In Virginia, cities and counties are separate, not one containing the other as in most of the US. So I live in the City of Harrisonburg, population about 53,000, which is surrounded by Rockingham County, population about 82,000, both in the Shenandoah Valley about 120 miles southwest of Washington.
In the past Harrisonburg, which contains James Madison University, tended to politically almost perfectly mirror statewide voting outcomes. However, since 2008 essentially it has become solidly liberal Democratic in its voting patterns and who controls the local government. We used to have GOP mayor not long ago, although they were of the moderate "mountain-valley" type who were holdovers from the days of Abe Lincoln, when the valley was fairly anti-slavery, and Lincoln's father was born in the county here (I have met a member of the family, who is tall and lanky and very progressive, working to help out refugees, Tom Lincoln).
OTOH, the county is very Republican, about 3 to 1 in recent voting. It used to moderate mountain-valley, but has pretty much gone Trump-mad like most of the party and neighboring West Virginia.
I do not have the exact vaccination numbers, but I know the rate is much higher in the city than in the county. Previously infection rates and so on were about the same between the two, but not any more.
For July so far, the city has had 6 new cases, but the county has had 64. That's it.
Barkley Rosser
So Donald Trump = Jim Jones x 666 (I did the math)
ReplyDeleteProfessor Rosser, this past MDW I had gone to WV with some friends on a rafting trip. It's been well over 10 years since I've last been there, but one thing that struck as slightly odd is that at least compared to more Trumpist/populist political lawn signs that dot Rockingham/Augusta counties, we didn't come across as many similar signs immediately across the border and for a while further in eastern WV. Better yet, I remember one home having a "proud union member" sign out front.
ReplyDeleteFrank,
ReplyDeleteI saw something similar not too long ago. But last summer WVa had plenty of Trump signs. But now I see more in VA than in WVa. Do not know why.
'cases'using high ct pcr is the wrong metric, but 'it ain't gain of function as i define it' fauci is the gold standard.
ReplyDeleteon vaccines age and medical issues are the key to determining producer and consumer risk of the vaccine.
younger w/o severe health issues the 100% exposure to the untested for safety vaccines is likely more dangerous than getting the infection after which chance of reinfection is 1/40 compared to the vaccine.
my view is republicans as a group handle risk more clearly and may know bio chemists who use corona virus on mice to induce human syndromes for study..
The vax/novax, mask/nomask, lockdown/nolockdown arguments seem to me to be all deliberate distractions from a much bigger topic, that both Trump and Biden have endorsed the lockdown strategy, even if in different grades, while the non-reaganista countries that have adopted variants of test-trace-isolate have had sickness and death rates 10 time to 100 times lower, which is a very big difference, as these death rates per 100,000 residents show:
ReplyDelete* 211.70 Italy, 197.74 Poland, 192.25 United Kingdom, 184.48 United States, 166.01 France, 142.25 Sweden, 127.05 Switzerland, 109.95 Germany
* 17.63 Finland, 14.85 Norway, 11.92 Cuba, 11.72 Japan, 8.03 Iceland
* 3.20 Thailand, 2.89 China-Taiwan, 0.63 Singapore, 0.53 New Zealand, 0.35 China-mainland, 0.09 Vietnam
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/27/five-ways-the-government-could-have-avoided-100000-covid-deaths
«While the number of UK deaths has entered the hundreds of thousands, New Zealand has recorded only 25 deaths from Covid-19 so far. Taiwan has recorded seven, Australia 909, Finland 655, Norway 550 and Singapore 29. These countries have largely returned to normal daily life. [...]
Countries that managed to effectively contain Sars-CoV-2 implemented screenings of new arrivals and 14-day quarantines for those entering the country.»
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-53816511>
«But Wuhan has not had a local coronavirus case since mid-May, and about 9.9 million people in the city have been tested for the virus. There are no bans in place on large gatherings.»
https://twitter.com/MarkDGeorge/status/1330509190507364352
«Mark George @MarkDGeorge
Greetings from Thailand, population 70 million, not an island, <4,000 cases, 60 deaths, no local transmissions in months.
Andrew Cornelio* @andrewcorn
Strange that Thailand is never mentioned in the list of countries that have successfully managed the pandemic. We’re living our lives practically normally now. Masks are mandatory. We haven’t had a local case in over 3 months.»
https://www.bloombergquint.com/businessweek/a-guide-to-2021-covid-vaccines-stimulus-sanity
“China, which clamped down on Covid with compulsory mask wearing isolation of the sick, and effective contact tracing. Chinese are blithely eating in restaurants, sitting in theaters, attending school, and going back to work.
On Jan. 18 the government reported GDP grew 2.3% in 2020, which makes China the only major economy to to avoid a contraction for the year.»
The Lincoln connection is so interesting - tall and lanky, does this Tom Lincoln tell good stories with a wry sense of humor too?
ReplyDelete