In some counties, it’s back to masks

benfell

Pandemic

While details of the revised guidance seem sparse and it strikes me that many of the places where this guidance should apply are the same places that are least likely to enforce it, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging people in some counties to resume wearing masks indoors.[1]

New guidance issued by the nation’s top health protection agency said fully vaccinated people who live in places with high or substantial transmission of the virus should once again wear masks in public indoor spaces, while emphasizing that Covid-19 vaccines remain effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalization and death.[2]

This news reached me after I had already published a new blog post entitled, “Lock up the anti-vaxxers” and, further, it is even more clear today than yesterday that people are entirely fed up with assholes who refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19.[3]

“Nobody wants to go backward but you have to deal with the facts on the ground, and the facts on the ground are that it’s a pretty scary time and there are a lot of vulnerable people,” said Robert Wachter, chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. “I think the biggest thing we got wrong was not anticipating that 30 percent of the country would choose not to be vaccinated.”[4]

So you want “facts on the ground?” The facts on the ground are that this is all due to assholes who refuse vaccination,[5] whether it’s politic to say so or not.[6] So, hell yes, I’m blaming the unvaccinated. And hell yes, I think they should be locked up.[7] They can cry fascism all they like;[8] it’s my freedom they’re impinging now because I’m required to wear a mask all day long driving for Uber and Lyft and it’s my trip to visit my aging and vulnerable mother that’s in ever increasing doubt. They can all fuck right the hell off.

Dan Diamond, “Doctors, nurses and medical groups call for mandatory coronavirus vaccinations for health workers,” Washington Post, July 26, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/26/mandatory-vaccinations-urged-health-workers/

Emma Fitzsimmons, “New York City and California will require workers to be vaccinated or face testing,” New York Times, July 26, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/26/nyregion/new-york-vaccinations-workers.html

Summer Lin, “Got your COVID vaccine? Stay out, says California restaurateur decrying ‘stupidity,’” Sacramento Bee, July 26, 2021, https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article253039643.html

Justine McDaniel and Chris A. Williams, “More COVID-19 shots are being given in Pa. and N.J. as delta variant spurs outbreaks in U.S.,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 26, 2021, https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/covid-vaccine-pa-increase-delta-20210726.html

Yasmeen Abutaleb, Joel Achenbach, Dan Diamond, and Adam Taylor, “CDC urges vaccinated people in covid hot spots to resume wearing masks indoors,” Washington Post, July 27, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/27/cdc-masks-guidance-indoors/

Simone Jasper, “Is it a HIPAA violation to ask someone about their COVID vaccine status? What to know,” Sacramento Bee, July 27, 2021, https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article253056433.html

Tyler Pager and Eli Rosenberg, “Biden plans to require federal workers to be vaccinated or undergo repeated tests,” Washington Post, July 27, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/07/27/biden-vaccine-mandate-federal-employees/

Jaclyn Peiser, “Evangelical pastor demands churchgoers ditch their masks: ‘Don’t believe this delta variant nonsense,’” Washington Post, July 27, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/27/tennessee-pastor-greg-locke-masks/

Sabrina Siddiqui and Tarini Parti, “CDC Urges Vaccinated People to Resume Wearing Masks Indoors in Some Areas,” Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/cdc-to-urge-vaccinated-people-to-resume-wearing-masks-in-public-indoor-spaces-11627399286

Paul Waldman, “I’m tired of being nice to vaccine refusers,” Washington Post, July 27, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/27/im-tired-being-nice-vaccine-refusers/

Cuba

Manolo De Los Santos and Vijay Prashad, “If You Grew Up With the U.S. Blockade as a Cuban, You Might Understand the Recent Protests Differently,” Toward Freedom, July 21, 2021, https://towardfreedom.org/story/archives/americas/if-you-grew-up-with-the-u-s-blockade-as-a-cuban-you-might-understand-the-recent-protests-differently/

Work

Oh, what a surprise. The Wall Street Journal sympathizes with employers.[9]

Meanwhile,

So far, early data suggests that cutting the benefits given to Americans who lost their jobs during the covid-19 pandemic has not led to a big pickup in hiring. The 20 states that reduced benefits in June had the same pace of hiring as the mostly Democrat-led states that kept the extra $300-a-week unemployment payments in place, according to state-level data from the Labor Department. Survey data from the Census Bureau and Gusto’s small-business payroll data show similar results.

Many economists and business owners say other issues such as health concerns, child-care problems and workers reassessing their career choices appear to be larger factors keeping them home.[10]

Though it does appear that in those states, hiring of people over 25 years of age has increased at the expense of teens.[11] But a consistent theme is that restaurant work sucks and restaurants are accordingly having difficulty hiring.[12]

Rachel Pannett, “Minimum-wage lessons for the U.S. from the other side of the world,” Washington Post, July 26, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/minimum-wage-australia-biden/2021/07/26/e681cac8-de42-11eb-a27f-8b294930e95b_story.html

Cara Sapida, “Police respond after Pittsburgh’s South Side Burger King allegedly left empty by workers,” WPXI, July 26, 2021, https://www.wpxi.com/news/top-stories/police-respond-after-south-side-burger-king-allegedly-left-empty-by-workers/ZZ262QR555FZBJWYMDHDMLRNZE/

Amara Omeokwe, “Biden Administration Moves to Tilt Pay and Power Toward Workers,” Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-moves-to-tilt-pay-and-power-toward-workers-11627378380

Heather Long and Andrew Van Dam, “States that cut unemployment early aren’t seeing a hiring boom, but who gets hired is changing,” Washington Post, July 27, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/07/27/unemployment-insurance-go-away/

White supremacist gangs

Colin Deppen, “A police killing in Philadelphia could change Pa. use-of-force cases forever,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, July 27, 2021, https://triblive.com/news/pennsylvania/a-police-killing-in-philadelphia-could-change-pa-use-of-force-cases-forever/

Donald Trump

Alexa Corse, “Capitol Police Officer Describes Fighting ‘Hand to Hand, Inch by Inch’ in Jan. 6 Testimony,” Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/capitol-police-officer-describes-fighting-hand-to-hand-inch-by-inch-in-jan-6-testimony-11627398536

  1. [1]Yasmeen Abutaleb, Joel Achenbach, Dan Diamond, and Adam Taylor, “CDC urges vaccinated people in covid hot spots to resume wearing masks indoors,” Washington Post, July 27, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/27/cdc-masks-guidance-indoors/; Sabrina Siddiqui and Tarini Parti, “CDC Urges Vaccinated People to Resume Wearing Masks Indoors in Some Areas,” Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/cdc-to-urge-vaccinated-people-to-resume-wearing-masks-in-public-indoor-spaces-11627399286↩
  2. [2]Sabrina Siddiqui and Tarini Parti, “CDC Urges Vaccinated People to Resume Wearing Masks Indoors in Some Areas,” Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/cdc-to-urge-vaccinated-people-to-resume-wearing-masks-in-public-indoor-spaces-11627399286↩
  3. [3]David Benfell, “Weeding out the stupid,” Not Housebroken, July 27, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/07/23/weeding-out-the-stupid/↩
  4. [4]Yasmeen Abutaleb, Joel Achenbach, Dan Diamond, and Adam Taylor, “CDC urges vaccinated people in covid hot spots to resume wearing masks indoors,” Washington Post, July 27, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/27/cdc-masks-guidance-indoors/↩
  5. [5]Max Boot, “Republicans are preventing America from reaching Biden’s vaccination goal,” Washington Post, July 6, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/06/republican-antivaxxers-biden-vaccination-goal/; Philip Bump, “A third of White conservatives refuse to get vaccinated — a refusal shown in polling and the real world,” Washington Post, July 6, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/06/third-white-conservatives-refuse-get-vaccine-refusal-shown-both-polling-real-world/; Adam Cancryn and David Lim, “Biden administration likely to miss July 4 vaccine target as new Covid strain surges,” Politico, June 22, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/22/biden-july-4-vaccination-target-495485; Jenny Deam, Ryan Gabrielson, and Bianca Fortis, “‘Don’t You Work With Old People?’: Many Elder-Care Workers Still Refuse to Get COVID-19 Vaccine,” Pro Publica, July 23, 2021, https://www.propublica.org/article/dont-you-work-with-old-people-many-elder-care-workers-still-refuse-to-get-covid-19-vaccine; Dan Diamond, “153 people resigned or were fired from a Texas hospital system after refusing to get vaccinated,” Washington Post, June 22, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/06/22/houston-methodist-loses-153-employees-vaccine-mandate/; Dan Diamond, Hannah Knowles, and Tyler Pager, “Vaccine hesitancy morphs into hostility, as opposition to shots hardens,” Washington Post, July 15, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/covid-vaccines-biden-trump/2021/07/15/adaf6c7e-e4bd-11eb-a41e-c8442c213fa8_story.html; Jackie Drees, “Vaccine passports: 23 states with bans, limitations & green lights,” Becker’s Healthcare, May 26, 2021, https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/digital-transformation/vaccine-passports-10-states-with-bans-limitations-green-lights.html; Chandelis Duster, “Fauci: ‘We’re going in the wrong direction’ on Covid-19 cases,” CNN, July 25, 2021, https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/25/politics/anthony-fauci-covid-19-unvaccinated-cnntv/index.html; Melanie Evans and Julie Wernau, “Unvaccinated Americans Are Behind Rising Covid-19 Hospitalizations,” Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/unvaccinated-covid-19-hospitalizations-11626528110; Courtney Ann Jackson, “Mississippi doctors still urging folks to get vaccinated as Delta variant becomes dominant COVID strain,” WLBT, July 5, 2021, https://www.wlbt.com/2021/07/06/mississippi-doctors-still-urging-folks-get-vaccinated-delta-variant-becomes-dominant-covid-strain/; Peter Jamison, “Their neighbors called covid-19 a hoax. Can these ICU nurses forgive them?” Washington Post, July 6, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/07/06/appalachian-covid-deniers-nurses-virginia/; Dhruv Khullar, “One half of America is protected. The other is approaching a perilous moment in the pandemic,” New Yorker, June 23, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/the-delta-variant-is-a-grave-danger-to-the-unvaccinated; Ed Kilgore, “The Willfully Unvaccinated Are the Newest Republican Martyrs,” New York, July 13, 2021, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/the-willfully-unvaccinated-are-the-newest-republican-martyrs.html; Apoorva Mandavilli, “Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe,” New York Times, May 3, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/health/covid-herd-immunity-vaccine.html; Chris Megerian, “Biden’s coronavirus success threatened by political divisions he pledged to heal,” Los Angeles Times, April 27, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-04-27/bidens-coronavirus-success-threatened-by-political-divisions-he-pledged-to-heal; Luke Money and Rong-Gong Lin, II, “Tougher tactics targeting the unvaccinated needed to stop new COVID-19 spike, experts say,” Los Angeles Times, July 14, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-07-14/to-slow-covid-19-rise-door-to-door-vaccine-outreach-and-workplace-requirements-could-help; Ed Pilkington and Lauren Aratani, “US seeing ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’ as cases rise in every state,” Guardian, July 16, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/16/covid-19-us-delta-variant-unvaccinated; Kevin Rector et al., “Many L.A. cops and firefighters aren’t vaccinated against COVID-19. Is this a public safety threat?” Los Angeles Times, June 19, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-19/vaccination-rates-lag-among-california-public-safety-workers-drawing-concern; Paul Waldman, “Right-wing anti-vaccine hysteria is increasing. We’ll all pay the price,” Washington Post, July 8, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/08/right-wing-anti-vaccine-hysteria-is-increasing-well-all-pay-price/; Katherine S. Xue, “Coexisting With The Coronavirus,” New Yorker, July 21, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-medicine/coexisting-with-the-coronavirus↩
  6. [6]Dan Diamond, Hannah Knowles, and Tyler Pager, “Vaccine hesitancy morphs into hostility, as opposition to shots hardens,” Washington Post, July 15, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/covid-vaccines-biden-trump/2021/07/15/adaf6c7e-e4bd-11eb-a41e-c8442c213fa8_story.html; David Frum, “Vaccinated America Has Had Enough,” Atlantic, July 23, 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/vaccinated-america-breaking-point-anti-vaxxers/619539/↩
  7. [7]David Benfell, “Lock up the anti-vaxxers,” Not Housebroken, July 27, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/07/27/lock-up-the-anti-vaxxers/↩
  8. [8]Philip Bump, “Vaccine skepticism and disregard for containment efforts go hand in hand,” Washington Post, April 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/02/vaccine-skepticism-disregard-containment-efforts-go-hand-in-hand/; Ron Kampeas, “In latest Nazi analogy, Marjorie Taylor Greene invokes ‘medical brown shirts’ in decrying vaccination outreach,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 7, 2021, https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/in-latest-nazi-analogy-marjorie-taylor-greene-invokes-medical-brown-shirts-in-decrying-vaccination-outreach; Hannah Knowles, “DeSantis sells ‘Don’t Fauci My Florida’ merch as new coronavirus cases near highest in nation,” Washington Post, July 14, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/13/desantis-fauci-florida/; Grace Panetta, “GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert calls Biden’s door-to-door vaccinators ‘needle Nazis,’” Yahoo! News, July 8, 2021, https://news.yahoo.com/gop-rep-lauren-boebert-calls-130015902.html; Greg Sargent, “A vile new Trump-GOP claim about vaccines suggests trouble ahead,” Washington Post, July 19, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/19/vile-new-trump-gop-claim-about-vaccines-suggests-trouble-ahead/; Daniel Villarreal, “Matt Gaetz Says Anthony Fauci ‘Has Blood on His Hands, And Now the Country Knows It,’” Newsweek, June 4, 2021, https://www.newsweek.com/matt-gaetz-says-anthony-fauci-has-blood-his-hands-now-country-knows-it-1597853; Laurel Wamsley, “Florida Gov. DeSantis Rejects Vaccine Passports As ‘Completely Unacceptable,’” National Public Radio, March 30, 2021, https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/03/30/982837517/florida-gov-desantis-rejects-vaccine-passports-as-completely-unacceptable↩
  9. [9]Amara Omeokwe, “Biden Administration Moves to Tilt Pay and Power Toward Workers,” Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-moves-to-tilt-pay-and-power-toward-workers-11627378380↩
  10. [10]Heather Long and Andrew Van Dam, “States that cut unemployment early aren’t seeing a hiring boom, but who gets hired is changing,” Washington Post, July 27, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/07/27/unemployment-insurance-go-away/↩
  11. [11]Heather Long and Andrew Van Dam, “States that cut unemployment early aren’t seeing a hiring boom, but who gets hired is changing,” Washington Post, July 27, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/07/27/unemployment-insurance-go-away/↩
  12. [12]Jenn Ladd, “‘This is a real job’: Philly’s restaurant workers dissect the labor shortage, and contemplate a different future,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 10, 2021, https://www.inquirer.com/news/labor-shortage-pandemic-workers-restaurants-philadelphia-hiring-20210710.html; Heather Long and Andrew Van Dam, “States that cut unemployment early aren’t seeing a hiring boom, but who gets hired is changing,” Washington Post, July 27, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/07/27/unemployment-insurance-go-away/; Gene Marks, “Rude customers are a drag – but can we small business owners do more?” Guardian, July 25, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jul/25/small-business-owners-rude-customers; Alina Selyukh, “Low Pay, No Benefits, Rude Customers: Restaurant Workers Quit At Record Rate,” National Public Radio, July 20, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/07/20/1016081936/low-pay-no-benefits-rude-customers-restaurant-workers-quit-at-record-rate↩

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