Italy has restricted the activities of the unvaccinated to protect the vast majority who are vaccinated and to curb the spread of COVID. The Washington Post reported on the constrained life of a musician.
OSIGO, Italy — After many rounds of rules targeting the unvaccinated, the chamber musician’s new life is unrecognizable from the old. Claudio Ronco once performed all over Europe, but now he can’t even board a plane. He can’t check into a hotel, eat at restaurant or get a coffee at a bar. Most important, he can’t use the water taxis needed to get around Venice, his home for 30 years — a loss of mobility that recently prompted him to gather up two of his prized cellos, lock up his Venetian apartment and retreat with his wife to a home owned by his in-laws one hour away in the hills.
“Isolation,” Ronco called it, on the fourth day in a row that he hadn’t left the house.
At this complicated stage of the pandemic, the lives of unvaccinated people are in major flux, at the mercy of decisions made everywhere from courts to workplaces. But their lives are changing most dramatically in a handful of countries in Western Europe, including Italy, where governments are systematically reducing their liberties, while beginning to return the rest of society to a state of normalcy. And while regular testing, until recently, was permitted as an alternative to vaccination, even that option has now been largely removed as countries harden their mandates. For people like Ronco, the choice is to get inoculated or face exclusion.
It’s a whole lot easier to do that in Italy than here in the US. I’m not saying that it’s impossible, but our geographical size, large population, and income gap make it much more difficult to accomplish. The biggest problem here are the individual people screaming about their “Freedom” to do as they please regardless of wanting to live in a civilized, democratic society.
LisaM,
I wrote a post a few weeks ago called “The Sad, Unfree Life of the Anti-Vaxxer,” which made the point that anti-vaxxers are not free at all. Most places of public accommodation are closed to them. They will eventually be hermits.
Good. They are a positive danger to everyone else in society and should be treated that way. The only possible excuse is for those relatively small number of individuals who have legitimate medical exemptions (and that’s a far smaller number than those who’ve claimed them.) Nothing else should excuse them, especially “religious exemptions” that are nothing more than cynical excuses for personal preference and stupidity. There is simply no reason that the responsible majority who have been vaccinated and boosted should have to continue to curtail our lives because a recalcitrant minority refuse to do what is necessary to curb a pandemic. Let them suffer the consequences of their actions, especially given that most of these yahoos would be the first in any other circumstance to insist that other must take responsibility for their situation.
and it is in the actual screaming: yelling, bellowing, whooping and loudly rallying are known to ‘spew’ the virus for the longest distance
I thought it was all about freedom…to stay home…how ironic.
Ha. No freedom for the unvaccinated. Unless they live on a farm.
Maybe a different solution is to have one health care system for the vaccinated with vaccinated staff, and one health care system for the unvaccinated with unvaccinated staff. (Exemptions for patients not eligible to take the vaccine.)
That would solve a lot of the problems facing overstressed hospitals and allow better care for breakthrough cases.
“where governments are systematically reducing their liberties, while beginning to return the rest of society to a state of normalcy. ”
Year, personal liberties are reduced to maintain the public‘s liberties. This is how it needs to be.
Beautifully, beautifully said, Máté!
Gotta admit, that’s about as succinctly honest as it gets.
Sounds like Ronco could use a Pocket Fisherman…
Obama’s birthday bash required proof of vaccination for attendance, yet 63 people from that gathering tested positive for COVID within two weeks, and that was before Omicron, which seems to be infecting vaccinated people at an alarming rate (yes, yes, I know, the unvaccinated are less likely to be hospitalized or die – but they’re still infectious). Meanwhile, the CDC, at the request of the CEO of Delta Airlines, reduced the quarantine period from 10 days (already too short) to 5 days, even though the science that we all supposedly follow says that people are still infectious after 5 days. But, yes, let’s celebrate those deplorable unvaccinated people losing their civil liberties and being confined to isolation. Maybe we can make special camps for the unvaccinated. I think there are some precedents in history for that….
The CDC was totally politicized during the Trump maladministration and remains so today. It can no longer be called, except in jest, a scientific organization.
Bob, dienne77 is lying again. I wish Diane Ravitch would ban her because this blog should not be a place for people to spread lies. I don’t care if this person has a different opinion but amplifying lies that one can only find on the right wing websites tells you this person is s right wing troll.
“63 people from that gathering tested positive for COVID within two weeks”
This is just baloney. An utter and complete lie.
I googled it and I saw that back then there were a few far right rabidly pro-Trump media sources that dienne77 clearly gets her information from that used that 63 number but even most of them were not as blatantly lying as dienne77 does and they made it clear that there were 63 CASES in the community, none of which could be traced back to the party.
There wasn’t a huge rise in COVID cases among people who either attended or worked at Obama’s birthday party. Cases did rise in Martha’s Vineyard during that time that was at the height of tourist season.
I think Obama having the party was idiotic, but that doesn’t excuse that dienne77 has to lie about it to push some right wing narrative about how we are being so mean to anti-vaxxers whose civil rights are being violated.
I criticized the media for letting Trump and the Republicans lie and lie with impunity.
But we are just as bad if we all let these falsehoods on this blog just go uncorrected.
Bob, did YOU believe that 63 people from Obama’s birthday party got COVID within 2 weeks?
If you did believe it, you got played. That’s how insidious these right wing trolls are.
I so hope that Diane will NOT ban Dienne77.
I so enjoy reading Dienne77’s posts. They make my day.
Yeah, it was always enjoyable in 2016 to have the news media replay quotes from Trump.
The problem is when people believe the lies.
Bob, you didn’t say whether you believed that 63 people from Obama’s birthday party tested positive for COVID within 2 weeks. Did you automatically believe it, or did you automatically treat that fact the way you would if Trump said something, knowing it was just as likely to be a lie as the truth?
Because that’s what people said about Trump. They all “enjoyed” listening to him in 2016 — he was entertaining. They saw no need to care about whether what he said was true or false.
The repercussions of that are still being felt today.
I don’t blame Trump voters. After all, if the media presents him as someone “enjoyable” and believes it is irrelevant whether half of what he is saying is blatantly false, why would people doubt his word? Eventually, they assume that if this person was lying, someone as smart as Bob Shepherd would say something.
And I am positive that many readers would read this post and assume that 63 people who attended Obama’s birthday party tested positive for COVID within 2 weeks.
Maybe you don’t think it matters if it is true. That’s what people said about Trump, too.
I have long thought our country is in grave danger, but now I realize it is even graver than I thought.
63 people on Martha’s Vineyard tested positive for Covid following Obama’s birthday party. However, MV has 17,000 year-round residents. So, attributing this to Obama’s party makes little sense. It’s my understanding that people were required to be vaccinated and that the party was scaled back from its original guest list, but it was a dumb (and insensitive) thing to do anyway. Not by any stretch of imagination as dumb as were Trump’s many superspreader events, but dumb nonetheless.
Bob,
You didn’t answer my question. dienne77 said that 63 people FROM OBAMA’S BIRTHDAY GATHERING – who were all vaccinated – tested positive within 2 weeks.
Why are you even bringing up what happened in the community since that has nothing to do with what dienne77 told us happened?
I asked you if you read that and believed it or thought it was a lie.
And instead you bring up community spread?? Which has nothing to do with the lie that dienne77 posted above.
Why?
dienne77 posted a falsehood about vaccinated people getting COVID (before Omnicrom) to support her opinion that there is no need to treat unvaxxed people so meanly because vaccinated people at Obama’s party spread COVID and 63 of them tested positive soon after attending that party.
It wasn’t true.
Like I say, our country is in a lot more danger than I thought.
Bob says: “attributing this to Obama’s party makes little sense.”
I repeat, dienne77 did not “attribute this to Obama’s party”.
dienne77 stated that 63 people FROM THAT GATHERING test positive for COVID within two weeks.
I feel like I did back in 2016 when a very few voices were pointing out Trump’s lies, and the news media kept defending it as “the gist” of it was true by changing the definition of truth into something that no longer meant INTENT TO DECEIVE.
Saying that 63 vaccinated people who attended Obama’s gathering tested positive for COVID within the next 2 weeks was an INTENT TO DECEIVE.
I don’t understand why you would change the words of what dienne77 posted to somehow justify the gist of it being true.
It was an intent to deceive. So depressing to me to hear you enabling it.
63 people FROM THAT GATHERING test positive for COVID within two weeks
Well, that’s simply false. Whether it was an intent to deceive–who knows? And no, I did not enable this. Dienne77 decides what Dienne77 posts. I find her posts amusing.
very few voices were pointing out Trump’s lies
People have been pointing out Trump’s lies for decades. I long ago suggested that when Trump eventually shuffles off this mortal coil, his tombstone should read
Here lies Donald Trump,
but that’s nothing new.
“Well, that’s simply false. Whether it was an intent to deceive–who knows? And no, I did not enable this. Dienne77 decides what Dienne77 posts. I find her posts amusing.”
Substitute Trump in that sentence.
That is exactly how Trump is treated.
“Whether it was an intent to deceive – who knows? And no, I did not enable this. Trump decides what Trump says. I find his speeches amusing.”
I fear for democracy for this very reason.
Democracy will survive Dienne77.
But you are right that it very well might not survive the enabling of Trump’s lies.
In my opinion, democracy will not survive as we become more and more complacent and enabling of lies being part of our public discourse because we view it as amusing instead of wrong.
But if I’m wrong, great.
I totally understand your argument, NYCPSP. But still, I would miss Dienne77 here, not because I often agree with her but because she provokes interesting replies. Stories need an antagonist. A professor of mine once called this “the nuts in the Hershey bar theory of literature.” Or, different metaphor–the grain of sand around which the pearl forms.
And, Dienne often raises uncomfortable realities. I applaud that. I was recently attacked in these comments because I mentioned that the U.S. dropped the atomic bombs on two civilian cities, which today would be crimes against humanity under international law, and that these things were done when the Japanese were themselves already debating surrender terms and when many of the cities of Japan had already been turned into moonscapes by conventional bombing. There are truths that people just don’t want to hear.
Donald Trump also raises uncomfortable realities. Really, he does. Every authoritarian leader who ever ruled also raised “uncomfortable realities” among their lies.
But they are nothing like you Bob, because you raise uncomfortable realities by being as truthful as you can. If you get something wrong and someone points it out, you correct it.
There is nothing wrong with having a difference of opinion. There are conservatives who I read who have a different opinion. It is possible to have a different opinion, but cite factual reasons for it.
There is something incredibly wrong when someone’s lies are excused because they bring up “uncomfortable realities” — frankly it is exactly the same type of excuse I heard since 2016 to normalize Trump. Every Trump supporter I know minimizes his lies because at other times he “tells it like it is”. That’s what makes propaganda work.
I don’t care if someone agrees with me and brings up opinions I am very comfortable with. If they are willing to cite blatant untruths — propaganda – then they need to be called out and marginalized.
I am pretty sympathetic to the idea of school re-openings. But when I see people citing untruths and incredibly flawed research to support their point of view, they lose all credibility.
That’s why I came to completely oppose charter schools. I used to think they were a reasonable idea.
But the more people supported them by using lies and intentionally cherry picked statistics clearly designed to mislead, the more I opposed them. I kept looking for people supporting them by telling the truth, and I just kept finding people supporting them by trying to mislead.
If dienne77 really is a progressive and not a Trump supporter (which I have doubts about), she hurts the progressive movement by posting untruth after untruth after untruth.
I don’t condone right wingers lying to support their view and don’t condone dienne77. I think all of them need to be called out, not enabled.
Our discourse has been trashed because the far right has normalized lying with the excuse that it raises uncomfortable realities.
The fact that we no longer hold people to a modicum of honesty as long as sometimes they bring up “uncomfortable realities” is exactly why our democracy is in so much danger. That’s how Trump got elected.
Not that I really much care about what’s being debated about here, I was caught by end of Bob’s last comment, especially with how it began, “which today would be crimes against humanity under international law, and that these things were done when the Japanese were themselves already debating surrender terms and when many of the cities of Japan had already been turned into moonscapes by conventional bombing. There are truths that people just don’t want to hear.”
I think the “which today would be” part of that is very important, but the assumptions behind the remainder of the statement are anything but that clear, they certainly don’t, in my mind, qualify as “truths”.
After reading McCullough’s bio of Truman, visiting the library in Independence a few times, and subsequent reading, I just don’t buy the black/white nature of this. It was not an easy decision. Perhaps more than any other president in our history, Truman understood the cost of war and the responsibility of leadership, whether you agreed with him or not. He knew. And the fact that they found a letter accompanied by medals from a father of a fallen soldier, blaming Truman for the death, in the top drawer of his desk, something he saw every day he sat there, tells us something quite different. It was a different time and place and decisions had to be made quickly with the information and experience at hand. This is one of those issues, I believe, where we have to beware of the certainty of hindsight.
They dropped atomic bombs on civilians on grandmothers and babies–on nonmilitary targets. And they did it twice because they wanted, for “scientific purposes” to compare the results.
And, ofc, the Nuremburg Trials, which predated the UN conventions establishing definitions of genocide and crimes against humanity and the establishment of the International Criminal Court proceeded on the basis of arguments that the crimes of genocide and mass murder of civilians were illegal under customary international law.
One of the best biographies I’ve read in recent years was about Congressman Jack Brooks from Beaumont, TX. He was the model of what of the framers had in mind of what a prototypical member of Congress might be. He recalls the story of how he was a soldier in the Pacific in WWII, often near battles or there in their immediate aftermath. In the spring/summer of 1945, he was in Okinawa as part of the buildup for the expected ground invasion of Japan. He was quoted, “We were prepared to go to Japan and then Truman dropped the atomic bomb, and I will be forever grateful to him because regrettably it killed an awful lot of Japanese civilians but it saved our lives.” He didn’t have a macro view of the war, but his views were nonetheless valid.
This is another example demonstrating how the clarity of hindsight is as dangerous as the delusion of perception linked to certainty. Another way to look at from the point of view of those times is that virtually everybody with public knowledge of events then literally could not conceive of the scope of an atomic bomb. If they could have, might people have acted differently? I think it’s not that easy to decide. Had I lived then, had my child been getting ready for a ground invasion of Japan, and even if I had known the scale of what a bomb would do, I might have still chosen to support the decision. After all, the child I know is more valuable than the grandmothers and babies I don’t. My point is that I don’t disagree with yours, it is that the times were much different with differing pressures and assumptions. A lot of people acted as best they could under the circumstances into which they were forced. And many didn’t.
My father was a paratrooper. And still a child. Most of those who fought in WWII were children. Fought his way across one, maybe more, I don’t know, of those Japanese islands. Saw many, many, many of his fellow soldiers die, some shredded has they hung in the air, drifting down to the beach. Lived through a hell he wouldn’t talk about except in rare, rare moments when he would give me a glimpse into those experiences. He would have been one of those who took part in the ground invasion. He had this view as well. No convincing him otherwise. He would be furious to hear me make the argument I made above. But I think it’s correct. It is not acceptable to target civilians. End of story. There is a reason why this is codified in international law. Though it is a principle often broken. Modern war is guerilla war and, then, total war.
BTW, he had been a baseball player. One season in the majors. A big, strong fellow. Stoic, John Wayne type embodiment of the mid-20th-century male ideal. I took him to see Saving Private Ryan. He was about 70. During the opening scene, when those people were hitting the beach, I looked over at him, and he had his head in his hands, weeping. I had never seen such a thing from him. I could not have been more astonished than if I had run into the shade of Joan of Arc in the hallway.
That is by way of saying that I did not come by my opinion lightly, Greg, or uninformed. I loved that man as much as it is possible to love anyone but one’s own child.
He wouldn’t speak of it. I got it only in glimpses. Once, we were watching some old war movie on television, and there were guys jumping from an airplane. He was shaking his head and laughing. I said, “What’s so funny?” He said, “You’re hanging there in the air, and they are all dug into the hillside, and shooting at you, like ducks in an arcade.” And as he spoke, his face distorted, his voice got distant. And then he would say no more.
After the war, he became a baseball player, played in the minors, one season in the majors. Then he quit and went out to Reno and got a job as a dealer in a casino, the Harold’s Club. There’s a scene in the movie 5 Against the House in which he is dealing cards to the principal actors in the film. They used actual club employees in the film. And there he is, with an Errol Flynn mustache, dealing cards.
At sixty, he could still through a baseball into the mouth of a quart bottle at 60 feet. Once, when my daughter was perhaps four, there was a roadside carnival. My daughter wanted to go. He pulled into it, and we went walking down the Midway. There was one of those games where you throw softballs and win prizes. My daughter wanted a bear. He paid his dollar or whatever it was and stood there, weighing the balls in his hands. The carnies put weights into one side of the balls so that they wouldn’t fly right. But he weighed them in his hands, contemplating. Then, bam, bam, bam, hit the target and won her the bear. My daughter thought that that’s just what happens.
I don’t. His name was John Shepherd.
I would appreciate any info you could supply.
What a great story
No luck at all on that site, Flerp, and I have never bothered to check this. I have no idea how long he lasted when he went up to the majors. He was a minor league player.
I never followed sports and heard that he went up to the majors only from my Mom, after his death. Wondering, now, if that’s even so. But that he played in the minors is definitely true. He had phenomenal skills. Taught me how to throw knuckleballs and curves and sliders. LOL. He would have given anything if his bookish son had been a ball player.
He was a good man–kind, generous to others. But he wasn’t a talker.
I have made up for that. LOL.
Bob, what was his name? Are the stats for his year in the majors on baseballreference.com?
I’m striking out on that site, Flerp!
I realize you don’t want to address my central point, Bob, as much as the story you conveyed is nice. “It is not acceptable to target civilians. End of story.” No one, certainly not me, is arguing against that. I’m just saying that there are few if any either/or, black/white ethical issues (they do exist, as we will soon learn) and it is folly for anyone to say “I would do this under all circumstances.” People like that say silly things like “a pox on all your houses.”
I understand, Greg. I do. But it’s extraordinarily important that we take seriously, as seriously as we take anything, the principle in international law that it is a crime intentionally to target civilians, period. It takes a lot to get most of the nations of the world to agree on something, and this they agreed upon and enshrined in the Rome Statute. In general, though, I agree with you. Robert Frost said, “I don’t hold tenets on anything, only tentatives,” and I’ve long thought that wise.
I also recognize that there’s anachronism involved in applying current understandings to older ways of thinking. It was a different time. And the Allies had a vision wrought by the horrific cost in life and treasure of the war and the history of the breathtaking brutalities on the other side, beginning in Manchuria. And people were tired of it and wanted it over. They didn’t want to spill any more American blood. I do understand these things.
Greg, it would be fascinating to have a beer with you and discuss these matters.
The whole ugly business of the world allowing itself to sit on the brink of nuclear annihilation became, thereafter, something of a joke. From Wikipedia:
During Operation Crossroads, Paris swimwear designer Louis Réard adopted the name Bikini for his minimalist swimsuit design which, revolutionary for the time, exposed the wearer’s navel. He explained that “like the bomb, the bikini is small and devastating”. Fashion writer Diana Vreeland described the bikini as the “atom bomb of fashion”. While two-piece swimsuits have been used since antiquity, it was Réard’s name of the Bikini that stuck for all of its modern incarnations.
I wonder how many people know this today. And this gives some insight into the ways of thinking of our very recent ancestors.
But at least, as politicized as it remains, it can tell more truth than it did in the time of Mr. “Hey, what about injecting disinfectant?”
On has only to observe the idiocy of Rand Paul’s attempted excoriation of Dr. Fauci to see the difference.
And speaking of idiocy:
But, yes, let’s protect the freedumbs of those who put everyone else’s lives at risk.
cx: every other person’s life at risk
Absolutely false that the CDC reduced the quarantine period “at the request of the CEO of Delta Airlines.”
It was done because hospitals were lacking health care providers because they were quarantining for 10 days after exposure (not positive tests, but exposure).
It was done because people like you demanded that we keep coddling the unvaccinated because it’s their civil liberty to expose lots of people an also to fill up hospital beds and force back to work already overtaxed hospital personnel to care for them.
Let’s celebrate those unvaccinated people because their right to demand disproportionate health care resources definitely trumps everyone else’s.
Their right to demand taxpayers pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical treatment for them trumps them “losing their civil liberties” and having to take a $20 vaccine.
Thanks for the important caveats, Dienne. As a ‘person of the left’ I am daily astonished by the dehumanizing scapegoating of the so-called anti-vaxxers and the almost religious faith given to the medical powers-that-be. As an example of the potential perils of blind faith in the purveyors of modern medicine, imagine if you had been required to use a CPAP for sleep apnea by your health provider or employer only to find out that the machines may be slowly poisoning you? https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/medical-device-recalls/philips-respironics-recalls-certain-continuous-and-non-continuous-ventilators-including-cpap-and
The unvaccinated are MORE likely to be hospitalized and die. Dienne, are you suggesting that requiring proof of vaccination is harmful to the unvaccinated? Are you seriously worried that the unvaccinated will be put into death camps like Auschwitz? That’s what we hear from Marjorie Taylor Greene and other whacko anti-vaxxers. Are you vaccinated?
Well said, Diane!
Italy has restricted the activities of the unvaccinated to protect the vast majority who are vaccinated and to curb the spread of COVID.
Sanity
With policy like this, Italy must be doing much better with Covid than the rest of the world. Oh, wait.
OK. Let’s look at the seven-day average of new cases as of yesterday. In Italy, it was 0.00451 percent of the population. In the United States, it was 0.21357 percent of the population.
Let’s also look at what percentage of those cases are among the unvaccinated.
The GOP is killing its base.
And the Democrats are killing their base. I’ve called for third parties only for about a millions years.
Robert Rendo,
The Tea Party was a 3rd party that has not just taken over the Republican Party, but the entire Republican party is now to the right from where the Tea Party used to be!
The one thing that the Tea Party did not do was what some progressives now say would have worked better. The Tea Party didn’t use its bully pulpit to convince voters that no matter what, they should abandon the corrupt and evil Republican party, because it would not make a bit of difference to conservative voters if the Democrats were totally empowered and the Supreme Court had a huge majority and the right of people who aren’t conservative to vote was always protected. I can imagine if the Tea Party had tried to gain influence by convincing huge swaths of conservative voters that the key to a sweeping far right victory was to abandon the Republicans and vote for a third party instead because it didn’t make a difference if the Democrats were empowered as long as the Republican party was totally destroyed.
I do wish the Tea Party would have done that. Every time a far right Tea Party conservative lost to a very conservative but not far right enough Republican in the primary, it would have been great if the Tea Party movement had told their conservative voters that their candidate lost the primary because the Republican party was corrupt (and secretly left wing socialists) and so those voters needed to vote for a third party candidate instead of the “fake” conservative Republican candidate who defeated their Tea Party candidate. Imagine if the one message that was amplified to conservative voters was not to vote for any Republican candidate because that’s the only way to make this country more far right.
It would have been great if the Tea Party had devoted itself to convincing conservative Republican voters that the winning Republican candidate in the primary — a very conservative Republican who wasn’t far right enough for the Tea Party – was secretly working for the far left, radical socialist agenda who was controlled by Commies. After all, the Tea Party could have made their only talking point all the things that the “fake conservative” Republican party had not yet done. Abortion was still legal. Rich people still had to pay a higher tax rate than very poor people. Social Security wasn’t privatized yet. Medicare still existed. Immigrants were allowed in. People who weren’t white had rights. Clearly the Republican Party was a fraud, the Tea Party would have said, and needed to be defeated because they were secretly working for the far left socialist agenda and only by defeating the Republican party could the right wing Tea Party agenda thrive. Look at all those things that the fake conservative Republican party hadn’t changed, even under Reagan, because that fake conservative Republican party was secretly under the control of radical socialists.
It’s a shame that the Tea Party didn’t follow that “winning” script. A shame for progressives. The fact that the Tea Party Republicans understood that totally empowering the Democratic party was NOT a winning formula for the right wing takeover of this country is one reason that they are extremely close to succeeding in their right wing takeover of this country.
I wish the Tea Party had listened the kind of advice you offer, and convinced their very conservative supporters that having a 3rd party and demonizing the Republican party was a winning formula.
Our country would probably be a progressive nirvana by now.
Yes, NYCPSP!
Too bad the conservative controlled US Supreme Court keeps getting in the way of similar mandates. If the unvaccinated had to stay out of sight, I might start eating out again.
It is apparent that in a GOP controlled United States, what the few want (if they vote Republican) means more than the safety of the many that do not vote Republican.
800,000 deaths from COVID and rising and too many Republicans pretend it isn’t an issue.
If the many, like me, stopped eating out, going to theaters to watch movies, and shopping at brick and mortar stores, how much money will those retailers lose with only anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers as their customers?
And with anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers as their only customers, how many retailers will be able to find enough workers to keep their businesses open?
Lloyd, if you lived in NYC, you could not get into a restaurant without proof of double vax. Or a museum or a theatre or any public space.
Many people in the alternative spirituality community are anti-vaccine. When Permaculture Feminist Starhawk got vaccinated, she received a lot of negative feedback from people saying she was going against her values. Why wasn’t she letting/helping her healthy immune system take care of her?
Starhawk wrote: What about herbal medicine and natural methods? Hey, I drink ginger tea whenever I feel fluish, or chomp on turkey tail mushrooms, and that generally works fine for me. I have a good, strong immune system.
But Covid-19 is not the flu. It’s something our immune systems have not yet evolved to deal with.
When Europeans arrived on this continent, the indigenous people of the Americas were amazing herbalists, incredibly skilled healers, extremely knowledgeable about all the medicines of the land, and they ate completely wild, nutrient dense organic food—but they had never developed immunities to European diseases and tens of millions died.
For that matter, the old Witches of Europe were damn good herbalists but that wasn’t much help, either, against the bubonic plague. I’m not arrogant enough to think that I’m in their league, anyway.
Democratic Underground
Magnificent. Thank you, Ms. Irwin, for sharing this!
I wish we were smarter here in the U.S., but not gonna happen. Population is too big, too divided, too ignorant. Really, for those of you who are able, do see the film, “Don’t Look Up.” It’s a well done allegory of what occurs in the U.S. Mark Rylance (an outstanding actor) is a mashup of Gates, Jobs & Zuckerberg. The cast is outstanding. Even my husband liked it (& husband, like Mikey, doesn’t like ANYTHING!).
Seriously, as satirical as it was, it was…serious.
Who coined the term CovIDIOTS (you, Bob?).
My neighbor’s daughter just left for a semester (if this post is correct, she’ll be able to do her full semester, & all the better for her!) in Italy.
Great to hear of a country taking this seriously.
Oh, New Zealand, as well.
Australia has also been serious about the pandemic.
Is the Post article supposed to make us feel sorry for people like Claudio Ronco?
Claudio Ronco is 66 and as an unvaccinated person (by choice, no less) the “retreat from public life” may well be the only thing keeping him from serious illness, hospitalization and possibly even death from covid.
If Ronco were travelling around from one concert venue to another, be would undoubtedly be at relatively high risk of contracting covid — and, unvaccinated as he is, maybe not just a “mild” case.
Italy has seen a lot of hospitalization and death since the pandemic began so it is completely understandable that they would implement stringent vaccine and mask policies, even if for no reason other than to help keep the hospital system from collapsing.
My sense about the Ronco article in the Washington Post is that it was neither sympathetic nor hostile to him. It showed how his refusal to get the vaccine has turned him into a recluse. No way he could give concerts. He can’t travel on an airplane or train. No concert hall in Europe would welcome an unvaccinated performer. His life is pathetic and it is his choice.
Perhaps this community would be interested in hearing what the Israel’s Vaccine Chief has to say about the Mistakes that were made,Green Passes, school closings, and the reaction that results when politics mixes with science.
Has anyone questioned why it the UK never mandated masks for kids under the age of 12?
As of Jan 20, 2022, the UK’s mask mandate and green pass ends: “Covid: Face mask rules and Covid passes to end in England”
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60047438
Hooray for Science!
As I recall, the commenters here are 100% convinced that “following the science” means requiring students as young as 5 to wear masks all day at school, requiring children as young as 2 to wear masks all day in daycare, and requiring children to be vaccinated AND boosted to attend school and enter restaurants and every other building accessible by the general public, regardless of whether those children have just had Covid.
It doesn’t matter how many other advanced nations have declined to do these things. If you don’t believe any of these things, the regular commenters here will accuse you of being anti-vax, anti-mask, or a Trumper. And you will never, EVER, see a regular commenter here (other than me, I suppose) raise questions about the wisdom of the above policies. This is a dark place.
“If you don’t believe any of these things, the regular commenters here will accuse you of being anti-vax, anti-mask, or a Trumper.”
Personally, I think people who don’t want to do any of those things above are simply selfish, or at least more self centered as they should be. They should never ever tell their or other kids to cough or sneeze into their elbows, unless they want to curb their individual freedom.
Wisdom enters nowhere the discussion, since selfish or not has nothing to do with thought, especially not with a high level thought process.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/cult-masked-schoolchildren
The link failed to post. Here it is. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bnMMYJKZvnU