COVID, week 60: Vaccination progress, Budweiser, Fauci

More than 60 percent of adult America is at least on the road to vaccination, with at least one dose of a multi-shot vaccine, or better. And, the vaccine hesitant percentage has dropped a bit. But, the resisters and the "no way" crowd are about unchanged. This is one of a set of takeaways from new public health research on the issue by Kaiser Family Foundation. KFF also finds that "bumps" (and not necessarily straight cash payments, but things like rides to shot clinics) may help speed vaccinations. 

Globally? Zeynep Tufekci warns that the new "Indian variant," B.1.617.2, could be far more a game-changer than the British B.1.1.7 one was, especially if vaccination campaigns don't speed up.

Facebook will no longer ban Wuhan Institute of Virology lab-leak theory posts. Nieman Lab wonders about how this will play out, especially with Q types. And, despite "breathlessness" in a Wall Street Journal story prying the theory back open, Dave Leonhardt at the Old Gray Lady notes its a realistic possibility. He also notes, per Nieman, that this is NOT to say it was deliberately engineered. 

Zeynep worries this might fuel that, or, at a minimum, this will just ramp up partisan war over the issue. But, as is her wont on avoiding twosiderism, that's couched in a larger post about the failures of fact-check sites.

Sharyl Attkisson is threatening to sue Dr. Peter Hotez. She'll lose, of course, should she follow through, which she almost certainly won't, even he he rightly doesn't cave.. But, A., it's disgusting in general, and B., a reminder that any states, and the federal government, not having anti-SLAPP statutes need them.

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 Updates

1. Fauci's been busted for telling his Platonic Noble Lies in private emails as well as in public. Busted along with him are BuzzFeed and Jason Leopold for fellating him and #BlueAnon for doing the same.

1A. Fauci also stands busted for lies, lies by omission and lies by redefinition about his agency and others helping the Wuhan Institute of Virology in "gain of function" research on coronaviruses. This busting also applies to the fellow travelers above.

That said, Jonathan Cook, at that link, himself stereotypes. Not all media of the so-called "mainstream" type totally dismissed the possibility of a lab leak. I personally entertained it in the back of my mind, if but a small segment. I long have thought China lied about COVID fatalities.

Cook also ignores that some of the non-mainstream media who were making lab leak claims, or worse, did so for their own ends. Far-right media wanted to lash China; some even said WIV also had secret labs looking at weaponization. "Greenie" sites opposing ANY genetic engineering work also jumped on the bandwagon. That includes some who have linked Nicholas Wade's piece. (Cook also ignores Wade's OWN problematic background — he's a Charles Murray fellow traveler on racialism issues — as part of why more "mainstream" media may not have listened to him.) Wade himself errs when he claims all early lab leak talk focused on accident, not conspiracy. He also semi-strawmans the likes of Kristian Anderson.

2. Budweiser says "free beer" if Merika is at 70 percent by the Fourth of July. Do MAGAts, nutter types within the Greenie world, more unhinged Libertarians etc. among COVID minimalists, conspiracy theorists etc. stand by their unhingedness or do they, per Mike Shannon, eye a frosty cold mug of Bud?