September 28, 2021: Massive Evidence in Support of Masks and Vaccines

Who else questions science? The Taliban.

9/28/21: It’s time to give Republicans a new name. We have long known that religious faith may trump science. In some cases, you can argue it should. Stubborn ignorance doesn’t trump science or anything else. 

At this point, the loudest voices in the party are leading their base over a cliff, like so many lemmings in red MAGA hats.

 

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Like so many lemmings in red MAGA hats.

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As Republican governors continue to fight all kinds of measures that might mitigate the spread of COVID-19, only a new name can suffice. The GOP has morphed into the Pandemic Party. 

A few days ago, the U.S. passed the death toll piled up during the Spanish Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919. That makes the current pandemic the worst in American history. Nor is it close to over.

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adjust numbers slightly, as information comes in daily from the states, but here are the tolls so far this month. 

9/1:    1,832 lives lost                                               9/17:  1,825

9/2:    1,847                                                              9/18:  1,151

9/3:    1,805                                                              9/19:     796

9/4:    1,352                                                              9/20:  1,114

9/5:    1,110                                                              9/21:  1,915

9/6:    1,074                                                              9/22:  1,863

9/7:    1,484                                                              9/23:  1,696

9/8:    1,864                                                              9/24:  1,940

9/9:    1,902                                                              9/25:     535

9/10:  1,950                                                              9/26:     267

9/11:  1,347                                                             

9/12:  1,064                                                              September toll:  39,361 deaths so far.

9/13:  1,134

9/14:  2,055

9/15:  1,875

9/16: 1,724 

 

According to medical experts, almost none of those nearly 40,000 deaths were necessary, had everyone had shots. Yet the Pandemicans have continued to fight for the “right” not to wear masks, and not to get life-saving shots. “Muzzles” to them, not masks. “Jabs,” not shots. Pandemican leaders and talk show hosts, have their own language and employ it to talk to their Pandemican base. 

As for this blogger, I like plain language, supported by facts. As of September 26, the CDC notes that 77.1% of American adults have had at least one shot. Yet, the unvaccinated, now less than a fourth of the U.S. adult population, continue to “shuffle off this mortal coil” in staggering numbers. Even Rejected-President Trump now finds himself powerless to change hearts and minds, after he suggested at a rally that his audience would be better off if they took the shots. He was met with scattered boos and jeers. So, like the craven coward he is, he backed off. 

If you had been listening to the loudest voices in the Pandemican fold, you knew they had set out to scare their ill-informed base. They wanted you to believe that Biden had a diabolical plan. First,  send out vaccination teams. Second, take away all the Bibles and guns.

 

This push for shots wasn’t about saving lives, Pandemicans howled. This was all about taking away freedoms and fastening the chains of tyranny round unvaccinated necks. The lemmings listened. They were lemmings. What else could they do? They hastened their pace and went running right over the cliff. 

The results have been predictable, with even leading Pandemican voices paying the price. Five right-wing radio hosts, who told listeners not to get shots, died by their own dim-witted swords. Marc Bernier, who dubbed himself “Mr. Anti-Vax” and assured fans, I’m not taking it,” is gone forever. 

No shot for him. 

Just death. 

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Ten times more likely to end up in ICU. 

WHAT DO WE SEE around us if we dare to take an honest look? According to the Kaiser Health Network, “overwhelmed” hospitals are being forced to cancel elective surgeries and even high-priority treatments. For Charlie Callagan, 72, a Vietnam veteran living in Oregon, who needs a bone marrow transplant, that means having to wait. 

Nor is his predicament the exception. “I’ve seen patients get ready to have their open-heart surgery that day,” explains Dr. Kent Dauterman, a cardiologist in Medford, Oregon. “I’ve seen patients have brain tumor[s] with visual changes, or someone with lung cancer, and their procedures are canceled that day and they have to come back another day.” 

He trails off, adding, “You always hope they come back.” That is: You hope they live long enough. 

Dr. Dauterman sees the cost of obstinacy both for patients, who must wait for care, and for those who listened to people like Mr. Bernier. In early September, the local hospital where he works “had 28 patients who were waiting for open-heart surgery, 24 who needed pacemakers, and 22 who were awaiting lung surgeries. During normal times, he said, there is no wait.” Right now, according to the Oregon Health Authority, five out of every six COVID patients filling hospital beds are individuals who for whatever reason have not had the shots.

 

When I check a bit further – because, as I often say, I like facts – I see that the Mayo Clinic has Oregon with 66.4% of all adults having had at least one shot. That would mean that the chances of ending up in the hospital, if not vaccinated at all, are really ten times higher, not five.

 

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You have the choice to go out and learn for yourself.

 

YOU NEED NOT LISTEN to fools. You have the choice to go out and learn for yourself. You can listen to what experts are saying across the land. For example, the Mississippi State Department of Health warns: “Due to the extreme shortage of intensive care beds in the state, allocation of hospital beds has been centralized under MSDH’s COVID-19 System of Care plan.”

 

Remember when Republicans claimed Obamacare would mean “death panels for Granny?” Thanks to Pandemican leaders, we’re already there. In red-state Mississippi they’ve achieved the actual state of rationed medical care.

 

People are getting sick unnecessarily. They are getting sent to hospitals unnecessarily. They are going to morgues when that irrevocable trip could have been avoided. It’s their own fault, although they have been aided and abetted by their own loudest, leading, science-averse voices.

 

Like Gov. Reeves.

 

In Mississippi, on Sept. 21, 284 people with COVID were in intensive care, including 200 on ventilators.

Almost none of them would have been there if they’d simply worn the “muzzle” and taken the “jab.” 

You can look all of this up. A study reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine finds that from March 2020 to March 2021, the coronavirus reduced U.S. life expectancy by well over a year. As one expert put it, the virus “robbed Americans of nine million birthdays that would otherwise have been celebrated.” Think in those terms if it will help. 

Yet, the Pandemicans and their base refuse. They’ve got the rapper, Nicki Minaj, on their side! Minaj won accolades from the anti-vaxxer crowd earlier this month, when she claimed on social media that she had a cousin who got the vaccine – and watched in horror as his testicles swelled to basketball size.

 

On our side – the science side – we countered with the heads of 68 pediatric hospitals in the United States. They took out a full-page newspaper ad and urged us all to do our part. Wear our masks. Get the shots. They explained that this was the best way to protect the nation’s young. As I said, I like facts. That makes it sixty-eight medical professionals vs. Nicki Minaj, famous, not for medical expertise, but for her feud and physical fight with Cardi B. 

(Nicki can sing better than any of the doctors; but that doesn’t mean you’d go to her to have your appendix removed.)

A call to save our children.

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That Pandemican pillar of uninformed bombast. 

I KNOW what it can be like to talk sense to the Pandemican base. On Facebook, if you post a story about all the countries where masks are mandated and vaccines are pushed, and note that it’s not just this country, it’s every country in the world, they say they don’t believe the science. The science is wrong. So all the countries in the world, and all the medical people are wrong. One of my conservative friends dismisses it all, saying the entire world is in on the “Plandemic” fix. 

Another Facebook friend insists, “They don’t wear masks in Australia or require shots!” As if that exception proves the point. I know, right away, it does not. But I decide I had best check it out. As of September 22, I learn that lockdown restrictions were in place for “Metropolitan Melbourne, City of Greater Geelong, Surf Coast Shire and Mitchell Shire.” People could only leave their homes for six reasons, one being to go to “authorised work (with a permit) or permitted education.” The Aussies, in other words, know this virus is not some random flu. 

Or, as that Pandemican pillar of uninformed bombast, Rush Limbaugh once said, nothing more than the “common cold.”

 

No amount of information, no matter how high you pile it, can alter the thinking of the lemmings of the anti-vaxxer, anti-mask cult. Recent data show that these ten states had the highest vaccination rates: Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. All ten had vaccinated 62% of adult populations or more. According to Johns Hopkins University – not Nicki Minaj – on average, they suffered 209 infections per 100,000 people in the week ending September 21. 

They had 14 hospitalizations and 2 deaths per 100,000. 

By comparison, the ten least-vaccinated states had adult vaccination rates of less than 41%. Those ten reliably-red states all voted for Trump last November, which tells you quite a bit about what’s going on today. Those ten include Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wyoming. (Ha, ha. Saying Georgia “voted for Trump” is just my little joke.) Compare then with the ten most-vaccinated states. These Pandemican states suffered 463 cases per 100,000 in the same week noted above. They piled up 39 hospitalizations per 100,000. Eight people in low-vaccinated states like Mississippi died per 100,000, compared to two in high-vaccinated states like Maryland. 

I point this out because both those last two states have Republican governors. Whereas Gov. Larry Hogan in Maryland is not a Pandemican by trade, the Mississippi governor is. Last week, Gov. Tate Reeves blasted the vaccine mandates put in place by President Biden for health care workers and businesses with more than 100 employees. Reeves called the new rules an “attack” on “hard-working Americans,” and claimed the president was trying to distract us from problems that were “driving his poll numbers into the ground.” 

I would argue, of course, that the Pandemicans are driving actual Americans into the ground. 

In recent days, we have seen hundreds of stories about the tragic death of Gabby Petito. She was traveling across the U.S. with her boyfriend and filming as they went. The pain of her family, I think all can feel. But this week, and last, and the one before that, and the one before that, another 10,000 American lives were needlessly sacrificed because people had been misled regarding ordinary masks and ordinary shots. On the same day we heard about autopsy results for Ms. Petito, we learned that Eric Trump would be showing up to speak at an October conference organized by Ty and Charlene Bollinger. They’re the typical, right-wing types who have referred to the COVID-19 shots as “abominable,” “A SHOT OF POISON,” and tagged them as the “COVID kill shot.” That, in a nutshell, is the Pandemican Party brand. It’s the brand of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep. Lauren Boebert, both of whom have loudly proclaimed that they will refuse to wear masks on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. 

“Give me Liberty, or Give Me Smallpox!” I suspect Rep. Boebert wanted to shout. 

The Pandemican Party is Rep. Greene giving former-President Trump glowing reviews for getting vaccines in doctors’ hands. And then Rep. Greene yelping on social media that vaccines don’t work.

 

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Sixteen hours face down in an ICU bed. 

ON FACEBOOK, I  post a pro-mask picture. My anti-vaxxer friends erupt. A Russian, who I know only as a bicyclist like myself, replies: Маска спричиняє деградацію імунітета. Я не ношу намордник, мій імунітет постійно працює, тому я не хворію. Хто носить маску, той частіше хворіє. 

I turn to the translation feature. His post reads: “The mask causes immunity degradation. I don’t wear a muzzle, my immunity is constantly working so I’m not sick. He who wears a mask gets sick more often.” 

The wife of one of my cousins joins the fray, arguing that the fact surgeons wear masks when operating (as I had had pointed out), was irrelevant. She said they were not wearing masks as part of some “virus protocol.” 

Which is normally true. 

Then she went on to add,

 

Surgical teams wear masks to prevent introducing bacteria into an already sterile environment...and keeping other people's blood and guts off their face and out of their mouth. It has nothing to do with viruses. Actually, if a surgical teammate has any viral symptoms, they are replaced or the surgery is rescheduled, but nobody goes into a surgery wearing a mask to prevent transmission of a virus. It is a really misleading comparison.

 

I read that comment and hardly knew where to begin. So, a mask could keep surgeons from hacking up bacteria in a sterile environment, but somehow masks don’t help stop the spread of COVID germs when we’re standing in line at a store? And if a surgeon or nurse had a virus, they wouldn’t be allowed in the room? One of my former students posted a pro-mask link in response, citing a study featured in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Here’s the key point those scientists wanted to make: 

The preponderance of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical contexts. Public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high. 

 

Next, one of my distant relatives posted a link “proving” that vaccines were no good. I decided to give it a look, on the Bumble website, and thought to myself, “This is crazy. This can’t be a valid source.” This is a site that offers videos of turbo-charged cats running in circles round a fountain. But my relative tagged his post, “Real science.” He noted that the host of the show which he linked, Steven Petty, was a “Certified Industrial Hygienist,” as if that clinched the deal. 

I kept trying. I always do. Masks and shots save lives and to me that’s the first and last and only point. When I checked an email from the retired-teachers lunch group to which I belong, I learned that one of our members was recovering after a battle with the virus, including ten days with a fever above 101°. 

Been there myself. Had the virus last November. Seventeen days. Sweating like when I was young, and would go out on a day when it was 102° and find a 2-on-2 basketball game and consider that fun. The difference, of course, is that when I fell ill, no vaccines were available.

 

Now our group member’s husband was in an ICU unit here in Ohio. Sixteen hours per day on his stomach. Eight on his back. His lungs kept filling with fluid and had to be drained. There’s almost no chance he was vaccinated before. 

I hope he recovers soon.

 

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Search out the truth for yourself. 

I KEPT piling up facts. Normally, that’s going to help. Fox 7 News, out of Austin, Texas reported hospitals in the state were “overwhelmed” by the influx of COVID-19 patients. In the Austin-area every ICU bed was filled. In Alaska, health officials announced that they were “imposing crisis-care standards” for the “entire hospital system, declaring that a crushing surge in COVID-19 patients has forced rationing of strained medical resources.” Alaska’s chief medical officer, Dr. Anne Zink, warned that the virus was “crippling our healthcare system. It’s impacting everything from heart attacks to strokes to our children if they get in a bike accident.”

 

In Arkansas, it’s more of the same.

 

In Florida, they recently set a record for COVID-19 hospitalizations.

 

In Idaho, the governor admits hospitals have been unable to keep up with the crush.

 

In Oregon, where my daughter and her husband toil in healthcare, officials were asking people to volunteer to help provide emergency coronavirus care. (They both volunteered, but only my daughter’s husband was transferred, part-time, from his policy job to frontline work.)

 

In Kentucky, they were seeing the same grim surge. Pam Akins, chief nursing officer at Mary and Elizabeth Hospital, told reporters that her hospital went from six patients in the ICU to 21 in just two weeks. “This virus is real. It’s killing people,” she said. “It’s making them very ill and the hospital workers are tired. They’re exhausted and they can’t continue like this.”

 

This surge, this problem – nothing about it is hard to grasp. Wyoming is calling out its National Guard to help hospital staffs. You can look this up. Gov. Mark Gordon has had to make the call. Gov. Greg Gianforte of Montana, a leading voice in the new Pandemican Party, has had to make the same call. Health and Human Services has a slow-to-load website, but reported a few days ago that hospitals in 45 states found at least 70% of all beds filled. For ICU units, nationwide, 80.46% of beds were already taken, and that includes 23,909 individuals with COVID-19.

 

The people opposed to masks and shots don’t care. Another former student sends me a link to a YouTube video titled, “Testing Oxygen Levels Under a Mask w/an OSHA Air Quality Monitor.” When I check the link, it’s already down for violating YouTube’s “community guidelines,” which to me proves my basic points. I understand about masks. Is it harder to breath while wearing a mask? 

Sure. 

Better a mask or a shot than sixteen hours per day, face down on a hospital bed in an ICU ward, for sure. 

And you can always search out the truth for yourself.

 

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“We recommend that everyone who is eligible get vaccinated.” 

I KNOW some anti-vaxxers, and anti-maskers think you can’t trust CDC. But these are the same people who trust Ohio’s “Magnet Queen,” the single doctor who claimed that if we get vaccinated our bodies become magnetized and paperclips stick to our face. I think to myself, maybe if I show Facebook friends that all over the world mask mandates are in place – maybe they’ll realize it’s not just some plot hatched by Dr. Fauci and President Biden and a bunch of cannibalistic, pedophile liberal types. (See: QAnon, if you don’t get the pedophile joke.) 

I share a screenshot and a link, and hope it helps:

Virtually the entire world is pro-masking.

When you roll over the map (on the link), you get the name of the country. I know right away, in China, masks are recommended, not “not required.” Those commies don’t mess around. 

I don’t like commies. That doesn’t mean masks aren’t a useful tool in gaining control of the virus. 

Afghanistan? Yeah. No mask mandates for the Taliban. This summer those murderous maniacs, with their seventh century views on governance and science, gunned down four medical personnel, and injured three others, because they were offering impoverished Afghans the polio vaccine. 

Japan? If you’re not vaccinated, they won’t let you enter the country. So you know where they stand. 

New Zealand’s Ministry of Health has a photo up on Twitter, showing three rugby players, with the caption, “Strengthen our team and #GetVaccinatedNZ.” So, no, when you hear Rejected-President Trump bashing Dr. Fauci for all his mistakes – but never admitting any of his own – it’s not just the folks at CDC that recommend getting the shots and wearing the masks.

 

I track down most of  the countries in blue to be sure. Again, I like facts. Iceland will let you visit if you can prove you’ve been vaccinated or had the virus before. In fact, they have all kinds of rules in place to stop the spread – gatherings of more than 500 people prohibited in most cases, masks required indoors in non-family situations, when social distancing (one metre) is impossible. Norway? The Barents Observer reports that 88.4% of adults have had at least one shot, and only fifteen Norwegians, in August, as of the 23^rd, had been sent to ICU with COVID-19. Ireland definitely has rules in place to stop the spread – but hopes to ease most by Oct. 22. Starting this month, up to 200 people are allowed again at outdoor events. Indoor venues will be allowed 60% of capacity, but only if people show proof that they’ve had shots. And masks will still be “mandatory on public transport and in health and retail sectors.” 

Next, I started listing groups that had come out in favor of masks and/or vaccines in various settings. My cousin’s wife can be incredibly stubborn when an idea gets stuck in her head. She continued on Facebook to argue that masks were ineffective. Something about how it was like: When you sprayed hairspray or perfume round a room, and it still smelled if you had on a mask. “Keep in mind that our environment throws all kinds of viruses our way every time we step outside,” she continued, in response to one of my other more-enlightened Facebook friends. “Even covid, although it does cause death, is harmless to most people.” 

I admit that comment made me gasp. When I checked to be sure, CDC still said 686,639 Americans were dead

 

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“For the protection and safety of our nursing workforce.” 

SO, I TRIED AGAIN. I found an “open letter” backed by the American Medical Association, the American Nursing Association, and the American Hospital Association. They made it plain. As a nation, we were going in reverse. Case numbers and deaths were surging. They said we should all put on masks. The AMA represents 250,000 doctors. The ANA speaks for 4,000,000 nurses. The AHA has 5,000 hospital members. The American Pediatric Association, with 67,000 members also “strongly recommends” all who are eligible get vaccinated to protect against COVID-19. They add that everyone “older than the age of two wear masks, regardless of vaccination status.” 

I understand, as surely as I am typing at this moment, that someone in the Pandemican base is going to latch onto one lame example or another – perhaps Alex Jones gobbling down the horse medicine, Ivermectin, on-air to “prove” he’s not going to be forced to take a shot. And then some poor dope is going to go out and get Ivermectin, him- or herself, and gobble it down. 

Sure enough, when I check, CDC reports that demand for the prescription drug (a de-wormer, in case you have worms) has soared. Just as night follows day, the Kansas Dept. of Health and Environment, for one, is forced to come out and urge “Kansans not to take Ivermectin to treat COVID-19.” Reports of poisoning and visits to hospital emergency rooms have surged.

 

“Kansans should avoid taking medications that are intended for animals and should only take ivermectin as prescribed by their physician,” said Lee Norman, M.D., Secretary of KDHE. “These highly concentrated doses can cause severe illness and even death in humans. The COVID-19 vaccine remains the most effective way to prevent COVID-19.”

 

Finally, I get tired of arguing with people whose minds have slammed shut like bedroom doors during a furious domestic fight. 

Husband: Honey, I took Ivermectin today.

 

Wife: Why, in God’s name!

 

Husband: It worked for Alex Jones! You don’t want me to get the “jab” do you and have my testicles swell up like basketballs.

 

Wife: I married a fool. 

(Door to bedroom slams.)

 

I post one more link, which I think no one with sense would attempt to refute. The American College of Surgeons joins fifty-seven other health care organizations in calling for all hospitals, nursing homes, etc. to “require their employees to be vaccinated.” They are joined in this recommendation by the  Association of American Medical Colleges, the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, the American Pharmacists Association, the National Hispanic Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, to name just a few. I notice an organization listed that I’ve never heard of before. It’s the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. I check to be sure. Yep. 

They think all healthcare providers should get vaccinated, too, whereas Gov. Reeves calls the new rules an “attack.” 

It doesn’t seem to matter, no matter what evidence anyone might provide. We’re trying to talk sense to people who believe Alex Jones was right. He said – well, first, he said this virus was no worse than the flu. Then he howled and said that those of us who did take the shots would be dead within the year. I check my vaccination card and realize I’ve only got six months to live.

 

I don’t give up easily. I keep looking for proof to support what I say. Although maybe I should be doing something more exciting, figuring – you know – only six more months to live. 

Skydiving, maybe? 

I see that Johns Hopkins University answers the question, “Are the vaccines safe,” saying, “Yes, we recommend that everyone who is eligible get vaccinated with one of the three currently authorized COVID-19 vaccines.” 

On the other side, we have leading Pandemicans warning that the vaccines will change our DNA. We may end up looking like chimps. I don’t believe that nonsense, whereas I know the American Medical Association is a “strong advocate” of COVID-19 vaccinations for all adults.

 

I stumble upon an older post, from the Association of Rehabilitation Nurses, asking people to wear masks “for the protection and safety of our nursing workforce, patients, caregivers, and communities.” 

You’d think the Pandemican base might care about that. 

Next, we check out advice for pregnant women. Yea or nay on the coronavirus shots? The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and an array of medical organizations have come out with the following statement, which, again, I believe trumps the guy on Bumble and the guy on YouTube who got his video yanked. Here’s what the ACOG and other groups have to say: 

As the leading organizations representing experts in maternal care and public health professionals that advocate and educate about vaccination, we strongly urge all pregnant individuals – along with recently pregnant, planning to become pregnant, lactating and other eligible individuals – to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

 

Again, I’ll list just a few of the groups in support. The Academy of Family Physicians is all in on vaccines. You can add the American College of Nurse-Midwives, The National Association of County & City Health Officials, the American College of Physicians and the Association of Immunization Managers to my growing and, if I do say so myself, very impressive list. 

I’m sorry to sound rude, but at some point, a person no longer has a right to be dead wrong in his or her “facts.” 

Stick the muzzle on your face and go out and take the jab. The life you save may be your own – or the life of some lucky individual who otherwise might have crossed your unvaccinated, infectious path.