Today, the Food and Drug Administration gave full and final approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, which had previously been in use under an emergency authorization. The FDA approved the vaccine for people 16 and older. It has not yet been fully approved for people aged 12 to 15; for them it is still under an emergency authorization.
Ever since POTUS 45 legitimized the mainstreaming of blatant lies as an acceptable alternative for the truth, we have observed mass lunacy in the form of the denial of normally authoritative sources of information regarding COVID and vaccines. When physicians have to demonstrate in the streets to draw attention to the exhaustion of the hospital workforce over a disease easily controlled by several available vaccines (the J&J version only takes one shot and does not use the mRNA/viral capsule mechanism), we've sunk to a new low. If we can't trust our doctors to speak the truth, who's left whom we can trust? Shall we ask priests and nuns to opine on medical facts? Shall we go back to questioning the negative health impacts of cigarette smoking? What about driving under the influence of mind altering substances? What about seat belts? How many anti-vax'ers have the same insane distrust of the influenza vaccine? Year by year, flu vaccines are sometimes far less effective than our 3 most widely utilized COVID vaccines and they still limit influenza dramatically from the pre-vaccine era. I'm not angry or outraged, simply saddened and deeply disappointed. When we have ALL been offered the voluntary and FREE opportunity to do the right thing for ourselves and others, on good authority from national experts and nearly universal support of the health care community, our country is still barely over 50% vaccinated when all age groups, all regions and political persuasions included in the count. I didn't realize just how collectively dense and deluded we are as a nation. Freedom to choose does not equate with reasonable, responsible, mature, trusting or any number of other positive attributes that support the selfless and philanthropic act of getting vaccinated.
If I wake up with superpowers, I will compel Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott to spend one week working in Covid ICU units and then publicly describe their experiences and observations. What they do next will show us if they have empathy for other people. Or are just brazenly ambitious, power-hungry politicians for whom human suffering is an acceptable means to an end.
I hope out of this we stop seeing wars as solutions to anything. A retired Air Force colonel one said to me that the military's job was to keep the peace, not to make war. That has always stuck with me. Unfortunately, just like drug lords are economically dependent on selling drugs no matter what the cost is to the populace; the Defense Contractors are economically dependent on selling weapons again at a very high cost to the populace. The politicians are addicted to these campaign donors.
Notes from the Press Paroxysm as the Evacuation Flights Continue
paroxysm | ˈparəksɪz(ə)m |
noun
a sudden attack or outburst of a particular emotion or activity: a paroxysm of weeping.
• Medicine a sudden recurrence or attack of a disease: paroxysms of ataxia and shaking.
I had to look up paroxysm and it meant what I hoped it would. Here's the opening paragraph for this piece and the link to finish it. Particularly insightful for people like me who need to understand why it's going down like it is in Afghanistan and how the media is doing a piss-poor job reporting about it.
<start snippet>
By Josh Marshall
|
August 23, 2021 10:48 a.m.
On the Sunday shows yesterday and across newspaper editorials you can see repeated claims of a military debacle for the US in Afghanistan, perhaps the worst in decades, perhaps the worst ever. Seriously, look at the quotes. And yet as far as I know not a single member of the US military has died or even been injured in this operation. In fact, it doesn’t appear that a shot has even been fired in anger against them. We don’t judge military victories or defeats by body counts or casualty lists. But surely this figures into the equation. The US withdrew its forces according to plan. It then reoccupied the civilian airport in Kabul. Since last weekend the US military operation at Hamid Karzai International Airport has overseen the evacuation of more than 40,000 people, and it continues at a rapid clip. So about 36 hours of confusion and then a fairly orderly and rapid airlift over the last week.
So, wait, let me try and get my head around something...
DeSantis, he vowed to defund school districts that impose mask mandates, right?
But, didn't he vow to punish (with defunding) any municipality that threatened to "defund" police? (The calls for defunding the police were in response to alleged police brutality aimed at protesters.)
Yeah he did. Either he is an unashamed hypocrite (probably), or maybe he is just REALLY cheap.
I know this is nothing to joke about, but it does seem like he is completely out of touch with the reality that people in his state are getting sick and dying at alarming rates, he has the ability to do something about it, and yet he is looking ahead to the next election by toting the GOP banner past the graveyard.
I really feel bad for our fellow Americans that are under his "care."
"While pundits have compared the evacuation from Afghanistan to that from Saigon in 1975 after North Vietnamese forces took the city, in that case the U.S. rescued about 7000 people in only two days, from April 29 to April 30." Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were so much worse than Afghanistan... for those confused, listen to Lawrence O'Donnell at MSNBC; replays of last night and others will explain the mendacity of MSM covering this mess... and much more. Lawrence's judgement matches his knowledge... and character... on historical fact and the racist aspect, there is no one better.
My fully vaccinated 14 y/o granddaughter developed a persistent hacking cough Sunday. My daughter was very concerned b/c my 12 y/o granddaughter had just received her first Pfizer vaccination on her birthday this past Friday.
Luckily it turns out it's most likely RSV virus that has recently popped up in schools all over Ohio. Sadly this is very early for this virus to arise, it's usually during the full as the weather starts to cool down.
Clearly this is yet another side effect of climate change. Ironically the best preventative measures for RSV are the same for Covid, wear a mask, wash your hands and maintain a safe distance.
Couple different tracks to take tonite that are not connected, and I've said a fair-piece about Afganistan that don't bear repeating since I haven't heard much inconsistent with my take, but on the issue of the FDA approval:
I am grateful that this day has come, a day of reckoning for the, "I'm waiting for approval" folks... Biden was quick to say, "well, now do it." As he should.
Sadly I live in a mostly-blue if not purple state you recognize on the map as Minnesota. There are STILL, as of today, people here (because I've spoken with them) who do not take this green-light on Pfizer as a good reason to get vaccinated! Welllllll, what about Moderna? Welllll, you got the J&J shot so what about that? People, smart people, who seem to me to be actively trying to find excuses to JUST NOT GET THE JAB. The logic is now completely lost on me and I expect that if my small (read ONE) sampling-size is extrapolated, many will just ignore the FDA and continue with their inane logic and excuse(s). It is so frustrating that the RWM has gotten SUCH a strange-hold on these people that even the FDA doesn't sway them.
Like HCR; no answers offered here, just observations. I'm thinking that GOD (theirs apparently) needs to have an intervention ON AIR with TUCKER CARLSON to convince these people. The same ones that may believe that they saw jesus on a mud-splatter on the side of a semi-trailer and want to create a shrine, that this is the right thing to do... we have to get science out of the political fray. A thousand-curses on the extreme wing of the Republican party and the Orangutan for making it such. My words, again, "they are killing people."
A note on vaccine hesitancy: I oversee a small staff of RNs at a youth detention center in NH. Most got their vaccine as soon as they could (myself included), one has even connived a way to get a booster.
Two of them, however, steadfastly refuse to get vaccinated. They are not Trumpers, they are not anti-science (one of them has research skills that surpass my own), they are not "millennial brats". In fact, they are the mainstays of their respective shifts, and excellent nurses. At my insistence, they wear masks at all time when at work. They are afraid. This fear is not reasonable, who would trade a case of COVID for a couple of jabs and a day or so of aches and pains?
The fear is real, almost primal, and requires understanding. None of my reasoned or emotion-based arguments budged either of them. Will FDA approval make a difference in their attitude towards getting vaccinated? I really hope so, but I doubt it. Would a vaccine mandate help? Honestly, one would likely get vaccinated, one would likely quit.
All I can really do is try to help them understand what they fear and how it is driving them to make the decisions they do. Their attitude towards vaccinations is the problem. This attitude is shaped more by what they fear, and less by what and whom they love. My job with them (and by extension all vaccine hesitant people) is to help them see this, and move toward love.
Oh, Florida, Florida! Your people don't deserve these tragic numbers! Your people are being led by an ill-educated monster who doesn't care who lives or dies. What can we do to help you? To rid you of a virus more lethal than Covid 19 and its Delta variant -- the DeSantis/GOP plague? My heart aches for all your innocents, elderly, and BIPOC citizens who have been and continue to go through such suffering and ultimate death. It's unacceptable!
"Last week the state had more than 150,000 new coronavirus infections, and this morning about 75 doctors in Palm Beach Gardens staged a symbolic walkout from their hospitals in a direct appeal to the public to get vaccinated. They warned that they are burning out from caring for the sick. 'It's the worst it's ever been right now,' Dr. Robin Kass told Katherine Kokal of the Palm Beach Post. 'And I just think that nobody realizes that.'"
I support mandates but they alone will not work and will cause strong blowback. Many of the vaccine hesitant will become vaccine resistant when it's mandated, because they choose "freedom," sometimes over life itself. A NY Times video interviewed people hospitalized for Covid-19 after refusing vaccination. One of them soon died. Here's the link to that video: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/21/opinion/arkansas-vaccine-hesitant.html
The Washington Post had an article today that mentioned a FaceBook private group that hosts civil, evidence-based discussions among anti-vaxxers, those on the fence, and vaccine supporters. It's called Vaccine Talk.
In this line I'm trying to have conversations with one of my neighbors who is vaccine resistant for some understandable difficulties with the medical profession in the past. I am being very careful to listen. In our conversation my friend decried mandating teachers to be vaccinated and considers our governor a dictator because of this mandate. It's as if we live in different worlds, but we have a trusting friendship, and the conversation continues. We keep a safe distance outdoors, and he knows I am fully vaccinated. He respects my preference for that.
Flying almost 5000 people a day, for 10 straight days and counting. It boggles the mind. That picture showing 823 on one aircraft! I live about 50 miles south of Fort McCoy WI and yesterday saw a couple airliners flying north overhead. We are nowhere near a normal flight pattern. I assume it was Afghanis being rescued. Thanks to all who are dedicated to this overwhelming humanitarian assignment.
The damage done to this country by the anti-vaxxers is incalculable. And, as soon as the FDA came down with its decision, I immediately started hearing new excuses as to why they still won’t get vaccinated: The approval process was “rushed”, and/or was “political”. Anti-vaxxers will always find an excuse to do the wrong thing. That they are destroying our medical system in the process is irrelevant to them because, you know, “FREEDOM”. 🙄🙄🙄
I know I’m not telling you anything new, but the operation in Saigon on April29-30 was preceded by roughly 1.5 months of evacuation (US citiens and Vietnamese both) leading up to the two last days - the fall of Saigon. I think your phrasing may leave too firma an impression that only the two days of “operation Frequent Wind” constituted the full evacuation effort. All the best.
And still my 89 year old mother in Ocala Florida keeps her ivermectin prescription close by and takes a huge overdose of vitamin C daily thanks to a Qanon relative. They’re all waiting for Trump to descend from a cloud and make the world safe for them. Of course, Biden is to blame for everything…
Ever since POTUS 45 legitimized the mainstreaming of blatant lies as an acceptable alternative for the truth, we have observed mass lunacy in the form of the denial of normally authoritative sources of information regarding COVID and vaccines. When physicians have to demonstrate in the streets to draw attention to the exhaustion of the hospital workforce over a disease easily controlled by several available vaccines (the J&J version only takes one shot and does not use the mRNA/viral capsule mechanism), we've sunk to a new low. If we can't trust our doctors to speak the truth, who's left whom we can trust? Shall we ask priests and nuns to opine on medical facts? Shall we go back to questioning the negative health impacts of cigarette smoking? What about driving under the influence of mind altering substances? What about seat belts? How many anti-vax'ers have the same insane distrust of the influenza vaccine? Year by year, flu vaccines are sometimes far less effective than our 3 most widely utilized COVID vaccines and they still limit influenza dramatically from the pre-vaccine era. I'm not angry or outraged, simply saddened and deeply disappointed. When we have ALL been offered the voluntary and FREE opportunity to do the right thing for ourselves and others, on good authority from national experts and nearly universal support of the health care community, our country is still barely over 50% vaccinated when all age groups, all regions and political persuasions included in the count. I didn't realize just how collectively dense and deluded we are as a nation. Freedom to choose does not equate with reasonable, responsible, mature, trusting or any number of other positive attributes that support the selfless and philanthropic act of getting vaccinated.
If I wake up with superpowers, I will compel Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott to spend one week working in Covid ICU units and then publicly describe their experiences and observations. What they do next will show us if they have empathy for other people. Or are just brazenly ambitious, power-hungry politicians for whom human suffering is an acceptable means to an end.
I hope out of this we stop seeing wars as solutions to anything. A retired Air Force colonel one said to me that the military's job was to keep the peace, not to make war. That has always stuck with me. Unfortunately, just like drug lords are economically dependent on selling drugs no matter what the cost is to the populace; the Defense Contractors are economically dependent on selling weapons again at a very high cost to the populace. The politicians are addicted to these campaign donors.
Notes from the Press Paroxysm as the Evacuation Flights Continue
paroxysm | ˈparəksɪz(ə)m |
noun
a sudden attack or outburst of a particular emotion or activity: a paroxysm of weeping.
• Medicine a sudden recurrence or attack of a disease: paroxysms of ataxia and shaking.
I had to look up paroxysm and it meant what I hoped it would. Here's the opening paragraph for this piece and the link to finish it. Particularly insightful for people like me who need to understand why it's going down like it is in Afghanistan and how the media is doing a piss-poor job reporting about it.
<start snippet>
By Josh Marshall
|
August 23, 2021 10:48 a.m.
On the Sunday shows yesterday and across newspaper editorials you can see repeated claims of a military debacle for the US in Afghanistan, perhaps the worst in decades, perhaps the worst ever. Seriously, look at the quotes. And yet as far as I know not a single member of the US military has died or even been injured in this operation. In fact, it doesn’t appear that a shot has even been fired in anger against them. We don’t judge military victories or defeats by body counts or casualty lists. But surely this figures into the equation. The US withdrew its forces according to plan. It then reoccupied the civilian airport in Kabul. Since last weekend the US military operation at Hamid Karzai International Airport has overseen the evacuation of more than 40,000 people, and it continues at a rapid clip. So about 36 hours of confusion and then a fairly orderly and rapid airlift over the last week.
<end snippet>
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/notes-from-the-press-paroxysm-as-the-evacuation-flights-continue
So, wait, let me try and get my head around something...
DeSantis, he vowed to defund school districts that impose mask mandates, right?
But, didn't he vow to punish (with defunding) any municipality that threatened to "defund" police? (The calls for defunding the police were in response to alleged police brutality aimed at protesters.)
Yeah he did. Either he is an unashamed hypocrite (probably), or maybe he is just REALLY cheap.
I know this is nothing to joke about, but it does seem like he is completely out of touch with the reality that people in his state are getting sick and dying at alarming rates, he has the ability to do something about it, and yet he is looking ahead to the next election by toting the GOP banner past the graveyard.
I really feel bad for our fellow Americans that are under his "care."
"While pundits have compared the evacuation from Afghanistan to that from Saigon in 1975 after North Vietnamese forces took the city, in that case the U.S. rescued about 7000 people in only two days, from April 29 to April 30." Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were so much worse than Afghanistan... for those confused, listen to Lawrence O'Donnell at MSNBC; replays of last night and others will explain the mendacity of MSM covering this mess... and much more. Lawrence's judgement matches his knowledge... and character... on historical fact and the racist aspect, there is no one better.
My fully vaccinated 14 y/o granddaughter developed a persistent hacking cough Sunday. My daughter was very concerned b/c my 12 y/o granddaughter had just received her first Pfizer vaccination on her birthday this past Friday.
Luckily it turns out it's most likely RSV virus that has recently popped up in schools all over Ohio. Sadly this is very early for this virus to arise, it's usually during the full as the weather starts to cool down.
Clearly this is yet another side effect of climate change. Ironically the best preventative measures for RSV are the same for Covid, wear a mask, wash your hands and maintain a safe distance.
Couple different tracks to take tonite that are not connected, and I've said a fair-piece about Afganistan that don't bear repeating since I haven't heard much inconsistent with my take, but on the issue of the FDA approval:
I am grateful that this day has come, a day of reckoning for the, "I'm waiting for approval" folks... Biden was quick to say, "well, now do it." As he should.
Sadly I live in a mostly-blue if not purple state you recognize on the map as Minnesota. There are STILL, as of today, people here (because I've spoken with them) who do not take this green-light on Pfizer as a good reason to get vaccinated! Welllllll, what about Moderna? Welllll, you got the J&J shot so what about that? People, smart people, who seem to me to be actively trying to find excuses to JUST NOT GET THE JAB. The logic is now completely lost on me and I expect that if my small (read ONE) sampling-size is extrapolated, many will just ignore the FDA and continue with their inane logic and excuse(s). It is so frustrating that the RWM has gotten SUCH a strange-hold on these people that even the FDA doesn't sway them.
Like HCR; no answers offered here, just observations. I'm thinking that GOD (theirs apparently) needs to have an intervention ON AIR with TUCKER CARLSON to convince these people. The same ones that may believe that they saw jesus on a mud-splatter on the side of a semi-trailer and want to create a shrine, that this is the right thing to do... we have to get science out of the political fray. A thousand-curses on the extreme wing of the Republican party and the Orangutan for making it such. My words, again, "they are killing people."
A note on vaccine hesitancy: I oversee a small staff of RNs at a youth detention center in NH. Most got their vaccine as soon as they could (myself included), one has even connived a way to get a booster.
Two of them, however, steadfastly refuse to get vaccinated. They are not Trumpers, they are not anti-science (one of them has research skills that surpass my own), they are not "millennial brats". In fact, they are the mainstays of their respective shifts, and excellent nurses. At my insistence, they wear masks at all time when at work. They are afraid. This fear is not reasonable, who would trade a case of COVID for a couple of jabs and a day or so of aches and pains?
The fear is real, almost primal, and requires understanding. None of my reasoned or emotion-based arguments budged either of them. Will FDA approval make a difference in their attitude towards getting vaccinated? I really hope so, but I doubt it. Would a vaccine mandate help? Honestly, one would likely get vaccinated, one would likely quit.
All I can really do is try to help them understand what they fear and how it is driving them to make the decisions they do. Their attitude towards vaccinations is the problem. This attitude is shaped more by what they fear, and less by what and whom they love. My job with them (and by extension all vaccine hesitant people) is to help them see this, and move toward love.
Oh, Florida, Florida! Your people don't deserve these tragic numbers! Your people are being led by an ill-educated monster who doesn't care who lives or dies. What can we do to help you? To rid you of a virus more lethal than Covid 19 and its Delta variant -- the DeSantis/GOP plague? My heart aches for all your innocents, elderly, and BIPOC citizens who have been and continue to go through such suffering and ultimate death. It's unacceptable!
"Last week the state had more than 150,000 new coronavirus infections, and this morning about 75 doctors in Palm Beach Gardens staged a symbolic walkout from their hospitals in a direct appeal to the public to get vaccinated. They warned that they are burning out from caring for the sick. 'It's the worst it's ever been right now,' Dr. Robin Kass told Katherine Kokal of the Palm Beach Post. 'And I just think that nobody realizes that.'"
I support mandates but they alone will not work and will cause strong blowback. Many of the vaccine hesitant will become vaccine resistant when it's mandated, because they choose "freedom," sometimes over life itself. A NY Times video interviewed people hospitalized for Covid-19 after refusing vaccination. One of them soon died. Here's the link to that video: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/21/opinion/arkansas-vaccine-hesitant.html
The Washington Post had an article today that mentioned a FaceBook private group that hosts civil, evidence-based discussions among anti-vaxxers, those on the fence, and vaccine supporters. It's called Vaccine Talk.
In this line I'm trying to have conversations with one of my neighbors who is vaccine resistant for some understandable difficulties with the medical profession in the past. I am being very careful to listen. In our conversation my friend decried mandating teachers to be vaccinated and considers our governor a dictator because of this mandate. It's as if we live in different worlds, but we have a trusting friendship, and the conversation continues. We keep a safe distance outdoors, and he knows I am fully vaccinated. He respects my preference for that.
Flying almost 5000 people a day, for 10 straight days and counting. It boggles the mind. That picture showing 823 on one aircraft! I live about 50 miles south of Fort McCoy WI and yesterday saw a couple airliners flying north overhead. We are nowhere near a normal flight pattern. I assume it was Afghanis being rescued. Thanks to all who are dedicated to this overwhelming humanitarian assignment.
The damage done to this country by the anti-vaxxers is incalculable. And, as soon as the FDA came down with its decision, I immediately started hearing new excuses as to why they still won’t get vaccinated: The approval process was “rushed”, and/or was “political”. Anti-vaxxers will always find an excuse to do the wrong thing. That they are destroying our medical system in the process is irrelevant to them because, you know, “FREEDOM”. 🙄🙄🙄
It was great to hear about the 3 babies being born while being evacuated from Afghanistan -- one minutes after the plane arrived in Germany.
I know I’m not telling you anything new, but the operation in Saigon on April29-30 was preceded by roughly 1.5 months of evacuation (US citiens and Vietnamese both) leading up to the two last days - the fall of Saigon. I think your phrasing may leave too firma an impression that only the two days of “operation Frequent Wind” constituted the full evacuation effort. All the best.
And still my 89 year old mother in Ocala Florida keeps her ivermectin prescription close by and takes a huge overdose of vitamin C daily thanks to a Qanon relative. They’re all waiting for Trump to descend from a cloud and make the world safe for them. Of course, Biden is to blame for everything…