Corona-zona

In a controversial and widely-read essay  published recently, Jonathan Haidt argues that during the last ten years politics have become "uniquely stupid" because of the internet. If that is true then the last three years of pandemic politics is the poster child. Most of the COVIDiocy we've seen has taken place on the internet, and whatever has happened in person was organized on the internet. It's where anti-vaxxers denounce a miracle of modern medicine and get rich selling their supplements and quack cures. It's where anti-maskers organize rallies to rail against mask mandates. This is happening despite the efforts of search services to demote links to fake news. I challenge you try and find an anti-vaxxer link on Google using keywords like "COVID vaccine side effects" or "COVID vaccine dangers." If you get anything it will be buried deep in the results. So why does this garbage continue to circulate and influence people? An article just o...

  To be honest, I thought (and hoped) I would be running out of things to blog about by now. But damn, interesting/important news just keeps coming.  Here are three brief items for your reading enjoyment. If You Have a Fake Vaccine Card, Don't Do This Dumb blonde, Tik-Toker, and Anti-Vaxxer, and Biden hater @notsamantharose17 thought it would be cool to troll the libs by showing off her fake vaccine card . She proudly did so while lip-synching the song What You Gonna Do About It? Only one problem. Her actual identifying info was plainly shown on the card she was displaying. Oops! A user named @thatdaneshguy (whose hobby is apparently reporting online criminals ) decided what he would do about it is report her to the FBI. Having a fake vaccine card is a felony . YouTube Bans Top Anti-Vaxxers—Too Little Too Late YouTube has  banned top anti-vaxxers like Joseph Mercola and Robert Kennedy Jr. and deleted 30,000 of their videos.  Good move guys, but you should have ...

Last night on the news I heard/saw rather breathless coverage of how bad the coronavirus outbreak is becoming in Japan. A "frightening spike" in cases according to the BBC . "Record breaking cases" leading to and expanded "state of emergency" according to NPR . One conjures images of Godzilla wreaking havoc on Tokyo. Everybody has been expecting things to go south over there, given the country's low vaccination rate . A reliable source told me the low rate is partly because the Japanese got started very late with vaccinations. That's because they believe they are "genetically distinct" and wouldn't approve vaccines for use until they had been clinically tested on Japanese people.  M'kay. Now infections are cranking up just in time for the "2020" Olympics. But how bad are things over there, really?   Well, no doubt cases are spiking.  Here is a chart from Our World in Data  showing the seven-day trailing average over the ...