Red Covid – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/briefing/covid-red-states-vaccinations.html

«What distinguishes the U.S. is a conservative party — the Republican Party — that has grown hostile to science and empirical evidence in recent decades. A conservative media complex, including Fox News, Sinclair Broadcast Group and various online outlets, echoes and amplifies this hostility. Trump took the conspiratorial thinking to a new level, but he did not create it.»

«One intriguing anecdote involves the football team at the University of Mississippi, which is entirely vaccinated even though the state has one of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates. Coaches there emphasized the tangible, short-term costs of getting Covid, rather than the more remote chance of death: The players might have to miss a game, and the team might have to forfeit it, if they tested positive.

A related message is duty, Timothy Carney has written in The Washington Examiner. If Carney had refused to get vaccinated, he explained, he would have risked loading more work onto his wife, his colleagues and his partner in teaching Sunday school, as well as forced his children to miss school.»

Really good podcast episode you should listen to

[On the Media] Constitutionally Speaking #onTheMedia https://podcastaddict.com/episode/127674713 via @PodcastAddict

This was an amazingly good podcast episode everybody should listen to, on free speech (absolutism) and whether/how we can make the American experiment actually work.

Hint: we cannot assume American exceptionalism will carry the day. Nothing good happens automatically unless we MAKE it happen. The arc of moral universe bends toward justice because WE are the arc benders.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-constitutionally-speaking

NYC Hostess Attacked After Asking Texas Group for Vaccine Proof – NBC New York

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/carmines-hostess-attacked-after-asking-group-from-texas-for-vaccination-proof-to-dine-inside/3277565/

«The 22-year-old hostess asked the group of Texans to show proof of getting the COVID vaccine in order to dine in the restaurant, part of NYC’s executive order that went into effect this week. Law enforcement sources said that the hostess was then repeatedly punched in the face and body, and sent to the hospital.»

Another Afghan interpreter dead

This is terrible. This is not the way we should be, as a nation. Meanwhile, a Montana politician says he doesn’t want any Afghan refugees in his state.