That, plus they are just plain against mandates their tribe is against, and in favor of mandates their tribe is for. Republican strategists hit on abortion and guns as wedge issues that split off Dem votes so have turned them into a battleground. They could as easily have decided abortion should be available because “freedom” if that was what they thought would be a good election strategy.
Going to address the off-topic with an anecdote, but one that ties into the main thread. So, I have heard various Republicans use the term ‘breakthrough cases’ to -also- apply to people who claimed to have already had COVID and gotten over it. Which is possible, or more likely they had some cold/flu during the last two years that they self-identified as ‘COVID’ which provides an excuse to NOT have to vaccinate because it’s not a big deal and they had it already.
Which as noted, feeds into their pre-existing conclusions, which they now have a reason for.
AFAICT (but IANAD) they are not unexpected? Vaccines aren’t perfect, and the moderate-effectiveness ones like the flu vaccine reduce the risk of illness by only about one-half.
So even a high-effectiveness vaccine like the COVID ones is going to wind up with at least many thousands of breakthrough infections in a vaccinated population of hundreds of millions (until vax levels get high enough for actual herd immunity).
But the point is that the breakthrough infections that the COVID vaccine doesn’t prevent are usually much much less dangerous and problematic than COVID infection in the unvaccinated.
Right there is where you lost today’s Republicans.
IAMAD either, but I was under the impression the point of the flu vaccines is to lessen one’s chance of dying from the flu, not to prevent you from gettting the flue in the first place.
They do both, AIUI, it’s just that they’re substantially better at the former than the latter.
And, again AIUI, the COVID vaccines are substantially better at both than flu vaccines are. But they’re not perfect in the sense of providing what’s called “sterilizing immunity” (completely stopping transmission, like smallpox and measles vaccines).
But they don’t need to be in order to be effective in controlling the pandemic.
I know but the number of them is surprising to me. I may have this completely wrong.
Are there any statistics on it?
I’m sure there are any number of studies in various stages of publication, but I’m not proficient in looking for them. My province is publishing vaccination status of new cases, and the numbers are running about 8-10x higher per 100k in the unvaccinated population than in the vaccinated. That’s a bit off from the published 95% efficacy rates from the phase 3 trials for the mRNA vaccines, but, Delta. To get a proper handle on this, you’d also want to be able to control for things like age and likelihood of exposure.
Nope. See what happens if a Republican governor instituted the mask mandates. Fox News says it’s bad, so they’d just call the governor a sell out. Like in Arizona.
I think this is the most accurate explanation I’ve seen yet. The good news is that as of this morning report on CNN, the willfully unvaccinated population is at around 25% (11% waiting for a sign, 14% hell no!). So many of those who loudly objected to the various realities of COVID and subsequent remediation steps (masks, distancing, vaccination, etc…) have quietly gone out and got their vaccination, particularly when the the delta variant emerged and started cutting through the unvaxxed communities. These people are loud-mouthed ignorant conspiracy theory rubes, but even they are realizing that living is better than sick & dying.
Oh dear. Yesterday, over here in Australia, one of our State Chief Medical Officers was doing the standard press briefing - ‘Case numbers, Hospital levels, please get vaccinated etc’ - and was also talking about the vaccine passport and tracking apps that may be required in the future and she unfortunately used the phrase ‘this may be the new world order’.
Well!! Didn’t that get the conspiracy nuts off and running! Woo Hoo!
They call him a sell-out and then condemn him as a RINO. In other words, that’s today’s No True Scotsman.
Or in Arizona, no true Scottsdale.
OK, and are all these draconian lockdown measures in Italy, Spain, and France still continuing?
This isn’t really a good example though, since that governor would be going against the existing belief set of the party as a whole.
The better example would be if the national party, including Trump, had come out in support of mask mandates from the beginning, with little dissent in the ranks.
My friends in Spain have posted about the adjustments as vaccine became available for an increasing number of people. Most of the adjustments loosen or remove restrictions. Some (masking indoors, decreased hotel beds) are still in force.
Can you please explain? I’m Canadian and have no idea what you are talking about…
I was actually trying to avoid chiefly characterizing these countries as poor, technologically backwards or otherwise incapable. I don’t at all blame the majority of their governments though exceptions exist, like Brazil’s Bolsanaro being a notable example. For at least some time there was an argument that the Delta variant may have originated or made it’s way to the US through Brazil. IIRC, that was later amended to India, with Brazil being the home of it’s own variant, Gamma.
The point is, these countries - no matter why - are reservoir populations and the idea that we’ll somehow prevent Covid from becoming endemic world wide without addressing these populations is fantastical. Right now, we are not on a path to addressing these populations at the speed required to prevent mutations and variants.
It sparked more than a small bit of controversy when C-16 was passed that legally mandated the use of an individual’s chosen pronouns. Jordan Peterson rather famously made quite a big deal on the internet about it. Now, like I said, being respectful to another person’s identity is just common decency, but it’s something else entirely to mandate that speech and place someone in legal jeopardy regarding it. It’s a very foreign concept to the Common Law and it’s many descendants.
So are you saying there is a new law, in addition to C-16? Because C-16 itself is not about mandating pronoun use, It’s about hate crimes, and doesn’t mention pronouns at all.
Jordan Peterson made a whole career on the back of the claim that he was being threatened with prison for not agreeing to use 36 gender pronouns (something like that; I don’t remember the exact number). AIUI, this was, and continues to be, bullshit.