of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients. However angry I am at losing my gym class (also important for physical health, I’ll point out), it likely pales in comparison to the rage of someone who has to put off surgery to fix a debilitating but not fatal condition, all because some Fox News junkie thought a quick jab in the arm takes away his “freedom”. Not being able to walk because your knee surgery keeps getting delayed is the far greater loss of freedom.
I’m doing my part, wearing a mask indoors everywhere I go. My university now requires a mask for everyone, and has also mandated vaccines, but everywhere I go in town, no one is wearing a mask…and we know that only 50% of the population of Stevens county is vaccinated, in part because this is a largely Republican part of the state. Would you believe that only 46% of the Trumpkins are vaccinated? They’re dragging the rest of us down!
What is a WATB?
I was part of the tiny minority of people that had a moderate to severe reaction to the vaccine. After my second dose of Pfizer I had a fever that hit 105.5F. That’s the danger zone. It was still worth it. I would still do it again. Sure it sucks for a day or two but at least you aren’t in an ICU with a hose down your neck. I’m vaxxed. I’m safe. I went through hell to keep these ungrateful assholes safe and all they do is shit all over my efforts.
I’m done giving a fuck. Let the lemmings die.
A man in Alabama died from a ‘cardiac event’ (per the news stories; I’m guessing a heart attack) en route to a hospital in Mississippi 200 miles from his home after 43 hospitals refused to admit him because they were full.
They swore up and down that we were getting “Death Panels” abnd by gum, if WE won’t make that happen, THEY will.
@Ketil WATB: ‘Whiny Ass Titty Baby’ https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=watb
And the Republican resistance to do what is needed also kills their neighbors:
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/alabama-heart-patient-dies-after-hospital-cant-find-bed-among-43-icus-in-3-states-family-says/2654166/
I don’t believe much, but this isn’t at all surprising. If you’re a Trumpkin you already fall for a lot a crap. I suppose there could be a few of the 46% who have secretly been vaccinated. Lying is part of the Trumpster MO.
I tested positive for COVID on Sunday, so now I have to isolate and teach remotely for ten days. Even if you take every precaution it can still happen.
Fortunately, being fully vaccinated, all it’s done so far is a mild sore throat, some headaches and a bit of fatigue. Though that’s probably just as much down to starting up teaching again.
I still fear my brother’s unvaccinated status though. The stress of that can’t be helping.
@6 cartomancer
Perhaps I could seduce and drug him and vaccinate him in his sleep…
That stat looks high to me. My in laws live in a place with absolutely unchecked rethug poltiticians, and that meant that simply getting the vaccine required tremendous effort on their parts – not to mention the social backlash. Idiots piles upon idiocy…..
Oh, thanks for that clarification! I’d just fed the string into Google,
and the likeliest-seeming match that came up was “We Are The Best”.
;->
robro@5
I’m stuck with my flawed intuition that an imminent threat to one’s life can turn even the most dogmatic person into a hypocrite: e.g. someone who would at least get vaccinated even if they don’t admit it. There might be people like that, but the statistics and disease spread make it clear that many are in fact unvaccinated. Maybe I should admire them (not really) for their willingness to die for a cause (well, it’s a pretty dumb cause to die for).
So why does my intuition fail in this case? I guess many still don’t believe there is an imminent threat that would merit attempting to do something about it. It is so hard for me to reconcile this with readily available data–data which (call me an optimist) seems to suggest California pulling out of the latest wave, presumably because of higher vaccination and precautions. The nation as a whole may also be doing better, but TX and FL, not to mention some other Southern states really are worse off than ever in many cases.
If you can’t do statistics, can you at least do some kind of rough-and-ready cause and effect?
Ray Ceeya, #7
I’m still modestly optimistic about my first plan, which involves arranging a convenient accident for him and being on hand as a blood donor in the aftermath.
Well, here is my vaccine side effect story.
Nothing happened.
I did have a sore arm for a few days, but I had to pay attention and move my arm to notice it. I might have had fatigue after the second shot. But who knows. I’m a Boomer. Fatigue happens often anyway.
This is common. Three quarters of all recipients report no systemic side effects.
And oh yeah, I stopped fearing invisible death that can come from anywhere whenever I left the house.
And this garbage is spilling over the northern border, with too many Canadians getting their ideas from the Republicans and their ilk. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-hospital-protests-canada-1.6173437
I despair for humanity.
And here’s an article about two of the people involved in organising the Canadian protests. They may have been in Washington on January 6th, which makes me wonder how they got into the US.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/nurses-who-attended-anti-covid-measure-rally-in-d-c-in-january-helping-organize-cross-country-events-in-canada/ar-AAOmK1D?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531
Another day, another 1,600 unvaccinated Covid-19 virus patients die.
This is what the heatlh care workers see a lot of.
Covid-19 virus deniers/antivaxxers in the hospital, very sick, about to die, and still don’t believe the Covid-19 virus exists or that the vaccine is worth getting. And then they go on to die. The staff everywhere are demoralized.
They don’t make a point of it, but the ventilators have their problems. The highest survival I’ve seen is 75%. It can be as low as 5%. A general ballpark figure is 50% live, 50% die.
This is the other contribution of the Covid-19 virus deniers/antivaxxers to our society.
Health care workers have been risking their lives every day to treat Covid-19 virus patients. Some have caught the virus.
Some of those die. In the USA, it is over 3,600 by now.
These Covid-19 virus denier/antivaxxer patients can be hard to treat.
When it dawns on them that they could die they frequently panic.
And start screaming at the healthcare workers and sometimes attack them.
If they do die, the family sometimes shows up and starts screaming some more at them.
Because the Covid-19 virus doesn’t exist.
And then refuse to get vaccinated after watching their family member die from the nonexistent virus.
raven @15: Do we need to tell them that they may not believe in COVID, but COVID still believes in them?
“…flawed intuition…”
You might be surprised at the numbers of people who have next to no skill at thinking for themselves, and whose reactions to things depends solely on self-referential and emotional reactions to articles of faith and circumstances in their immediate circle.
I wouldn’t ordinarily say this, but at this point I’m fed up, they are mentally like wind-up toys ripe for manipulation by psychopaths.
around here, everyone is asking which vaccine they got and how bad were the side effects.
The discussions usually center around how the arm was so sore it was essentially disabled for the day.
Never appreciating the safety the vaccine is providing.
I tend to get pedantic and start explaining the sore arm is from the body activating its defenses, as the vaccine has taught it about COVID..
Naturally I get shushed away as “too much science, yes we know, glad we got it, we’re discussing how painful it was”.
Which makes me stop talking out of courtesy.
sigh
I will never understand the hesitancy to getting vaccinated against such a horrific disease.
I mean I’d rather have my arm in severe pain for a week than experience the COVID infection itself, Small price to pay.
I wish it wasn’t far from the truth.
With stories of people dying because of non COVID reasons because the unvaccinated Covidiots are filling up hospital beds, it’s about time the unvaccinated suffer the consequences of their inaction, as opposed to those around them.
As far as I can now recall, I had no side-effects at all after the first jab of Pfizer-BioNtech, and only some very mild soreness in the arm after the second jab. As it so happens, I got jabbed just before President Macron announced France’s Health Pass, so I missed the “rush” and was ready-to-go when it came into effect.
France’s Health Pass (paper or app) is proof of full-vaccination, immunity after recovery due to a recent case of Covid-19, or a very recent negative test. (There are some provisions for those who have a valid medical reason they cannot be vaccinated, albeit I do not know what they are (and since children cannot currently be vaccinated, they are also exempt, as I recall).) The Health Pass must be shown (whether indoors or outside) at a restaurant, bar, café; for long-distance travel; etc. And starting recently, employees of such venues also need a valid Health Pass. It was explicitly introduced to increase vaccination rates — at the time, about 40% were vaccinated and rate was in decline, now about 80% are vaccinated and the rate seems to be holding steady. (In the week after the announcement, about 4 million appointments for vaccination were made, a French record.)
The Health Pass is popular (around 67% approval, last figure I saw), and whilst protests against it have attracted international attention, they are a nothing (by French standards). The protests have also been declining in size for several weeks now. Encouragingly, apparently most French think the protestors are loons, while supporting their right to protest. (I’ve heard booing at the local protestors, and yelled at them myself.) The protestors themselves are an (overlapping) mix of nazis (e.g., Le Pen and her mob), hardcore antivaxxers, loonytarians, anti-Macron rioters (e.g., teh “Yellow Vests”), and an assortment of “far left” (who seem to be objecting more to profiteering and the absence of vaccines in much of the world). I obviously have some sympathy with that “far left” but am baffled what the feck their points have to due with the Health Pass.
There’s a number of clever things about the Health Pass. It’s part of the national track-and-trace app, it’s compatible with the EU, it targets things which make France France (cafés! restaurants! …), it’s free, very easy to use and to verify, etc. Use has become so routine servers rarely have to ask anymore (it’s been in effect for a month now).
And in about a month’s time (October 15th), “convenience” tests will no longer be free; i.e., if you’re getting tested every week-or-so to avoid vaccination (whilst still, presumably, availing of yourself what is possible only with a Health Pass), you’ll have to start paying for being an eejit.
bfl @21, you are so lucky to live in a country sane enough to have a health pass! I envy you: I want a “vaccine passport” badly, because I do want to travel someday, but my state and of course my country’s (US) government, has maintained silence de glace about getting one.
The WATB that I’m most currently pissed about are the ones who scream that they either have to get vaxxed or get tested once a week. Fine, you don’t want the shot because you’re crazy, but getting tested once a week is just too much of a burden that you can’t even go on? The universe doesn’t owe you convenience, so suck it up.
[QUOTE]‘well you’re going to treat me differently because I didn’t get vaccinated,’ and that is far from the truth.[/QUOTE]
The unvaccinated should be triaged out of treatment behind the vaccinated and non-covid patients. Much of Idaho is on critical standards of care-i.e. rationing of care-and I find it extremely hard to justify denying care to a vaccinated person because of trolls.
The infuriating thing to me is that there will be no accountability at all. Many of the unvaccinated are simply following terrible advice from a source they should not trust, but do. I find people like that frustrating, but I don’t hate them. The ones giving out the advice (who may even be vaccinated themselves) are committing murder on a mass scale, but nobody will ever hold them accountable.
Of the people I know, there is only one that had a day of nausea after the second Pfizer vaccine shot.
Those reactions are a lottery but it is a lottery with a much milder outcome than the “never mind vaccines” lottery.
.
Sweden (10 million) has suffered 14 thousand deaths. Only a dozen of those are after we were done vaccinating the most vulnerable.
Subscribe to the Herman Cain Award over at Reddit if you want to see some mind blowing propaganda. To be nominated for an HCA, you have to publicly downplay/deny/mock some aspect of covid, and then get hospitalized. You win the award by dying.
True.
Where it has been looked for, almost all of the leaders of the fundie xians and the GOP have been vaccinated. Almost all of the GOP members of congress are vaccinated.
These are educated people with a huge amount of power and money. And they know that all that power and money doesn’t do them any good if they are dead.
They have a lot to lose and can do the risk-benefit calculation easily.
@26, There’s also https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/
Same here. My piece-of-shit congressman sent out a whine about how the Biden admin’s new vaccine mandate “makes [his] blood boil” and how it “deserves our most strenuous opposition.” It’s here, if you want to read it, and the gaggle of anti-vaxxer scum pledging their commitment to the death cult:
https://jasonsmith.house.gov/newsroom/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=3818
I admit that my ranting response wasn’t the most helpful, but I’ve fucking had it. Asking nice has not and will not convince these people. The science has not and will not convince these people. Even bribes have not and will not convince these people to get the shot. So fuck them all. They can either get the shot or be cut out of public life completely.
Watching their family, friends, and neighbors die won’t convince them to be vaccinated.
For many of them, being in the hospital, sick with the Covid-19 virus, and about to die won’t convince them.
If death won’t convince the antivaxxers, then nothing will.
Ironically, they will all get vaccinated whether they want to or not. The hard way. This virus is very transmissable and it is everywhere. Everyone will meet it, sooner or later.
I had quite severe side effects from the shot (I had the Moderna vaccine), in addition to the sore arm. Specifically: when I went to bed I had chills. I have never in my life had chills as a symptom before which actually caused me to shiver, but I definitely did then. I was shaking uncontrollably from head to toe, teeth literally chattering, while desperately trying to get warm. (I used to think that the teeth chattering thing was a humorous exaggeration, but no, it actually happens.) And then it stopped, once I worked up the energy to get out of bed, turn up the thermostat, and grab an extra blanket, and I went to sleep. And when I woke up the next morning, I felt like I had a mild cold, a little congestion and low energy. That was gone too the next day (although I still took it easy just in case).
And that was it. Most severe side effects of anybody I know, and none of it was dangerous or as bad as I’ve had from bronchitis, and it was all gone in 24 hours.
WATB Whale Watching Association of Tosa Bay
Because of course they should instead be worshipping our cephalopod overlords, they also oppose vaccines.
at his point I would not care if all the anti-vaxers should get sick and die! I do not however it is completely selfish on my part. I know as long as the virus is spreading and reproducing the greater the chance of a really dangerously bad mutation that we can not stop in time.
all the politicians and the empty talking heads on TV news have all taken their shots all the while decrying any mandate which is bad enough. They are also repeating lies upon lies actively discouraging any and all measures proven for over a hundred years to slow the spread of disease for that I hope they get some other affliction that will bring them low which has a very difficult stressful somewhat effective treatment.
Or they get to meet the devil face to face.(hahahahah)
I’m angry too. So angry, I imagine darting the WATBs with the vaccine, like in the second half of this video.
https://youtu.be/QU1KpDKwzkk?t=604
It’s very difficult to care about people who are so reckless.
I had no side effects at all for either shot of AstraZeneca, not even a sore patch on my arm.
But yes I am angry too, even though in the UK our rates are better than those in the US there are still far too many who aren’t vaccinated and more still who aren’t masking or distancing. But we’re open for business so that’s all right. Like hell.
What really makes me angry are not the custard-heads who refuse to get the vaccine. For them, the die is cast. They will get COVID. many of them will die. I will not shed a tear. But whom I will cry for are the care workers who have to provide them care while they needlessly die. And the family members who’re vaccinated or maybe just lucky and didn’t die, who have to stand there and watch while their loved one dies of a PREVENTABLE DEATH. I’ve been intubated. IT SUCKS. but for me it was a short-lived experience. For these people, it will be their last few days. last few hours. And they will experience it knowing full well that they are going to die. That there will be no reprieve. For their family, I grieve. For the Nurses, R/Ts, MDs and other care staff too numerous to name, I also grieve. Oh, but you needn’t have been put through this. This hell of Trump’s making. Of Abbot, Noem, DeSantis … of their making. Of Tucker, Hannity and Bongino. This is their baby, and it’s rolling back over them. I hope the bastards suffocate in a loaded diaper.
Jazzlet@35
Well, I hope you made some antibodies. As miserable as I was the day after my second Moderna shot, it was good to know it was doing something. My daughter takes immunosuppressants and did not have any side effects. She also didn’t make antibodies, though she gained some T-cell immunity. On the booster, it looks like she finally made some antibodies.
I have read that you can make antibodies without feeling terrible, so if that’s your case, I guess you really are lucky.