Coronavirus

Well, this article discussed how people working from home when others are in the office being 'out of the loop'. There is that water-cooler mentality, for one, and a sense of teamwork, for another.

What if you work on an assembly line (or in close quarters with other workers), serve food, deliver mail, go door-to-door, deliver food, or need to speak with the public (without a plastic barrier)?

Better their off-topic chatter than the personal attacks that they were launching previous to that, IMO.

My understanding is that the vaccines have been proven both safe and effective in large-scale studies.

even after your shots, the incidence of infections has gone way down.

Back in December, before the queen of England and the president-elect of the United States had their turns, the media mogul Rupert Murdoch received a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Afterward, he urged everyone else to get it, too.

Since then, a different message has been a repeated refrain on the prime-time shows hosted by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham on Mr. Murdoch’s Fox News Channel — a message at odds with the recommendations of health experts, even as the virus’s Delta variant and other mutations fuel outbreaks in areas where vaccination rates are below the national average.

Mr. Carlson, Ms. Ingraham and guests on their programs have said on the air that the vaccines could be dangerous; that people are justified in refusing them; and that public authorities have overstepped in their attempts to deliver them.

Mr. Carlson and Ms. Ingraham last week criticized a plan by the Biden administration to increase vaccinations by having health care workers and volunteers go door to door to try to persuade the reluctant to get shots.

“Going door-to-door?” Ms. Ingraham said. “This is creepy stuff.”

Mr. Carlson, the highest-rated Fox News host, with an average of 2.9 million viewers, said the Biden plan was an attempt to “force people to take medicine they don’t want or need.” He called the initiative “the greatest scandal in my lifetime, by far.”

Mr. Carlson’s guest on that episode, the veteran Fox News political analyst Brit Hume, pushed back slightly, saying, “What they’re trying to do is make it as easy as possible for people to get the vaccine and, for people who are hesitant, to perhaps encourage them that they have nothing to fear.” Mr. Hume was quick to add that “vaccines do have side effects” and said those who are hesitant “should be respected.”

Opposition to vaccines was once relegated to the fringes of American politics, and the rhetoric on Fox News has coincided with efforts by right-wing extremists to bash vaccination efforts.

Served up to an audience that is more likely than the general population to be wary of Covid vaccines, the remarks by Mr. Carlson and Ms. Ingraham echoed a now-common conservative talking point — that the government-led effort to raise vaccination rates amounted to a violation of civil liberties and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

The comments by the Fox News hosts and their guests may have also helped cement vaccine skepticism in the conservative mainstream, even as the Biden administration’s campaign to inoculate the public is running into resistance in many parts of the country.

Public health experts have said that a strong vaccination effort is critical for the United States to outrun the virus, which has killed more than four million people worldwide and continues to mutate.

The amplification of vaccine skepticism through conservative media channels could harden the reluctance of those who might otherwise have been persuaded to get a shot, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

“If you have constant exposure to an outlet that is raising vaccination hesitancy, raising questions about vaccinations, that is something to anchor you in your position that says, ‘I’m not going to take the vaccine,’” Ms. Jamieson said.

A Fox News spokeswoman provided past statements by Mr. Carlson voicing his general support for vaccines. “I’ve had a million vaccines in my life, as we all have,” the host said on an April show. “I think vaccines are great.” The spokeswoman also noted that Ms. Ingraham had spoken in favor of adults choosing to receive vaccines if they wanted them.

White House officials said on Thursday that virtually all new coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths nationwide involved unvaccinated people. The five states with the worst outbreaks as of Wednesday had below-average vaccination rates; four of them voted for President Donald J. Trump in the 2020 election.

Vaccine resistance was greater among Republicans than Democrats, according to an April study by the Public Religion Research Institute. Among Republicans who watch Fox News, 45 percent said they were hesitant or unwilling to get a Covid-19 shot, compared with 68 percent of viewers who watch the niche right-wing news channels Newsmax or One America News Network.

On his Wednesday program, Mr. Carlson went after colleges that have required students to be vaccinated before their return to campus.

“They shouldn’t get the shot,” said Mr. Carlson, who has not disclosed whether he is vaccinated against Covid-19. “It’s not good for them. There’s a risk involved, much higher than of Covid, but colleges are forcing them anyway.”

[...]
Officials in the state are pulling out the stops to get people vaccinated. Arkansas not only has one of the lowest vaccine rates in the country -- only about a third of eligible people are fully vaccinated -- but is facing a troubling uptick in Covid-19 cases - fueled mostly by the emerging Delta variant of the virus.

"There's no question about it, our level of vaccination is not where we want it to be," Dr. Jose Romero, the Arkansas Secretary of Health, told CNN. "We have one third of our population fully immunized. But we need to get much higher levels in order to bring this under control."

The reasons that experts say people aren't getting the vaccine in Arkansas are varied. They cite pregnant women who are concerned about the impact of the vaccine on them and their unborn children, or people who want to see further FDA approval of the vaccines beyond the current emergency use authorizations. But there are also those who believe in conspiracy theories about the vaccine, the experts said.

Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. knows that skepticism well. It was something he grappled with himself.

"I'm someone, as a Black male, who has some heart burns about it," Scott said. "When you think about the Tuskegee (experiment), the HeLa cells, and that disheartening history of the past. I'm also someone who had never taken a flu shot."

But after losing family members to Covid, Scott said he found it even more important to encourage people to get the vaccine.

"I took the time as a leader to do the research," he said, "to get to understanding, and to be a leader and demonstrate to the residents of Little Rock that I wouldn't ask them to do anything that I wasn't willing to do."
... ... ...

Do you have any verifiable evidence of that?

Despite all the disagreements of vaxers and antivaxers, one point I hold true is that the pandemic is far from over.

I think that is the sad part. This should never have become politicized. Who pandemic in the US would be over now if people have just gotten their vaccinations when they were available.

And let’s remember that it was progressives who politicized it.