Tag: COVID-19

Anti-vaxx nurse dies from COVID-19 in Louisiana

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A Louisiana nurse who questioned the safety of vaccines has died of complications from COVID-19.

Olivia Guidry, a registered nurse in the emergency department at Ochsner Lafayette General, died Saturday after being hospitalized for the coronavirus in the intensive care unit, reported The Advocate.

“Today is a sad day for my ER family and I,” her colleague Nick Berthelot postedon Facebook. “Your contagious laugh and smile will truly be missed Liv. Until we meet again sweet girl.” Continue reading.

Despite Outbreaks Among Unvaccinated, Fox News Hosts Smear Shots

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Months after Rupert Murdoch got a Covid-19 vaccine dose, one of his network’s stars, Tucker Carlson, called a Biden vaccination proposal “the greatest scandal in my lifetime.”

Back in December, before the queen of England and the president-elect of the United States had their turns, the media mogul Rupert Murdoch received a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Afterward, he urged everyone else to get it, too.

Since then, a different message has been a repeated refrain on the prime-time shows hosted by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham on Mr. Murdoch’s Fox News Channel — a message at odds with the recommendations of health experts, even as the virus’s Deltavariant and other mutations fuel outbreaks in areas where vaccination rates are below the national average.

Mr. Carlson, Ms. Ingraham and guests on their programs have said on the air that the vaccines could be dangerous; that people are justified in refusing them; and that public authorities have overstepped in their attempts to deliver them. Continue reading.

Commentary: How The Republican Party Became A Death Cult

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The childish narcissism and prideful ignorance of the American right — as personified in its idol, former President Donald Trump — have transformed “conservatism” into a public health menace. Republicans in office and their media echoes are the principal obstacles to vaccinating enough Americans to achieve herd immunity from COVID-19, which would be awful even if their gullible audiences were the only potential victims. 

But the rapid spread of the highly contagious and harmful delta variant is a warning that large pools of unvaccinated human hosts create the perfect environment for further mutations that may overcome vaccines and kill more efficiently. This means, in short, that the Republicans resisting vaccination and encouraging others to resist are a danger to all. After whining bitterly for the past year about masks and shutdowns, these same complainers may now make a safe reopening impossible.

The campaign to thwart vaccination grows more intense on the right as the Biden administration seeks desperately to prevent a viral catastrophe. It is a campaign of fear and lies, seemingly designed to ensure that the maximum number of Americans will succumb to the disease. According to the Centers for Disease Control, at least 99 percent of those Americans now dying from coronavirus infection are unvaccinated. The Republicans urging their constituents to reject the vaccine appear determined to massacre them in a terrible parody of the Darwinian theory of natural selection. Continue reading.

Pfizer to seek FDA authorization for booster of COVID-19 vaccine

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Pfizer and BioNTech announced Thursday that they plan to seek authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a third dose of their COVID-19 vaccine, saying it would provide even stronger protection.

In a statement released Thursday afternoon, the companies said they have seen “encouraging data” from an ongoing trial of the booster shot, adding that it provides levels of neutralizing antibodies five to 10 times higher, when administered six months after the second dose. The companies plan to submit data “in the coming weeks.”

It will be up to U.S. regulators — the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — whether to recommend a third dose. Continue reading.

Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan Update: July 9, 2021

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Governor Walz and Lt. Governor Flanagan Visited Rochester to Highlight Child Care and Early Education Investments in Minnesota’s COVID-19 Recovery Budget

Gov. and Lt. Gov. Highlight Child Care and Early Education Investments


On Thursday, Governor Tim Walz and Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan visited Rochester to celebrate the passage of Minnesota’s COVID-19 Recovery Budget. The budget’s historic investments will help Minnesota’s working families by increasing access to affordable, high-quality child care, early education, and youth programs.

New Data Shows Minnesota’s COVID Restrictions Saved Lives

In case you missed it, KARE 11 aired a story this week detailing new research from the Wilder Foundation showing that Governor Walz’s leadership throughout the COVID-19 pandemic saved lives. Throughout the pandemic, CDC data shows Minnesota had the lowest death rate of any surrounding state. Rewatch the story here: New data shows Minnesota’s COVID restrictions saved lives.

Continue reading “Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan Update: July 9, 2021”

‘I cried and cried’: Unvaccinated Republican assumed COVID-19 ‘wouldn’t be that bad’ – then came perilously close to dying

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A whopping 99.2 percent of the people who died of COVID-19 in May were people who weren’t vaccinated, Forbes reported, citing data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It showed that only 150 out of 18,000 COVID deaths in May were “breakthrough” infections of fully vaccinated people.

One of those people who survived was Republican Party of Lakeland chairman James Ring, who says now that he “certainly was dying,” when he contracted the virus at a volleyball tournament where his daughters played in Orlando, reported The Ledger.

“I haven’t shared this with many people, but I just spent the last few days confined to a small room in the COVID unit at Lakeland Regional Health with COVID pneumonia in both my lungs,” Ring said in a Facebook post. Continue reading.

More than 4,005,000 people have died from the coronavirus worldwide

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More than 185 million cases have been reported.

The coronavirus has killed nearly 4 million people since it first emerged in Wuhan, China, in 2019, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

New confirmed cases of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, remain high, and the world struggles with unequal vaccine rollouts and new threats posed by fast-spreading variants.

“The pandemic is a long way far from over,” World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned in May. “It will not be over anywhere until it’s over everywhere.” Continue reading.

Psaki dismisses MTG over Nazi comparison

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“We don’t take any of our health and medical advice from Marjorie Taylor Greene,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

Press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that the White House would not “take any of our health and medical advice from Marjorie Taylor Greene,” a response to the Georgia lawmaker’s remark a day earlier comparing the Biden administration’s vaccination campaign to Nazis.

Greene (R-Ga.) on Tuesday called efforts by the Biden White House to vaccinate more Americans against Covid-19 a “political tool” and likened the administration’s on-the-ground push to a Nazi paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung, often referred to as “brownshirts.”

“People have a choice, they don’t need your medical brown shirts showing up at their door ordering vaccinations,” Greene wrote in response to a video of President Joe Biden describing a plan to offer vaccines door-to-door. “You can’t force people to be part of the human experiment.” Continue reading.

Risks rise as vaccination gap with Trump counties grows wider

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A stark divide in the vaccination rates of blue and red states has grown more prominent in recent months, imperiling a full national recovery.

While a partisan divide fueled in large part by former President Trump has been a defining characteristic of COVID-19 in the United States, the gap is becoming more worrisome once again with the deadly delta variant.

According to data across 2,415 counties analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), the vaccination gap between counties that voted for Trump in the 2020 election and those that voted for President Biden has nearly doubled in less than two months.  Continue reading.