Josh Marshall
The Numbers Start to Clarify
A central mystery of the Delta variant in recent weeks hasn’t just been limited data but also wildly inconsistent data. The Israeli health ministry has been placing vaccine efficacy somewhere near 40% against infection – vastly lower than the original clinical trials and much lower than other current measurements. But a slew of Israeli public health experts have challenged those tabulations. A UK study in that went through May and was published in The New England Journal of Medicine on July 21st placed efficacy against the Delta variant at 88%, only slightly less than against the Alpha variant. But yesterday another UK study was released by the Imperial College London which showed substantially reduced efficacy against infection – though apparently not hospitalization and disease.
This study puts vaccine efficacy against all infection at 49% and against symptomatic infection at 59%.
Boy Congressman Insurrection-ing Again?
There was a heated school board meeting last night down in Buncombe County, North Carolina, which includes Asheville. The topic was a new mask mandate for the county’s schools. But it’s a targeted one: the board voted to mandate masking for those who don’t show proof of vaccination. The vote was 4 to 2 in favor. Protesters insisted that this constituted dictatorship if the board didn’t agree to vote again.
But that wasn’t the end of it. The meeting attracted a pride of feral Trumpers who tried to disrupt it and pushed all sort of conspiracy theories about like “the fake vaccine is the plandemic.”
You can see one of the outbursts here.
Great deep dive into the American right-wing’s love affair with authoritarian nationalist Viktor Orbán. Tucker Carlson is actually late to the party.
I’m so glad Matt Shuham ran this to ground. It’s the story of how the GOP’s latest COVID dodge and anti-immigrant freakout started with someone flagging down a police officer in La Joya, Texas because they saw what they believed was a family of immigrants sneezing and coughing and not wearing masks at the local Whataburger.
Many thanks to everyone who signed up yesterday for our Prime AF (Ad Free) trial. If you’re a member you can try it out for two weeks with no additional cost and no obligation. I promise you’ll find it a big improvement and it’s a big help to us every time someone upgrade. Just click here to give it a test drive on us.
Richard Trumka, Dead at 72
Richard Trumka is dead at 72. Head of the AFL-CIO and a fixture of the American labor movement for decades. Heart attack appears to be the cause of death but that’s still supposition. More to come.
New GOP Message on Surging COVID: It’s Juan’s Fault!
As Delta COVID surges cases across the country and fills hospitals in low-vaccine Red States, Republicans have been test-driving a range of messages to maneuver out of accountability for their reckless policies on vaccines. They’ve tried a belated effort to push vaccines, deny they were ever against them and then sidled back to opposing various kinds of vaccine mandates. But over the last couple days they’ve started pushing a new message: the problem is undocumented immigrants “pouring” over the US-Mexico border. Embattled Florida Governor Ron DeSantis put it this way (emphasis added) in a fundraising email sent out yesterday: “Joe Biden has the nerve to tell me to get out of the way on COVID while he lets COVID-infected migrants pour over our southern border by the hundreds of thousands. No elected official is doing more to enable the transmission of COVID in America than Joe Biden with his open borders policies.”
I want to flag again what I discussed here yesterday. Only a handful of jurisdictions across the country are tracking and publishing COVID data broken down by vaccination status. As far as I can tell all of two states – Oregon and Virginia and one county, San Diego County in California – are tracking so-called breakthrough infections in any way that gives us a helpful understanding of the state of the pandemic.
Support For DeSantis Drops Amidst Pro-COVID Policy Push
Floridians don’t seem wild about Gov. DeSantis’s pro-COVID policy agenda. A new poll out this morning shows DeSantis’s public support falling roughly ten points since May. The new poll is from St Pete Polls and shows DeSantis with 44% approval and 49% disapproval.
We have a couple tentpole events each year which are critical for the business side of our operation. One of those is when we offer all our members two weeks of TPM AF (Ad Free) at no extra cost. That’s what we’re doing this month. It’s basically a no-risk free trial and we do it because we’re so confident that once you’ve tried it you won’t want to go back. It’s just that much better.
It’s also a way to support TPM. We fund TPM with a mix of membership revenues and advertising. Every time a member opts out of advertising our financing gets a bit more stable and we spend a bit less time scrambling for ad dollars. We spend that time producing a better site. It makes a big difference.
No hard sell to upgrade. But I really do want to ask you to do the trial. There’s no obligation. It’s easy to opt out if it’s not for you. If nothing else, just enjoy two weeks ad free on us and then opt out. The trial is super easy to turn on and turn off. Can you give it a try? Just click here. Like I said, we’re confident that if you give it a try you simply won’t want to go back.