Month: July 2021

This kind of trolling isn’t right. But if anyone deserves it after his grotesque performance in the hearing last week , this man does. He is a uniquely odious individual:

Here’s the more polite version of that sentiment:

“Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about.”

— Dr. Fauci after Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) accuses him of lying to Congress about gain-of-function research in Wuhan lab.

“If anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you.”

— Dr. Fauci to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

“This is a pattern that Senator Paul has been doing now at multiple hearings, based on no reality … I have never lied, certainly not before Congress. Case closed.”

— Dr. Fauci ends back-and-forth with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

Originally tweeted by The Recount (@therecount) on July 20, 2021.

This story about marriages being destroyed over vaccine disinformation is horrifying. How awul it must be to have someone so close to you go down this crazy conspiracy rabbit hole. When it’s just politics that’s one thing. I would certainly not go along with it, but that’s just me. I know couples who disagree politically but manage to set that aside. But this? No. This is so crazy that I can’t understand why anyone would stick around.

For Lucy, a 59-year-old metastatic breast cancer patient from Washington state, getting vaccinated against COVID-19 was a matter of life and death. After undergoing aggressive chemotherapy for months, the coronavirus almost certainly would have killed her. Yet as relief washed over her upon receiving her final Pfizer dose in March, she knew she’d have to keep it to herself. Her husband had begged her not to get the shot.

At the outset of the pandemic, Lucy’s husband and partner of seven years, Shane, was as cautious as anyone about the virus. He kept a big container of hand sanitizer in the car and fanatically washed his hands, keys and other items. He wore a face mask everywhere he went, showered and changed his clothes immediately upon returning home from necessary outings, and was anxious for Lucy and her elderly mother, who lives with them, to get vaccinated as soon as possible due to their heightened vulnerabilities.

But as the crisis dragged on, 60-year-old Shane spent months cooped up inside on YouTube and Facebook, where a vortex of coronavirus conspiracy theory videos was waiting for him. Many declared that the virus was nothing to fear — that it was the vaccines he should really be afraid of. Before long, he was also tuning into the increasingly malicious disinformation networks Newsmax and OAN, which regularly rehashed the lies he’d been fed online. He was completely enthralled, Lucy said, and over time, his worldview “did a 180.” 

Among other delusions, Shane is now steadfastly convinced that the COVID-19 outbreak was orchestrated by government-allied forces, the coronavirus is no more harmful than the flu, and the vaccines alter recipients’ DNA — condemning them to slowly perish.

Shane also believes that those who’ve been vaccinated can “shed” deadly toxins onto unvaccinated people in their vicinity. He fled the house when one of Lucy’s vaccinated adult sons from her previous marriage came to visit around Memorial Day of this year. Since returning more than a week afterward, he has confined himself to the basement and insisted that Lucy’s children never come back, lest they “shed.”

He still doesn’t know Lucy is immunized; she hides her vaccine card in a safety deposit box.

“Everything fell apart last year,” said Lucy, who also snuck her mother out to get her shots behind Shane’s back. “I don’t even know who he is anymore.” 

Shane is among the millions of Americans who have fallen prey to the coronavirus “infodemic” — the maelstrom of false and misleading information about COVID-19 that has gone viral during the pandemic, drastically hindering the nation’s recovery. Hyper-politicized anti-vaccine propaganda has reached countless U.S. households — largely by way of Fox News, far-right media outlets, GOP lawmakers and right-wing influencers — as terrifying conspiracy theories about the vaccines’ supposed lethality and nefarious development spread like wildfire across social media. 

The COVID-19 vaccines have become a symbol of America’s culture wars, and the consequences are deadly. More than 99% of coronavirus-related deaths in the U.S. occur among unvaccinated people, yet even though the shots have been widely available in all 50 states for months, nearly half the population hasn’t received a single dose. 

Research shows that social relationships may play a key role in keeping some people from getting vaccinated. In May, the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life found only 28% of Republicans reported receiving any encouragement from family and friends to get the vaccine, and more — 1 in 3 — reported actually being discouraged by friends and family, or receiving mixed messages. Only 45% of Republicans have received at least one vaccine dose, compared to 86% of Democrats.

Lucy’s story may only be unusual in the sense that she still got the vaccine — making the logical decision to protect herself against a virus that has killed more than 600,000 Americans — despite her family pressures. For many in her position, the choice to betray a loved one’s trust in order to prioritize their own health isn’t easy, and may come at a great personal cost. 

HuffPost talked to five men and women whose marriages are crumbling or have already collapsed under the weight of viral anti-vaccine disinformation. Most said they did their best to tolerate their spouses’ embrace of conspiracy theories amid the pandemic — until it came to the vaccines, when those delusions suddenly posed a direct threat to their well-being or that of their children. All were pressured by their partners not to get immunized (though most managed to do so in secret anyway), and are identified by pseudonyms to protect their families’ privacy. Three, including Lucy, are now in the process of getting divorced.

“I don’t understand what happened to him,” Lucy said of Shane. “But I choose my health.”

The Q Factor

As the coronavirus swept across the U.S., so did QAnon, with anti-vaccine hysteria emerging center stage in its extraordinary fear-mongering campaign. The far-right conspiracy theory movement hinges upon the belief that former President Donald Trump has quietly been at war against an omnipotent cabal of “deep-state” pedophiles who do all kinds of wicked things — from eating children to unleashing a highly infectious virus to manufacture a global need for a secretly deadly vaccine. (The latter is all part of a mass depopulation scheme cooked up by billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates and his fellow cabal members, of course.)

QAnon rode COVID-19 to new heights, conjuring up its own twisted narratives behind the pandemic while exploiting the widespread fear and uncertainty to indoctrinate more people. A staggering 15% of Americans have adopted the movement’s core beliefs, according to recent polling by the Public Religion Research Institute. For many, QAnon’s wild anti-vaccine conspiracy theories have left them completely petrified.

Carrie, a woman in her mid-40s who lives in the Southwest, met Anthony 12 years ago. They had a lot in common: Both had young children from earlier marriages, were around the same age and were generally fun, friendly and easy-going people. They married three years later.

Anthony was a Trump supporter but had never been very politically engaged, nor had he ever shown any interest in conspiracy theories. That changed in February of this year when he tested positive for COVID-19 and was almost entirely unaffected. During the two weeks he spent in complete isolation post-diagnosis, he heard repeatedly on social media that the virus wasn’t actually killing people and that the death tolls had been fabricated — QAnon theories that seemed to be supported by his own mild, cold-like symptoms. (It’s common for coronavirus cases to be mild or asymptomatic.) 

Up until that point, the entire family had been very cautious about COVID-19, and Anthony began to feel foolish for having been so afraid. It was the catalyst for his nosedive down the Q rabbit hole, where he absorbed all kinds of QAnon falsehoods. Soon, he was telling Carrie and the kids that President Joe Biden and his cronies had stolen the election from Trump, there was a Democrat-run child sex ring under the White House, the pandemic was a hoax, and everyone who got any of the COVID-19 vaccines would be dead within two years.

“I think my husband has lost his mind,” said Carrie, who tried tirelessly to debunk his delusions until she eventually accepted that no amount of logic or evidence would sway him. “How does someone go from being a normal human to being so crazy?”

It’s a question that families across the country are asking about their loved ones who rattle off conspiracy theories when explaining why they refuse to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Conspiratorial narratives about the supposedly malicious interests of key figures and institutions surrounding vaccines are now causing just as much vaccine skepticism as safety concerns are, according to a report from First Draft, a global nonprofit that researches misinformation.

Carrie didn’t understand how her husband could buy into these anti-vaccine delusions while still supporting Trump, whose administration launched Operation Warp Speed, a COVID-19 vaccine development and distribution program. Trump has also strongly encouraged Americans to go out and get immunized. Anthony’s explanation was mind-boggling.

“Trump is lying because he’s trying to take down this global cabal of pedophiles and he’s just trying to throw us off,” Carrie recalled him telling her — a refrain repeated widely in QAnon circles. “It’s so we don’t see what he’s really doing because he’s trying to save the world.”

Anthony wept when he learned that Carrie had snuck out to get vaccinated, convinced not only that his wife was doomed to die in the near future, but also, bizarrely, that she’d been injected with HIV. He wouldn’t have sex with her until she got tested for the disease and showed him her negative result. He broke down again when she later informed him that she’d taken her eligible biological children to get their vaccines, then sent her a written notice explicitly threatening to divorce her if she ever got their shared eight-year-old daughter immunized against the virus.

“He thinks I’m murdering our kids. He believes it hook, line and sinker — I don’t know how he makes it through the day,” said Carrie, who told him, sarcastically, “At least you’ll be alive for the remaining children.” By then, Anthony had latched onto the “shedding” theory. 

“We’ll all be dead, too,” he replied.

Inside the Anti-Vaccine Echo Chamber

For Harrison, a 52-year-old husband and father from Michigan, social media is a tool to stay connected with friends and family from afar, and has been especially useful through the COVID-19 lockdowns. To Fiona, his wife of 20 years, it has become her go-to source for news — and medical advice. 

Much of Fiona’s day is spent on YouTube, where an echo chamber of QAnon influencers and other far-right conspiracy theorists fill her head with baseless claims of corruption behind the “plandemic” and warn her about the supposed dangers of the coronavirus vaccines. Pointing to videos on the platform and other social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, Parler and Bitchute, she has told Harrison that the virus is nothing serious and the shots are used to inject people with some kind of poison. His attempts to steer her toward credible sources have been futile, and he often finds himself wondering how long they can go on like this.

“I had even tossed out to her, ‘Have you talked to one of our doctors about it face-to-face, taking social media out of it?’” recalled Harrison, who secretly got his Moderna shots in March and April. “But she thinks the doctors are in on it, that they’re part of Big Pharma and they’re working together behind the COVID ‘hoax.’ That’s what she hears online over and over and over again.” 

One of QAnon’s greatest and most damaging accomplishments has been eroding the public’s trust in legitimate information sources at a time of crisis. Building off Trumpworld’s crusade against the “fake news media,” its network of disinformation spreaders has successfully painted the mainstream media, liberal politicians and government institutions including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as corrupt and unreliable. As a result, people have increasingly turned to social media platforms to get their news, where grifters abound and facts don’t matter. 

Social media has been a breeding ground for coronavirus conspiracy theories, with platforms not only hosting disinformation but actively driving users toward it via algorithmic recommendations while turning a profit. “Plandemic,” a conspiracy theory film in which a widely discredited medical researcher called vaccines “a money-making enterprise that causes medical harm” and suggested they will “kill millions,” racked up millions of views across social platforms almost overnight last May. 

Anti-vaccine hysteria can be especially lucrative for opportunistic hucksters who shill supposed immunity-boosting alternatives, information packages and coronavirus “cures” on social media — and who often benefit from algorithmic amplification and sometimes earn a cut of the ad revenue they generate. Just 12 influencers are responsible for nearly two-thirds of anti-vaccine content across social media, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

In the online attention economy, the more polarizing a post is — like the anti-vaccine propaganda that Shane, Anthony and Fiona have been binging to the dismay of their spouses — the more likely it is to drive high engagement. Platforms notoriously reward such content by further boosting its visibility, which can keep users active longer and increase their exposure to ads. This may not seem like a big deal for flat Earth-type conspiracy theories, but with vaccine-related disinformation, the stakes are extraordinarily high.

Fiona, 51, is overweight, and Harrison worries about what might happen to her if she catches COVID-19. They have a nine-year-old son together, and he has started repeating his mother’s falsehoods. But if Fiona got sick, only then, Harrison suspects, would she realize that the “intel” she consumes on social media is nonsense.

“There’s gonna be no convincing her until it affects her directly,” he said of his wife. “I just hope it doesn’t come to that.”

For the past several months, Hannah’s home has been a literal anti-vax megaphone. Her husband, Rick, has set up speakers around the exterior to blast COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theory videos out to neighbors, passersby and anyone who will listen. A hard-line Christian conservative, he’s been known to do public Bible readings in an effort to convert people, but lately, he’s been preaching coronavirus trutherism to turn them into anti-vaxxers.

He wasn’t always like this. Hannah, 38, met Rick when she was a senior in high school. He was four years older, and at six-foot-two, he towered over her with more than a foot between them. She liked his blue-green eyes and the way he dressed, like he was in a boy band. They married a few years later and now live on the West Coast with their two daughters, who are 9 and 5. Both received all of their regular childhood vaccines and annual flu shots — until the pandemic hit.

That was when Rick, like so many other Americans, suddenly decided the coronavirus shots contained secret location-tracking microchips and were designed to kill people en masse. When his wife mentioned that she was planning to get vaccinated, he threatened divorce.

“Not only does he not want me to get [the vaccine], he wants me to tell everyone I know not to get it,” said Hannah, who secretly got her Pfizer shots on her way to pick the girls up from day care in April and May. “I sat there thinking to myself, ‘I guess I’m getting divorced.’”

While Rick’s vaccine beliefs are extreme and ludicrous, the underlying current of fear and suspicion is regularly reinforced on his TV screen. His media diet includes Fox News, OAN and Newsmax, whose hosts have likened vaccine passports to racial segregation, denigrated door-to-door vaccine efforts as “creepy,” declared that the Biden administration’s focus on vaccination is “mind-boggling” and argued that vaccines are “against nature.” The effect is clear: Just 3 in 10 people who watch Newsmax or OAN are “vaccine accepters,” according to a study from PRRI.

There’s more and it’s all very depressing. Online conspiracy theories, validated by trusted leaders, are apparently addictive. When you call it a rabbit hole it really is. You go down headfirst and it’s very difficult to get back out. I think that happens with online gambling, gaming and porn as well. There’s brain chemistry involved.

Nonetheless, this is a life and death issue and all adults have agency in this situation. It’s both tragic and infuriating.

Tom Cotton was educated at Harvard and Harvard Law. He thinks he’s going to be president some day:

Let me say, nobody elected the CDC. Nobody elected Tony Fauci to make these decisions. Advisers advise, elected officials decide. And the American people elected Joe Biden and the members of Congress and our governors and state legislatures to make these decisions for us.

If you just turn these decisions over to a bunch of public health bureaucrats, of course the only thing they’re gonna consider is what they think is in the best interest of public health.

Imagine that.

Again, this man wants to be president.

Michael Wolff says Trump is running again. I have never thought there was any doubt. The only way he will not run is if he’s physically disabled or in jail:

To write three books in four years about Donald Trump has been an immersion into his obsessions and fixations. This is why I know the obvious: Donald Trump will run for president again.

This spring, in another of his compulsive bids for attention — indifferent to whether it is good or bad — he hosted me at Mar-a-Lago, even after I had written two unflattering books about him (one whose publication he tried to stop), for an interview and dinner. After dinner, I asked about his plans for a presidential library, the traditional retirement project and fund-raising scheme of ex-presidents. There was a flash of confusion on his uniquely readable face, and then anger, aroused, I figured, by the implication of what I seemed to be saying — that his time in office was past.

“No way, no way,” he snarled, “no way.”

It is an existential predicament: He can’t be Donald Trump without a claim on the presidency. He can’t hold the attention and devotion of the Republican Party if he is not both once and future king — and why would he ever give that up? Indeed, it seemed to be that I was strategically seated in the lobby of Mar-a-Lago when I arrived precisely so I could overhear the efforts by a Republican delegation to court and grovel before Mr. Trump and to observe his dismissive dominance over them.

More than a bit of his subsequent conversation with me was about his contempt for any Republican who might be less than absolute in his or her devotion to him — after all, he had the power to make or break the people who have since disappointed him (like Senator Mitch McConnell and Justice Brett Kavanaugh). He seemed not so much paranoid about challenges to him but warlike, savoring his future retributions.

He repeatedly returns to his grudge against his once obsequious vice president with relish; Mike Pence has become more public about his own political ambitions. In his telling, it is Mr. Pence whose actions confirmed “the steal,” by his refusal to overturn the electoral vote count, over which he presided in January in the Senate. I believe he will run again just to stop the men who, in his view, helped take the presidency from him from trying to get it for themselves. The reports that reach him of the West Wing and members of his administration who refuse to subscribe to the idea of “the steal” only feeds his fury and determination to punish all doubters — “some very weak people who have worked for me but won’t in the future,” as he told me.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has become another frequent subject at Mr. Trump’s Bedminster, N.J., golf club, where the former president is spending the summer away from the Florida heat. Many members of Trumpworld believe Mr. DeSantis, who came in second to Mr. Trump in a CPAC straw poll this month, might, unbelievably, run for the 2024 nomination even if Mr. Trump runs. The idea that Mr. DeSantis, who Mr. Trump believes he “made” by his endorsement, might not accept his dependence on and obligation to Mr. Trump would be a personal affront that must be met. Mr. Trump pointedly blew off the governor’s request that he postpone a Florida rally in the aftermath of the Surfside building collapse. Clear message: The governor is not the boss of him. (Mr. DeSantis has denied making this request.)

The continued career of Mr. McConnell, to whom Mr. Trump has not spoken since vilifying him with a heap of obscenity after Mr. McConnell acknowledged Joe Biden’s victory, is unfinished business. (Trump aides believe the two are likely to never speak again.)

Mr. Trump believes that Mr. McConnell retained his Senate seat in 2020 only because of his support. The war against Mr. McConnell is a war about who controls the Republican Party — if it’s Mr. Trump’s party, it can’t be Mr. McConnell’s. If candidates win because of his endorsements, thereby making Mr. Trump himself the ultimate winner, and inevitable front-runner, then it’s surely his party. Mr. Trump, whose political muscle helped oust some Republican enemies from office in 2018, is confident about evicting Mr. McConnell once back in power. (I doubt he pays attention to the fact that Mr. McConnell was re-elected to a six-year term and has a reasonable chance of becoming the Senate majority leader again.)

Many Democrats believe that the legal pursuit of the former president’s family business in New York, and other cases, including the investigation of his attempt to overturn election results in Georgia, might seriously impede his political future. But in Mr. Trump’s logic, this will run the opposite way: Running for president is the best way to directly challenge the prosecutors.

Mr. Trump also believes he has a magic bullet. In his telling, the Republicans almost took back the House in 2020 because of his “telerallies,” telephone conference calls in congressional districts that attracted in some instances tens of thousands of callers. Who has that draw? he asked me, nearly smacking his lips. In 2022, with his draw, the Republicans, he is certain, will retake the House with his chosen slate of candidates. And indeed, this actually might be true.

But perhaps most important, there is his classic hucksterism, and his synoptic U.S.P. — unique selling proposition. In 2016 it was “the wall.” For 2022 and 2024 he will have another proposition available: “the steal,” a rallying cry of rage and simplicity.

For Democrats, who see him exiled to Mar-a-Lago, stripped of his key social media platforms and facing determined prosecutors, his future seems risible if not pathetic. But this is Donald Trump, always ready to strike back harder than he has been struck, to blame anyone but himself, to silence any doubts with the sound of his own voice, to take what he believes is his and, most of all, to seize all available attention. Sound the alarm.

Trump is delusional in every way but the idea that he is the only reason Mitch McConnell won re-election is right up there with the most delusional.

But as to the main point? Of course he’s running again. I’ve been saying it since before the election. This is a money making proposition for him, of course. And that’s still important. But mostly the man simply can’t stand to be the loser he really is. And if he runs and loses again? Fasten your seatbelts.

The cover story in Harper’s was “The New Narcsissim.” It was October 1975, of the years Tom Wolfe dubbed “The Me Decade.” In a complex, morally demanding world, Peter Marin took readers on a tour through pop therapies promoting “selfishness and moral blindness” and branding themselves “in the larger culture as enlightenment and psychic health.” California stuff, mostly. Easlen workshops, Erhard Seminars Training (EST), and others. Trends that begin on the left coast have a way of migrating east.

We were all gods (or something), the individual fully in control of determining her/his destiny. Right consciousness brought fortune or held ill fate at bay. At one workshop two women explained that “the Jews must have wanted to be burned by the Germans, and that those who starve in the Sahel must want it to happen.” When Marin asked if we bore any responsibility for a child starving in the desert, one snapped, “What can I do if a child is determined to starve?”

Pushing a half century later, it is hard not to react that way to vaccine refuseniks determined to feed themselves to the Delta variant. They are the 21st century’s new narcissists, led by the most grandiose in my experience. His movement rebrands selfishness and moral blindness as patriotism and rugged individualism. They have no responsibility for protecting their families, their neighbors or the larger culture. Because — say it with me — freedom.

Alabama’s Republican Gov. Kay Ivey had had enough this week when she unloaded on the unvaccinated for the new surge of Covid cases in her state. “It’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks,” she told reporters. “It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.”

Washington Post:

“I think for a lot of leaders, both in government and in business, patience has worn thin,” said Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist. “There is an urgency that might not have been there a month ago.”

Meanwhile, exhausted health providers say they are bracing for case spikes that are largely preventable, driven by the hyper-transmissible delta variant. “We are frustrated, tired and worried for this next surge — and saddened by the state we find ourselves in,” said Jason Yaun, a Memphis-based pediatrician, who said his colleagues are grappling with an “accumulation of fatigue” since the outbreak exploded in March 2020.

Biden administration officials increasingly frame the current outbreak as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” seeking to persuade and perhaps even frighten some holdouts to get the shots.

New cases in Missouri are spiking. Hospitals are filling with new patients, especially in the state’s southwest region. Yet, plans are still in place for opening Greene County’s Ozark Empire Fair days from now in one of the area’s Covid hotspots.

CNN:

Mercy Hospital in Springfield recorded 148 positive Covid-19 cases as of Thursday, an all-time high, said Sonya Kullmann, spokesperson for the hospital. Greene County currently has 4,663 active cases as of Friday morning, according to its website.

The uptick in cases is caused by the fast-spreading Delta variant; 95% of those cases were in unvaccinated people, Kullmann said.

Greene County, with a completed vaccination rate of about 35%, has declared a local emergency. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson sent additional life support ambulances and medical staff to the area in preparation of rising cases.

But the fair, which will feature food, a Ferris wheel and an exotic petting zoo — marketed on its website as “summer’s biggest party” — will not be canceled.

“Amusements around the country go on every day with way bigger attendance, in a lot more confined space than what we offer,” Aaron Owen, general manager of the fair, told CNN. “I’ve worried about it all, I know (the Delta variant) is real. But farmers and agriculture folks put their livelihood at stake on this. There’s lots of factors that we have to take into consideration.”

“I’m not going to waste my time arguing with a man who’s lining up to be a hot lunch” comes to mind.

I don’t need convinving. I was exposed to Legionnaires’ disease from standing 20 feet away from a contaminated hot tub display at such a fair here in September 2019. I was was sick as a dog for a week with “a fever of unknown origin” before news broke of the Legionnaire’s outbreak. That fair, too, is scheduled again this year. Perople will attend, maskless and beligerent about it.

It only took 40 years for the narcissism they once sold as enlightenment in godless California to turn up as patriotism in the god-fearing red states.

A Big Boy:

Some more big animals:

Aaaand: the tiniest!

I always hesitate to post excerpts by David Frum because, you know, it’s David Frum. However, if I’m to be intellectually honest, I have to call it like I see it, and he’s right about this:

In the United States, this pandemic could’ve been over by now, and certainly would’ve been by Labor Day. If the pace of vaccination through the summer had been anything like the pace in April and May, the country would be nearing herd immunity. With most adults immunized, new and more infectious coronavirus variants would have nowhere to spread. Life could return nearly to normal.

Experts list many reasons for the vaccine slump, but one big reason stands out: vaccine resistance among conservative, evangelical, and rural Americans. Pro-Trump America has decided that vaccine refusal is a statement of identity and a test of loyalty.

In April, people in counties that Joe Biden won in 2020 were two points more likely to be fully vaccinated than people in counties that Donald Trump won: 22.8 percent were fully vaccinated in Biden counties; 20.6 percent were fully vaccinated in Trump counties. By early July, the vaccination gap had widened to almost 12 points: 46.7 percent were fully vaccinated in Biden counties, 35 percent in Trump counties. When pollsters ask about vaccine intentions, they record a 30-point gap: 88 percent of Democrats, but only 54 percent of Republicans, want to be vaccinated as soon as possible. All told, Trump support predicts a state’s vaccine refusal better than average income or education level.

To overcome this resistance, some state and local political leaders have offered incentives: free beer, free food, tickets for a $1 million lottery. This strategy is not working, or not working well enough. Part of the trouble is that pro-Trump state legislatures are enacting ever more ambitious protections for people who refuse vaccines. They are forbidding business owners to ask for proof of vaccination from their customers. They are requiring cruise lines, sports stadiums, and bars to serve the unvaccinated. In Montana, they have even forbidden hospitals to require health-care workers to get vaccinated.

Pro-Trump vaccine resistance exacts a harsh cost from pro-Trump loyalists. We read pitiful story after pitiful story of deluded and deceived people getting sick when they did not have to get sick, infecting their loved ones, being intubated, and dying. And as these loyalists harm themselves and expose all of us to unnecessary and preventable risk, publications—including this one—have run articles sympathetically explaining the recalcitrance of the unvaccinated. These tales are 2021’s version of the Trump safaris of 2017, when journalists traveled through the Midwest to seek enlightenment in diners and gas stations.

Reading about the fates of people who refused the vaccine is sorrowful. But as summer camp and travel plans are disrupted—as local authorities reimpose mask mandates that could have been laid aside forever—many in the vaccinated majority must be thinking: Yes, I’m very sorry that so many of the unvaccinated are suffering the consequences of their bad decisions. I’m also very sorry that the responsible rest of us are suffering the consequences of their bad decisions.

As cases uptick again, as people who have done the right thing face the consequences of other people doing the wrong thing, the question occurs: Does Biden’s America have a breaking point? Biden’s America produces 70 percent of the country’s wealth—and then sees that wealth transferred to support Trump’s America. Which is fine; that’s what citizens of one nation do for one another. Something else they do for one another: take rational health-care precautions during a pandemic. That reciprocal part of the bargain is not being upheld.

Biden’s America is home to vaccine holdouts too. But state and local leaders in Biden’s America have spoken clearly and consistently about the urgency of vaccination. The leaders in Trump’s America have talked a double game: Like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, they urge vaccination one day, then the next they fundraise by attacking public-health officials such as Anthony Fauci. The consequence of DeSantis’s weeks of pandering to COVID-19 denial: More than one-fifth of all new COVID-19 cases in the United States are arising in the state of Florida—24,000 recorded on a single day, July 20.

Can governments lawfully require more public-health cooperation from their populations? They regularly do, for other causes. More than a dozen conservative states have legislated drug testing for people who seek cash welfare. It is bizarre that Florida and other states would put such an onus on the poorest people in society—while allowing other people to impose a much more intimate and immediate harm on everybody else.

The federal government could use its regulatory and spending powers to encourage vaccination in the same way that Ron DeSantis has used his executive powers to discourage it. The Biden administration could require proof of vaccination to fly or to travel by interstate train or bus. It could mandate that federal contractors demonstrate that their workforces are vaccinated. It could condition federal student loans on proof of vaccination. Those measures might or might not be wise policy: Inducements are usually more effective at changing individual behavior than penalties are. But they would be feasible and legal—and they would spread the message about what people ought to do, in the same way that sanctions against drunk driving, cheating on taxes, and unjust discrimination in the workplace do.

Compassion should always be the first reaction to vaccine hesitation. Maybe some unvaccinated people have trouble getting time off work to deal with side effects, maybe they are disorganized, maybe they are just irrationally anxious. But there’s no getting around the truth that some considerable number of the unvaccinated are also behaving willfully and spitefully. Yes, they have been deceived and manipulated by garbage TV, toxic Facebook content, and craven or crazy politicians. But these are the same people who keep talking about “personal responsibility.” In the end, the unvaccinated person himself or herself has decided to inflict a preventable and unjustifiable harm upon family, friends, neighbors, community, country, and planet.

Will Blue America ever decide it’s had enough of being put medically at risk by people and places whose bills it pays? Check yourself: Have you?

I’m there. Actually, I’ve been there for years. The problem always comes back to kids and other vulnerable people who live in these places where the right wing rules. They need protecting and their own adults refuse to do it. It’s a conundrum for anyone who has a heart.

But sure. I’m sick of these people and their hypocrisy and stubborn insistence on always, always doing the wrong thing just so they can own the libs. This isn’t new. But it gets more deadly every day.

And I must say, Frum makes an excellent point about government mandates for drug testing. That’s totally cool with the GOP. But insisting that health care workers get vaccinated or people wear a mask in a crowded public place to fight the spread of a deadly disease? Oh no, that’s an infringement on their rights. This makes no sense. But then that’s never been a deal breaker.

Really?

The LA County Sheriff is with these “protesters.” He says he won’t enforce the county mask mandate because he doesn’t believe the science and anyway, they cut some of his massive funding so he’s pouting and cancer patients just have to suck it up.

I don’t care how deluded/stupid/brainwashed they have been by propaganda, this is just disgusting. They are adults. They have agency. And as far as I’m concerned they deserve nothing but scorn:

A breast cancer patient says she was sprayed with bear mace, physically assaulted, and verbally abused outside a cancer treatment center in West Hollywood, Los Angeles by far-right activists who were angry over the clinic’s mandatory mask policy. 

Dozens of anti-maskers holding signs with anti-vaxx and QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theories amassed on the sidewalk by the Cedars-Sinai Breast Health Services building on Thursday afternoon, and harassed patients and doctors. 

In one exchange captured by local videographer Vishal Singh, a woman who has since publicly identified herself as Kate Burns, a cancer patient, approached the protesters and told them to leave. 

“I get treated here, get the fuck away,” Burns said. 

One protester, who was filming the scene on his phone, asked her why she was so angry, as a man holding a cardboard sign saying “End the Censorship of Vaccine Risks” smirked. 

“Because I’ve just gone through fucking breast cancer,” Burns said. “And you motherfuckers are here.” 

“That has nothing to do with you,” one man replied. “We’re trying to help.” 

“You are protesting a breast cancer fucking center. It has everything to do with me and my community,” Burns said. “Do you know anything about chemotherapy? Do you know what happens to the immune system?”

Protesters then ask her if she’s familiar with the Civil Rights Act. “Get on the right side of history,” one man says. “You’ve got a lot of anger you need to release. It’s a very dangerous emotion.” 

Tensions continued to rise as more far-right, anti-maskers arrived on the scene. A small group of anti-fascists also arrived, and got into altercations with the far-right. A woman holding a megaphone shoved Burns, and then punched her several times. Burns said, on social media, that the woman hit her in the chest and struck her scars. 

Thursday was the second time that anti-maskers had targeted that particular breast cancer clinic over its mask policy. The ugly scenes and casual political violence that unfolded there on both occasions have become troublingly common across the U.S. 

California in particular has emerged as a hotspot for that type of activity. Just last weekend, Proud Boy associates joined far-right conspiracy theorists outside Wi Spa in LA’s Korea Town, as part of an ongoing protest against the spa’s nondiscrimination policy of accommodating the needs of transgender guests. Reporters at the scene of the spa were assaulted, dozens were arrested, and police later located weapons scattered across the site including knives, pepper spray and stun guns. A protest at the same location earlier this month resulted in two stabbings. 

The Cedars-Sinai Medical Center did not immediately respond to VICE News’ inquiry about how they plan to expand their security protocol to protect patients and employees in the future.

This isn’t Trump country. But it doesn’t matter. These people are everywhere.

This piece in Politico implies that Pelosi is going after Trump out of personal spite or to burnish her legacy. That is nonsense:

Nancy Pelosi has some unfinished business with Donald Trump.

The volatile former president and Pelosi foe is long gone from the White House but still haunts Capitol Hill. And as much as some in her party might want to move on from Trump, the speaker has made overseeing an investigation of the deadliest attack on the Capitol in two centuries into a core mission this year — putting her squarely in the path of the former president who Democrats say played a central role in the insurrection.

Her GOP opponents are warning that Pelosi’s close involvement in the select committee on Jan. 6 exposes its efforts to politicization and failure. But the California Democrat and her allies insist it’s the best way to prevent a repeat of the deadly day when thousands of rioters stormed the Capitol bent on overturning a democratic election and threatened to kill members of Congress.

Pelosi huddled with the panel’s seven Democrats and sole GOP member, Rep. Liz Cheney, in her office on Thursday afternoon. A devout Catholic, she led the group in prayer before stressing the “solemnity” of their work ahead.

“The facts will take us where we go, not anything else,” Pelosi told the group, according to a source in the room.

Members of Pelosi’s inner circle insist that she doesn’t consider the select panel as legacy-defining work during what could be her final turn with the gavel. Instead, her confidants say, Pelosi feels like she was left with no choice after GOP leaders mobilized to block an independent probe and a separate Senate-led investigation was dismissed as too narrow, with virtually no discussion of Trump’s role.

But the most popular parlor game in Washington is guessing when Pelosi might finally exit the Hill after a storied two-decade tenure atop the Democratic caucus. And no matter when Pelosi and her two longtime lieutenants — Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn — step down, their responses to the deadly insurrection and its aftermath will shape their legacies.

“The answer of ‘we did no investigation’ is just not a legacy that anybody — forget about the speaker, but anybody, including Republicans — should be willing to live with,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.). “It’s an overused word, but this is existential.”

Democrats close to Pelosi say although the speaker no longer engages in daily verbal combat with Trump, she still sees him and his loyal band of insurgent followers as a once-in-a-generation threat to American democracy.

And with Trump sidelined, Pelosi has been able to shift her focus away from countering his administration’s policies to shielding Congress from what she sees as his dangerous brand of politics, a clash with implications for the institution that will long survive her tenure.

“This is deadly serious,” Pelosi said Thursday, raising her voice and growing unusually animated as she explained her determination to move ahead with the select panel despite Republican protests. “This is about our Constitution. It’s about our country. It’s about an assault on the Capitol.”

Long before the riot at the Capitol, Pelosi has considered solemn duty to the institution as part of her leadership post. She has a long history working on national security, including years as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and played a pivotal role in establishing the independent commission to study the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Then came Jan. 6, when Pelosi and other party leaders were whisked from the floor just minutes before rioters broke into the House chamber. Back in her office, staffers cowered under tables as rioters angrily chanted Pelosi’s name outside a locked door.

Pelosi stunned much of Washington this week by ridding the Jan. 6 select panel of a pair of vociferous Trump allies — Reps. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — drawing fierce criticism from Republicans, who slammed it as the latest example of her overreach as speaker.

The move left Trump’s chief antagonist in his own party, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), as the sole GOP member of the investigation, although Pelosi hinted Thursday she might add more Republican representation.

Pelosi’s play this week infuriated McCarthy, the first House GOP leader during her nearly 20 years in power with whom she has almost zero relationship. Pelosi had a friendly rapport with former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and was cordial with former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

But when McCarthy comes up, she barely cares to hide the disdain in her voice.

“I’m not talking about him,” Pelosi told reporters when asked about McCarthy Thursday. “Let’s not waste each other’s time.”

The feeling appears to be mutual. When Pelosi called McCarthy to inform him of her decision to block Jordan and Banks from serving on the panel, she was met with “a wall of screaming,” according to a source familiar with the conversation.

A second source confirmed the call was tense but said both McCarthy and Pelosi had “raised voices.”

For both parties, this week was a reminder that Congress is still in the throes of a painful reckoning over Donald Trump’s hold on the GOP, as the former president’s influence only grows across the campus since his election loss. The resulting gulf between the two parties, and their leaders, has only expanded.

And it was yet another sign that Pelosi — who has already shepherded her party through two Trump impeachments — won’t hesitate to wage brutal combat with her political opponents, despite her party’s slimmest margins in decades.

Brutal combat was what we saw on January 6th. This is not that. (And the idea that McCarthy’s choice of Banks and Jordan — including obviously signing off on their provocative comments after they were named — is ridiculous. He got exactly what he wanted.)

Nonetheless, I’m pretty sure Pelosi knows that negative partisanship is a big part of contemporary American politics despite Joe Biden’s paeans paeans to the “soul of America” and despite the article’s reporting that says she believes 2022 depends entirely on the state of the economy. Part of her job is to engage this fight not only on behalf of the people who are sincerely appalled by what happened on January 6th, but also to ensure that they are energized and engaged come 2022. 2018 was largely driven by the Democratic base’s loathing for Trump and he isn’t going away as much as we would like him to. The Dems have to engage with his party and his cult whether they want to or not. Let the games begin.