Yesterday I noted ex-President Trump’s vainglorious recital of events at his two recent rallies in Ohio and Florida. But there were a string of comments he made at his Sarasota, Florida rally that I only learned about after the fact. They are highly important going forward and particularly in the context of the 2022 election. The comments aren’t terribly surprising coming from Trump. They’re perhaps implicit in things he’s said before. But they represent something new. In short, he now seems to be demanding the release of the various insurrectionists facing charges for storming the Capitol on January 6th. “How come so many people are still in jail over Jan. 6?” he asked the crowd.
He also went further and began to suggest or demand (the ambiguity is a central feature of all Trump incitement) the lynching of the Capitol Police officer who shot insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt.
There’s a high bar for nonsensical Trump statements that actually grab my attention. But he seems to be now moving into what I guess we might call his Evita phase. Who talks like this? Who has this kind of messiah complex and who has supporters who don’t laugh when they hear this kind of faux biblical melodrama?
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The post below on the Delta variant has gotten a lot of attention. It’s always important to make a simple point: This isn’t “oh noooeesss, the vaccines don’t work anymore!” All the data suggests they remain extremely effective at preventing serious illness – over 90%. By the standards of almost any other vaccine they remain highly effective against any infection at all. Recent peer reviewed measures of the Pfizer vaccine against the Delta variant suggest efficacy in the high 80s percentage range. This new data out of Israel says it’s in the mid-60s. If you’re vaccinated, especially with one of the mRNA vaccines, there’s no reason for you to worry. The issue is more at the society-wide level, trying to make sense of the various data points suggesting a non-trivial level of reduced vaccine efficacy and how that maps onto how society at large will be operating in the coming months and years.
At the risk of stating the obvious, if you don’t want to die of COVID or end up in a hospital struggling to breath and fearing for your life, get vaccinated. You’ll be covered.
