[_tunic_]

We have a curfew since yesterday evening. In some towns there were riots then. This afternoon there were protests in my hometown which ended up in riots.

Here's in front of the train station

 

The windows of the train station are demolished, supermarkets and other shops inside and nearby were plundered

Bikes were used as barricades

 

 

A woman got hit full in the face by a water cannon, and got smacked onto the concrete wall behind her :-D
There's a video of it too.
There's also footage of her afterwards with her face covered in blood, but I'll spare you those.

 

More pictures are here, on the site of the local newspaper. Including the new look of the train station with all windows broken

[choc e-Claire]

On the one hand, I'm really sorry about the riots happening and I hope that you're able to sort things out soon. But on the other, bicycles as barricades? You Dutchies are really beyond parody

[_tunic_]

The odd thing is, I live just outside of the city centre, about a 10 minute bike ride from the train station and I noticed nothing. Normally I notice police sirens when they drive by.

There are always hundreds of bikes parked outside the station. Guess they're all burned and trashed now.
Some politicians said this was the worst riots in the country in 40 years, the punk/squatter riots in the eighties.

[The Soup Nazi]

When did so many MAGAssholes fly from Hicksville, USA to Eindhoven?

[The Soup Nazi]

Fareed Zakaria's latest Washington Post column:

100 million is too few. Biden should aim higher on vaccinations.

What is the first thing Joe Biden should do as president? He has many competing priorities. He must deal with the pandemic, restart the economy, reestablish U.S. credibility on the world stage and compete effectively with China.

It turns out there is one thing he can do that will address all these problems at once: vaccinate all Americans as quickly as possible. Biden’s current goal of vaccinating 1 million people a day is far too modest. He should double that, doing whatever it takes to achieve herd immunity for the United States by late April or early May. This would instantly boost the United States’ standing and give the president leverage with everyone from the Republicans to the Europeans and the Chinese.

Right now, the rollout of the vaccine is flailing. Alex Azar, the Trump administration’s secretary of health and human services, predicted in early December that 20 million Americans would be vaccinated by the end of 2020. In fact, that number barely reached 3 million. The situation has improved, but there is still chaos and confusion. The Trump administration’s mishandling of the vaccine rollout follows a string of other public health failures, such as bungling the policies on testing, tracing and isolation, as well as the supply of medical equipment. Although the administration did an admirable job funding vaccine development through Operation Warp Speed, it quickly fell back into its familiar hands-off mode once the private sector pulled off that feat. The states, whose varying standards and infrastructure make them ill-equipped for carrying out a mass vaccination campaign, have been forced to improvise — with predictable consequences.

And although the Trump administration has plenty of blame on its hands, this is a much larger failure. As I write in my latest book, “Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World,” the U.S. government has in recent decades become good at just one thing: writing checks. Its major endeavors have centered around tax cuts and credits, bailouts and relief payments. The size of the covid-19 relief packages passed last year — including the money for Operation Warp Speed — is impressive. But other than dispensing cash, the federal government seems to be unable to administer anything. Forty years of Reaganism — defunding, dismantling and demeaning government — have taken their toll.

The capacity of the state to undertake large and complex projects cannot be rebuilt overnight. But some things can be changed right away. The Biden team is clearly well-qualified. Perhaps as important, his people believe in government and understand that getting it to work is a special challenge in the United States. Power is divided among three branches, dozens of federal agencies and thousands of local authorities. Corralling all these forces to work together requires strenuous, persistent efforts directed by the White House every day. If you view government as a reality television show, consisting mostly of symbolic gestures and signals to your base, little gets done.

The federal government has already paid for hundreds of millions of doses. It has funds available to vaccinate. It should take on the task of ensuring that Americans are vaccinated — and fast. The president should use every tool available, including the armed forces and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as partnerships with private companies such as Starbucks and Federal Express. Drug store chains, by one account, have the capacity to administer more than 3 million vaccines a day.

This should be the equivalent of a wartime effort. Those who have worked on rapid vaccination programs in developing countries argue for an aggressive approach. We should set up thousands of vaccination sites, many running 24/7, and create mobile units to reach people far from population centers. The government should spare no expense in accelerating the vaccine rollout. The effort would easily pay for itself by saving lives, driving economic output and raising tax revenue along the way.

The United States’ handling of the pandemic in general has been a disaster and is widely seen as such. In a Pew Research Center survey across 13 major countries, 84 percent of respondents agreed that the United States had bungled covid-19, and every country believed it had done far better than the United States. Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole described the strange new attitude of the world toward the United States — not admiration or hatred or envy but, for the first time, pity.

In an essay in Foreign Affairs, Samantha Power, the incoming head of U.S. foreign aid programs, reminds us that the world has admired the United States most for its spectacular achievements. The United States was the arsenal of democracy during World War II, executed the Berlin Airlift, put a man of the moon and created the Internet. If the Biden administration can succeed spectacularly at the most pressing challenge facing the world, that will say loud and clear to everyone: The United States is back.

[The Soup Nazi]

I already started doing this a coupla weeks ago (and I should have begun before that). From The Washington Post:

Time to double or upgrade masks as coronavirus variants emerge, experts say

The change can be as simple as slapping a second mask over the one you already wear or, better, donning a fabric mask on top of a surgical mask.

Wear your mask is becoming wear your masks.

The discovery of highly transmissible coronavirus variants in the United States has public health experts urging Americans to upgrade the simple cloth masks that have become a staple shield during the pandemic.

The change can be as simple as slapping a second mask over the one you already wear, or better yet, donning a fabric mask on top of a surgical mask. Some experts say it is time to buy the highest-quality KN95 or N95 masks that officials hoping to reserve supplies for health-care workers have long discouraged Americans from purchasing.

[What you need to know about the coronavirus variants]

As with other parts of the pandemic response, the United States lags behind other parts of the world when it comes to masks. Several Asian countries, including Singapore and South Korea, have mass-produced high-quality masks to send directly to residents. In recent weeks, European countries have begun mandating medical-grade masks in public settings as the virus strain first identified in the United Kingdom threatens to ravage communities. British scientists estimate it could be as much as 70 percent more transmissible.

“The existence of more-transmissible viruses emphasizes the importance of us upping our game and doing not more of the same but better of the same,” said Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Frieden has called for people to wear higher-quality masks. “Yes, that is confusing to people, but the key is to share what we know when we know it and be frank about what we don’t know.”

Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, touted double-masking during a Monday appearance on the “Today” show, saying two layers “just makes common sense that it likely would be more effective.”

But on a Wednesday town hall appearance on CNN, Fauci appeared to reverse course and instead stressed following CDC guidance, which does not call for wearing two masks or N95s. New CDC Director Director Rochelle Walensky, appearing alongside Fauci, also warned that N95 masks are uncomfortable to wear and may dissuade consistent use if expanded to the general public.

The CDC encourages Americans to choose well-fitting masks with “two or more layers of washable, breathable fabric” and to avoid surgical masks and other face coverings meant for health-care workers.

President Biden has embraced masks as a core strategy for ending the pandemic, mandating face coverings on planes, in airports and in all federal buildings. But he has not called for a medical-grade-mask mandate or mass production of high-quality masks.

The CDC and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Some public health experts said the federal government should have prioritized certifying or manufacturing better masks earlier so Americans do not have to fend for themselves to avoid counterfeits or upgrade their own.

The Trump administration in March coordinated with underwear makers to send five masks to every household, officials told The Washington Post, but the plans fell apart because of logistical concerns and other issues, including complaints that the masks looked like underwear or jockstraps.

Abraar Karan, a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School has, since last spring, called on government and industrial leaders to mass-produce comfortable, effective masks. He said the country could have avoided its current situation, with Americans learning how to better protect themselves largely alone.

“This seems just like the rest of our covid tragedy: We just don’t have answers, we just put out fires constantly, and we are asking people to do things on their own,” Karan said. “You’ve always needed better masks. We needed better masks from the start.”

Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech engineering professor who has researched mask effectiveness, said the public has better tools to reduce viral loads getting into the air and into bodies.

Without a medical-grade face covering, Marr said, people can get the best, simplest protection by wearing a cloth mask tightly on top of a surgical mask. They can also make a three-layer mask by cutting a high-efficiency filter, such as a vacuum bag, to place between two tightly-woven fabric masks.

The difference is like getting two recommended doses of coronavirus vaccines instead of one — the additional mask offers more complete protection against the virus.

[CDC acknowledges role of airborne transmission in spread of coronavirus]

“Those standard cloth masks might be around 50 percent effective in terms of protecting yourself,” Marr said. “Maybe that was good enough before when combined with distancing and trying to avoid being in crowded indoor spaces.”

Masks are among the simplest tools in the fight against the coronavirus but also among the most politically fraught. Some have turned masks into a symbol of government overreach.

[At the heart of dismal U.S. coronavirus response, a fraught relationship with masks]

Federal officials, including Fauci, were criticized when they urged people to cover their face after initially advising against masks in the early weeks of the pandemic. Many experts said the changing guidance made senseas the shortage of protective equipment for health-care workers eased and scientists better understood the spread of the virus — including that it is spread by asymptomatic people. But the initial confusion has been used to cast doubt on the proven efficacy of masking and the broader government response to the pandemic.

“So in other words Fauci and everybody else really has no idea what to do or what is safe,” former Major League Baseball player Jordan Schafer tweeted in response to a news article about the scientist recommending two masks. “Fauci has told us not to wear a mask, to wear one mask, and now to wear two masks. Can we just get transparency please and accurate info.”

Cady Fusté of Seattle started wearing a cloth mask over a surgical mask this month. She made the shift at the advice of her mother’s doctor — a double lung transplant has put her mother at a higher risk.

“Science evolves. It makes total sense to me,” said Fusté, 35, who works in photo production. “If you think about it, if you can still smell someone’s perfume, it’s probably not that effective to something that’s airborne. A thin layer of cotton is probably not as ideal as a surgical mask.”

Behavioral psychologists say public health authorities must be mindful of a backlash as they start to shift mask guidance. When people living through a crisis are confused, they often stick to their habits.

(continues...)

[The Soup Nazi]

(cont'd)

“When you look at leaders and you see mixed messages like the ones you’ve seen in the past, you tend to latch onto the ones that make you feel comfortable,” said David Abrams, a professor of social and behavioral health at New York University and a former National Institutes of Health official.

Abrams said it is essential to acknowledge that the guidance is changing and to be patient if people do not change their behavior immediately.

“Let’s face it: This is changing very quickly and science is making progress and sometimes we even make mistakes and correct them,” Abrams said. “There’s nothing wrong with that or learning how to do something better. The double-masking is a good example of that.”

Linda Aldoory, a public health communications researcher at the University of Maryland, said there may be no swaying people who have already lost faith in the government to change their mask behavior, which is why other messengers should be enlisted.

“If we could get every famous influencer and celebrity to wear new masks and wear double masks … that might actually be a great way to start a new social norm to getting the kind of masks they want worn,” Aldoory said.

Danny Ryan, a 27-year-old who works in communications in D.C., said he was swayed to switch to two cloth masks in part after he saw Biden and Vice President Harris doubling up in recent weeks. He also reconsidered the protection of a single mask after seeing his breath while waiting outside for a coronavirus test, although experts say that is not a sign of a malfunctioning mask.

“It just stuck in my head — they are wearing two masks, protecting them underneath and maybe more above,” said Ryan, who now keeps extra masks by his door. “To be perfectly honest, I just feel safer doing it with updates in the news about the new variants.”

[The Soup Nazi]

Yeah, things are peachy.

 

Anti-Vaxxers and Right-Wingers Shut Down Dodgers Stadium Vaccine Site

What the fuck is up with the beards? Always with their big beards, these assholes. Go join the fucking Taliban.

More: https://news.google.com/stories/CAAq...S&ceid=US%3Aen

[The Soup Nazi]

 

[The Soup Nazi]

Wisconsin pharmacist who destroyed more than 500 vaccine doses believes Earth is flat, FBI says

Try to make this up: "In another interview with authorities, pharmacy technician Sarah Sticker said Steven Brandenburg [the dipshit in question] sent her text messages promoting false beliefs he supported, including that the sky was not really the sky but a 'shield put up by the government to prevent individuals from seeing God,' court records show."

[Savage Clone]

FFS

[Skuj]

(How was fucking tesla able to escape the recent house-cleaning?)

Edit: Oops, he was indeed banned. I was assuming that these were recent posts.

[Antagon]

Anyone else feeling like the effects of the crisis are sort of manifesting themselves in what I can only describe as a psychological Horror movie? Where it's not so much body horror, but more a widespread infestation of mind-corrupting brain bugs? So many people at least partly buying into total BS theories right now or coping in rather unhealthy/irresponsible ways. People that seemed somewhat reasonable before all that shit went down. Fuck the time we're living in.

[tw2113]

*chugs alcohol*

[Antagon]

"Non-essential" retail is allowed to open again tomorrow after being closed for over a month in Austria. And everything's full of ads announcing huge fucking clearance sales. Something...something its own tail.

Freaking commercialism is absolutely running amuck. And people will flock to furniture stores to buy whatever they wish to fill the gaping hole in their soul with - potentially risking another massive increase in new infections. Not that the numbers right now are great.

This sad charade is getting absolutely disgusting and tiresome. But hey, people are losing their shit right now. How about instead of working out a comprehensive and effective plan to get the vaccinations going at a sensible pace or compensating those working tirelessly so our medical system still works accordingly, we just open all the stores again and let people substitute their lack of hope or meaningful connections with mindless consumerism?

[Skuj]

I'm looking at pre-Superbowl crowds in Florida. Pandemic? What pandemic?

[Antagon]

Originally Posted by Skuj

I'm looking at pre-Superbowl crowds in Florida. Pandemic? What pandemic?

I feel like every country has it's own Florida. In Austria, it is definitely the Tyrol right now - where, despite a harsh lockdown, tourists were able to lodge and party in a specific region, because they were pretending to establish a secondary residence there and looking for a job - something that was far too easy to accomplish and must have been sanctioned in some way by local profiteers.



Also: In spite of the lockdown, skiing resorts were still allowed to be opened - resulting in a good amount of clusters. I think this photo may actually be from the neighboring state of Vorarlberg, but the scenario is quite similar. Mind you, all other societal events that consist of people gathering in larger groups (that is more than two households at a time) were forbidden, including pretty much any type of sports activities - yet skiing was miraculously greenlit, making it an absolute monopoly people who were cooped up were flocking to.


The amount of sheer fucking incompetence and irresponsible cherry-picking (also corruption, considering a lot in the skiing business are members of the Conservative Party - which holds the majority in the current government) is glaring. Also, wild parties in Austrian skiing resorts were responsible for a substantial amount of infections all across Europe back when the whole shit really began a year ago. It was party central for drunk, irresponsible yokels and ignorant tourists then and it seems like there's still a lot of that going on in those regions now - just in a more clandestine, roundabout way.

 

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by Antagon

I feel like every country has it's own Florida. In Austria, it is definitely the Tyrol right now - where, despite a harsh lockdown, tourists were able to lodge and party in a specific region, because they were pretending to establish a secondary residence there and looking for a job - something that was far too easy to accomplish and must have been sanctioned in some way by local profiteers.

From the Associated Press:

Austria warns against travel to Tyrol, eases virus curbs

VIENNA (AP) — Austria on Monday issued a warning against travel to its Tyrol province amid concerns over cases of a coronavirus variant first discovered in South Africa, even as the country eased its third lockdown by reopening schools, shops, hairdressing salons, museums and zoos.

[The Soup Nazi]

Get ready for permanent fun. From Fareed Zakaria's newsletter:

Covid-19 Forever?

We’re all waiting for the pandemic to end—but will it, ever? At The Wall Street Journal, Daniela Hernandez and Drew Hinshaw write that it’s beginning to dawn on “governments and businesses” alike that we’re probably heading for a future of endemic Covid-19, in which the virus simmers and evolves, necessitating constant updates to vaccines, but never goes away.

“Going through the five phases of grief, we need to come to the acceptance phase that our lives are not going to be the same,” former CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden tells them. “I don’t think the world has really absorbed the fact that these are long-term changes.”

At The Atlantic, Sarah Zhang talks to experts who draw much the same conclusion. Vaccines may help prevent severe illness and death, but they may not fully block transmission; as more people develop immunity and as that immunity wanes, while new variants emerge, asymptomatic spread could linger as a risk. If the pandemic is a campfire, Zhang writes, we may never douse it completely, but we might wet the logs enough to cool the blaze.

[choc e-Claire]

Another five day lockdown (or, as they insist on calling it, 'circuit-breaker') here in Victoria, harshest restrictions we had last year. I get it, but surely considering how few relative numbers we have, we should actually be better by now?