Not sure if Kossacks outside Florida have been seeing this, but in President Biden’s meeting yesterday in Miami with Ron DeSantis about the Surfside condo collapse, he wasn’t wearing a mask while speaking with our idiot governor, nor was anyone else—all indoors in very close quarters, no social distancing. Florida unfortunately is a cesspool of stupidity and science-denial around things like masking, vaccines, travel and social distancing and the delta variant is spreading fast here. Even though Joe’s gotten the shots, there’s some recent info out of Britain and Israel we’ve been hearing that’s worrisome even for vaccinated people, and at Biden’s age and some health issues he’s had, it seems like he’d be in a vulnerable group if he caught delta--is this really a good idea? (Do we even know how long his immune protection would last, let alone vs the variants?) Even those of us among the canvass team who had early misgivings about the vaccines have since gotten the shots (mostly Pfizer and Moderna, some JnJ), but all of us are still wearing our masks even especially indoors in close quarters. And now to be honest, it’s looking like the CDC’s recent mask guidance has been very misguided, premature and just stupid, but by even now keeping to it—just to score political points?--it seems like they’re starting to endanger the President and high officials in continuing to push the “it’s OK for the vaccinated to get rid of the masks” claim, even with the delta variant now starting to rage and spread at exponential rate in the USA.
The UK data we’re all worried about, is showing that more and more of the hospitalizations and deaths there from the COVID delta variant are occurring in people who are fully vaccinated. For anyone having trouble with the paywall, they were looking at an early group of deadly cases in England from the delta variant of around 115 people, of those around 50 were fully vaccinated and several others were part vaccinated, with the UK population total having around 33 million fully vaccinated (about half the total pop. and 60 percent of the adult pop.) The numbers overall are still low because the delta variant is rather recent in the UK, but it’s spreading scary fast there, and if previous trends hold, the United States tends to be about 2-3 weeks behind trends in the UK and Europe with these new variants. Yes, it’s been clear for a while that the vaccines don’t necessarily prevent getting or spreading COVID 19, just tend to make it milder.
That’s great except for two problems shown by recent reports, first with the delta variant, vaccinated people esp. in the UK are coming down with very serious COVID-19, having to go to the hospital or still worse. And also even “mild” cases of COVID have been associated with long COVID and neurological problems, so considering how important Joe Biden is to the country and world right now, it seems crazy to take this risk and not mask when in a crowded indoor room esp. in Florida. There are accounts of fully vaccinated doctors and nurses giving the delta variant to each other, and Israel has resumed its own mask mandate after half of early delta infections were in vaccinated Israelis, meanwhile in the US, delta infections spiked about 10 percent from a week ago and in Florida, we’ve had a 35 percent jump in COVID infections as the COVID delta mutant rages here!
So it just seems like a crazy dangerous risk for President Biden to be going without a mask in crowded indoor meetings like this, esp. in states full of anti-science morons led by a fool like Ron DeSantis, with one of the highest rates in the country for spread of the COVID variant. I feel like Biden may be doing this as a way to show support for the CDC and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, but to be honest the CDC has been looking increasingly questionable in its decisions and has dropped the ball, seriously, in the past few months. The CDC insisted to the bitter end that COVID spread by droplets and was not airborne, until the research firmly confirmed it was indeed spreading through the air. The CDC then inexplicably stopped tracking so called “mild cases” of breakthrough infections in vaccinated people who don’t go to the hospital, even though we need this information to see how much the coronavirus is spreading (since this could cause it mutant further), and many mild cases lead to long COVID, which is not something we want a POTUS to suffer! But now the mask guidance from the CDC is more and more looking premature based on what the delta variant is doing and how fast it’s spreading, and the extra precautions that both Britain and Israel are taking—and LA County, Illinois and St. Louis, all moving to encourage indoor mask wearing again--even though they have a much higher full vaccination rate than the US does.
Given how crazy and flat out dangerous the current GOP is, it’s been a comfort to have an experienced, steady hand like Biden at the helm. It’s why we’re all the more concerned about the risks to President Biden’s health as the delta variant picks up and rages through America at exponential rate like this. The CDC decision on masks indoors reeked of premature “mission accomplished” stupidity and political contamination from the start, but now it just comes off as clearly reckless and irresponsible with the info out of UK and Israel, and as we learn more about long COVID and the delta variant picking up steam in the US. If the CDC is sticking to that misguided stance for short term political gain—and thus pressuring the President and top officials to avoid wearing masks for that reason--then they’re, quite literally now, carelessly endangering the good of the free world! For any Biden staffers lurking here, we’re not saying we know better than you close to him do, but are you at least discussing the possibility of encouraging POTUS to mask up again, at least for indoor conferences in close quarters in a state like Florida? We love Kamala Harris and have full confidence in her, but still it would be great for her to have more experience and tutelage under Joe as she prepares to take charge of the country herself. And esp. with the mad and disgusting Republican Party we have now, again it’s a huge relief to have someone as experienced as Joe Biden leading. Please, at least consider convincing the CDC to change its guidance now—COVID is challenging so there’s no shame in making corrections as variants appear—and encourage wearing the mask, especially if he’s stuck in a crowded room with an anti-science governor in an anti-science state!