☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Wednesday, October 6, 2021 ☙ JABS OVER PILLS 🦠

Today’s wide-ranging roundup includes: an unattractive school board chair targets a single mom; Hillsborough County relents and lets parents decide their own kids’ medical issues; the Times ...

It’s Wednesday, and we’re now a week into October. Can you believe it? The holidays are right around the corner. Covid Claus has his workshop running 24-7 at this point. Anyway, today’s wide-ranging roundup includes: an unattractive school board chair targets a single mom; Hillsborough County relents and lets parents decide their own kids’ medical issues; the Times reports that Fauci doesn’t care about treatments, just the injections; sports news; New Zealand retreats from “Covid zero,” a little; employer mandates seem to be working on workers in some places – or are they?; Governor DeSantis responds to Attorney General Garland; the City of Gainesville retreats from its Covid mandates — or does it?; and more petitions for mandamus get filed against rebellious Florida school boards.

🗞 *THE C&C ARMY POST* 🗞

☎️ The 5DAY calls restarted yesterday aimed at getting a special session going and at private employers forcing injections on their healthcare workers. If you would like to help, just text 5DAY to 43506.

📰 We had a great C&C subscriber Zoom last night! Thanks to everyone who zoomed in, it was so nice seeing everybody’s faces. We’ll do another one in a couple weeks.

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

🔥 According to the Tennessee Star, Chair Kristi Peterson got her feelings hurt when single mother Tara criticized the Shakopee County School Board this week. So of course Karen, I mean Kristi, called Tara’s boss and complained about Tara. Tara got a two-week unpaid suspension from work because of it, and she now expects to be fired at the end of her suspension.

Overpaid and under-qualified school board chairperson: 1.

Single working mom with two special needs kids: 0.

Here’s the “outrageous” comment Tara posted on Facebook that made Peterson so angry:

“I personally was really disappointed in board member Kristi Peterson tonight. She was turning around to watch the time clock while Amanda was speaking about her daughter’s struggle with her disability and masking. She did it multiple times! So rude. I know that most people don’t have ill will towards these children … but that lady showed she has NO HEART! Who does that???”

Oh no! A domestic terrorist! Somebody call Merrick Garland!

I won’t tell you about what a frumpy, dumpy, unattractive woman Kristi Peterson is, or what an ugly, ridiculous-looking stereotypical “Karen” haircut she has, because that would be mean. And we hold to high standards of dialog here. You guys know I am above that sort of thing.

But I think it is fair to say that Kristi Peterson of Shakopee County — ON THE INSIDE — is a frumpy, dumpy, unattractive woman with a gross Karen haircut. On the inside. Now, I’m sure SOMEBODY loves her. Maybe her dog. Or, maybe not. Who knows? Frankly, it’s hard to imagine.

You know, there’s a reason why public officials didn’t try this kind of stuff before about a year ago . It’s only because they have literally gone insane that they are doing it now, completely forgetting all the lessons of the past. I wonder how they think this story ends?

Anyway, I did my civic duty, found Tara’s local state rep on Facebook (who’d posted about her story) and commented, offering a citation to a 2019 federal case on suing school board officials for civil rights violations and money damages. Just trying to help calm everybody down.

🥂 Hillsborough County, Florida’s School Board last week voted to stop defying the state and allow parents to opt out of the mask requirement “at their sole discretion.” In its statement, the HCSB said this:

> “In making this decision, the Board reviewed the most recent COVID rates for Hillsborough County, as well as the rate of isolations and quarantines of students and staff over the past seven weeks. The rates and numbers of cases have decreased significantly since the most recent face covering mandate, providing the Board some insight into the impact that the previous decision had on our schools.”

Uh huh. It was the mask mandate. Except, cases ALL ACROSS FLORIDA are down 95% since school started, and only about nine counties out of sixty-seven in Florida kept a no-opt-out mask policy. So.

🪳 A weekend article in the New York Times was headlined, “Fauci says Americans should get vaccinated even if Merck’s Covid pill cuts deaths.”

Hahahahahahaha! Of course he does! What else would he say!

In Merck’s phase 3 clinical trial for its new drug Merkermectin (working name), the drug company reported that there were zero deaths from Covid among the drug group, but eight in the placebo group. It concluded that the treatment cuts Covid deaths and hospitalizations at least by half. Merck says it will immediately seek EUA approval. Good luck with that.

Fauci said that the government has pre-ordered 1.7 million doses of Merckermectin. In an interview on on Face the Nation, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former F.D.A. commissioner under President Trump and now Pfizer board member, said that amount of the drug was “not enough” because it would only cover about one month of infections in Southern states.

But Fauci dismissed concerns over the low order, pointing out the country was now seeing a slow down in cases, signaling a potential respite from the pandemic. “We certainly are turning a corner on this particular surge,” he said. Funny how he can come up with some good news when he needs it. Because just the day before, he said it was “just too soon to tell” if Christmas would be cancelled this year. Too soon to tell for Christmas, but NOT too soon to tell to reduce your order for a lifesaving Covid drug. So.

🔥 In sports news, the Atlanta Falcons football team fired one its scouts, Rodrik David, because he was uninjected. Dirty, dirty employee.

🔥 New Zealand just can’t make up its mind. The island nation previously set an ambitious “Covid Zero” policy, and was widely praised in the corporate media for closing its borders (imagine that) and jamming its citizens into house arrest. Meanwhile, alert readers will recall the recent story about how Auckland’s crack team of anti-terrorism officers just nabbed some fried chicken smugglers trying to bring a trunk-full of extra crispy in across the border.

Well, yesterday, the corpse-like Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Arden, announced that her cabinet has shifted policies, again, and have now decided to abandon their years-long “Covid Zero” goal. Never mind! Instead — almost two years later — they have now decided to try and “manage the virus.”

What does “manage the virus” mean? Prime Minister Arden decreed that some people can sometimes temporarily leave their house arrest to visit some family members. That’s it. But strict rules have to be followed, or the citizen will be arrested and thrown in real jail. New Zealanders may now visit one household of a family member at a time. They must stay outside at all times, they must keep their masks on, and must stay socially distant, but they can see and talk to them. Or something.

Managing the virus.

🔥 The New York Times reported last week that “‘Mandates Are Working’: Employer Ultimatums Lift Vaccination Rates, So Far.” It describes how, since employers gave their employees injection ultimatums, the injection rates in New York and California have spiked to “to 90 percent or higher” in those states’ major health systems.

“Mandates are working,” said John Swartzberg, professor at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. “If you define ‘working’ by the percentage of people getting vaccinated and not leaving their jobs in droves.”

The Times also reported that, at Houston Methodist Hospital, which mandated vaccines this summer for 25,000 employees, less than one percent of employees ended up quitting or being fired. More than 90 percent of Tyson Foods’ 120,000 employees have now been injected. The strategy of rushing these mandates through before people can get a response mounted seems to be working. Dorit Reiss, law professor at the University of California Hastings College who is tracking employer mandates, said that rapid mandates generally increase vaccine compliance because the dreadful awareness that a deadline is looming has often been enough to gets workers to accept injections before courts even can weigh in.

The Times did allow, though, that “much remains unknown though about how mandates will be received in regions of the country with lower vaccination rates and higher levels of hesitancy.”

The article was also COMPLETELY SILENT about New York’s disastrous lack of nursing and medical staff to the point that its messianic interim governor is calling in the national guard and licensing nurses and doctors with degrees from online Nigerian medical schools. So, there’s THAT. But all the mandates are going great!

🦸‍♂️ Yesterday, Governor DeSantis of Florida responded to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s memo to national law enforcement agencies about terroristic soccer moms. The Governor tweeted:

> “Attorney General Garland is weaponizing the DOJ by using the FBI to pursue concerned parents and silence them through intimidation. Florida will defend the free speech rights of its citizens and will not allow federal agents to squelch dissent.”

Thank you Governor!

🔥 In the bottom story of the day, the City of Gainesville informed the Florida Department of Health on September 28 that it voided all of its previous Covid mandates, including requirements that citizens wear masks in City facilities, and including all requirements related to vaccination for employees. Employees still must wear masks indoors, and everyone must wear them on city buses. Good so far. But, on Monday of this week, the City filed a “motion for reconsideration” asking the Court to lift the injunction on its vaccine mandate. So, which is it?

🔥 Finally, late yesterday, lawyers in two more Florida counties — Orange and Brevard — filed petitions for writs of mandamus against those school boards and superintendents’ unlawful policies. Stand by for updates.

Hope your coffee was tasty and energizing. Have a wonderful Wednesday and we’ll grab some more java together tomorrow morning.

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