Some Covid-19 thoughts
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Monday, September 29, 2025 18:59
VIEWED: 301579
PAGE 376 of 384
Quote:The healthcare system could have saved $459 billion in 2020 per National Academy of Sciences. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2200536119
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Those 330,000 people died of something else.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
But $459 billion was lost because every Republican lawmaker is opposed to the savings.
Here is what other countries pay per person per year for healthcare:
1. United States ($10,586)
2. Switzerland ($7,317)
3. Norway ($6,187)
4. Germany ($5,986)
5. Sweden ($5,447)
6. Austria ($5,395)
7. Denmark ($5,299)
8. Netherlands ($5,288)
9. Luxembourg ($5,070)
10. Australia ($5,005)
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/health-care-costs-b
y-country
15. Canada Money spent on public health: $3,382 per capita
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/04/11/countries-that-spend-t
he-most-on-public-health/39307147/
The United States pays more than any other country because of Republican lawmakers.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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A federal appeals court on Monday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging Houston Methodist’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which last year thrust the hospital into the national spotlight as the first healthcare system in the U.S. to require the shots for its employees.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of 117 Houston Methodist employees who refused to abide by the policy, was dismissed in June 2021 by U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes, who at the time decried arguments comparing the requirement to those made under Nazi Germany.
In its opinion, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said it affirmed the original ruling “because plaintiffs do not demonstrate any error in the district court’s judgment on the arguments made in that court but instead make an entirely new argument on appeal.” -- https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/unpub/21/21-20311.0.pdf
The plaintiffs’ attorney, Jared Woodfill, said “this battle is far from over.”
“We believe employment should not be conditioned on your willingness to take an experimental shot,” he said in an email to the Chronicle. “During oral argument, the court indicated that one way to potentially address this case of first impression is to take it back to state court. We will pursue every legal avenue available to our clients, including taking this case to the United States Supreme Court.”
Woodfill added that a “companion case” has been filed in Harris County, though records of that lawsuit could not be found by press time.
Houston Methodist announced its mandate April 1, requiring employees to be fully vaccinated with a one- or two-dose series or request a medical or religious exemption. Protests ensued among a small group of hospital workers. Those who did not receive a vaccine or a religious exemption were first suspended and eventually fired.
In the end, 153 employees out of roughly 25,000 in the hospital system were either terminated or resigned. Many Texas Medical Center institutions have since implemented their own mandates.
Jennifer Bridges, a former nurse at Houston Methodist Baytown Hospital, was among the most vocal opponents of the mandate and the lead plaintiff in the federal lawsuit. She previously described the plaintiffs as “a mix of those who want more trial data to emerge on the long-term effects of the vaccine before taking it, and those who simply don’t want any shots,” according to earlier reports.
The lawsuit brought three separate claims of wrongful termination, alleging violations of state and federal law. In their appeal, the plaintiffs “pivoted” from focusing on the federal law violations to state law, the appeals court notes in its opinion.
The plaintiffs “now even equivocate on whether federal law supports their claim,” according to the opinion. “Federal law does not, and the district court did not err in dismissing plaintiffs’ claim.”
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Fe
deral-appeals-court-affirms-dismissal-of-17241835.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:The healthcare system could have saved $459 billion in 2020 per National Academy of Sciences.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Those 330,000 people died of something else.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
That's an entirely different argument. One that I might not be so quick to argue with you about.
Stop being ingenuous.
Quote:
The United States pays more than any other country because of Republican lawmakers.
Bullshit. Period.
Think of all the awful things that the Democrats have managed to do in the last year and a half without Republican support, and how many times they've found legal loopholes to get around the fact they don't have a filibuster proof majority.
Then think about how they failed to raise the minimum wage or do a fucking thing about healthcare.
You will have a long time to think about that, since it is the last time you're ever going to see Democrats in power in your lifetime.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Politicians don’t want to talk about Covid-19 anymore. But it’s still influencing voters.
The pandemic is still having enormous, if subtle, influence on American politics. Inflation — a crisis that began with supply-chain and workforce issues caused by Covid-19 and was likely amplified by some aspects of the US relief legislation — is the No. 1 issue for US voters right now. Murders and drug overdose deaths began rising during the pandemic, souring the public’s mood on the country’s future and presaging a difficult campaign for the party in power.
“It’s been so extensive that you just don’t notice it,” John Gasper, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University who has studied the effect of prior natural disasters on political behavior, said. “People are sick of blaming Covid for a lot of things. Politicians don’t want to keep talking about Covid.”
Much of the Republicans’ voter base has been skeptical of Covid-19’s significance for a while, giving their candidates little reason to focus on it.
The exception is the hard-right candidates who oppose public health interventions to slow down the pandemic. Certain Republicans continue to make clear their opposition to mask or vaccine mandates and other measures, even though those restrictions have been lifted almost everywhere.
That bizarre reality — in which the pandemic that killed 1 million people is being most effectively politicized by the people who opposed the response to it — reflects the unusual nature of Covid-19 as a political event. It started as something akin to a natural disaster: disruptive, but not something that sticks in voters’ memory. But, unlike most hurricanes or tornados, the pandemic wasn’t over within a relatively short time. It lasted years — long enough to evolve into a political wedge issue that candidates use to stir up their most strident supporters.
“Covid has transformed from a disaster to ... fodder or kindling for the ongoing culture war,” Gasper said. “It’s one more thing to stoke the fire in order to feed your base.”
Even though Trump himself tried to counter vaccine skepticism, many of his favored candidates have continued to run very publicly on their opposition to not only vaccine mandates but to getting vaccinated at all.
It fits into the general themes of distrusting experts and institutions that have been a hallmark of Republican campaigns for a long time now, most notably during Trump’s rise to the presidency. Those with anti-establishment attitudes attack health experts.
Republicans politicians placed themselves in opposition to health experts as a way of indicating they are on the side of their own voters -- angry poor white trash, who are about 100 million out of a population of 330 million. 75 million voted for Trump.
More at https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/2022/6/16/23167365/covid-19-20
22-us-midterm-elections-vaccines-masks
Wealth inequality in the United States
6ix, stop insisting you are wise & thrifty when you are really only poor. Start looking at the people who vote for Trump as they truly are: angry poor white trash, some with guns so that they don't feel like complete nothings, but rather powerful and free, like Mal and Zoe and Jayne. Predictably, their life on Serenity was one struggle after another.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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That whole story is a lie if they're going to continue to lie to you and tell you Covid killed a million people.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:My sister, the nurse who works at https://www.stlukeshealth.org says 6ix's signature "false in one thing, false in everything" describes 6ix. It is you who is the liar, 6ix. Alternate hypothesis? You're insane like the Joker.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
That whole story is a lie if they're going to continue to lie to you and tell you Covid killed a million people.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:My sister, the nurse who works at https://www.stlukeshealth.org says 6ix's signature "false in one thing, false in everything" describes 6ix. It is you who is the liar, 6ix. Alternate hypothesis? You're insane like the Joker.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
That whole story is a lie if they're going to continue to lie to you and tell you Covid killed a million people.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
You don't have a sister either, Arthur.
You should really reevaluate calling other people insane with that post history of yours that I have archived.
If you ever want to see something really insane, just ask and I'll post all the things that you've deleted over the years.
We won't even have to dip into your banned Reaverfan persona to get to the good stuff.
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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So who's already signed up their babies to be sacrificed at the altar of Pfizer?
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COVID is far from solved. The coronavirus is still mutating. Even at one of the lowest death rates of the pandemic, it still claims the lives of hundreds of Americans daily, killing more than twice as many people as die, on average, in car accidents.
“Take it from a tuberculosis activist that you can lose political will, public attention, and scientific momentum and still have a disease that kills over a million people each year,” said Mike Frick of the Treatment Action Group. “We’re seeing the TB-ification of COVID start.” https://www.who.int/news/item/14-10-2021-tuberculosis-deaths-rise-for-
the-first-time-in-more-than-a-decade-due-to-the-covid-19-pandemic
The entire health-care system is now perpetually overburdened and unable to provide its former standard of care. People are still being disabled by long COVID, often without ever landing in the hospital.
Local officials, community organizers, and grassroots groups are swimming furiously against the tide of governmental apathy to push some pandemic response forward, even if incrementally. The late Paul Farmer, who devoted his life to providing health care to the world’s poorest people, understood that when doing such work, victories would be hard-won, if ever won at all. Referencing a line from The Lord of the Rings, he once said, “I have fought the long defeat.” In the third year of the COVID pandemic, that fight will determine how America fares against the variants and viruses still to come.
In a study of 177 countries, people’s level of trust — in the government and especially in one another — predicted COVID infection rates and vaccine uptake. In America, trust is in short supply, and accordingly, the country has underperformed throughout the pandemic despite its considerable resources. This problem is getting worse: A poll from January found that only 44 percent of respondents trusted the CDC’s statements on COVID, down from 55 percent in 2020.
As the pandemic has revealed, even powerful biomedical tools such as vaccines sputter in practice if disadvantaged people can’t access them, or if distrusting people refuse to use them. America’s recurring mistake is to create such technofixes at warp speed, while neglecting the systems that actually deploy those tools.
America actually has an entire workforce that specializes in earning trust: community health workers. They’re hired for their empathy, their strong local ties, and their personal experience with hardship. Breanna Burke, a community health worker in Bristol, Tennessee, where she has lived since she was 3, told me that her job is to “get to the root cause of ongoing health issues,” with the understanding that a person’s circumstances constrain their choices. For example, she helped one of her diabetic clients plan a budget to keep their power on so they could keep their insulin cold; another time, she figured out that a patient whose pain wouldn’t stop had been sleeping on a hardwood floor for nine months, and contacted a local women’s club to raise money for a mattress.
When COVID hit, Burke provided people with emergency food supplies so they could weather quarantine in safety, and talked others through their hesitancy over getting vaccinated. She can do that because her nonjudgmental approach and shared life experience make her trustworthy — the secret to community health workers’ extraordinary effectiveness.
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20220627184401/https://www.theatlantic.com
/health/archive/2022/06/pandemic-protections/661378/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Then go wear a mask and get a fifth booster, you little bitch.
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