Tag: vaccinations

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Alabama Governor: ‘Time To Start Blaming The Unvaccinated Folks’

Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL)

Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL) Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey expressed her frustration with the low level of COVID-19 vaccinations in her state even as cases are surging. From NBC News:

“Folks are supposed to have common sense,” Ivey told a reporter in response to a question about what it’s going to take for people to get vaccinated.

“But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down,” she continued.

Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate in the country with only 38 percent of the state’s population receiving at least one vaccine dose. According to state statistics, 31 percent were fully vaccinated as of Tuesday. Over the past two weeks, the rolling average number of daily new coronavirus cases in the state was up by 694 or 573 percent.

“Almost 100 percent of the new hospitalizations are with unvaccinated folks,” Ivey said. “And the deaths are certainly occurring with the unvaccinated folks. These folks are choosing a horrible lifestyle of self-inflicted pain.”

She told reporters that she’s done her best to fight the virus but “can’t make you take care of yourself.”

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COVID Patient Would Still Refuse Vaccine: ‘Don’t Shove It Down My Throat’

In his report for CBS This Morning, national correspondent David Begnaud recently spoke to a Louisiana man, Scott Roe, who is currently recovering from COVID-19 but remains adamant he will not be getting any of the vaccines available to the public.

Roughly one in three Louisianans are fully vaccinated. This week, the state’s health department reported the highest number of COVID-19 hospitalizations since late February. Scott Roe is one of them. “Here I am recovering, getting out of here finally tomorrow. Am I going to get a vaccine? No,” Roe said. “Because there’s too many issues with these vaccines.” This father, former baseball coach, small business owner and hunter caught COVID and then developed pneumonia.

“Before you got sick,” Begnaud asked Roe, “if you would have had a chance to get the vaccine and prevent this, would you have taken the vaccine?” “No,” Roe said. “I would have gone through this, yes sir… Don’t shove it down my throat. That’s what local, state, federal administration is trying to do – shove it down your throat.” “What are they shoving,” Begnaud asked, “the science?” “No they’re shoving the fact that that’s their agenda,” Roe said, “their agenda is to get you vaccinated.”

GOP Rep. Steve Scalise, Roe’s representative in Congress, announced this week he just received his first Pfizer shot, and urged his constituents to follow suit saying the shots are “safe and effective.” Roe’s response? “Not proven.”

My question of late has been: “What would constitute ‘proof’ that the vaccines are safe and effective to these folks? Is it a matter of time? Are they saying they would take the shot in a year? Two years? Ten years? Or have the vaccines become such a politicalized topic that those folks will never cross that divide? Here’s the full report from CBS This Morning.

(h/t JoeMyGod)

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Doctor: Dying COVID Patients Beg For Vaccine ‘But It’s Too Late’

Image of a vaccine shot

Image of a vaccine shot
(stock image via Depositphotos)
A Facebook post from Dr. Brytney Cobia in Alabama went viral after she shared some of her experience treating COVID-19 at her hospital. From AL.com:

“I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections,” wrote Dr. Brytney Cobia, a hospitalist at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, in an emotional Facebook post Sunday. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.”

“A few days later when I call time of death,” continued Cobia on Facebook, “I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same.”

“They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just the flu’. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can’t.”

COVID-19 case numbers and hospitalizations are surging yet again due to the more contagious Delta variant of the virus and Alabama’s low vaccination rate. Alabama currently ranks last in the nation in vaccination rate, with only 33.7 percent of the population fully vaccinated. Read full report here.

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Newsmax CEO Praises Biden Vaccine Push, Urges Americans To Get Shot

Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy

Newsmax CEO praises Biden
Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy (screen capture via CNN)
In an op-ed posted on his network’s website, Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy offered praise for the Biden administration’s rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines and urged Americans to get their shot. He wrote, in part:

Six months into his administration, President Joe Biden should be applauded for making a huge dent in the COVID pandemic.

He inherited an effective vaccine from President Donald Trump, took it into his arms, and ran with it.

The success of this approach has been obvious. Serious deaths and hospitalizations (the most important COVID data) have collapsed.

[snip]

The bottom line: The vaccines are safe and effective. More than 3.6 billion shots have been given worldwide, and some 338 million here in the U.S. alone.

Meanwhile, deaths caused by the coronavirus have fallen to record lows, with almost negligible side effects to those vaccinated.

At Newsmax, we have strongly advocated for the public to be vaccinated. The many medical experts who have appeared on our network have been near unanimous in support of the vaccine.

I myself have gotten the Pfizer vaccine. There’s no question in my mind, countless lives would have been saved if the vaccine was available earlier.

As I wrote earlier today about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Fox News host Sean Hannity, it seems the dive the stock market took yesterday really jolted these wealthy Republicans to get serious about the vaccination effort.

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McConnell And Hannity Urge Americans To Get Vaccinated

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) implores Americans to get vaccinated
So, basically, Hell just froze over I guess. Both Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Fox News talking head Sean Hannity have begun to strenuously urge people to get vaccinated against COVID-19. McConnell speaking to reporters today:

“Ninety-seven percent of hospitalizations for COVID are unvaccinated people. It never occurred to me, after three highly effective vaccines were developed in under a year, that we’d have difficulty getting Americans to take the shots. But that’s obviously where we are.

“These shots need to get in everybody’s arm as rapidly as possible or we’re going to be back in a situation in the fall that we don’t yearn for that we went through last year,” continued McConnell. “I don’t know how I could be any more clear than I have been. I’ve been saying the same thing about vaccinations all along the way.

“It is not at all unclear that the way to avoid getting back in the hospital is to get vaccinated,” he added. “I want to encourage everybody to do that and to ignore all of these other voices that are giving demonstrably bad advice.”

Hannity on his show last night: “Please take Covid seriously. I can’t say it enough. Enough people have died. We don’t need any more death. Research like crazy. Talk to your doctor… I believe in science. I believe in the science of vaccination.” Most folks are saying yesterday’s stock market drop, based in great part in coronavirus concerns, fueled McConnell and Hannity’s pleas. Both are wealthy men, and both lost money in the market yesterday.

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U.S. Records Highest Number Of New COVID Cases In The World (Again)

New cases of COVID-19 spiked on July 17, 2021, as the Delta variant continues to spread in the U.S.
(screen capture via Johns Hopkins University)
Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 data tracking shows the United States had a massive spike of 79,310 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday. On July 4, the number of new cases being reported had dropped to 3,491. From The Daily Beast:

The number is the highest in the world, exceeding recorded totals from Indonesia (54,000), the United Kingdom (51,949), and Brazil (45,591), and doubling that of India (38,079).

The spiking case number matches the level hit in October 2020, a record at the time, though it would not remain so for long.

Despite the effectiveness of multiple vaccines against the virus, vaccine hesitancy is fueling “a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” according to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

The vast majority of all patients currently hospitalized with COVID-19 are unvaccinated, according to the CDC.

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News Round-Up: July 14, 2021

(image via Instagram)
Some news items you might have missed: • Just Because: InstaHunk Yes.Its.Andy (above) shares this calming scene. Follow him here. Can I just say I liked the colors? • JoeMyGod: Republican senators have issued a statement calling for the repeal of wearing masks on public transportation because it could ruin family vacations. • Deseret News: Family nurse practitioner Aaron Hartle (45-year-old former triathlete and father of five) decided he wasn’t in any hurry to get vaccinated against COVID-19, even though the virus killed one of his patients. In June, COVID-19 sent Hartle to the hospital for a week. Back at home, he remains on oxygen and tires easily as he talks about an ordeal that that didn’t need to happen.

• NBC News: Britney Spears was granted a request to hire her own attorney on Wednesday, a development that could mark a major shift in how her 13-year conservatorship case has been handled. • Raw Story: According to Michael Wolff’s new book Landslide, Jared Kushner would apparently ‘slow-walk’ Donald Trump’s temperamental orders in order to lower the immediate temperature precisely to the point where the president would not notice (due to his short attention span) and Jared would not be blamed. • LGBTQ Nation: Today is International Nonbinary People’s Day and Twitter is celebrating with an outpouring of heartfelt emotion. #InternationalNonbinaryDay is trending with thousands of tweets from supporters and enbies themselves.

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Anti-Vax ER Nurse Dies Of COVID-19

A Louisiana nurse who railed against vaccinations for the coronavirus died on Saturday from COVID-19 complications

A Louisiana nurse who railed against vaccinations for the coronavirus died on Saturday from COVID-19 complications A Louisiana nurse who had railed against vaccinations on her social media has reportedly died from COVID-19 complications. From The Acadiana Advocate:

Olivia Guidry, a registered nurse in the emergency department, died Saturday after battling the virus for days in the hospital’s intensive care unit. Friends, who had been pleading for prayers for the young woman, expressed grief as the news of her death spread Saturday afternoon.

Guidry was diagnosed with COVID in early July, according to a social media post from her sister, Brittany Smith. She spiked a high fever and had a seizure, Smith wrote. She was placed in a medically induced coma on Thursday.

Louisiana has a vaccination rate of about 36%, below the national vaccination rate of nearly 50%.

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News Round-Up: July 9, 2021

(screen capture via NBC News)
Some news items you might have missed: • NBC News: Hospitalized unvaccinated patients are “shocked” that Covid-19 truly exists and that it can make people very sick and even kill them. “A comment they make all the time is that they wish that they knew they were going to end up in the hospital this sick and they would have made a different choice and got the vaccine.” • NJ.com: José Tobias Carranza Serrano, 18, confessed to assaulting and robbing a 37-year-old intellectually disabled man on June 23 because he believed the man to be gay. The assault has left the victim still clinging to life where he is still intubated. In his confession, Serrano reportedly showed no remorse. • ABC News: The Michigan elections bureau has determined that organizers of a ballot drive to prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ people failed to collect  the roughly 340,000 needed. But Fair and Equal Michigan, which spent $2.9 million on the effort, says the Bureau of Elections threw out thousands of signatures that are valid. The group plans to file a lawsuit.

• Washington Blade: A federal judge today blocked a new law in Tennessee that required businesses and other entities that allow transgender people to use the public restroom that matches their gender to post a government-prescribed warning sign. • Washington Post: President Biden on Friday fired Social Security Commissioner Andrew Saul, a holdover from the Trump administration who had alienated crucial Democratic constituencies with policies designed to clamp down benefits and an uncompromising anti-union stance. • Next Shark: Out Filipino American influencer Bretman Rock (People’s Choice Awards Beauty Influencer of the Year in 2019) graced the cover of Teen Vogue’s July issue. The social media star has over 17 million followers on Instagram, 12.1 million followers on TikTok and 8.71 million subscribers on YouTube. https://www.instagram.com/p/CRCVsqRlSHQ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

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News Round-Up: July 8, 2021

Edward Gal and Hans Peter Minderhoud (image via Instagram)
Some news items you might have missed: • Instinct Magazine: Swedish couple Edward Gal and Hans Peter Minderhoud (above) will be representing the Netherlands at the Olympics in dressage – a type of horse riding that tests the teamwork and power of a rider with their horse. Together they won a team bronze medal at the 2014 World Championships, and each have an Olympic medal: silver for Minderhoud in 2008 and bronze for Gal in 2012. • The Gaily Grind: Caitlyn Jenner, whose net worth is estimated to be roughly $100 million, wants to deal with California’s population of more than 60,000 homeless people by moving them to “big open fields.” • The Guardian: Organizers of the Miss Mexico 2021 pageant pushed ahead in spite of a Covid-19 outbreak that infected almost half the contestants. At least 15 of the 32 contestants in the pageant tested positive for coronavirus as well as a pageant staff member.

• Washington Post: Michael Avenatti — who made headlines representing an adult-film actress who claimed an affair with Donald Trump before he was president — was sentenced to 30 months in prison on Thursday, after being convicted for trying to extort Nike Inc. He faced up to 11 years in jail. • Pink News: A New Jersey appeal court has upheld a massive $3.5 million fine against a conversion therapy practice, which was shut down after former patients alleged widespread abuse. • CNN: Researchers estimate that there would have been about 279,000 additional deaths due to Covid-19 — about 46% more than there were — and as many as 1.25 million additional hospitalizations if there had been no vaccinations. • ABC News: Pfizer will seek U.S. authorization for a third dose of its COVID-19 vaccine. Data from the company’s booster study suggests people’s antibody levels jump five- to 10-fold after a third dose.