[News] Coronavirus

A place to discuss the now-global coronavirus outbreak.

Also responsible is that we completely wasted the leadup to where we are now. We could have been setting up the systems that would let us handle this, but instead everyone was focused on getting back to normal as quickly as they could that they got rid of the systems that would help us now. Lots of places have reduced support for or completely stopped curbside pickup when they should have been building the system up so it could handle more customers.

Hopefully many lessons will be learned, but probably not.

garion333 wrote:

Well, the "good" news is that the hospitalizations per million in Australia is below even the UK! And way, way below the US.

So, in that way, the Australia "experiment" is working.

Everything I hear anecdotally and directly from friends/family in healthcare is that the system is dying. Less hospitalizations per million than the UK but maybe we have less capacity per million as well?

They've diverted patients to the private hospitals because public resources are overwhelmed. Also not counted in the toll of life is all of the critically ill patients whose treatment has been paused while the hospitals are overwhelmed by COVID patients.

But yes the government continues to insist the system is coping.

Back To Normal Isn’t Enough

Spoiler:

Yesterday, I went to the local pharmacy in my neighborhood to pick up my monthly prescriptions. The pharmacy is small and narrow, and was crowded at 5 p.m. A few children were waiting in line to receive booster shots, their tired-eyed parents trying to corral them. The rest of us stood in another line waiting for the pharmacists, who raced back and forth trying desperately to keep the parents calm and the vaccine line moving and the prescriptions going into their bags and over the counter and out of the store. They were overwhelmed. The line kept growing.

One of the parents kept waving the clipboard with the form for his child every time the pharmacist had a minute to breathe. Around the fifth time he did this, two men waiting patiently near me in the line turned and snapped at him. “Shut the f*ck up,” the guy in front of me said. “Can’t you see he’s trying his best?” There was no evident coordination between the two. They just each seemed to reach the end of their respective tethers at the same moment.

The pharmacist ignored this exchange, but the tension lingered. The annoying parent, to his credit, stopped waving the clipboard, stopped asking when it would be his child’s turn. Standing there for 20 minutes, waiting, I felt a dread that has appeared regularly and without warning for months. All of us were at, or near, our breaking points: the people in the line, the pharmacists, the children, the parents. Everyone is exhausted and frustrated.

All around the pharmacy these signs were hung, printed on regular paper with the words “NO RAPID TESTS” in giant blue font, highlighted yellow. They have been up for weeks. It all feels like some terribly boring nightmare, this gentle constant frustration in the space where hope used to be.

Two weeks ago, in the same pharmacy, I helped a woman who only spoke Spanish find the city webpage about rapid tests on her phone. We are lucky in Washington, D.C. Our city government has decided to do something, and done it. They have made rapid tests free to pick up at one library in each ward, two rapid test boxes per person per day with proof you live in the district. There are no flyers anywhere about this, though, and unlike the many times our mayor has instituted curfews, the city sent no push-alerts telling people about it. I knew because I read local news and follow my city representative on Instagram. When I told the woman in the pharmacy, she had no idea.

Standing in the line this week, I could not stop thinking about her, about the signs that only said NO, about the fact that the president of the country where all this has been and still is happening, tweeted last week that American people should try Google to find rapid tests instead of doing what many other wealthy countries have easily managed, which is mailing those tests to people’s houses for free. I have been thinking about how it feels and what it means to have been left so thoroughly alone.

Get a vaccine, the CDC says, because you can’t afford to get sick. Pay $30 for a rapid test, the drugstore says. Get to work, employers say, it’s important. Quitting your job, the papers add, will upset your boss, whose feelings matter. You shouldn’t have used that space heater to keep your family warm since the landlord refuses to fix the heat, a mayor tells the survivors and the dead of a building fire; you should have closed the door, which was built to close by itself but does not, as you fled your burning apartment. All of this, finally, is your problem. It’s your fault. It’s you.

It’s not, though. That’s what has been keeping me awake long after I’ve climbed into bed. It’s not us. We are not the ones who have failed. The country has always worked this way. You just tend to notice it more when all that absence comes barrelling down on you at once.

Early in the pandemic, I felt a dangerous kind of hope even when things were very bad. Lots of people were dying; everyone on the street seemed terrified. There was very little toilet paper to be found in my neighborhood. Everything was dire. In April 2020, 14 percent of Americans were unemployed. But it also seemed like the government might actually do something to help, and they did. They passed a bill to fund vaccine research and development worth $8.3 billion. They passed the CARES act, which actually sent people some money to help them survive. Student loan payments were suspended, as were evictions. Maybe, I let myself dream, this could open up some kind of possibility down the line—that watching our society crack might inspire us to patch those weak points up, maybe even through some sort of New Deal. Maybe this massive universal trauma could be redeemed, and future ones prevented, by creating a society that worked better for everyone.

And we got the CARES Act, and we got the miraculous vaccine. Scientists were stunned that, less than a year after the global outbreak of the virus, vaccines were being put into people’s arms. It had never been done before! But that initial burst of optimism has long since left behind a country bitter, and scared, and broken. Today, 10 months after my first dose and two months after my booster, I realize that my hope and my optimism was unfounded. The points of weakness are now points of leverage—you can still lose everything just from getting sick, the state says, so get vaccinated. And good luck. We have been rewarded for all of our suffering and all of our patience and all of our frustration with not just the same broken country we’ve always had, but a concerted effort to make sure that Returning To Normal does not mean improving upon the pre-COVID status quo in any meaningful way.

The United States does not become the kind of country that threatens its citizens with onerous hospital bills as part of a vaccine promotion campaign by accident. This is how the country was built, and how the system has grown to work; it is how it was designed. Even miraculous innovation on the order of MRNA vaccines is not used to make everyone’s lives better. It was only marketed that way, for a little while.

This might explain, as I’ve tried to figure out this blog, why I have not been able to stop thinking about the cotton gin. Most Americans were taught in school that the cotton gin was an American invention, the creation of a man named Eli Whitney. But until a couple of years ago, I didn’t realize why the cotton gin is really important.

I learned through reading The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward Baptist that before Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, the profits of crops like indigo, tobacco, and rice—all of which were farmed by enslaved people—were dropping dramatically, leaving the U.S. economy in trouble. Cotton, a potential cash crop, was thwarted by a very narrow bottleneck in its production. Seeds had to be removed from the cotton by hand, which dramatically limited the amount of cotton that could be picked every day. That work is what the cotton gin did. It allowed enslavers to clean as much cotton for market as they could grow and harvest, and broke that bottleneck. This, we have been taught, was a world-historic innovation. But there was more to it than that, Baptist explains:

“Once the gin shattered the processing bottleneck, other limits on production and expansion were cast into new relief. For instance, one constraint was the amount of cheap, fertile land. Another was the lack of labor on the frontier. So enslaver-generals took land from Indians, enslaver-politicians convinced Congress to let slavery expand, and enslaver-entrepreneurs created new ways to finance and transport and codify ‘hands.’ And given a finite number of captives in their own control, entrepreneurs created a complex of labor control practices that enslaved people called ‘the pushing system.’ […] Innovation in violence, in fact, was the foundation of the widely shared pushing system.”

The cotton industry, bolstered by this invention, was later used by economists as an example of “perfect competition.” The market was so large that no one could control more than one percent of the total. Innovations were shared among these competitors, including innovations in violence. The cotton industry of the 19th century was the archetype upon which Alfred Marshall grounded the famous supply-and-demand curves we were all taught in school. An industry based entirely on the inhumane and atrocious business of slavery meant enough to the people profiting from it that they seceded from the union and started a civil war.

Ever since I learned this, I haven’t been able to hear the word “innovation” without cringing. Who is the innovation for? Whose lives will it ruin, and what exactly will it make better in the world? This, I am coming to realize, is the fundamental flaw with capitalism as we live it. If it does breed innovation, that innovation has no inherent ethics; left alone, it could ruin more people’s lives than it helps.

A system that funnels rapid antigen tests through various companies trying to make money off them, for instance, isn’t one that cares about us at all, although it is the one in which we must participate in pursuit of that care. Sure, we have the miracle of the vaccine, but as I am being promised that we will be “returning to normal” soon and that the country is “reopening,” I don’t feel optimistic. The normal we had before was bad for most people. After two years of misery, going back to it just does not feel like enough. The vaccines are miraculous, but they cannot and will not fix what actually ails us.

The minimum wage is still atrociously low. Cops are still shooting black people in the streets. School shootings are only down because the students are learning virtually. Everything is more expensive and not any nicer. Our experiences of buying things are also bad. The government’s relationship with the people is that of a disapproving and forgetful grandparent with a very young and very naughty child. The country is in shambles, and everyone can feel it.

Here is the trauma of this generation, the moment in which the present became so oppressive and deadly and bad that there was no choice but to envision a better future. How silly of me to assume that what had held true for the generations now in power would extend to us. How ridiculous to dream that we might get our own Works Progress Administration, or a livable minimum wage, or some student loan debt relief. How impossibly naive to believe that something might get better as a response to how much worse everything had become.

The people in charge, it seems clear, never wanted things to get better. Since the earliest days of the pandemic they have given us vague instructions, asked us to sacrifice our lives and our happiness for the faint promise of Getting Back To Normal. If we suffered gamely enough, for long enough, we might win back… the same country we had before.

It’s the same threat the Democratic party makes every election cycle now. ​​”We’ve got to vote like the future of our democracy depends on it,” a letter from Michelle Obama published this week read. The Republican party is making a very real effort to restrict voting rights and make future frauds easier to perpetuate, but the opposition’s promise isn’t a better future or a better life. The Democrats are now the party of only trying to stop things from getting worse; they currently control the House, the Senate, and the Presidency and yet they have accomplished very little, either because they are so corrupt or so self-defeating or so uninterested as to have accepted the idea that Accomplishing Very Little is what they are there to do. Because there is no link between “saving democracy” and the policies this so-called democracy might pass to make our lives better, it once again feels like we are being threatened. That’s a nice brutal and untenable status quo you’ve got there, it leers, be a shame if you did something that let it get somehow even worse. We have now endured almost two full years of all this hardship, and stand to get nothing but its (contingent) end in return.

Time does not run backwards. The virus exists now and will continue to exist. But in order to continue underserving the people they represent, elected officials need us to believe that the past was an idyllic time to which we should want to return. They need us to look at the cotton gin and praise American innovation, instead of seeing an instrument of violence. They need us to idealize the past because the system blithely fails most people in the present. They need us to feel like it is our fault that the things schoolchildren are told make the United States different, and great, quite obviously no longer work at all.

Standing in the pharmacy this week, I remembered how early in the pandemic there was a small hope that maybe, because everyone was sick, insurance companies would somehow go bankrupt. Maybe, we would finally get some kind of healthcare to rival every other democracy in the world. I remembered this because for months I have been fighting with my insurance. I need to take 450 mg of a drug. My initial prescription was for three 150 mg pills, but the insurance I pay so much f*cking money for argues with the pharmacist every single month because they want me to take one 300 mg pill and one 150 mg pill. The prescription has been fixed to this inane, ridiculous requirement for months now, but still the insurance flags it and creates some kind of problem that the overworked but very kind pharmacist then has to solve for me. Every single person in the line in front of me had an issue like this.

The pharmacy wasn’t chaotic because the people behind the counter weren’t doing their jobs. The pharmacy is chaotic because the system in which it exists pushes it towards that chaos. The chaos was caused by a poor vaccine rollout program that forced extra work onto pharmacists without extra staffing or resources. It was caused by a terrible healthcare system that makes it difficult for them just to fill prescriptions in the first place. It was caused by poor, lazy information distribution, which made it unclear when children could be boosted and how. It was not caused by people who, after being ground down for two years, just didn’t have the bandwidth to think about other people. You have to put your own oxygen mask on first so that you can help the people around you.

That, then, was what hung in the air in the pharmacy after some tired men told another tired man to calm down—the sense that all of us just had to try to get what we could. I see people all around me helping each other even more than before. Everyone is frustrated, and their patience is thin, but no one is defeated yet. In the pharmacy, people yelled at the clipboard man, sure, but it was to help the pharmacist. They held open the doors for a parent with a stroller. They pointed when someone dropped a glove. The desire to support each other is unflagging even when people are exhausted.

We pay taxes, theoretically, so that the oxygen masks will (at a bare minimum) drop from the ceiling before the plane crashes. But the masks are not dropping and we are rapidly losing altitude. The option of paying $40 for a mask that should be handed to us is dangled in our faces while a $2.1 billion fighter jet lands safely beneath us. The government, whose only purpose is to help us work better than we work alone, is fundamentally failing us. Of course it is infuriating.

The problem is no longer just the pandemic. It is, more precisely, that our government is blaming the pandemic for problems that it created. We do not deserve to go back to a normal that is so terribly bad for most people. We do not deserve to pay more for worse things. We do not deserve to be sold the lie that it is just more important for companies to make money than it is for us to live. Certainly no one would choose that, if they felt they had a choice.

We deserve a country that uses our tax dollars to make our lives richer, and better, and easier. We deserve a country that can promise a future that improves upon some glorified, false version of our past. We deserve, simply, a country that makes it easier to be alive. That is what a society is supposed to be—people working together to help each other and make the places they live better. It is what we wait for, what keeps the lines orderly. It is supposed to get better.

I recommend anyone who hasn't read what was spoilered there to do so, if you have a bunch of time.

It was very long, very brutal, and, unfortunately, very true.

Keldar wrote:

I recommend anyone who hasn't read what was spoilered there to do so, if you have a bunch of time.

It was very long, very brutal, and, unfortunately, very true.

Yup, great stuff. I take issue with the comment about Democrats though.

The Democrats are now the party of only trying to stop things from getting worse; they currently control the House, the Senate, and the Presidency and yet they have accomplished very little, either because they are so corrupt or so self-defeating or so uninterested as to have accepted the idea that Accomplishing Very Little is what they are there to do.

There should at least be another sentence talking about the blatant obstruction that is occurring by Republicans

How impossibly naive to believe that something might get better as a response to how much worse everything had become.

I don't know whether to feel smart, proud, or sad that I never believed that was possible.

JC wrote:
Keldar wrote:

I recommend anyone who hasn't read what was spoilered there to do so, if you have a bunch of time.

It was very long, very brutal, and, unfortunately, very true.

Yup, great stuff. I take issue with the comment about Democrats though.

The Democrats are now the party of only trying to stop things from getting worse; they currently control the House, the Senate, and the Presidency and yet they have accomplished very little, either because they are so corrupt or so self-defeating or so uninterested as to have accepted the idea that Accomplishing Very Little is what they are there to do.

There should at least be another sentence talking about the blatant obstruction that is occurring by Republicans

I thought Biden's comment that there's 52 Presidents in the Senate was spot on.

The Dems have razor thin to no majority in Congress to the point it's sad to see Dems bashing them for doing "very little". Like, how can they get anything done when it's a constant stalemate?

I had my first kerfuffle with an anti-vaxxer yesterday, and I feel sh*tty.

My age group just received their booster shot, and I simply miss my friends. So I sent out an email to my old friend group stating just that, and asking who would feel comfortable meeting up in a few weeks. I closed off stating that I would completely understand if anyone still feels uncomfortable getting together, and that unvaccinated people are not welcome - or at least not with me.

An hour later the first response came, from a friend I hadn't spoken or seen in years. "That's clear, thanks for thinking about me." Funnily enough, when writing my mail I was thinking about him as the most likely to refuse the vaccine.

My wife feels I was "too attacking" in my email, and after a sleepless night I agree: my phrasing was too direct, and out of place in that email. I do stand by the principle, so I sent an email to everyone after removing the antivaxxer and his boyfriend from the recipients. I apologized for the phrasing, restating though that I want everyone to feel comfortable and that anything is open for discussion in that context.

I now have two friends less.

But you're less likely to get exposed to virus at your friend reunion.

Anyone who tries to murder you and yours with neglect and selfishness isn't your friend, dear (/mom)

dejanzie wrote:

I had my first kerfuffle with an anti-vaxxer yesterday, and I feel sh*tty.

My age group just received their booster shot, and I simply miss my friends. So I sent out an email to my old friend group stating just that, and asking who would feel comfortable meeting up in a few weeks. I closed off stating that I would completely understand if anyone still feels uncomfortable getting together, and that unvaccinated people are not welcome - or at least not with me.

An hour later the first response came, from a friend I hadn't spoken or seen in years. "That's clear, thanks for thinking about me." Funnily enough, when writing my mail I was thinking about him as the most likely to refuse the vaccine.

My wife feels I was "too attacking" in my email, and after a sleepless night I agree: my phrasing was too direct, and out of place in that email. I do stand by the principle, so I sent an email to everyone after removing the antivaxxer and his boyfriend from the recipients. I apologized for the phrasing, restating though that I want everyone to feel comfortable and that anything is open for discussion in that context.

I now have two friends less.

Dude you said exactly the right thing. The unvaxxed (by choice, not by medical condition) shouldn't be welcome. Anywhere.

I've been very fortunate to discover instead that of my small group of friends locally, two who I thought might be the types to be skeptical of the need of safety measures and vaccines have instead turned out to be among the most serious and responsible through this whole pandemic.

I mean, they were my friends already, but still -- it increased my esteem of them.

Sadly, in my greater circle of loose acquaintances, there are several whom I now know I can't trust with community safety & concerns.

I've run into quite a few anti-vaxxers in my social circles. Living in a purple state it's been inevitable, seeing that one of my main recreational activities - golf - would be more red than blue. I've always been consistent in my stance:

"I don't understand your denial of the science, but I respect your decision to do so. Having said that, keep at least six feet away from at all times. I will not shake your hand but will offer a fist-bump. I will not engage in any discussion about our differences in this matter."

Most are accepting of my position and those who aren't can go f*** themselves and I'm better off without them in my life.

I've been around people who are wrong my whole life. A few more won't change anything

On unvaxxed:
I am worried I'm going to lose it one of these days in a store and yell at an unmasked person. I am increasingly angry when I see this.

On DS's link:
The author (who does other great writing at that site, too) focuses on government and it's a good proxy for the even broader problems of our society (economy, philosophy, inner, outer and interpersonal lives).

We are so selfish that we can't act collectively. It's like watching Battlestar Galactica or Matrix or Walking Dead and realizing that if people would put aside their selfish impulses they could be so much better off. But no. That's not the system we've constructed and live in.

We don't have "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

We don't have, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

We have, "Get down to Disneyworld in Florida" after 9/11 and whatever the hell we've constructed today to tell ourselves that Netflix and Meta and rise-and-grind and Likes and money for the money god and NFTs and f*cking Elon will set us free.

Lately the way I’ve been dealing with anti-vax nonsense is visiting the Herman Cain Awards subreddit. Basically, people post the hateful tweets and social media comments of anti-vaxxers who go into the hospital (aka nominated). Then if the idiot dies he or she receives the award.

I’m not particularly proud of my new guilty pleasure, but the fact I got a breakthrough infection that put me on my back for weeks has made me a little bit salty.

jdzappa wrote:

Then if the idiot dies he or she receives the award.

Don’t feel bad. This is just a new take/version of the Darwin awards site…

jdzappa wrote:

Lately the way I’ve been dealing with anti-vax nonsense is visiting the Herman Cain Awards subreddit. Basically, people post the hateful tweets and social media comments of anti-vaxxers who go into the hospital (aka nominated). Then if the idiot dies he or she receives the award.

I’m not particularly proud of my new guilty pleasure, but the fact I got a breakthrough infection that put me on my back for weeks has made me a little bit salty.

Be sure to also visit Sorry Antivaxxer

https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/

Update on my kerfuffle: I decided to send a similar mail to the anti-vaxxer 'friend', apologizing for my tone but reaffirming that I feel uncomfortable meeting with vaccine refusers. I also informed him that I removed him and his boyfriend from the mail chain.

I did this for me, wanting to do the right thing, and do not expect an answer nor care for it. A friend's wife told me the anti-vaxxer chewed her out years ago when she dared to eat a tuna sandwich. She's a very principled and sensitive person, and he still felt cool about knocking her down a peg... but apparently cannot comprehend someone taking a stand against him.

I do wish one of the other friends would have reached out, if only privately, to express their solidarity. I've been feeling pretty alone, so thank you all for your support. It has made a difference.

Australia's let it rip approach

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/scie...

I do wish one of the other friends would have reached out, if only privately, to express their solidarity. I've been feeling pretty alone, so thank you all for your support. It has made a difference.

You are doing the right thing. It makes us all doubt our sanity when it seems like no one is so childish and myopic

farley3k wrote:

Australia's let it rip approach

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/scie...

Interesting to see an international perspective.

LOL, Trump definitely got cowed by the antivaxxer wing of the party.

Trump Claims White People 'at the Back of the Line' for COVID Vaccines, Treatments

The former president's comments came in reference to a recent New York state policy that allows health-care providers to consider race as a risk factor when administering limited supplies of antiviral treatments to those most in need.

That policy states that "non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity should be considered a risk" due to "longstanding systemic health and social inequities" that increase the risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19. The guidelines come after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that Hispanic or Latino people are 2.1 time more likely to die from COVID-19 than white people, while Black people are 1.9 times more likely to succumb to the virus.

......Trump, however, exaggerated New York's guidelines on Saturday by incorrectly claiming that white people are not given proper treatment in comparison to people of color.

Also, delighted at how impossible this is to argue, as it is so at odds with reality. The whitest person on earth could walk into a vaccination center in the blackest party of NYC right now, and they'd vax you on the spot. You'd have to fight them off.

Man, if you went in by accident you'd have to fight them off. They really want to vax people.

charlemagne wrote:
farley3k wrote:

Australia's let it rip approach

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/scie...

Interesting to see an international perspective.

The article provides a mostly accurate reporting of the situation here.

We've been warned by our State's CMO that deaths will sharply increase across the next 3 weeks (a basic function of increased infections > increased hospitalisations > increased intubations > increased failures in medical interventions).

What isn't reported is the impact on cancer patients and any other high-risk medical conditions due to the diversion of health resources to hold back the Omnicron-Delta wave. Allied healthcare are growing more weary and overworked but the government doesn't measure their discomfort, only the numbers hospitalised and in ICU or deceased from COVID.

The government is hoping that citizens get their third booster shots as soon as possible, but because of the policy failure in procuring sufficient vaccines in 2021, most young people (including myself but really I'm almost 40 now) aren't yet eligible for the 3rd shot. I think I mentioned it upthread but my 9yo is eligible for her 1st shot but local providers are booked out until after the new school year starts on 1 February.

There is most certainly a temporary breakdown in logistics and interrupted food supply but this is going to ease over the next couple of weeks as all those people who came down or were otherwise isolating emerge from isolation. It's bad enough in a country with high vaccination rates generally; I can only imagine the levels of disruption in other places less privileged to have obtained vaccines and had significant uptake by their citizens.

Prederick wrote:

LOL, Trump definitely got cowed by the antivaxxer wing of the party.

Trump Claims White People 'at the Back of the Line' for COVID Vaccines, Treatments

......Trump, however, exaggerated New York's guidelines on Saturday by incorrectly claiming that white people are not given proper treatment in comparison to people of color.

Same old, same old, Trump can't exist unless he keeps his white base angry.

JC wrote:
Prederick wrote:

LOL, Trump definitely got cowed by the antivaxxer wing of the party.

Trump Claims White People 'at the Back of the Line' for COVID Vaccines, Treatments

......Trump, however, exaggerated New York's guidelines on Saturday by incorrectly claiming that white people are not given proper treatment in comparison to people of color.

Same old, same old, Trump can't exist unless he keeps his white base angry.

What's nuts is how much worse he is at reading things than he was before. I don't know who all cut ties from him, but I feel like the whole election/Nov 6 lost him some of his "better" people.

If he runs again maybe they'll come back, but I think he's more interested in grifting folks for money and trying to influence things/wield power without having to deal with being president.

You know, for the longest time I couldn't understand why Trump stuck to his guns about vaccines being good. Seriously the only thing he ever did that was unpopular with his insane base was to encourage people to get vaxxed, and it would be so easy for him to get on board with the anti-vaxx conspiracy theory nutjobs and get them right back in his pocket. Could it be that he finally reached a line he wouldn't cross? Did he actually grow a principle?

But then I realized, that's not it: he still wants credit for the vaccines existing because the research that lead to them happened to happen during his term of office. He wanted to be seen as the hero who swooped in and solved the pandemic, and he sees the anti-vaxx movement as ingratitude. It's amazing that he manages to rein himself in enough to go with the "vaccines are good but it's a personal choice whether to take them" angle instead of "you peons will take the jab and like it." But of course even if he still had the authority to do anything about it, he would never coerce people to get vaxxed, because that's contrary to his narcissistic narrative that the COVID vaccines are his gift to a grateful world.

Classic broken clock syndrome. And now his only out is to play the "scary brown people are trying to steal your medicine" card.

Scary brown people got him elected before! It'll work again!