The Commonwealth Fundâs August 4 report says that the US health care system ranked dead last among 11 wealthy countries, despite spending the highest percentage of GDP (17%) on health care.
The report considered 71 performance measures in five categories: access to care, the care process, administrative efficiency, health care equity and health care outcomes. The countries analyzed in the report include Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the US.
America ranked last on access to care, administrative efficiency, equity, and health care outcomes. We performed well in rates of mammography screening and influenza vaccination for older Americans, as well as the percentage of adults who talked with their physician about nutrition, smoking and alcohol use. But we had the highest infant mortality rate and lowest life expectancy at age 60, compared with all the other countries.
Eric Schneider, the lead author and senior vice president for policy and research at the Commonwealth Fund:
âThe US has two health care systems. For Americans with the means and insurance to have a regular doctor…reported experiences with their day-to-day care are relatively good, but for those who lack access, the consequences are stark.â
Our poor performance is nothing new. The US has been in last place in all seven of these studies that the Commonwealth Fund has released since 2004. This is another failure of our political system. Our politicians talk but never act.
On to cartoons. There were lots of Cuomo cartoons, little on Covid, the Olympics or infrastructure this week.
Someone should tell Cuomo the “I Grope Everybody” defense is a terrible defense. A good rule in life is not to touch people youâre not supposed to be touching. Keep your hands to yourself:
Gov. DeSantis explains Florida manâs definition of how to end Covid hesitancy:
The GOP also predicted Sharia law in America, the end of Christmas and death panels:
Remember when Obama wore a tan suit and Republicans went nuts? This week, Biden wore a tan suit to announce the big jobs increase. It was also Obamaâs birthday week. Itâs an obvious attempt to troll conservatives:
Random end-of-the-week thoughts about Covid. First, from ABC News:
âSeventy percent of US adults ages 18 and older, or roughly 180.7 million Americans, have received at least one vaccine dose, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.â
Itâs difficult to get 70% of the American people to agree on anything, but given todayâs Delta variant, somehow that doesnât seem to be nearly enough. Weâre down to a hardcore 30% who for all sorts of reasons, arrive at the same conclusion: Theyâre not getting vaccinated. Some may get vaccinated later, some will never get the shots.
That 30% is not only stopping the rest of us from getting on with a semi-normal life, but theyâre also placing the country in grave risk.
Second, itâs always good to remember that the pharmaceutical companies are in the game to make profits. Earlier this week, Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna raised prices on their vaccines. Apparently, the European Union now has to pay 25% more than it was paying for the Pfizer vaccine, and 10% more for Modernaâs. Their costs didnât go up, but their market power has increased. Pfizer has already raised its financial  estimates, telling investors it will generate $33 billion in revenues this year from selling the vaccine.
Itâs important to note that neither firm is making enough doses to vaccinate the world. Theyâre focused on production for rich countries. In general, there isnât enough vaccine supply. And this makes it much harder to bring the pandemic under control, since poorer countries just canât get the vaccines they want.
Third, Floridaâs Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said recently that immigrants are causing the spread of the Delta variant of Covid. This map from the USA Today refutes his nonsense:
High test positivity is happening nearly everywhere in America. On parts of the southern border where illegal immigration is heavy, the risk is lower than anywhere in Florida.
Hereâs Mattelâs lineup of Covid new role model dolls:
Over the decades, Mattel had been criticized for its unrealistic portrait of womanhood with its original Barbie, a white, blonde, who although turning 60 in 2019, still has that impossible physique. Mattel now offers dolls with careers such as firefighter, doctor, and astronaut, and in a range of skin tones.
These six women all have had important roles in fighting the pandemic, so thatâs something new. Also, sales of Barbie dolls last year hit a six-year high.
On Sunday, Wrongo and Ms. Right are attending a new musical, held in an outdoor tent, at the indispensable Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, CT. Goodspeed, like theaters everywhere are feeling their way forward in a time of increased infections, and weâre happy to support them.
But today is the start of the weekend, and that means itâs time for our Saturday Soother, a few minutes to disengage from the media cacophony, and focus inwardly. Itâs a short few moments in which we search for repair and renewal.
To help with that search, grab a seat outdoors if possible, and listen on your wireless headphones to Claude Debussyâs “Nuages” (‘Clouds’) from his âThree Nocturnesâ, with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. Debussy finished writing the piece in 1899. Stokowski recorded the first two of Debussyâs Nocturnes in 1937. Here is âNuagesâ, a musical impression of slow-moving clouds, taken from his 1950 recording, re-engineered to produce a better sound, and reissued on a Cala CD:
Thereâs a political crisis brewing for Democrats in the form of the now-lapsed eviction moratorium. Progressive Democrats are angry at mainstream Dems like Pelosi and Biden for failing to extend the moratorium that expired on August 1.
The moratorium was put in place 18 months ago by the CDC. It has been popular with tenants, but many of them never caught up on their bills, and/or figured out how to access the aid promised under the moratorium.
Landlords sued to end the moratorium, and last month, the Supreme Court allowed the moratorium to remain through the end of July. But at the time, Justice Kavanaugh wrote that any further extensions would require âclear and specific congressional authorizationâ via new legislation.
While Kavanaugh said that a further extension of the moratorium would require Congressional action, that wasnât the issue before the court. The issue before the court was whether to vacate a lower court stay. Their decision left the moratorium in place. When a judge expresses views beyond the specifics of the case, it is known as dicta, and is not binding.
So, the administration actually was free to extend the moratorium, and assuming the extension was later challenged in court, they could argue to the Justices that circumstances have changed. Hereâs Judd Legum: (parenthesis by Wrongo)
âFirst, the Delta variant has made it more dangerous to allow millions of evictions to proceed voluntarily. Second, the time that Kavanaugh thought would allow for the orderly distribution of the funds (one month) has not been sufficient.â
But instead, Biden wanted Congress to act. The Congressional Democrats launched an effort to extend the ban, but the House adjourned last Friday without passing a bill. Senate Democrats were also pushing for an extension but didnât have enough support that would lead to passage.
And now, the Biden administration is in a bind. Moderate Democrats along with Republicans, do not want to see the moratorium extended. Biden doesnât want it extended either, so maybe we’ll see a deluge of evictions. From The Guardian:
âMore than 15 million people live in households that owe as much as $20 billion to their landlords, according to the Aspen Institute. As of July 5, roughly 3.6 million people in the US said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the US Census Bureauâs Household Pulse Survey.â
On Sunday, Pelosi and other House leaders said that action extending the moratorium “must come from the Administration.” They said that extending the moratorium “is a moral imperative to keep people from being put out on the street which also contributes to the public health emergency.”
But itâs hard for Democrats to hold the moral high ground when they refuse to stand on it. The House hasnât interrupted its 7-week recess to address the issue.
Progressive Democrats are up in arms. Last weekend, Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) led a protest on the Capitol steps to get the attention of her colleagues and the country. She wants Congress to reconvene and extend the national eviction moratorium.
What weâre seeing here is the political power of a freshman Congressperson. Bush has the attention of the media as she sits outside the Capitol. That means the administration and senior Democrats are paying attention. These kinds of political stunts rarely work, but since the Dems are in control of the government, albeit with very slim margins, everything needs to be taken seriously.
OTOH, eviction is purely a state/local process. Itâs very difficult to really do much at the federal level. Also, landlords deserve to be paid, and able-bodied renters need to pay their bills. That’s how our system works.
The fact is that tenants and by extension, landlords were promised help and haven’t gotten it. The pandemic has caused a cascade of negative consequences at all levels. But $ billions of taxpayer funds are unused, and available to help landlords, if only they could avail themselves of the opportunity.
The system is set up to convey the payments to landlords, but renters must apply for the money, and too few either know about it, or have availed themselves of the program.
The White House wonât step in. The Dems in the House and Senate canât be bothered to delay their trips to the Hamptons and the Vineyard to solve the problem. The Republicans, the so-called party of Christianity, will do nothing to help.
Whoâs left? AOC and Cori Bush on the steps of the Capitol?
There are rumors that Biden is finally going to do something about this, but no details yet, as of this writing.
The Sensorio, Paso Robles, CA âThis Field of Light display in Paso Robles uses 60,000 fiber-optic stemmed spheres to transform 15 acres of rolling hills into an awesome light show. It is on display until January 2022. Wrongo hopes to visit it later this year.
âWe were almost there….It was only two months ago the CDC said we could put our masks away.
We were this close to getting this thing under control, to seeing one another smile, to cookouts, to visiting grandpa, to signing off Zoom, to normal. Now we see it all slipping away as inexorably as the tide going out. We return to masking up….â
But now, weâre not so close anymore, and itâs time to stop coddling the reluctants, the vaccine haters, and the angry people who are trying to kill the rest of us by doing nothing to help. Eight months after the first vaccine was approved, vaccine hesitancy persists.
This toxic individualism is making life in America more dangerous than it needs to be. Vaccine mandates are needed. People need to recognize that their choices have consequences. And if it upsets a few politicians and pundit types, so be it.
And vaccinated Americans are getting fed up with being put at risk and potentially forced into further restrictive measures by the politically hostile and belligerently unvaccinated. Many red states have pre-emptively banned any public or private measures to implement restrictions based on vaccination status.
One result is that a wave of businesses, schools and government agencies are spontaneously considering vaccine mandates to lead the country in the exactly right direction. Their efforts are popular, as new polling by The COVID States Project shows:
They questioned a national sample of 20,669 adults between June 9th and July 7th. From the survey:
64% of respondents said in June or July that theyâd support government vaccine requirements.
70% said theyâd support vaccine requirements to get on an airplane; 61% support requiring children to be vaccinated to go to school; and 66% support requiring college students to be vaccinated to attend a university.
But as with everything in America, not everyone thinks the same way:
A majority of every demographic subgroup except Republicans said theyâd support vaccine requirements. Only 45% of Republicans said they approve of such mandates.
A majority of respondents in all but three states â Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota â said they support requirements that everyone be vaccinated.
One argument for implementing mandates is that many who remain unvaccinated are increasingly open to it. Nationwide, 16% of those unvaccinated today say theyâll get the vaccine if required, the Kaiser Family Foundation reports. Â Thatâs more than the 14% who said they would never get the vaccine.
Those who havenât or wonât get vaccinated probably have noticed that the rest of us have gotten angry about having to go back to wearing masks because of them. The nudge could be a mandate, or it could be institutions setting up unpleasant alternatives to getting vaccinated, like more frequent testing or required indoor masking.
âMandates wouldnât necessarily be easy to impose, even with those who arenât hard-core anti-vaccination. More than 150 workers…resigned…after Houston Methodist required them to get the vaccine this summer. (A federal judge had tossed a lawsuit against the hospitalâs mandate).â
This becomes a question of whether workersâ individual rights can be compromised in the name of public health. It may not be possible to make getting vaccinated a condition of employment, but a company, a hospital or a government agency would be within its rights to enforce a regime of daily testing for unvaccinated employees.
Employer mandates may just be the thing that turns the tide:
Since Bidenâs election, the Republican strategy has been simple: sabotage the administrationâs goal of vaccine-based herd immunity. The idea is that either pandemic-weary voters will rebel at the prospect of a new round of mandates, or the virus will overload ICUs and kill another million Americans by the midterms, which Republicans can blame on Biden and Democrats. Thatâs something Trump is already doing.
The right is whining about how they won’t take the vaccine without FDA approval. Itâs deeply disingenuous for them to whine about the FDA when they willingly took Hydroxychloroquine.
Maybe the FDA should just put the vaccine in Mountain Dew.
Time to wake up America! Letâs end the toxic individualism by taking the shot, so we all can get on with our lives.
To help you wake up, listen to Jack Antonoff, a music producer whoâs worked with Taylor Swift, Lorde, and Lana Del Rey. Heâs got a solo project, Bleachers, and here is Bleachersâ tune âStop Making This Hurtâ, that touches on the theme of mental health and dealing with a notion of inescapable darkness:
Ars Technica reported that on Wednesday, the USDA released a survey of the wild deer population in four states that found large numbers of the animals have been exposed to the virus that causes Covid. The study shows that the antibodies ranged from a low of 7% of the samples in Illinois to a high of 60% in Michigan. Overall, a third of the deer tested had antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid.
This means that there’s a very large population of wild animals in North America that may serve as a reservoir for the virus, even if we manage to contain its spread among the human population.
Why check deer? The USDA is studying a variety of species to identify which may serve as hosts for the virus, and like mink, deer show evidence of wide-scale infection. It’s possible that these numbers came from a rare transmission by humans to deer, followed by extensive spread within the deer population.
Scientists think that understanding how the transmission took place is critical to determining whether the existence of a large viral reservoir in deer poses a threat to humans. But the truly bad news is that deer are notoriously anti-vaxx. On to cartoons.
Itâs not just deer, itâs the sheep, but Charles Darwin approves:
This is why the job is so difficult:
GOP thinks that the Capital Cops who testified in Congress were weaklings:
New disclosures about Trump and the election make it harder for the GOP to hold the line:
Conservatives ought to walk the talk against Biles. Gotta love that right-wing crop top:
Rain on the way, Factory Butte, UT – May 2021 photo by armitage2112
It was a big week for political news, but the most explosive story of the week concerned Covid and the delta variant. On Friday, the WaPo reported that a scientific analysis of a Covid outbreak in Provincetown on Cape Cod, MA, showed that 74% of the people who became infected had been fully vaccinated.
Also, the infected but vaccinated people had received all the approved vaccines: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.
Worse, the study found that vaccinated individuals carried as much virus in their noses as unvaccinated individuals, and that vaccinated people could spread the virus to each other. As of Thursday, 882 people were tied to the Provincetown outbreak. Among those living in Massachusetts, 74% of them were fully immunized. Officials said the vast majority also reported symptoms. But just seven people were hospitalized.
Also, officials tested specimens from 133 people and found the delta variant in 90% of them.
On Thursday, another WaPo story about a CDC internal document estimated that 35,000 vaccinated people a week in the US are having symptomatic breakthrough infections. This is out of a vaccinated population of more than 162 million Americans. That internal CDC document also reported that the delta variant is as transmissible as chickenpox.
So, it looks like itâs time once again to recalibrate our thinking about Covid.
The CDC report says that thereâs evidence that vaccinated people can also spread the more transmissible delta variant, right along with the unvaccinated. That both groups can spread the virus is likely the key factor in the current summer surge of infections.
Thereâs a whole lot of finger pointing going on over this. The right is blaming the CDC for being inconsistent, and the Republicans in Congress are trying to make the possible instituting of a vaccine mandate along with re-instituting a mask mandate, into another political issue.
What House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) fails (purposely) to understand is that since the virus is changing, our response needs to also change. This variant is much more contagious than the original variants. We should all be working to defeat the virus, not trying to score political points on each other. And McCarthy is vaccinated, although 65 GOP members of the House are not.
Republican Congressman Roger Marshall (KS) is an MD. He said on PBS yesterday that masks do absolutely nothing to prevent the spread of disease. And he’s a Republican OBGYN, so he should know, right?
Nobody in the world, much less in the CDC, knew exactly how virulent these Covid variants would be. Epidemiologists hoped that people would get quickly vaccinated and help end the unchecked spread of the virus. That didnât happen, in large part because right-wing media has actively stoked the culture wars, while GOP politicians run alongside, hoping to take control of the House in the 2022 mid-terms.
Once again, this means we’re dealing with a bad faith crowd that will scream about any contradictions. You’re not allowed to change your mind. You’re not allowed to admit you were wrong. You’re not allowed to accommodate new evidence.
Borrowing from driving your car, your mask is your seat belt. Your vaccination is your airbag.
On to the weekend and our Saturday Soother. Weâre seeing an invasion of Japanese beetles on the fields of Wrong. Ms. Right went to the Agway and bought one of those old-fashioned beetle traps, a long green plastic bag topped by a lure with the scent of roses. It has captured a very satisfying number of beetles, but itâs difficult to say what percentage have not fallen victim to Ms. Rightâs lures.
Friday marked the return of the summer session of the BBC Proms in London, after an 18+ month absence due to Covid. Friday night led off with Ralph Vaughan Williamsâs âSerenade to Musicâ. It premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in 1938. Williams also wrote the piece for 16 vocal soloists and orchestra in 1938. He adapted the text from a discussion about music in Act V, Scene 1 of Shakespeareâs âTheâ Merchantâ ofâ Veniceâ.
Vaughan Williams later arranged the piece into versions for chorus and orchestra and for solo violin and orchestra. Since Wrongo doesnât appreciate the operatic singing of Shakespeare, this is the orchestral version, played by the Northern Sinfonia of England, conducted by Richard Hickox. The violinist is Bradley Creswick:
The video includes wonderfully atmospheric paintings by the Victorian era artist John Atkinson Grimshaw.
âIn the United States, this pandemic couldâve been over by now, and certainly wouldâve been by Labor Day. If the pace of vaccination through the summer had been anything like the pace in April and May, the country would be nearing herd immunity. With most adults immunized, new and more infectious coronavirus variants would have nowhere to spread. Life could return nearly to normal.â
More:
âWhen pollsters ask about vaccine intentions, they record a 30-point gap: 88% of Democrats, but only 54% of Republicans, want to be vaccinated as soon as possible. All told, Trump support predicts a stateâs vaccine refusal better than average income or education level.â
Wrongoâs patience is nearly at an end with these people. It will be fully at an end once vaccinations are available to the 12 and under crowd. Then, let the anti-vaxxers go one-on-one with the virus to see who wins. Wrongo will say to them, “mask up if you want to live, or donâtâ. On to cartoons.
GOP tries on a new vax message:
And even Fox tries walking it back:
And itâs not just at home:
McCarthy rolls his ball of dung back to the GOP caucus:
The Summer Olympics start next Saturday in Tokyo. Nobody knows how they will go, but the Olympic village just reported its first case of Covid. And Tokyo reported a six-month high in cases.
That doesnât sound like an auspicious start for an event that has already been postponed for a year.
The reason itâs taking place at all is money. NBC and the International Olympic Committee agreed to a $7.75 billion rights deal in 2014 thatâs designed to keep the Olympics on NBC through 2032. And there are hundreds of sponsors signed up for commercials during the more than 7,000 hours of coverage scheduled across its variety of networks from July 23 to August 8.
As Felix Salmon writes, the Olympics haven’t made financial sense in decades. Host cities spend billions preparing for the games. They inevitably suffer massive cost overruns, and go deep into debt, with a lasting legacy of little more than a group of buildings that are a monument to failure.
The 2008 Beijing summer Olympics cost $45 billion; its revenues were $3.6 billion, most of which went to the International Olympic Committee. Russiaâs Sochi winter Olympics in 2014 cost about $50 billion and had even lower revenues.
The Tokyo Olympics will cost about $28 billion and the decision to ban spectators means foregoing another $1 billion in ticket sales. So, while winning an Olympic medal represents the pinnacle of athletic achievement in most sports, the edifice that supports standing on the podium is crumbling. On to cartoons.
Biden may need to choose his words better:
Bidenâs tune is nice, the words are true:
GOPâs attacks on culture wars hit a new low. Itâs always the one on the left:
Recent books say the Former Guy attempted a coup. Republicans say not so:
Most Republicans are happy to excuse TFGâs behavior:
Ruby Beach Overlook, Â Olympic NP, WA – 2021 photo by Erwin Buske
COVID-19 cases in the US have soared 121% in the past two weeks. Hospitalizations have jumped 26%. Â and deaths are up by 9%. Infections have more than doubled in 22 states, DC, and Puerto Rico in the past 14 days. The counties with the biggest jump in new cases are overwhelmingly in Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Georgia, and Louisiana. The delta variant is alive and well, and on the move!
We should now be calling it the plague of the unvaccinated.
Ignorance is going to ruin this country. Look at what so many conservatives believe: The coronavirus vaccine is either harmful, useless, or a government plot to control our bodies; that the 2020 election was rigged and the Former Guy won; and that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was mostly a stroll by tourists through the building. Hereâs conservative Fox News person Tomi Lahren tweeting about Covid:
Like most anti-Covid conservatives, she didnât bother to check the facts. Perhaps she thinks that just stating what she believes makes it true. Sheâs wrong.
Yes, Covid has âa high survival rate for most people,â but that doesnât mean what Lahren thinks it means. The attitude of conservatives, that Covid is only a little worse than a bad case of the flu, ignores the reality that more than 624,000 Americans have died from it so far.
Despite what conservatives would have us believe, taking or not taking a Covid vaccine isnât about personal freedom. Itâs not about a tyrannical Big Government forcing people to accept an awful fate. In a world where nearly 99% of new Covid deaths are occurring among the unvaccinated, it doesnât take a PhD to figure out what the unvaccinated should be doing.
It turns out that confidence in science is split heavily along party lines, according to a Friday Gallup poll. The survey found that Democrats are very confident in science, with 79% saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence, compared to just 45% percent of Republicans who said the same.
This also has to do with the Christian Right, which has been hostile to science ever since the Scopes trial. Itâs fine if they donât believe in evolution. But itâs a big problem when we’re trying to put Covid in the rear view. Science is true whether you believe in it or not, and their ignorance is lethal.
Conservatives like Tomi Lahren, go through life angry and suspicious of most things. Itâs their brand to be anti-government and anti-science. Itâs on brand for them to assume the worst of others. To the contrary, the bottom line is simple: We have a tool that can lead us out of the pandemic, but some people are too arrogant, ignorant, or suspicious to use it.
What makes this so terrible is that there are many, many times in our history when Americans have pulled together to defeat a common threat. But we no longer trust each other enough to pull together for the common good.
Americans really should be better than this. We used to be.
Time to forget about dickheads like Lahren. Time to leave voting rights, infrastructure bills and fires in the West behind. It’s time to take a beat and have a Saturday Soother! In northwest Connecticut, weâre recovering from unusual amounts of rain, precisely when it is really needed elsewhere in the country. This weekend brings trimming of the crabapple trees, attending to our tomato plants and spraying weed killer on the fields of Wrong.
But before all of that starts, letâs kick back and brew a cup of Baby Dragons coffee ($28/12 oz.) from San Diegoâs Nostalgia Coffee Roasters. A review says that you should taste the resonant, long, flavor-laden finish with notes of lychee and chocolate.
Now, put on your wireless headphones, take a seat by a window, and listen to Frederic Chopinâs âFantaisie Impromptu in C sharp minorâ, Op. 66. This piece was written in 1834, but was first published posthumously in 1855, despite Chopin’s wishes that none of his unpublished works ever be published. We’re lucky his wishes werenât followed!
Here, itâs played by Anastasia Huppmann, a Russian-born Austrian concert pianist, live in Vienna:
Watch her absolutely amazing technique! You will recognize the melody of the Fantaisie-Impromptu‘s middle section as the music in the popular song “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows“.
If you had said in 2016 when Trump got elected, that by 2021, America would lose more than 600,000 people to Covid, Wrongo would have been shocked.
Worse, that after 34 million US Covid cases, about a third of our adult population would refuse to take an effective (and safe) vaccine, developed under a Republican administration? To both, Wrongo would have said, âAmerica wonât ever get that screwed upâ.
Wrongo was well, wrong. And itâs worse than that. Axios reports that Republican state lawmakers around the country are pushing bills that would give unvaccinated people similar protections as those that protect race, gender and religion.
âThese bills would tie the hands of private businesses that want to protect their employees and customers. But they also show how deep into the political psyche resistance to coronavirus vaccine requirements has become, and how vaccination status has rapidly become a marker of identity….On a national scale, well-known GOP figures have recently escalated their rhetoric about the vaccination effort, comparing it to Nazi Germany and apartheid.â
This movement is widespread and growing. Many Republican-led states have already enacted restrictions on vaccine mandates, or on vaccine âpassports.â Some states are trying to make it illegal for governments or private businesses to treat unvaccinated people any differently than vaccinated people, by using the same language that exists in the federal civil rights law.
The states with restrictions on vaccine requirements tend to have lower vaccination rates than those without such laws, and in many of them, Covid cases are on the rise.  For example, Montana has made it illegal to âdiscriminateâ on the basis of vaccine status, with a few exceptions in the health care sector.
This isnât a civil rights issue in the modern sense (race, color, creed), but Republicans are trying to frame it as an economic rights issue. The original Civil Rights Act of 1866 involved mostly economic issues such as the right to enter a contract. However, back then, the basis for the statute was racial discrimination despite the fact that the right being protected was “economic”.
The Montana Republicans arenât trying to protect a “right” based on a traditionally recognized status. Theyâre simply saying that businesses can’t refuse service to anyone. It’s like saying that a Montana business can’t refuse service to someone with no shoes or shirt.
You would think that this means Republicans are saying that theyâre fine with businesses being heavily regulated by the government regarding who they choose to have as customers. But what theyâre really saying is if people are unvaccinated for Covid, they must be served.
But if the customer wants to purchase a gay wedding cake? No way in hell!
The national vaccination effort is increasingly dependent on partnerships with various institutions, like schools and employers, to encourage more people to get vaccinated. This is an effort to undermine those partnerships.
In total, about 85 million people voted in person. The share of ballots cast by mail jumped to 46%, from 21% in 2016. The counties where a higher share of votes were cast in person on election day, also had higher Covid case rates: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âHolding other variables constant, the gap in in-person voting on election day between the state with the highest rate in our data (Alabama, at 41% of the population) and the lowest (Arizona, at 6%) was associated with an extra 173 cases per 100,000 people. This implies that if no one had voted in person on election day, 220,000 fewer people would have been diagnosed with Covid-19â.
The Economist says that from mid-October to early November, Covid cases in counties in states with the  highest in-person turnout were no higher than in areas with the lowest in-person voting rates. But a week after the election, positive tests became more common in places with the largest in-person turnout on Election Day. The conclusion is that many people caught the virus while standing in line to vote.
We know that the states which prevented, or limited vote-by-mail were largely GOP-controlled. They  tended to have people with relatively low levels of income and education. They also tended to have those votes in 2016 for The Former Guy.
Republicans! Why is there an almost direct correlation between those who voted for The Former Guy, and those who wonât get a COVID vaccination?
Their narrative goes something like this: Covid was a weaponized virus leaked from a lab in China. It was designed to kill Americans, but we shouldnât defeat their nefarious scheme by taking the vaccine the Trump administration developed, because Covid is a hoax. Itâs a harmless virus, and the vaccine isnât safe.
