[Malankazooie]

Be sure to keep tabs with the niece, or ask bro to stay in contact with Qaren sis. And come up with strategies to deprogram. If all ties are cut, it won't end well.

[Cyphon]

Anyone heard/seen if Ando is okay?

[Macros]

Over 30s now eligible to book their vaccines here in NI, is this UK wide now?

[Cyphon]

Macros, on 27 April 2021 - 06:06 PM, said:

Over 30s now eligible to book their vaccines here in NI, is this UK wide now?

Think it's over 42 nationally, but may be parts of the UK where they're ahead of that.

[Macros]

Holy fuck, first time NI is ahead in something not bigotry or violence related!

[Mezla PigDog]

How do you find out? I'm 41, I keep assuming I'll just get told by my GP surgery but wondering if I'm being slow as people younger than me seem to be being vaccinated all the time.

[Gorefest]

I got an alert on my NHS phone app yesterday that I was eligible for a test. Went on the NhS booking site and had a choice of every single day and time slot I wanted. Pretty impressive. So I booked myself in for this Thursday morning. Second dose also booked in for July. It will be the AstraZeneca one, which is nice as I worked on that one over the past year. It is a cool idea to get offered something I helped create.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'"Tucker Carlson is now telling his audience to harass people who wear face masks outside.

If they see children wearing masks, Tucker says the response should be no different than when you see a kid being abused -- 'call the police immediately, contact child protective services'"

[...] Whether he's disingenuous or delusional, many people will hear what he says and take it seriously and literally. We have several recent examples of the Fox audience being misled into believing falsehoods, including denying the reality of COVID-19 and subscribing to bogus claims about fraud in the 2020 election.

[...]

"As for forcing children to wear masks outside, that should be illegal," Carlson sputters. "Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from seeing someone beating a kid at Walmart: Call the police immediately; contact child protective services. Keep calling until someone arrives. What you're looking at is abuse. It's child abuse, and you're morally obligated to attempt to prevent it."
One doesn't need a lot of imagination to game out where this is going. Some viewers will take Carlson's possibly arch exhortations to heart. They'll call the police and child protective services. In most cases, authorities will ignore those calls. In some cases, especially if the callers repeatedly summon police as Carlson demands, they could be charged with filing false claims; it's a good bet that neither he nor Fox News will be there to help them if they are. In other cases, encounters will end poorly for the innocent parents involved. The news is full of examples of how police called to respond to petty or wholly imagined offenses end up gravely injuring or even killing people. (Carlson believes Derek Chauvin was wrongly convicted.)

[...]

Even after new guidance, some people will decide to continue wearing masks outside. Perhaps they feel more comfortable that way. People exercising sometimes extreme caution about their health is neither new or a nuisance. Perhaps they are immunocompromised, or have immunocompromised family members or friends. [...]


That's the sort of personal choice that conservatives have also traditionally defended. Though Carlson masquerades as a defender of free speech (one of several poses he's tried on over the years), he must know that the government has no business telling citizens what they cannot wear. [...] Unlike mandates to wear masks, which stem from a public-health interest, a government rule punishing people for wearing masks during a pandemic serves no compelling interest. As for children, conservatives have long argued that families should enjoy autonomy about their parenting decisions, without undue interference from the state.'

https://www.theatlan...nmasked/618730/

'Carlson opened up his top-rated Fox News primetime show on Monday night by blasting "neurotic" liberals who have been faithfully wearing face masks amid a deadly pandemic.

"Masks have always been incompatible with a free society," he fumed. "We used to know that. Masks strip people of their identity as individuals, transform people from citizens into drones. They isolate us and alienate us to shut us off from one another, they prevent intimacy and human contact. If I can't see your face, I can't know you."

Stating that a large portion of liberals suffer from an "actual mental health condition" because a recent Pew survey shows they are critical of others who don't mask up near them, Carlson called on his audience to instead openly mock mask-wearers in public.

"The rest of us should be snorting at them first. They're the aggressors. It's our job to brush them back and restore the society we were born in," he said. "So the next time you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or on the bike path, do not hesitate. Ask politely but firmly, 'Would you please take off your mask? Science shows there is no reason for you to be wearing it. Your mask is making me uncomfortable.'"

[...] "We should do that and we should keep doing it until wearing a mask outside is roughly as socially accepted as lighting a Marlboro on an elevator. It's repulsive. Don't do it around other people. That's the message we should send because it's true."'

https://www.thedaily...rticles&via=rss

Ugh.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 27 April 2021 - 11:33 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

What a vile human being.

This is the same Tucker Carlson that Fox successfully argued that only stupid people would take what he says seriously, meaning they can avoid being sued when people get in trouble for taking him seriously, right?

[Cyphon]

Mezla PigDog, on 27 April 2021 - 07:45 PM, said:

How do you find out? I'm 41, I keep assuming I'll just get told by my GP surgery but wondering if I'm being slow as people younger than me seem to be being vaccinated all the time.

GP should contact you but if not you should be able to book direct OK the website like Gorefest.

[glasseye]

Mezla PigDog, on 27 April 2021 - 07:45 PM, said:

How do you find out? I'm 41, I keep assuming I'll just get told by my GP surgery but wondering if I'm being slow as people younger than me seem to be being vaccinated all the time.

I'm one of those younger people (40 & vaccinated yesterday). I got a text from my GP last week.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Read a side-effect horror story (nothing too major, just terrible cold/flu symptoms) from an old friend today. Then saw my first vaccine appointment offer within easy walking distance (just slightly more than a mile). Felt some trepidation (am I prepared to potentially be out of it for a day on short notice?) but went with it anyway.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

My elderly father got his second shot today, went to a store to get glasses, then played pickle ball. Says he's sore but thinks it's from the pickle ball. (Of course, I've told him multiple times that he won't be fully vaccinated until about two weeks after the second shot....)

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Bolsonaro's Chief of Staff Admits the Brazilian President's COVID Position Is BS on Hot Mic

[...] didn't realize his comments were being livestreamed on Tuesday when he dismissed his boss' approach to the virus and said he feared for the life of Jair Bolsonaro because he hasn't yet been vaccinated.

[...] said that he had been desperately "trying to convince our president, regardless of [his] positions," to take the vaccine.

"We cannot lose the president to such a virus. His life, at the moment, is at risk. He is 65 years old," he said of Bolsonaro, who tested positive for the virus in July of last year.

[Bolsonaro], who once joked that the vaccine could turn people into crocodiles and cause women to grow beards, has previously declared that he will only decide on getting the jab "after the last Brazilian [is] vaccinated," in order to set an example. He became eligible for vaccination in Brazil on April 1.

[...] Despite his claims that "Brazilians should be studied" because "they don't catch anything," Brazil is now one of the worst places in the world for COVID, thanks in part to a highly infectious variant and frequent superspreader events that have been taking place all across the country.

While it's unclear how attendees at the Health Council meeting didn't realize their discussion was being streamed online, [he] wasn't the only one to say things he may have wanted to keep from the public.

Minister of Economy Paulo Guedes remarked during the meeting that "the Chinese invented the virus and [their] vaccine is less effective than that of the American." Most of the vaccines administered in Brazil come from China.

[...] Brazil's senate launched a probe into the federal government's handling of the pandemic, the outcome of which could threaten Bolsonaro's chances for re-election next year.'

https://www.thedaily...ot-mic?ref=home

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 29 April 2021 - 12:57 AM

[Malankazooie]

India.

Those lots filled with pyres to cremate the dead. Holy - Fucking - Shit.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Malankazooie, on 29 April 2021 - 05:10 PM, said:

India.

Those lots filled with pyres to cremate the dead. Holy - Fucking - Shit.

'India's Covid catastrophe: "We are witnessing a crime against humanity"

It's hard to convey the full depth and range of the trauma, the chaos and the indignity that people are being subjected to.

Meanwhile, Modi and his allies are telling us not to complain

[...] Modi "accused the state government – which was led by an opposition party – of pandering to the Muslim community by spending more on Muslim graveyards (kabristans) than on Hindu cremation grounds (shamshans). With his customary braying sneer, in which every taunt and barb rises to a high note mid-sentence before it falls away in a menacing echo, he stirred up the crowd. "If a kabristan is built in a village, a shamshan should also be constructed there," he said.

"Shamshan! Shamshan!" the mesmerised, adoring crowd echoed back.

Perhaps he is happy now that the haunting image of the flames rising from the mass funerals in India's cremation grounds is making the front page of international newspapers. [...]

"Can India, population 1.3 billion, be isolated?" [...] difficulty of containing new, fast-spreading Covid variants within national borders. "Not easily," [...]

[...] wards with no staff and more dead patients than live ones. People are dying in hospital corridors, on roads and in their homes. Crematoriums in Delhi have run out of firewood. The forest department has had to give special permission for the felling of city trees. Desperate people are using whatever kindling they can find. Parks and car parks are being turned into cremation grounds. It's as if there's an invisible UFO parked in our skies, sucking the air out of our lungs. An air raid of a kind we've never known.

Oxygen is the new currency on India's morbid new stock exchange. Senior politicians, journalists, lawyers – India's elite – are on Twitter pleading for hospital beds and oxygen cylinders. The hidden market for cylinders is booming. Oxygen saturation machines and drugs are hard to come by.

[...] At the bottom end of the free market, a bribe to sneak a last look at your loved one, bagged and stacked in a hospital mortuary. A surcharge for a priest who agrees to say the final prayers. Online medical consultancies in which desperate families are fleeced by ruthless doctors. At the top end, you might need to sell your land and home and use up every last rupee for treatment at a private hospital. Just the deposit alone, before they even agree to admit you, could set your family back a couple of generations.

[...] speaking for the government of India, said: "Let's try and not be a cry baby" [...]

[...] the saffron-robed chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, who goes by the name Yogi Adityanath, has [falsely] declared that there is no shortage of oxygen in any hospital in his state and that rumourmongers will be arrested without bail under the National Security Act and have their property seized.

The threat to those who complain is not restricted to Uttar Pradesh. A spokesperson for the fascist Hindu nationalist organisation the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – of which Modi and several of his ministers are members, and which runs its own armed militia – has warned that "anti-India forces" would use the crisis to fuel "negativity" and "mistrust" and asked the media to help foster a "positive atmosphere". Twitter has helped them out by deactivating accounts critical of the government.

[...] The government[...] deliberately dismantled what little medical infrastructure there was. This is what happens when a pandemic hits a country with an almost nonexistent public healthcare system. India spends about 1.25% of its gross domestic product on health, far lower than most countries in the world, even the poorest ones. [...] the real figure is estimated to be more like 0.34%. The tragedy is that in this devastatingly poor country, as a 2016 Lancet study shows, 78% of the healthcare in urban areas and 71% in rural areas is now handled by the private sector. The resources that remain in the public sector are systematically siphoned into the private sector by a nexus of corrupt administrators and medical practitioners, corrupt referrals and insurance rackets.
[...]

Understand that there were and are so many far more pressing issues for the Modi government to attend to. Destroying the last vestiges of democracy, persecuting non-Hindu minorities and consolidating the foundations of the Hindu Nation makes for a relentless schedule. There are massive prison complexes, for example, that must be urgently constructed in Assam for the 2 million people who have lived there for generations and have suddenly been stripped of their citizenship. [...]

The hashtag #ModiMustResign is trending on social media. Some of the memes and illustrations show Modi with a heap of skulls peeping out from behind the curtain of his beard. Modi the Messiah speaking at a public rally of corpses. Modi and Amit Shah as vultures, scanning the horizon for corpses to harvest votes from. But that is only one part of the story. The other part is that the man with no feelings, the man with empty eyes and a mirthless smile, can, like so many tyrants in the past, arouse passionate feelings in others. His pathology is infectious. And that is what sets him apart. [...]

[...] with every independent institution essential to the functioning of a democracy compromised and hollowed out, and a virus that is out of control.


The crisis-generating machine that we call our government is incapable of leading us out of this disaster. Not least because one man makes all the decisions in this government, and that man is dangerous – and not very bright. This virus is an international problem. [...]

No, India cannot be isolated. We need help.'


https://www.theguard...vid-catastrophe

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 29 April 2021 - 05:54 PM

[QuickTidal]

From what I understood, India handled the first wave relatively well considering the density of the cities and citizens, and the disparate gap between the wealthy and the poverty-stricken communities....but it sounds like the Variants just ran rampantly unchecked in Wave 2 and they are super overwhelmed.

It speaks to how populous the country is that they are vaccinating over 1million ppl a day and can't get anywhere NEAR ahead of the outbreaks...if we were vaccinating 1million a day in Canada we'd have this licked in a fortnight, but India's pop. is like 1.36Billion so 1million a day won't cut it.

I feel awful for the people in this over there. No matter how bad it is here, it's so much worse there.

Which reminds me, has anyone heard from Ando? I hope he's okay man.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

QuickTidal, on 29 April 2021 - 07:05 PM, said:

From what I understood, India handled the first wave relatively well considering the density of the cities and citizens, and the disparate gap between the wealthy and the poverty-stricken communities....but it sounds like the Variants just ran rampantly unchecked in Wave 2 and they are super overwhelmed.

It speaks to how populous the country is that they are vaccinating over 1million ppl a day and can't get anywhere NEAR ahead of the outbreaks...if we were vaccinating 1million a day in Canada we'd have this licked in a fortnight, but India's pop. is like 1.36Billion so 1million a day won't cut it.

'Canada now vaccinating over 100K per day' (that was in March, may be higher now)

Population approximately 37.59 million

10^5/(37.59*10^6) ≈ 0.00266

10^6/(1.366*10^9) ≈ 0.000732

0.00266/0.000732 ≈ 3.633879 times the rate of India (relative to population)

Modi's response to the first wave was a humanitarian disaster: 'tens of millions of workers from the cities, carrying the virus with them, are fleeing home to their families, traumatised by their memory of Modi's national lockdown in 2020. It was the strictest lockdown in the world, announced with only four hours' notice. It left migrant workers stranded in cities with no work, no money to pay their rent, no food and no transport. Many had to walk hundreds of miles to their homes in far-flung villages. Hundreds died on the way.

[...] when a crisis comes, in the eyes of this administration, they simply don't exist. This year's exodus has resulted in a different kind of chaos: there are no quarantine centres for them to stay in before they enter their village homes. There's not even the meagre pretence of trying to protect the countryside from the city virus.

These are villages where people die of easily treatable diseases like diarrhoea and tuberculosis.'

https://www.theguard...vid-catastrophe

Instead of preparing for the anticipated second wave, Modi was busy persecuting Muslims and his political opposition, and being a demagogue.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 29 April 2021 - 07:35 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Forgot to check the weather forecast before scheduling my appointment. If the filters in my P100 mask get wet, they become much less effective. (Appointment at a veterans hospital.) Last night said about 30% chance of thunderstorms while I'd be walking down. This morning it was about 60%. Wanted to reschedule. Decided to go through with it anyway---just be diligent about holding the hood of my rain hoodie over the top and edges of the face shield protecting my mask. Also of course brought an umbrella---with periscope (non-functioning) and see-through plastic window for holding it low enough to enclose my face. When I started getting ready to leave, minutecast was predicting thunderstorms starting on my walk down (just over a mile).

Had three extra masks with me in case they objected to the vent in my P100 mask which I had covered with a piece of a cloth mask taped over it. Plan was to first try stretching another cloth mask over it (covering the vent) and see if that was okay with them, then if they objected to that too I'd wear one of the N95 masks (extra one in case I dropped one or it got wet somehow).

Got lucky, no rain. Arrived 25 minutes early, originally planned to wait until 10 minutes before my appointment to go in, but guard said it was okay to go in early---hoped they might take me early. By pure coincidence it took almost 25 minutes to get to the front of the line to give them my information. Could hear some old guys talking about their time in the Vietnam war.

After the shot, during the 15 minute wait a guy who sounded a bit like Joe Biden but with a Philly accent was repeating warnings about ibuprofen, periodically asking if everyone was okay, etc. Thought that would be a much better job than president for Biden.

Got lucky on the way back too, apparently no precipitation whatsoever.

Took me about 15 minutes to forget where I had put my paperwork and vaccination card, which they said I'd need when coming back. Searched all around my closet for it, didn't see it, felt like I was in a nightmare for a moment, took a deep breath, looked again, saw it had slipped between two cardboard boxes in my mess of a closet. Put it in a large ziplock bag.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 29 April 2021 - 10:46 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'India's Covid wards are like scenes from Dante's Inferno

[...] The virus was forgotten for we had already declared ourselves the victors. And then the second wave struck, as any thinking person knew it would, and struck with the ferocity of a tidal wave, making the events of 2020 seem like a ripple in a bathtub. There seems little doubt that this wave is caused by a variant, probably the now dreaded Indian B.1.617 with two mutations [...] The spectre of global spread of this variant has led countries to race to close their borders to India. As a physician I can vouch that this strain seems far more infectious, is probably more lethal, and seems to affect the young more frequently than the initial wave. Younger patients between the ages of 26 and 44 now account for about 40 per cent of all cases and almost 10 per cent of deaths.'

https://www.ft.com/c...fb-482234b4655c


'India Is What Happens When Rich People Do Nothing

The chamber of horrors the country now finds itself in was not caused by any one man, or any single government.

[...] Our doctors are among the best trained on the planet, and [...] our country is a pharmacy for the world, thanks to an industry built around making cost-effective medicines and vaccines.

What is evident, however, is that we suffer from moral malnutrition—none of us more so than the rich, the upper class, the upper caste of India. And nowhere is this more evident than in the health-care sector.

India's economic liberalization in the '90s brought with it a rapid expansion of the private health-care industry, a shift that ultimately created a system of medical apartheid: World-class private hospitals catered to wealthy Indians and medical tourists from abroad; state-run facilities were for the poor. Those with money were able to purchase the best available care (or, in the case of the absolute richest, flee to safety in private jets), while elsewhere the country's health-care infrastructure was held together with duct tape. The Indians who bought their way to a healthier life did not, or chose not to, see the widening gulf. Today, they are clutching their pearls as their loved ones fail to get ambulances, doctors, medicine, and oxygen.

Now the rich sit alongside the poor, facing a reckoning that had only ever plagued the vulnerable in India.

[...]

Averting our gaze from the tragedies surrounding us, remaining divorced from reality, in our little bubbles, are political and moral choices. We have been willfully unaware of the ricketiness of our health-care system. The collective well-being of our nation depends on us showing solidarity with and compassion toward one another. No one is safe until everyone is.

Our actions compound, one small act at a time—not pressing for greater attention to the vulnerable, because we are safe; not demanding better hospitals for all Indians, because we can afford excellent health care; assuming we can seal ourselves off from our country's failings toward our compatriots.'

https://www.theatlan...failure/618702/

'Biden's Misstep in India

The president's foreign-policy and domestic teams have a long-standing difference on pandemic diplomacy.

Biden's foreign-policy team supports India and is unambiguously internationalist in its instincts, especially on matters of public health. [...] Biden's domestic-policy team, including his political advisers and the coronavirus task force, favored achieving herd immunity in the United States before sending vaccines or related materials overseas. It wanted to demonstrate to the American people that they were laser-focused on fighting the pandemic at home. The administration settled on a policy to reconcile these different impulses. It would keep Donald Trump's executive orders preventing exports of vaccines and related raw materials, but once the domestic vaccination program was largely complete, it would pivot to play a global leadership role in the pandemic.

[...] Biden also announced the Quad Vaccine Partnership, which promised to finance, manufacture, and deliver 1 billion vaccines for the Indo-Pacific region by the end of 2022. The production would be centered in India.

Biden's plan was reasonable and might have worked had the world escaped a massive surge of COVID-19 this spring. The problem is that the world is not a static place—the coronavirus gets a vote. By mid-April, India's coronavirus cases were rising exponentially, fueled by reportedly double- and even triple-mutation strains and a number of political and religious super-spreader events. [...]

Many governments offered to help, including India's geopolitical adversaries China and Pakistan. The Biden administration, which was in constant contact with Indian officials, was strangely silent in public. [...] he spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State [...] said, [the administration] has "a special responsibility to the American people," who have "been hit harder than any other country around the world … It is not only in our interest to see Americans vaccinated; it's in the interests of the rest of the world to see Americans vaccinated."

The remarks sparked a firestorm of criticism in the Indian press, on social media, and on messaging apps. India's leadership understood the political constraints on the Biden administration and did not criticize the United States. But as India's health situation deteriorated, its political leaders lost hold of the narrative. The public understandably had little patience with the political limitations of another government, especially one that seemed well positioned to help. [...]

That frustration was compounded by the fact that much of India's elite had little sympathy for Biden to begin with. [...]

The Biden administration had put cooperation with India at the heart of its foreign policy in the Indo-Pacific, but by the weekend, U.S.-India relations were facing a crisis. Chinese embassies tweeted details of their assistance to India, including its delivery of oxygen concentrators. Chinese state media ran stories blaming the United States for India's predicament and gloating about how American inaction would affect Indian public opinion. Beijing clearly hoped to drive a wedge between India and the United States, perhaps fatally undermining Biden's Asia policy.

[...]

The White House now appears to fully understand this, albeit belatedly, and this realization explains why we are likely to see deep engagement with the Indian crisis in the coming days and weeks. Its delay is unlikely to be forgotten, but it may be forgiven. [...]

During a pandemic, time works differently. In 2020, battles against the virus were won or, more often, lost over weeks or even days. Those who acted quickest fared the best. The U.S. knows this all too well, given the catastrophic consequences of time lost at the beginning of the pandemic. This is why the delay matters and may not be forgotten.'

https://www.theatlan...n-india/618722/

'[...] Navajo Nation, which has done a heroic job wrestling the coronavirus to the ground, is now donating extra PPE to India. The Navajo have been a model of resolve in fighting the pandemic, and are now a model in supporting others worldwide who need help.'

https://twitter.com/...230661572894721

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 30 April 2021 - 12:08 AM