I live on the ID/WA border. Even though it is Red WA, it is still a marked difference between Spokane and Kootenai counties. Red WA is getting vaccinated and mostly wears masks. ‘Murika ID is running around licking doorknobs cause you can’t tell me what to fuckin’ do!
The ‘spreadnecks’ are always a concern for the simple fact of their ability to infect innocents.
But ISTM that you guys should be seeing lots of freezing temps awfully soon.
And wouldn’t that stick many/most of these doorknob lickers right to their knob-of-choice, and limit their ability to cause collateral damage ? At least until Spring ?
[One can hope]
The recent spike in covid cases was dropping then plateaued. While that did help with hospital capacity some, they are now worried that the positive cases will start going back up as everyone starts recreating indoors rather than outdoors. I fear it’s going to get really bad around here. Again. Maybe the worst this time. Although this article is about WA, it applies to northern ID as well:
Freedumb.
My sincere religious belief is that I should be allowed to punch anyone I like in the face without warning. If you stop me from doing this, you’re oppressing me and my religion!
Also, Gillian McKeith can fuck right off, along with her fake doctorate and poo obsession.
While I’m no apologist for Maher, I think it is fair to say that his fundamental premise about health is that Americans should be healthier.
And he’s banged on that particular drum for decades.
He questions why Americans spend billions of dollars on OTC meds each year [interestingly, this [PDF] paper makes the case that OTC dollars save quite a few Healthcare dollars], frequently asking “why we’re so sick ?”
He also banged a similar drum during the pandemic, frequently pointing out the high % of severe COVID illness and death that people with hypertension, significant obesity, and other ‘lifestyle factors’ represented – something he called Fauci out on for not emphasizing (I noticed that this was a chord eventually struck by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, on CNN).
He’s also proudly vaccinated against COVID, though he didn’t believe he was at much risk (despite his vax, he did test positive but reported being totally asymptomatic). In his words, getting this vaccination was “taking one for the team --” an obligation he was effectively exalting.
Again: I’m not his Press Secretary, but – despite his occasional forays into looney-tunes territory (he’s a comedian, a satirist, and a provocateur for a living, of course) – I think his basic premise about our fundamental unwellness as a people is fairly tenable.
Now there’s a controversial viewpoint. Physicians and public health experts have been promoting healthier lifestyles (including better diets, weight control, smoking cessation, limitation of alcohol intake, vaccination etc.) for decades. They also support evidence-based treatments for when lifestyle alone is not enough. But Maher in his infinite wisdom has contempt for the “people in the white coats”, because they can be wrong, y’know.
Maher
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has said that physicians are blowing the pandemic out of proportion, and that everyone should want to get Covid-19.
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has defended ivermectin to treat Covid-19 in the face of overwhelming lack of evidence for its use
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has termed all evidence-based cancer care useless
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promoted a quack physician who says the milk of arthritic goats is a cure for HIV/AIDS (Maher has a history of AIDS denialism).
I don’t know what percentage of the crap Maher spews he actually believes. In part, he seems to be in love with the idea of being a gadfly, and getting martyred for his unconventional views.
Instead, he comes off as a credulous moron who puts his equally credulous viewers at serious risk.
I gotta say, though, that on the list of things a public spokesperson for an emergency presidential task force during a raging pandemic should be emphasizing, the issue of contributing lifestyle factors is pretty fucking low-priority.
I mean, in practical terms, it’s not like people are going to cure their hypertension or lose fifty pounds or recover from decades of cigarette smoking in the next few weeks or even months while the pandemic is raging. Fauci should have been, and very properly was, prioritizing the short-term public-health measures that would actually protect people against COVID in a realistic way.
(Not to mention the fact that the biggest contributing factor to severe COVID illness and death is old age, a “lifestyle factor” that its victims have no way of remediating, though goodness knows plenty of them would if they could.)
While I definitely understand that point, I don’t agree.
If we looked at the totality of the COVID-19 timeline, though, was there no opportunity to talk about the biggest risk factors over which some of us maybe had some measure of control ?
Americans were drinking more, sleeping less, and gaining weight – understandable to a large degree, to be sure, but unhelpful.
At the risk of stating the obvious …
For people that prioritize ‘climate crisis’ (to invoke an analogy), the right time is always right now.
I don’t view any results of lifestyle/behavioral modification as likely to bear fruit instantly. But that isn’t really the point.
I also understand the endless social determinants of health, but feel like that’s part of the problem: the Og-awful rat race that is 'Murica, and how it makes it virtually impossible for so many to take even reasonable care of themselves and their families.
But that’s politics – something Fauci famously doesn’t do.
This guy had a national spotlight. Personally, I think he could have added two more things to the oft-repeated list of things we can each do Right Now: wash your hands, wear a mask, maintain social distancing, eat more vegetables, and get more exercise (or something like that).
Fauci did say “something like that” during the pandemic:
Personally, I think that advice is more generally useful than scolding people for being too fat or for being addicted to cigarettes. And in the context of COVID in particular, it still is far less important than the targeted anti-COVID protocols.
I’ve lost 43 pounds during the pandemic. I realize that my experience is not exactly typical.
My thought about that was:
“If you really want to keep your immune system working optimally, there are things that you do that are normal things,” Fauci told Business Insider Thursday.
[bolding mine]
National spotlight. Not just a single interview on a single day. Hammer on it as part of the messaging. That’s what I didn’t hear.
Of course I agree with that, but the stick approach isn’t typical Public Health advice and it doesn’t, in any way, seem to be Fauci’s style.
I don’t see it as an either/or.
Good, and congratulations! But yeah, the pandemic has been going on for a year and a half now; not exactly a “short-term” response.
Just because a few people managed to turn it into a successful longer-term weight-loss journey doesn’t mean that that’s the behavior Fauci should have been emphasizing in his public announcements.
My most sincere congratulations to you !!
My SIL, similarly, lost pretty much every pound she needed to lose (not a trivial endeavor). Unfortunately, she did this as part of a ‘concession’ to her (and my brother’s) staunch anti-vax status.
I’d rather she get/got vaccinated, but I do think she’s taken a big step toward helping her odds.
Her overall health improved dramatically, too, including normalizing long-standing abnormal laboratory values and no longer needing her CPAP machine.
I hope your weight loss paid similar dividends, and more !
No, but from your post #1105, that seems to be what Maher was complaining about: not enough “stick approach” scolding about how dangerous these lifestyle-factor issues are in the COVID era.
I cannot for the life of me understand why I keep reading articles that talk to experts who all have moderate hopes that this winter won’t be as bad as last. We still have about 30 million adult morons and 24 million unfortunate children who aren’t vaccinated yet. There are far fewer restrictions on gatherings than last year, and all the morons are going to hang out with other morons over the holidays and infect each other plus a fair number of their fully vaccinated but frail elders. It won’t surprise me if deaths in January and February easily top all the spikes we’ve seen so far, but the experts interviewed seem to discount the possibility.
My cousin and her family are anti-vaxxers, and it’s completely depressing. She’s totally under her husband’s thumb and has been for years – it seriously pisses the rest of the family off. Now especially since another cousin is having her wedding reception this month (which was postponed due to the epidemic), and she’s coming. So everyone else, that’s BEEN vaccinated, is still going to have to be careful around her. I know my aunt’s absolutely furious, but she was already invited, so what could you do?
It really, really upsets me, since the two of us were really close growing up – we used to call ourselves “best cousins”, (heh). We were always going over each others’ houses and playing together, and she’s just changed so much. The rest of us absolutely loathe her husband (especially her older brother), and are REALLY grateful that he’s not coming this time. (The guy actually tried to prevent her from coming to my see uncle before he died – can you believe that!!! Her brother had to call and threaten to come up and get her and dude backed down. Jesus Christ!)
She can do what my mother did:“we’re holding x event with a vaccine requirement.”
Uninvite her.
I think the expectation is a lot of the morons have already caught it and recovered.
The kids are a problem, though. The UK is dealing with that right now.