Trump And His Enablers Are Making Everything Worse-- And Now It E

5-Watt Bulb by Nancy Ohanian

Getting COVID-19 can be extremely serious to your health, even if you don't die. NPR rerouted yesterday that as the pandemic continues, we're learning more about what it means to survive the disease. "For many patients who fall seriously ill, the virus' impact does not end upon discharge from the hospital. Some are struggling with a host of residual symptoms and challenges... Even two to three months after leaving the hospital... many patients who were seriously ill have only recovered a fraction of their former strength. Some suffer from daunting neurological challenges as well."

What we don't know is where this leads for these people. Obviously no one knows what happens a year or ten years from now. Will people recover over time? But we do know this: "The amount of inflammatory response that [the virus] creates that causes significant damage in various organs of our body is unprecedented."

That said, the last thing we need is untrustworthy politicians consumed with their own careers, making decisions for society. Public health experts should be making these calls, not slime like Trump or, in California, Gavin Newsom. This week, the L.A, Times reported that 77% of Californians worry that they could come down with the disease and that a significant number of residents believe Newsom reopened the state's economy too early. Here in L.A., as the surge of cases started rising, it became harder and harder to get tested. Last month was a breeze. I don't know if it's Mayor Eric Garcetti or Newsom pulling the strings, but now it's virtually impossible.

Neo-liberals behaving like Republicans is pretty depressing-- although not something that should surprise anyone who knows anything about Newsom besides that fact that in the gayest city in America he was pro-LGBTQ. Yesterday Bloomberg News reported how another always disappointing neo-liberal, Joe Biden "will call for a moderate approach toward reviving the U.S. economy if elected president that includes spurring manufacturing and encouraging innovation, shelving for now the more ambitious proposals pushed by progressive Democrats." Wow-- and the same day the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Forces submitted recommendations to the DNC Platform Committee and to Biden directly on working together on key economic policies. No one can ever say DWT didn't warn you from day-one that the only sack of putrid shit worse than Biden was Trump.

And meanwhile, California is bracing for a spike in coronavirus deaths, which is what inevitably follows big increases in infection rates. On Tuesday, California reported another 8,631 confirmed new cases (7,277 cases per million Californians). Wednesday it was another 8,561 (7,493 cases per million). Today another 7,248 cases (7,677 per million residents). Or, as the L.A. Times put it, "New coronavirus cases roughly doubled in California over the last month. Hospitalizations have soared 88%, filling some medical centers close to capacity. Now, public health officials are bracing for the grimmest phase of the cycle: a spike in COVID-19 fatalities... Experts say it can take three to four weeks after exposure to the virus for infected people to become sick enough to be hospitalized, and four to five weeks after exposure for some of the most vulnerable patients to die from the disease.

More younger people are also testing positive for the virus, a trend that has become apparent as the economy has reopened and working-age adults returned to jobs and resumed social gatherings.

Early in the pandemic, in March, about half of California’s new infections were identified among people ages 18 to 49, a Times data analysis found. In June, as the number of new cases began to climb sharply, that share increased to nearly 62%. So far in July, roughly 65% of new infections have been diagnosed among those 18 to 49. That’s despite the fact that just 45% of Californians fall into that age range.

“These are individuals who tend not to be as likely to get serious disease or require either hospitalization or to die from COVID-19,” said Timothy Brewer, professor of medicine and epidemiology at UCLA. “So particularly the 18- to 50-year-old age group is a group that has relatively low mortality rates, but there has been a big surge in infections.”

These kids today! Judd Legum's PopularInformation explained how Facebook and YouTube have been masking reality. Despite all the scientific proof that masks are the only viable option we have to slow down the pandemic, both platforms keep disseminating false information about masks being useless or even harmful. After all, the Republican Party has spent 2 decades and countless amounts of money persuading people with low IQs that science is their enemy and not to be trusted. Now they think some moron with a MAGA hat on YouTube is a better person to get medical advise from than a professional or, God forbid-- expert. Only 65% of Americans say they were masks "most of the time" when inside a business.

"How," asked Legum, "did so many Americans become misinformed about the efficacy of masks? Some of the confusion is driven by Trump, who has refused to wear a mask publicly and questioned their efficacy. He has also resisted calls to impose a national mask mandate. Another factor is that false information about masks is proliferating on social media. Facebook and YouTube announced strong policies banning misinformation about COVID-19 transmission and prevention. The platforms recognize this kind of misinformation puts lives at risk. But these policies are not being effectively enforced, exposing millions to false and dangerous information.

[O]n June 30, Ohio State Representative Nino Vitale posted a lengthy rant on Facebook that claimed masks "drop oxygen below danger levels in 5 seconds." The post was tagged #masksdoharm and #masksdonotwork. In just a few days, the post was shared more than 13,000 times across Facebook.  The claim that masks interfere with your ability to get enough oxygen is false. Christopher Labos, a doctor affiliated with McGill University, explains:

There are actually only two ways to develop low oxygen levels in the blood. One is to deliver less oxygen into the lungs, and the other is to impair the lungs’ ability to allow oxygen to diffuse into the bloodstream. A mask will obviously not impair gas exchange within the lungs, and the cloth face coverings advocated by public health experts do not provide an airtight seal that would impair oxygen delivery into the airways. Furthermore, masks are designed to filter out large particles, like water droplets, and cannot stop tiny molecules like oxygen that can infiltrate between the weave of any fabric...It is frankly implausible to think that wearing a mask is dangerous. Think of all the surgeons, nurses, anesthetists, and perfusionists that have worn masks during long operations and suffered no ill effects.

In response to a request for comment by Popular Information, Facebook removed Vitale's post and two others with similar claims. “We removed several of these posts for violating our policies against making false claims about COVID-19 that could lead to imminent physical harm, including the suggestion that wearing a mask can make you sick," a Facebook spokesman told Popular Information.

But the fact that these kinds of posts were able to make dangerously false claims about masks-- and rack up more than 13,000 shares-- suggests that Facebook's enforcement of its policy is ineffective. Moreover, Facebook left up two posts by Vitale that also claimed masks are dangerous, including a post from July 3, claiming "there is overwhelming scientific evidence showing masks actually do harm."

A Facebook spokesperson said this post did not make a specific enough claim about the harms of masks to be removed.

YouTube has been full of insane videos by Vitale and other Trumpist Death Cult freaks. When Legum complains, YouTube removes them, but when he doesn't catch them in time, hundreds of thousand of morons view them. Vitale is upper reelection in November, but the geniuses who called themselves the Ohio Democratic Party are probably the ones who admire Vitale's videos and screeds; they aren't bothering to run anyone against him. (They didn't even run someone against him in 2016 when the GOP refused to endorse him! Fed up, a high school student finally ran against him in 2018.) He's the chair of the Ohio House's Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Over 90% of his district (HD-85)-- Champaign County and portions of Logan and Shelby counties-- is white. The closest thing to a city is Champaign's county seat, Urbana (pop- 11,400); Gym Jordan was born there. Since 1856, when it was established, Champaign Co. has only voted for 3 Democratic presidential candidates, once for Woodrow Wilson (1912), once for FDR (1932) and once for LBJ (1964). Trump beat Hillary 69.2% to 25.2% and that should give you an idea about why someone like Vitale is in public office.

Vitale says he refuses to wear a mask in the Ohio House because it interferes with his religious beliefs. "This is the greatest nation on earth founded on Judeo-Christian Principles. One of those principles is that we are all created in the image and likeness of God. That image is seen the most by our face. I will not wear a mask." Outside of his own district, most people consider him certifiably insane and more than a few people think also criminally insane, since he seems to delight in endangering the health of everyone he comes into contact with.

Ohio had another 1,250 confirmed new cases yesterday and 1,114 more today-- 5,247 cases per Ohioan. Vitale doesn't appear to give it a second thought, other than how to use it to boost his own career with far right extremists and GOP morons by whining about his liberty... liberty to spread the contagion far and wide with no constraints from society. This is a video he posted as part of his absurdist war against the Ohio Republican establishment.





Earlier today, CNN reported that Nino is at it again-- on Facebook, trying his damn best to cause more death and destruction in Ohio. Nino Vitale is a plague Ohioans brought on themselves. Facebook hasn't removed the series of memes yet, like these two:

The second is the kind of misleading pandemic news that Facebook has pledged to remove. What set nutty-Nino off this time was DeWine's new announcement of a mask mandate. "This is what happens when people go crazy and get tested. STOP GETTING TESTED!," Vitale shrieked. "It is giving the government an excuse to claim something is happening that is not happening at the magnitude they say it is happening." People will die in Ohio because of Nino Vitale and his sick brain. Voters in his district should take responsibility for defeating him in November by writing in someone else's name.