So, I know I just said I'd be trying to make update journals every two weeks or so, but my last little bit has been thrown into a little chaos from family issues and the resulting headaches that come with that.
To make a long drama short, a whole branch of the family tree are getting hit with COVID. And they didn't have to. They could have gotten the damn vaccine free months ago. The only ones down there in Texas who did were the ones forced to by work, and between them they have 16 kids under 12 their recklessness has now put in danger. The spikes last year, there was so little alternative. Now there is a god damn miracle of science a decade in the making is available for free while the rest of the world struggles to get any at all. Southern states are throwing out vaccine that is spoiling because no one is getting them any more. Like that whole cluster of my family has decided not to, and now there are two struggling for their life on ventilators.
Get the damn vaccine. If you already have, pressure those you know who haven't. We have the technology to make COVID relegated to the status of polio, we just have to have the collective will. Whatever negative you've heard about it likely isn't true, and the alternative is I may lose my last uncle and more than a dozen children too young for the vaccine have all been exposed and to a variant that seems much more deadly to children than the ones that came before. That's the side effect of not taking it.
I'm a bit of a history buff, and one lesson I wish could be written on giant letters in the sky is that the world's first government-sponsored immunization campaign was initiated by George Washington while camped at Valley Forge. Smallpox had been spreading and so he required every one of his troops to get what was at the time an experimental treatment of placing a small bit of pox-puss into a cut on the arm. He required all serving under him, including himself, to take this new treatment because he was losing more men to disease than to the British and a big outbreak of smallpox at that moment in the revolution could have snuffed it out. There is nothing more American than all of us coming together to save each other, of many we become one. E pluribus unum. Right now we all need to become one, we need to get the damn vaccine as one society so that it stops spreading to those who can't get the vaccine, like children.
Is the sappy pap? Sure, but I can't give this speech to someone already on a ventilator, someone who already chose to selfishly and destructively prolong this plague by rejecting the one tool needed to end it. I can give it to you fellows though, so I am.
I've not been writing much, I'll return to updates hopefully soon.
Very sorry to hear about your relatives; I've got my second dose booked in for this Sunday - things are moving a little slower for us here in Blighty. Stay safe!
ReplyDeleteyour wrongdoing. The first government vaccination in the world was carried out in the Russian Empire in October 1768, against smallpox. Catherine 2
ReplyDeleteI should have clarified. First vaccination of the general public. Catherine didn't mass vaccinate the serfs.
DeleteSorry to hear that. Hopefully, they will pull through. The craziest thing I heard was they were injecting a computer chip (I guess nano-scopic in size) through the vaccine and is tracking people. To be honest, any side effect that vaccine has varies from person to person. Indeed, it is choice that the moment, but it is a risk worth taking. Also, to anyone reading this comment, do some research to make sure if any medications may have negative reaction when getting it like medication for blood pressure, neurological, or anything else? Remember, it is always 50/50 percent, but you won't know until you take first step. Jess, stay safe out there.
ReplyDeleteI was vaccinated against dozens of diseases as a child, not by my choice, and as a result of all those vaccines there are dozens of diseases that were near wiped out.
DeleteI didn't get a choice, because vaccines only eradicate disease if we all take them. This is the small small price to live in a society so free of childhood diseases. Polio vaccine wasn't a choice, now there's no more polio floating around the US. Smallpox vaccine wasn't a choice, now one of the greatest killers of humans in all history is globally eradicated.
Taxes aren't a choice, they are the price to live in society. The price to live in a disease free society is we all get vaccinated.
George Washingtonon also did not engage in mass vaccination of the population. He vaccinated his army. Catherine 2, accordingly, massively forced her court, courtiers and her army to be vaccinated, but, somewhat earlier. :)
ReplyDeleteUndoubted success in mass vaccination is shown by totalitarian non-democratic regimes such as China. If stupid people are given a choice, they will most likely die out en masse. Thus, totalitarian regimes have a clear advantage over democracy in a difficult period.
ReplyDeleteData shows different. The US has 52% vaccination but Russia is down at 22%. China is even lower than that, they claim only 15% vaccinated. Removing micro-nations like Malta from the picture, the countries doing the best are Chile, Denmark, Belgium, and Canada who are between 64-68% vaccinated.
DeleteSo there is more population in China. Here it is necessary to count not as a percentage, but in absolute numbers. For example, the population of San Marino is 100% vaccinated, so there are about 20,000 of them there.
DeleteYeah that's why you shouldn't compare Russia to San Marino, but it's fair to compare it to France or Germany or UK or USA or any other major nation all of which are by far more vaccinated than Russia. And unlike New Zealand who also has low vaccination rates, Russia can't say it's because they have had trouble buying from other countries because they make their own.
DeleteRussia is just doing a poor job vaccinating themselves when compared to other nations of their size and relative wealth. The world is 23% vaccinated and Russia is only 22% vaccinated. Russia is one of the few producers of a vaccine and they have below average vaccination rates, that is a failure of administration not a result of Russia's population. It's half the population of the US and the US has 52% vaccination. It's a tenth the size of China and China has administered 1.8 billion doses.
As for Sputnik V. I got it back in April, now I have to be almost constantly in the red zone without any protection. CoV19 my wife fell ill, I live with her in the same room and I am absolutely healthy.
ReplyDeleteGood for you, but maybe Russia should be spending more effort vaccinating themselves and less time trying to tell the world how great it is. Because right now Russia is only 22% vaccinated, one of the lowest rates in all of Europe (if you count Russia as European).
DeleteSputnik V is good, not the best but very very good. So maybe you should make more and take it rather than just brag on the internet how good it is. This is one of those places where we all do better when we all do better, And the weird insistence that Sputnik is the best is not only not supported by independent scientific analysis, it's also not the point. Even if it were the best in the world, people just needs to start taking a vaccine! Something Russia is not doing right now, they're a behind the global average for both partial and full vaccination.
The fact that nothing is worth, as a rule, is not appreciated in any way. Satellite in the Russian Federation is absolutely free of charge and, most importantly, voluntarily. What I think is wrong, it is necessary to vaccinate as in the USSR on a mandatory basis and all the polls, without wasting time on persuasion.
DeleteI feel like we, leftists, have fallen in an unexpected trap. So many years fighting for human rights and freedom and now people are using their freedom as an excuse to be stupid. And so the governments have to make laws to save people's lives. And we leftists find ourselves forced to endorse the government and endorse their laws. Because if we give a stupid antivaxer the punch in the face he/she deserves, they will call us fascists, so the police has to intervene.
ReplyDeleteIt's very, very depressing. :(
You should drop politics as a topic on your forum unless you understand what you are talking about. Sometimes it is good to take a step back to see the big picture and not just your own narrow view. Only time will tell if you are right.
ReplyDelete"drop politics unless you understand what you are talking about."
DeleteFirst, as I literally titled my first political post, this is something I never wanted to use this platform for.
Second, intentional or not the sexism is dripping from that comment.
Third, just because we do not agree does not mean I don't know what I'm talking about. It's delegitimizing behavior, particularly when no founded on any kind of base of facts supported by examples. I know politics generally, North American politics a lot of American politics extensively. I not only studied it I have worked on campaigns (primary, general and off year), as well as grass roots organizing outfit that helped get marriage equality on the ballot in Maryland and have worked directly with congressmen on the hill.
I don't want to make this a political blog, as I've said repeatedly, but seriously get fucked. Just because we disagree doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about.