Testing requirements are still in place for those in close proximity to the president and passengers aboard Air Force One, including for the upcoming trip to India. But the stringent monitoring that prevailed in the early days of the administration has eased significantly.
"Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
Look, sometimes Covid will just do these things and it has the 1st Amendment rights to do it. Who are you to go against the Constitution?
that sentence should say "it's going to do this because the vaccine will never be forced on people." That's the only way to maybe stop it. We didn't stop the flu but did stop polio, so we're just real picky about our diseases.
polio
This is tangential but still relevant. The crucial role that the USSR played in the eradication of smallpox often goes completely overlooked.
There's a really good conversation that goes into this which I'd recommend (in fact, the whole episode is really good.)
Polio is spread by turd particles so it's actually feasible to eradicate it, that's not really the case for covid or the flu. Our chance was to just lock down for a month or two back in Feb 2020 and we fucked it.
Our chance was to just lock down for a month or two back in Feb 2020
There's some evidence that the virus was present in Europe months before it was first identified as a novel virus in China, Dec 1019 (some blood samples and wastewater samples) - by the time we realised what we were dealing with it was probably already too late tbh.
I am not normally one to engage in conspiracy theory, but if there is one I believe in 100% it's that covid originated in USA.
Fort Detrick truthers rise up!
The vaccine won't stop it. That was a lie fed to people to make them accept the removal of all other precautions, but it became clear very quickly that while the vaccines were effective at preventing death and severe illness, they were never able to prevent infection well enough to stop the spread. Maybe a future generation of vaccines, but that's useless until those actually exist.
Even with full vaccine coverage, we wouldn't be able to fully eradicate sars-cov-2 at this point. It's too contagious and its rate of mutation is too high.
It's a completely different virus to polio, so a direct comparison is pretty pointless.
Even if the vaccine was forced on people it wouldn’t help in its current state. The vaccine efficacy is just not that good. The virus can infect many common animals including deer, dogs, cats, mink, etc.
Any sort of eradication would require new vaccines that work in a fundamentally different way.
Even though Ashish Jha doesn't officially work for Biden anymore, you can tell his morally bankrupt ass is still angling for a position in a future admin cuz he's still trying to be the admin's mouthpiece for COVID minimization. Fucking hate that piece of shit and wish for horrible things to happen to him.