I decided to write today’s blog at a bar and get some food afterward. As I got to the bar, I discovered stools were back at the bar.
See, over the past year, there has been no sitting at bars in Virginia. What this means is, you sit at a table away from the bar and you’re supposed to be six feet apart from other people. If you want to meet a bunch of covid deniers, go to a bar in Virginia.
Bars have been forced to comply with state covid rules. Of course, they hate that. Covid has hurt their business just as it’s hurt everyone else’s business. But bar workers have taken it personally. I can see why they want to be covid deniers since they have often been hotspots.
As I came into this bar, I asked about the seats at the bar, and the bartender told me it was OK now. These stools are not six feet apart and I know that rule is still in effect. I asked about this and she said, “Yeah, but we don’t care.”
That’s it right there. They don’t care. They don’t care about quarantines, social distance, or face masks and they’re all forms of oppression being inflicted by a Marxist government and the entire experience is worse than the Holocaust…if you listen to these people. On top of all that, they’re anti-vaxxers.
People have different reasons to oppose the vaccine. When I ask someone while I’m out in public (which is not often) if they have or plan to get vaccinated, my question is usually met with resistance. I try not to challenge them and explain that I’m just taking a personal poll. I haven’t talked to anyone in person who is afraid of microchips in the vaccine and is waging a political war against it. Every one of the individuals I have talked to is afraid or suspicious of the vaccine while also not identifying him/herself as anti-vaxxers.
I was talking to a young lady earlier this week who told me she was afraid because she heard covid vaccines can make some people sterile. There is no research supporting that but she believes it anyway. Others are suspicious because the vaccines are new and they don’t believe they’ve been tested enough. They don’t want to be guinea pigs. Add to that, the recent worries of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine giving blood clots as a rare side effect. Other people are just resistant to any vaccinations.
Covid cases in this country are going down and we may be at 60% immunity nationwide from vaccinations and people who have already contracted covid. Now, as the Biden administration is trying to convince more Americans to become vaccinated, the numbers of people getting vaccines are dropping. I’m looking forward to next week when I receive my second injection and I can see if the lines are just as long as they were three weeks ago when I got my first.
Leave it to the United States to make fear and politicization of vaccination to the coronavirus a first-world privilege. The people who complain the most about the pandemic robbing their liberties are the same assholes who don’t want to help in getting rid of the virus. While we’re refusing to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines, thanks to having an adult president who tackles problems instead of gaslighting them, India is on fire.
These anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers politicizing the virus and acting like the pandemic is an assault on their liberties remind me of Libertarians.
Despite wanting a nation of zero regulations, no taxes, and no government authority whatsoever, you don’t see Libertarians moving to live in the mayhem that’s Somalia. Somalia is a libertarian paradise. Maybe none of them wants to wear puffy pirate shirts. Who knows. And you don’t see these anti-vaxxers moving to India to relish an environment of no face masks or vaccine shaming.
In India, only about two percent of the nation has been vaccinated. Its President, Narendra Modi, is presenting a smiling face of denial about the pandemic while his nation has entered a second phase. In fact, the pandemic has not affected his proclivity for hugging.
Each day since April 22, India has recorded more than 300,000 new cases. On most days, India is recording more new cases than half the world, which Modi and Donald Trump probably both believe is flat. New Delhi, the capital, is now running out of wood for cremations and hospitals are full and lacking oxygen. Modi’s government is rejecting responsibility for failing to recognize that new variants were coming, and is blaming India’s state governments. Where have we heard that one before?
As our first relief checks had Trump’s signature, a vaccine passport in India has Modi’s face. These cretins want credit for the good stuff but none for the bad. We should be calling the coronavirus the “Trump Virus” in the United States, and in India, it should be the “Modi Virus.”
In India, the rate of vaccinations declined as the nation believed it was out of the woods. Over 300 million of India’s population are illiterate while the Trump cultist population of the United States is willfully ignorant. India had the vaccines. They exported over 66 billion to help other nations. Now, they need vaccines to be imported.
We can not ignore the pandemic. We can’t afford to politicize this. We can’t afford to not get vaccinated. We can’t afford to let our guards down. And, we can’t afford to sit at the bars.
Speaking of, I decided to sit at the bar as there was no one else here other than a couple of goobers at the gambling machines. Shortly after starting this column, the bar filled up and I was surrounded by mask-less bikers who were ignoring the six-foot rule. I am still not comfortable with that. I don’t believe we can be comfortable with that. I left the bar for a corner table far away from everyone, but they keep getting closer. I haven’t even ordered food yet but I may have to bail.
We can’t afford to let our guard down but when this pandemic is over and we can finally sit close to each other, I’m still going to want most of you fuckers to stay the fuck away from me.
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Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
DO NOT LOOK AWAY!! This is the reality in India!! … “both of my proofers, Hilary and Laura, had very strong reactions to today’s cartoon. I acknowledge, this is terrible.”
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The worst is still to come Clay. And I don’t mean people’s reactions to it.
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Smells Like Teen Spirit
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“Oh, the irony!” I think the only way to fight these business is to boycott them. Altho I s’pose there’re more of them than of us.
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I can’t go back to the business I mentioned here. It’s too much.
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I hope you did not catch anything.
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I’m not comfortable in crowds right now and I normally don’t go out at all. But I have had covid, one vaccination, and immediately got away from those people yet I still don’t believe immunity is a certainty. I’m fairly confident I won’t get it again anytime soon, but I think flouting rules against it is asking for trouble.
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Oh no, you never hear “100% efficacy.” Even a very effective viral vaccine must be orders of magnitude above blood clots in risk of significant failure.
I am puzzled by rabies vaccine, which actually does appear 100%. Finally I concluded that it is backstopped by the extreme rarity of rabid attacks on humans.
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I live in Alberta. Our right wing premier did not believe in Covid until a good friend of his almost died from it. He made a few token efforts, but mostly he gave in to the minority of the population who bitched about having their rights taken away. Now that Alberta is the worst province in Canada relative to population size, he has closed a few more things, but he is scared to do too much.
He just doesn’t get it. But he was one of the first to get vaccinated, though he did not fit his own criteria of who had priority!
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My husband got yelled at in an e-mail today from a 30-year friend for asking, Is everybody vaccinated yet so our gaming group can get back together? Apparently that’s somehow become a grave insult.
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I’m planning a SWFL CairnFest (people and dogs) for 2022; DOGS have to be vaccinated for rabies; PEOPLE have to be vaccinated for COVID. No vaxx, no party. And believe me, I’ll ask for proof of both!
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Oh, and I’m planning a mini-CairnFest for June 2021 – again, ALL dogs and people will have been vaxx’d.
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This increases the chances of India becoming an incubator of new variants. This is a world problem, not a national problem. Vaccinated countries need to send help if possible.
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Really? Modi is genociding his beloved Hindu majority? That’s really Twilight Zone. He’s genuinely weird.
Sometimes I’m just not prepared to wade through the news. I listen to NPR, but that’s some kind of blissful Privilegeland — oddly enough, considering that it is quite facile characterizing privilege. Still, these days, an honest effort is 50 percent of your grade.
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From WaPo: Modi’s pandemic choice: Protect his image or protect India. He chose himself.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/modis-pandemic-choice-protect-his-image-or-protect-india-he-chose-himself/2021/04/28/44cc0d22-a79e-11eb-bca5-048b2759a489_story.html
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I bought a John Pavlovitz t-shirt stating, ‘I’m elated AND vaccinated!”. I’ll be wearing it next week to my first haircut appt in 14 months.
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For a more in-depth view:
https://thenib.com/india-covid-crisis/
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