Big guns are being brought out today to combat delta variant. If this ample dose of fear doesn't goad the remaining vax-hesitant rebels into joining the ongoing $Trillions worth Biden-Trump led "global war on covid" GWOC (probably the largest global endeavor since Bush-Cheney led GWOT), don't know what else will.
Top of google news today:
CNBC 59 minutes ago
Dr. Scott Gottlieb estimates up to 1 million Americans infected with Covid daily as delta spreads
July 30, 2021
'War has changed', CDC says, as Delta variant infectious as chickenpox
By Reuters Staff
(Reuters) -The “war has changed” against COVID-19 because the Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox, can be passed on by vaccinated people and may cause more serious disease than earlier strains, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
FILE PHOTO: People wait in line for a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) test at a testing site which is temporarily set up at a public health center in Seoul, South Korea, July 9, 2021. REUTERS/ Heo Ran/File Photo/File Photo
An internal CDC document, titled “Improving communications around vaccine breakthrough and vaccine effectiveness”, said the fast-spreading variant required a new approach to help the public understand the danger.
It said the unvaccinated were three times more likely to become infected and more than 10 times more likely to become seriously ill or die, it said.
“Acknowledge the war has changed,” it said. “Improve communications around individual risk among vaccinated.”
It described the Delta variant as no less transmissable than chickenpox and more transmissible than a host of other diseases, such as MERS, SARS, Ebola, smallpox, the common cold and seasonal flus, including the flu that caused the 2018 pandemic.
It recommended prevention measures that included making vaccines mandatory for health care professionals to protect the vulnerable and a return to universal wearing of face masks.
The CDC confirmed the authenticity of the document, which was first reported by the Washington Post.
While vaccinated people were less likely to become infected, once they contracted such “breakthrough infections” they might be just as likely as the unvaccinated to pass the disease on to others, the document said.
‘VIRUS HAS BECOME FITTER’
The World Health Organization said hard-won gains in battling COVID-19 were being lost as the Delta variant spreads but that vaccination could still save lives.
“The vaccines currently approved by the WHO all provide significant protection against severe disease and hospitalisation,” the global health body’s top emergency expert Mike Ryan told a news briefing. “We are fighting the same virus but a virus that has become fitter.”
The fastest-spreading and most formidable version of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has upended assumptions among virologists and epidemiologists about the disease, even as vaccines have let many countries lift social restrictions. Delta has become the dominant variant globally, documented in 132 countries to date, according to the WHO.
On Tuesday, the CDC, which had advised vaccinated people months ago that they no longer needed to wear masks, reversed course, saying even the fully vaccinated should wear face coverings in situations where the virus was likely to spread.
ASIAN COUNTRIES TIGHTEN RESTRICTIONS
Countries in Asia, many of which avoided the worst outcomes that hit Western nations in 2020, have been particularly hard hit in recent weeks by the spread of Delta, first detected in India. Australia, Japan and the Philippines were among countries to announce tighter COVID-19 restrictions on Friday
“We know from the research that it (Delta) has a viral load 1,000 times higher than previous variants, that’s why we see more cases because it transmits more easily and faster,” Dicky Budiman, an epidemiologist from Griffith University in Australia’s Queensland state, told Reuters.
He said Delta appears to cause more severe symptoms, especially regarding breathing difficulties.
Australia, which had previously kept infection under control but has been far slower than other rich countries to vaccinate the public, has been imposing lockdowns. From Monday, army personnel will help police its biggest city Sydney, checking that people who have tested positive are isolating.
The Philippines announced a plan to put the Manila capital region, home to more than 13 million people, in lockdown for two weeks.
India reported its highest number of daily cases in three weeks.
In Japan, where a surge in cases has overshadowed the Olympic Games, the government proposed states of emergency through the end of August in three prefectures near Tokyo and the western prefecture of Osaka.
“Infections are broadening. The situation is extremely severe,” Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said, warning infections had not yet reached a peak.
Vietnam, which has fully vaccinated less than 1% of its 96 million people, is mobilising private hospitals to take COVID-19 patients. After successfully containing the virus for much of the pandemic, it has been facing record daily increases in infections since late April.
reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-asia/war-has-changed-cdc-says-as-delta-variant-infectious-as-chickenpox-idUSKBN2F019Y
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Bush-Cheney led GWOT messaging morphing into Biden-Trump led GWOC (global war on covid) campaign?
'War has changed', CDC says, as Delta variant infectious as chickenpox
July 30, 2021
reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-asia/war-has-changed-cdc-says-as-delta-variant-infectious-as-chickenpox-idUSKBN2F019YThe fastest-spreading and most formidable version of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has upended assumptions among virologists and epidemiologists about the disease, even as vaccines have let many countries lift social restrictions. Delta has become the dominant variant globally, documented in 132 countries to date, according to the WHO.
On Tuesday, the CDC, which had advised vaccinated people months ago that they no longer needed to wear masks, reversed course, saying even the fully vaccinated should wear face coverings in situations where the virus was likely to spread.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb estimates up to 1 million Americans infected with Covid daily as delta spreads
How many people has COVID-19 killed in America? | Fortune
'Over 600,000 Americans who have died from the coronavirus'
US memorials to victims of COVID-19 pandemic taking shape
By JULIE CARR SMYTH
July 31, 2021
apnews.com/article/lifestyle-joe-biden-health-pandemics-coronavirus-pandemic-cb2f3aafbc8516f4cea089f6268be1c2CHILLICOTHE, Ohio (AP) — Ohio has planted a memorial grove of native trees to remember people who died of COVID-19, and governors and state lawmakers nationwide are considering their own ways to mark the toll of the virus.
Temporary memorials have sprung up across the U.S. — 250,000 white flags at RFK stadium in the nation’s capital, a garden of hand-sculpted flowers in Florida, strings of origami cranes in Los Angeles.
The process of creating more lasting remembrances that honor the over 600,000 Americans who have died from the coronavirus, though, is fraught compared to past memorial drives because of the politics.
Non-pandemic monuments — such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., the Oklahoma City National Memorial and the National Sept. 11 Memorial in New York — resulted from negotiations among diverse stakeholders willing to push through controversy to hash out common narratives, said Nancy Bristow, a history professor at the University of Puget Sound.
A national COVID-19 memorial won’t be so clear-cut, she said.
“The problem and the strength of memorials is they tell the story we want to tell, and they may not have anything to do with learning from the past or even with remembering the complexities of what we’ve been through,” Bristow said. “Commemoration and memorializing is not about nuance.”
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, were among the first to seize the virus narrative with their memorial proposals earlier this year.
The COVID-19 Pandemic Memorial Grove that DeWine dedicated in April at a state park near Chillicothe, in southern Ohio, included among its native trees the white oak, which can live for 400 years.
“Maybe someone will come here and will talk about their grandmother, great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother who went through the pandemic,” DeWine said at the event. “Maybe someone in their family died, maybe someone in their family was a nurse or doctor, someone who was there to make a difference for others. We should not forget the sacrifices that have been made.”
Cuomo is regrouping after plans for a concrete state memorial to essential workers at Battery Park faced outcry from neighbors upset at the related loss of green space. He has said workers need to be remembered for their valor.
“They saved the lives of New Yorkers,” he said in announcing the panel to spearhead the project in April. “COVID was a war and they were war heroes. They gave their lives in the midst of that war to save others.”
DeWine and Cuomo are patterning their memorial language around their contrasting leadership styles, Young said.
“I think DeWine did see himself as a kind of a pater familias trying to take care of everybody, and Cuomo did see himself or portray himself as a general going to war against the virus,” Young said.
Bristow said the war metaphor was also used with the deadly 1918 influenza epidemic, which arose during a real war — World War I — and that conflation ultimately overwhelmed all memory of the deadly disease, which never got a national memorial.
Operation Iraqi Freedom FINE SILVER Coin With George W.Bush,Tony Blair
In 2003, President Bush announced the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
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Unity urged on Iraq war anniversary
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Unity urged to combat covid-19
ABC News
New scams and cases of fraud as criminals take advantage of COVID-19 outbreak
Anti-War Protesters shut down drone factory in Kent
Three British factories, owned by Instro Precision, a subsidiary of Israel's Elbit, were forced to suspend operations
Anti-vaccine protesters temporarily shut down vaccine site at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles
Ridge says he was pressured to raise terror alert
WASHINGTON -- Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge says in a new book that he was pressured by other members of President George W. Bush's cabinet to raise the terror-alert level just before the 2004 election.
Ridge says he objected despite the urgings of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, according to a news release from Ridge's publisher. Ridge said the episode persuaded him to follow through with a plan to resign; he did so on Nov. 30, 2004.
dispatch.com/article/20090821/NEWS/308219670?template=ampart
'Code black': AdventHealth has moved to 'Code black' as delta variant cases surge| LiveNOW from FOX
Jul 30, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnYqPDasWVo
'Mission Accomplished' - George Bush celeberates Operation Iraqi Freedom success
President Trump takes vaccine victory lap, boosting shots confidence
Financial costs
Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and GWOT Cost
Nobel laureate estimates wars' cost at more than $3 trillion | McClatchy Washington Bureau
Department of Defense (DoD)
Coronavirus: Operation Warp Speed
New chart reveals military's vast involvement in Operation Warp Speed
United States has spent or committed to spend nearly $6 trillion to crush the coronavirus
Warp-Speed Spending and Other Surreal Stats of COVID Times
By the numbers, the coronavirus pandemic is surreal.
By Associated Press
March 13, 2021
Warp-Speed Spending and Other Surreal Stats of COVID Times
FILE - In this Thursday, March 11, 2021, file photo, a health worker loads syringes with the vaccine on the first day of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine being made available to residents at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza in Los Angeles. California officials say much of the state will be able to reopen next week to indoor activities as coronavirus case rates remain low. At the same time, more than 4 million residents with certain disabilities or health concerns become eligible for a vaccine. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File) The Associated Press
By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. effort in World War II was off the charts. Battles spread over three continents and four years, 16 million served in uniform and the government shoved levers of the economy full force into defeating Nazi Germany and imperial Japan.
All of that was cheaper for American taxpayers than this pandemic.
The $1,400 federal payments going into millions of people's bank accounts are but one slice of a nearly $2 trillion relief package made law this past week. With that, the United States has spent or committed to spend nearly $6 trillion to crush the coronavirus, recover economically and take a bite out of child poverty.
Set in motion over one year, that's warp-speed spending in a capital known for gridlock, ugly argument and now an episode of violent insurrection.
Political Cartoons
For a year now, Americans have grappled with numbers beyond ordinary comprehension: some 30 million infected, more than half a million dead, millions of jobs lost, vast sums of money sloshing through government pipelines to try to set things right.
How high can you count? At one turn after another, that may be the rhetorical question of these COVID-19 times.
THE TOLL
Once, the attack on Pearl Harbor was the modern marker for national trauma. About 2,400 Americans died in the assault on the naval base in Hawaii that drew the United States into the Pacific war. The nearly 3,000 dead from the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, 2001, became the new point of comparison as the ravages of COVID-19 grew.
The U.S. reached a total of 3,000 COVID-19 deaths even before March 2020 was out. By December, the country was experiencing the toll of 9/11 day after day after day. In that time, COVID-19 was killing more Americans than any other disease, any other single cause.
“COVID-19 now is the leading cause of death, surpassing heart disease,” Dr. Robert Redfield, then leading the Centers for Disease and Prevention, said Dec. 10. Looking to the weeks ahead, he said “it’s going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation.”
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