A number of US states, typically those with the lowest vaccination rates, are delaying, reducing or eliminating reporting data on Covid cases and deaths. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths have been surging in those states.
At least five states have traced outbreaks back to the Sturgis MC rally in South Dakota.
Oregon has maxed out hospital capacity and the National Guard has been sent in to try to help, but there is no room for patients. ICU beds are being turned over on an hourly basis, as soon as a patient dies, the room is cleaned and another is brought in. Patients are stacked up waiting for a bed, the longer they wait, the less likely it is that they will survive. It has turned into a losing battle as the body boxes steadily roll out. Heart surgeries have been canceled because there are no resources, at least some of those patients are likely to die too.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/oregon-cov ... pital-icu/
In a number of hard-hit areas, hospitals have been going on 'divert' status- meaning that they can no longer accept patients, who have to try to find room elsewhere, in other regions and/or other states. Some hospitals have told people not to come to the ER, in at least one area residents were told not to bother calling 911 for medical emergencies. Some hospitals have simply been giving desperate patients oxygen bottles and sending them home.
Regardless of how this got started, it is not a joke and it never has been. I worked in a virus lab for two years, and when I saw the first videos coming out of China, with doctors and nurses dressed in protective suits just short of space-suits, Chinese officials barricading people *inside* their homes and trying to shut-up and or arrest medical staff and journalists attempting to get information out, I knew it was airborne and I knew it was bad, Very Bad.
In the US, our very own orange-haired Bozo The Clown responded very poorly to the crisis, and even outright LIED to us- he knew it was airborne, a fact he was stupid enough to allow Bob Woodward to record. I regret voting for that idiot, though none of the other choices seemed viable for various other reasons. And he was even so stupid as to suggest, on national TV, that maybe people should ingest or inject household cleaning products as a 'cure'. Really? Yes, I saw and heard it with my own eyes and ears. I was dumbfounded. How could we have elected such an idiot?
And a whole bunch of the rest of our alleged 'leaders' have proven themselves to be equally, or in some cases, even *more* stupid...regardless of their political affiliations. It is no wonder that we have many of 'the common man' thinking that products that are completely useless against a virus will prevent, treat or cure Covid. We have idiots running out to TSC and ingesting topical and inject-able formulations of Ivermectin meant for large farm animals...and ending up in the ER and/or dead because of it. They won't get a vaccine, but they'll chow down on a tube of Ivermectin paste meant to be rubbed on horses or drink a solution meant to be injected into a cow. They call people who are vaxxed 'sheep' but they are the ones sucking down medicine for farm animals. Insane.
There was just *one*
in vitro (test tube/petri dish) study that showed that Ivermectin could inhibit Covid...at a dosage rate that was 400x the safe human dose rate. What happens when you take Ivermectin at a 400x dosage? Yeah, that's right, you overdose and you die. But yet, somehow, a bunch of idiots (some of them, perhaps, 'educated idiots') decided that this single little factoid meant that Ivermectin would prevent/cure Covid even at a
human dosage and spread it all over various social media outlets and 'alternative' web sites...and despite the fact that this has been disproven, and even the original doctor who made the initial speculation on the subject has has announced that people are mistaken in their belief, people continue to believe it, the rumor simply will not die even though some of the people spreading it *are* dying because of it.
People quote all sorts of nutjob websites as 'credible', when just the tiniest amount of common sense would say that they are not. And 'conservative' radio talk show hosts, listened to by millions of people who believe their anti-vax and 'conspiracy' rhetoric, are now finding themselves on ventilators and dying. I think I've run out of fingers to count them on. But a whole bunch of *their* 'sheep' keep following the herd in spite of the deaths of their shepherds. Incredible. Some of these people *still* don't think Covid is 'real', or that it's "no worse than the flu"...right up until the point that a vent tube is being shoved down their throats, and then they want the vax- "Sorry, it's too late. If you come out of the coma and survive, we can talk about it then."
We have people who complain that a vaccine that has been in development for more than a decade is 'experimental' and refuse to get it...but when they come down with Covid they are begging for monoclonal antibody treatments which are *themselves* even *more* experimental and are also being used under an EUA (Emergency Use Authorization). Even the idiot DJT the Bozo who touted 'alternatives', what did he end up getting? Yep, Covid, a serious case...and the best medical care money can buy- steroids and monoclonal antibody treatments.
You won't get a couple of $20 shots, but hey, you'll take the $20k per pop experimental Regeneron treatment. The mind boggles. I have run out of sympathy, anybody who want some can find it in the dictionary, it's between scat and syphilis. This was preventable and predicable, if people had just done the right thing from the start, and continued doing it until the plague was conquered. But it was bungled right from the start, and we were fed bullsquat right from the start. I have made predictions on other sites/forums since the beginning, and people crapped on me for them...but I have been right every, single, time.
Ordinarily, I would say "Hey, everybody who wants to be stupid, line up here for your Darwin Award." But the sad fact is, that in most of the cases (with the Alpha and original variant) it was the stupid people who were living, and their victims who were dying. But now that we have the Delta variant, which is making younger people, even children, sicker, and killing them, while some who deserve Darwin Awards are getting them, they are *still* killing people who have no choice, people who are victims of someone else's stupidity. Kids under 12 can't get vaxxed, and some between 12 and 17, their parents won't *let* them get vaxxed (though some are doing it anyway and keeping it from their parents)- they don't get a choice. "Oh, kids won't get it, kids can't spread it." Yeah, they darn sure can and do...and it's killing some and leaving others with life-long disabilities.
We have the tools to get this under control- vaxxes, masks and distancing...and then we have idiot governors trying to ban and illegalize mask and vax mandates, who refuse to implement proven effective public safety measures...like the idiots in FL and TX and other states. These people need to be removed from their offices...as soon and as expediently as possible. A revolution has been brewing in the US for several decades, and now we have morons from both ends of the political spectrum who are acting completely insane. We are sitting on a powder-keg, and if things aren't made right, and right soon, the people in the middle might very well decide it's time to light the fuse and we are going to have a shootin' war on our hands. It won't be a pretty thing. The Jan 6 riot, and that's all it was, a riot incited by fools, will look like a fart next to a hurricane...speaking of which, Louisiana is in deep doo-doo with their Covid cases and the fact that it is impossible for them to evacuate the hospitals because
there is nowhere to put the patients and a major hurricane beating them up...they'd better hope there's enough fuel for the generators.
Oy vey. Over and out for now. I need to go think about something else for a while...maybe I'll go try out my new compressed-air grease gun and lube up some of the vehicles...and maybe I'll dust off my other grease-gun and burn up a few cases of 9mm for practice...note, steel cased rounds and Zytel mags tend to jam up on full-auto bursts...got to get some steel 30 and 50 round mags in...maybe a Lage upper and some 70 round drum mags...still waiting for stripped AR lowers to come in, got trigger kits to go in but the lowers are on back-order...