CovidActNow, a Web site for Shutdown Karens (‘We support data- and science-backed policies and decision-making’), starts with a map of “Vaccination progress” by state:
The primacy accorded the vaccine percentage is a good reflection of where America’s Shutdown Karens are mentally right now. The virus itself is no longer that interesting, even if it manages to kill someone (“Thank Fauci he/she/ze/they was vaccinated and therefore died in a state of grace” will become part of our standard eulogy for anyone killed by Covid?). If the reader is interested enough to scroll down, the page includes a map of states color-coded by risk:
The map reminds us to stay in our bunkers because, of course, nowhere is safe. There is no “low risk” state to be found (“risk” is a function of “daily new cases per 100K (incidence), infection rate (Rt), and test positivity”). But there is one state that is only “medium” risk: Florida! The state that explicitly rejects science (at least according to the NYT) has the lowest current COVID-19 risk (if we go beyond the mainland, Hawaii has a slightly lower daily new case rate and soon-to-be-a-state Puerto Rico (Senator AOC!) is substantially lower).
Separately, who can see a correlation between vaccine virtue and risk level? Pennsylvania, for example, has a high vaccination rate and also a “very high” risk level. Is this a Paging Dr. Ioannidis situation? (current COVID-19 vaccines are somewhat effective, but vaccinated people will go out and party more, thus eliminating most or all of the benefit, at least when it comes to infection and transmission; see “Benefit of COVID-19 vaccination accounting for potential risk compensation”)
Related:
- states ranked by COVID-19 death rate (the Florida Free State now tied with fully-masked and often-shut Maskachusetts, but these data are not adjusted for percentage of population over 65, in which case FL would look much better (not that Floridians would care; they don’t measure the overall success of a society by the COVID-19 death rate))
The data is actually consistent with vaccine-induced ADE (antibody dependent enhancement). This is something the real immunology experts have been warning about for quite a while now.
The behavioral change explanation dies not fly because in FL and other “anti-science” states people congregated freely for a year now. Certainly a lot more than in intellectual havens of NY and CA.
> see “Benefit of COVID-19 vaccination accounting
> for potential risk compensation”
Interesting link. My possibly imperfect understanding is that the paper envisages how risk compensation might reduce benefit all the way down to zero. It doesn’t imagine that benefit could go negative, right?
But that’s what Britain’s vaccine surveillance reports have been showing, in terms of protection against infection. The latest report is for week 42. See table 2 for “case” rates per 100,000 (“case” seems to mean “positive test”). For the 40-49 age group it’s 772.9 (unvaxxed) versus 1,731.3 (double jabbed).
For week 36 those rates were 880.4 versus 1,116.2, i.e. negative protection is getting more negative. It’s implausible that the vaxxed were taking more risks six weeks later (and the unvaxxed were taking fewer?), at a time when it was becoming widely known that the vaccines are fading.
Have any of your former friends from Lincoln/Cambridge/Etc., called up or reconnected with you on Facebook to apologize for accusing you of basically losing your intellect and allowing yourself to be captured by the Hee-Haw/Moose Hat/Bleach Injection army?
First, my friends back in Maskachusetts are unaware that Florida is currently lower risk than MA. Their only sources of news don’t mention Florida’s relative infection risk or death rate except in weeks when FL’s rates are higher than those in the States of Righteousness. The last time they read about FL in the NYT would have been August, for example, right at the peak of FL’s Delta/summer wave.
Second, my friends who are Biden supporters (i.e., nearly all of my friends!) imagine Florida as a place where people are as obsessed with politics as they are. They ask what it is like to be surrounded by people who talk about Trump coming back as president in 2024 or even sooner once the election outcome is declared to be illegitimate. They’re shocked when I respond that hardly anyone in Florida has mentioned any election, any candidate, or any politician, and that there are generally no political signs or bumper stickers to be seen.
Our discovery today: a Banyan Tree tunnel in Stuart (https://youtu.be/ZF2MxmD7_pA ).
I did aggressive pruning of my circle of friends and closer acquaintances for years, so I guess I’ve no Biden voters in my circle, despite the ultra-liberal environment of Silly-con Valley. On the other hand, in my circle people who lived under socialism are over-represented. So they know exactly what Democrats are, having seen it all before.
philg: “Their only sources of news don’t mention Florida’s relative infection risk.”
Fortunately, your friends will be even safer in the future. Billionaires are establishing a Ministry of Truth:
https://www.axios.com/soros-hoffman-disinformation-tara-mcgowan-b1e7cb89-a4f7-4281-8e0a-3877fe8a3944.html
“Good Information Inc. aims to fund and scale businesses that cut through echo chambers with fact-based information. As part of its mission, it plans to invest in local news companies.”
“Good Information is launching with a multi-million seed investment led by Hoffman and joined by investors Ken and Jen Duda, Incite, and George Soros.”
It is interesting that anyone who spoke about Soros involvement was labeled a conspiracy theorist some years ago. The man has a history of ruining systems (i.e., the British pound).
Winter is coming…. MA and Pennslyvania will have incredibly higher COVID case counts