Anthony Fauci Tells Anti-Vaxxers to Sit Down and STFU as COVID Cases Surge

One of the most frustrating aspects of many conservatives’ refusal to follow the advice of health experts when it comes to COVID-19 is that they don’t want to wear masks or social distance, they’re demanding that life go back to normal, and yet they won’t do the most important thing when it comes to putting the pandemic behind us, i.e. get the damn vaccine. So, you’ll have to excuse Anthony Fauci (and the rest of the Joe Biden administration) if they’re at-the-end-their-ropes piqued with what we would never dare call, but someone slightly less decorous might, these selfish mother-f–king idiots.

Appearing on CNN on Saturday—one day after Biden said social media companies like Facebook are “killing” people by allowing vaccine misinformation to spread, a critique he later clarified by saying he meant that about a dozen of Facebook’s users are killing people with misinformation—Fauci said if the world had had to deal with these anti-science pundits in years past, it never would’ve made it out alive. Asked by Jim Acosta if he thought “we could have defeated the measles or eradicated polio if you had Fox News, night after night, warning people about these vaccine issues that are just bunk,” Fauci responded, “We probably would still have smallpox, and we probably would still have polio in this country if we had the kind of false information that’s being spread now.”

Fauci, of course, has been the right’s arch nemesis since the very start of the pandemic, thanks to the fact that he represents all the things they despise (science, multiple degrees), and not only told people what to do in the midst of a global health crisis, but displayed a treasonous level of disrespect by not blindly agreeing with every single thing Donald Trump said about the virus, never once telling reporters, “Actually, I think injecting bleach into your veins is a great idea and I’m personally going to try it tonight.” All of which would just be another day in GOP crazy town if not for the fact that literal lives are at stake. Which, of course, they are.

In an analysis published on Monday, The Washington Post showed that the coronavirus is surging among the unvaccinated, particularly where the “more contagious, more powerful” delta variant has gained a foothold.

The adjusted rates in several states show the pandemic is spreading as fast among the unvaccinated as it did during the winter surge. Florida, Arkansas, Missouri, Nevada, and Louisiana all have coronavirus case spikes among the unvaccinated, with adjusted rates double or triple the adjusted national rate.

“We are on an exponential curve,” said Mark Williams, dean of the Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. “The delta variant is a different animal than the wild [original] variant. It is far more infectious and far more virulent.” Williams expects the case rate among unvaccinated people to push higher than the winter surge. “I don’t see at the minute how we can avoid it,” he said.

Like deaths, hospitalizations from COVID-19 are almost entirely limited to unvaccinated patients. When current hospital utilization is spread across only the unvaccinated population, Nevada, Missouri, Arkansas, and Florida have rates between double and triple the adjusted national rate. “Ninety-eight percent of hospitalized individuals with COVID in Arkansas are unvaccinated,” Williams said. Even though treatments are better than they were originally, a larger share of patients are ending up in intensive care, and the fatality rate for those patients remains high, experts said.

“That’s just indicative of the more virulent quality of the delta variant,” Williams told the Post. “It will make people sick, even people that are young and would not have felt any consequence from the original wild variant.” He added that “far more children are being hospitalized,” which was extremely rare until now, saying that as of the middle of July, a dozen kids were in Arkansas Children’s Hospital, and two were on ventilators. He also fears that there will be an uptick in cases in the fall in places such as Arkansas, where masks and vaccine mandates are being banned, when schools and colleges reopen. “That’s kind of like a viruses playground. There will be a lot of transmission going on,” Williams said.

“With the arrival of delta, we will have two very different epidemics—one a mild cold in vaccinated individuals, and then we continue to have deadly infections in unvaccinated individuals,” William Powderly, director of the Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis, told the Post. “The people who need to come to hospital, who end up in the intensive care unit, and the people who die are almost exclusively unvaccinated individuals.

But according to conservatives, vaccines are for suckers and anyone trying to convince you otherwise is a Nazi. Which, among other things, gives Nazis a lot of credit!

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In other Trump crime news

Prosecutors are said to be working to flip Trump Organization chief operating officer Matthew Calamari, who allegedly received similar fringe benefits to the ones Allen Weisselberg did. Per CNN:

Calamari…is among a small group of top company executives with a close relationship to Trump who could possibly help prosecutors in their ongoing investigation.… Prosecutors started talking to Calamari’s legal team before the indictment and have continued those discussions in the two weeks since it was unsealed by a Manhattan judge.… Because Trump doesn’t use email, prosecutors would likely need a witness to testify about his intent and his understanding of the law to have grounds to charge him with a crime. Prosecutors have not charged Trump with any crime.

Calamari, and his son Matthew Calamari Jr., who also works at the company, have been under scrutiny by prosecutors over whether they properly paid taxes on subsidized rent and cars they received as benefits from the company, CNN has previously reported. The Calamaris weren’t indicted earlier this month when the Manhattan district attorney’s office charged the company and Weisselberg, with a 15-year alleged tax scheme, saying they systematically avoided paying payroll taxes and income taxes on fringe benefits including rent-free apartments, cars, and private school tuition.… Trump discovered Calamari at the 1981 U.S. Open tennis tournament after he liked the way Calamari, working security, handled hecklers at a match. Calamari got his start at the Trump Organization as a security guard and rose through the ranks to become the director of security. He grew close to Trump during a stint serving as his personal bodyguard and was eventually promoted to chief operating officer. “I love the guy,” Calamari once told Bloomberg News of Trump. “My thing is, I’ve always promised I would, knock on wood, never let anything happen to him.”

Nicholas Gravante, a lawyer representing the Calamaris, suggested Matthew Senior would have nothing of use to share with investigators, which isn’t exactly the same thing as saying, no, he would never cooperate against Trump. “This is a financial investigation. My client has nothing to do with the financial running of the company,” Gravante told CNN. “He is the chief operating officer. He is involved with security, doormen, building managers, construction, superintendents. He manages security and operations; he is not a financial person. This notion that he could cooperate is entirely speculative—cooperate as to what?”

Jim Jordan of the Ohio Jordans, and also the same Jordan who claimed the election was stolen before it even happened 

First Capitol rioter convicted on felony charges gets eight months in prison

Which, as author Ari Berman points out, seems pretty light compared to other sentences handed down by the justice system, for reasons one can probably pretty easily put their finger on.

While the sentencing guidelines for Paul Hodgkins ranged from 15 to 21 months, with the Justice Department asking for 18, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss said that though it is “essential to send a message that this type of conduct is utterly unacceptable and that grave damage was done to our country that day,” he does not not believe Hodgkins is a threat and simply made “some very bad decisions that day.”

Elsewhere!

Dow drops 700 points for its worst drop since October as investors fear a COVID resurgence (CNBC)

CDC tells individuals to “avoid travel” to the U.K. as COVID cases rise (CNBC)

Tokyo Olympics hit by trifecta of discouraging news amid COVID fears (NBC News)

Vegas Mother-Son Duo Swindled Investors in Crypto Scam, SEC Says (Bloomberg)

How the New Child Tax Credit Is Already Changing Lives (Intelligencer)

Neumann’s Payday From WeWork Bigger Than Previously Known, New Book Says (Bloomberg)

Leon Black Reveals Intimate Details in Denial of Sexual Assault (Bloomberg)

Robot that can “read emotions” keeps getting fired from jobs (NYP)

“I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice president, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me” (Hive)

Florida man arrested for allegedly trying to throw alligator onto roof to “teach it lesson” (Independent)

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