I Misjudged The Pandemic In 2020. We're Making The Same Mistake in 2021.
The Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that began in India is currently blitzkrieging its way around the globe. It is time to take it very, very seriously.
Image: WebMD
by Bob Cesca
WASHINGTON, DC -- Back in February 2020, I misjudged the pandemic.
At the time, one of my podcast co-hosts, David “TRex” Ferguson, mentioned to me that we ought to be talking more about “this coronavirus thing” that was popping up in the news with increasingly urgent frequency. Like many of us, I didn’t take it all that seriously at the time. I was focused on other issues and I didn’t feel as though it was prevalent enough or threatening enough to warrant more than just a passing mention. I figured it’d come and go like the swine flu or the avian flu.
Boy, did I misjudge that one.
It wasn’t until midway through March 2020 when I realized “this coronavirus thing” was going to be a serious global emergency. And how could it not have been?
Donald Trump was calling the shots for the nation, so the old playbook for aggressively-yet-calmly handling an outbreak was going to be ignored. And it was. Trump’s response wasn’t really a response at all. His incompetence would boil to the surface in the face of the unthinkable: a crisis that would expose a completely unprepared and grotesquely maladroit chief executive, proving he had no business visiting the White House as a tourist much less presiding as the shrieking a-hole behind the Resolute Desk.
Trump’s incompetence, however, was amplified by his deliberate ignorance and singular focus on getting re-elected that November -- at any cost. It turned out, hundreds of thousands of dead Americans would be the price tag for Trump’s vast dumbness and malignant narcissism. He sacrificed all those people, on top of the rest of us who sacrificed a year of our lives by isolating in place, by urging Americans to ignore responsible protocols -- framing himself as a lockdown Santa Claus -- the good cop to science’s bad cop. Trump figured if he pandered to and indulged Americans, they’d reward him by keeping the economy afloat and re-electing him in November.
By Election Day 2020, 231,353 Americans were dead -- prior to the massive Winter surge -- due in large part to Trump’s monstrous political and financial ambitions.
And he didn’t even win. He gambled with all those lives and lost anyway.
Fast forward to this week and we’re seeing echoes of those early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in the form of news about the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that began in India and is currently blitzkrieging its way around the globe.
I don’t intend to make the same error in judgment on this one, I assure you. Why?
In the United Kingdom, 97 percent of the cases by mid-June were caused by the Delta variant.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Almost half of the [UK’s] recent Covid-19 deaths are of people who have been vaccinated.”
The Delta variant, along with unvaccinated Americans, created a nine percent uptick in new cases nationwide.
80 percent of new cases in four states, Missouri, Connecticut, Kansas, and Arkansas, are reportedly due to the Delta variant. 96 percent of Missouri’s cases are Delta.
Israel’s Health Ministry released a data dump this week with some startling numbers. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine’s efficacy against Delta seems to have dropped from 94 percent to 64 percent, and the infection appears to be somewhat spreadable to people with two Pfizer vaccinations given the fact that, similar to the UK, Israel reported that half of its COVID cases -- as opposed to COVID deaths -- are among vaccinated people.
And finally, Japan has declared another state of emergency for Tokyo ahead of the Summer Olympics this month, due to the Delta variant. This means it’s unlikely there will be live audiences for the events. More importantly, the emergency should serve as a wake-up call: COVID isn’t done with us yet.
All told, the Delta variant is gaining steam with similar velocity as the earliest days of the original pandemic, and we should probably keep a closer eye on the rise of this new strain, including being extra careful to distance from if not outright avoid unvaccinated people whenever possible. And by the way, Tucker Carlson, with his anti-vax pandering, can feel free to suck it.
Now the good news: with a new and infinitely more competent president in running things this year, I’m confident that far better decisions will be made as we awaken to this new Delta threat. That said, the White House isn’t the only entity that needs to do better if and when this next thing lands in our laps. Even though vaccinated people are reportedly testing positive, vaccinations are still our best chance at beating the virus and its offspring. As the situation gets increasingly confusing with variants and questions about who can infect whom, the great equalizer is getting vaccinated, while mustering the discipline to distance from the unvaxxed whenever possible. If we’re all vaccinated, there’s no more guesswork, and with that, peace of mind -- or as close to peace of mind we can attain these days.
A former president once said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me -- y’can’t get fooled again.”
Unlike those early, early, early days, I’m awake and paying attention now.
Read an excerpt from the latest for Banter Members and get a 60 day free trial! Members get access to premium articles, our locked archive, and exclusive member chats:
Can Mark Zuckerberg Please F*ck Off?
It is one thing to live in this social media Panopticon, but it is another to be reminded of it by being forced to look at things like this on your newsfeed.
by Ben Cohen
Most people’s lives these days are controlled by Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple. These big tech companies track our movements, sell us products they think we’ll like, and anticipate behavior using incredibly sophisticated algorithms. In return we can order toilet paper with the click of a button, message friends around the world, search the web for any piece of information we want, and use our phones to buy our groceries.
Is it a fair trade? Almost certainly not, but when you have kids, a high stressed job or live far away from friends the benefits are oftentimes too seductive to pass up.
Of all the tech companies Facebook is by far and away the most evil. This isn’t hyperbole — the company is truly, truly awful on so many levels it almost defies description. From illegally “sharing” (read: selling) user data to other big tech companies to helping right wing/Russian disinformation groups spread fake news during the 2016 election, Facebook has almost singlehandedly brought Western civilization to its knees. The company destroyed thousands of legitimate independent news sites back in 2017/18 (take a look at what they did to The Daily Banter as an example), and is now responsible for ensuring far right websites get significantly more play on the network than liberal ones.
The problem is, Facebook also provides users with an excellent experience when they log on and continues to provide more ways of connecting with people than ever before…
This is an excerpt of today’s Members Only piece. Continue reading hereand get a 2 month free trial on a Banter Membership!: