I read the pull of the stars yesterday. It was cathartic. No lesbian (or other sex). I’m glad I read it at the end of our pandemic, I couldn’t have handled it at the beginning (Emma Donoghue really gets to me, to the point that I don’t read some of her work because of the subject matter)
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WHO announced a change to the variant naming convention. It’ll now proceed along the Greek alphabet.
“ Under the new scheme, B.1.1.7, the variant first identified in Britain, will be known as Alpha and B.1.351, the variant first spotted in South Africa, will be Beta. P.1, the variant first detected in Brazil, will be Gamma and B.1.671.2, the so-called Indian variant, is Delta.”
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Denver is in “yellow” for total cases for the first time in a looooong time. That’s under 100 new cases per hundred thousand people. So… still almost one in a thousand, but we were at one in a hundred for way too long.
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So…I don’t know if I accidentally organized a super-spreader last event last night. We said masks were required on the ride portion last night, but it was 94F/34C out yesterday and there was no way to keep it enforced with 500-700 people on the ride. I would venture to say 50-70% were not wearing masks at some point on the ride or end point. I saw a lot of hugs and plenty of dancing together at the end too 
We were following the law. Pretty much anything is allowed if you’re outside in public places in my county now, the event was 95% adults in a county currently ranked the Lowest of state risk categories. There are currently only 7 new cases in my county for every 100K people. We have 60% of adults vaccinated.
But still. It’s weird. I took off my mask at the end picnic to drink water and eat, and it just felt…normal…but unsettling.
I think kid-friendly rides are going to be a lot harder for awhile, since we have awhile to catch up on vaccinations.
I am having trouble reconciling how back to “normal” so much stuff is in the affluent, liberal pockets of the US and how different it is in other parts of the world. I wish it had been a more subtle transition in many ways.
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So…I don’t know if I accidentally organized a super-spreader last event last night.
I imagine you run with a pretty liberal crowd, right? I bet a lot of the people comfortable hugging and dancing are vaccinated.
Outdoor transmission is already very unlikely, among vaccinated, even lower.
So probably you didn’t 
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Yea, I gave a few very sweaty side-hugs and everyone that asked to hug me confirmed they were fully vaxxed first. And they’re people I know and trust to not be lying. For myself and many other people, it was the first time we’ve seen a ton of our friends in 2 years.
But there were also a LOT of strangers there because even I don’t know 800 people who will show up to a bike ride in 94F heat. Bikes rides bring out lots of types of people, political leanings not specified 
A lot of portland tends to fall into the “crunchy liberal” anti-vax crowd vs the “trump supporter” anti-vax crowd.
Far less babies and kids than you’ll usually see at a Kickoff ride, though, and I noticed a lot of the co-parents I know with kids only had one adult there, and no kids. I suspect a lot of people left unvaxxed kiddos at home.
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“crunchy liberal” anti-vax crowd vs the “trump supporter” anti-vax crowd.
A truly fascinating connection between disparate groups…
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I could not have put that any better. Everything feels super abrupt right now.
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The latest data I saw (I think from gallup? maybe pew? I get a ton of emails IDK, lol) actually shows that political affiliation has little impact on vaccine hesitancy. It’s mostly education level. People with lower education levels are way more likely to avoid the vaccine on both sides of the political spectrum, whereas college educated democrats and republicans are both getting vaccines in high (and similar) numbers.
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If you run across it again, I’d love to see the data! I love data.
I haven’t seen anything that cites little to no correlation between political affiliation and vaccine hesitancy.
I found a pew article (https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2021/04/23/republican-men-are-vaccine-hesitant-but-theres-little-focus-on-them) from April that cited political party, and one from UCSD from May that also cites political party. (https://ucsdguardian.org/2021/05/09/ucsd-study-shows-increased-vaccination-hesitancy-among-republicans/) Along with a ton of other stuff.
I can’t find anything more recent though.
I have definitely seen education level impacts hesitancy as well though. There are lots of factors. I’ve also seen a lot of “vaccine apathy” articles lately.
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Found it. You’re right, there is a political divide but the class divide is large (and larger than the racial gap). That makes sense because there is a class divide politically; democrats are likelier to be rich than republicans.
NY Times
It is common to hear about two different demographic groups that are hesitant to receive a Covid-19 vaccination: Republican voters and racial minorities, especially Black and Latino Americans.
The two groups seem to have different motivations. For Republicans, the attitude is connected to a general skepticism of government and science. For Black and Hispanic Americans, it appears to stem from the country’s legacy of providing substandard medical treatment, and sometimes doing outright harm, to minorities.
These ideas all have some truth to them. But they also can obscure the fact that many unvaccinated Republicans and minorities have something in common: They are working class. And there is a huge class gap in vaccination behavior.
Here is a look at vaccination behavior by racial groups and political identification, based on polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation:
By The New York Times Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
Here are those same groups subdivided by class, using a four-year college degree as the dividing line between working class and professional:
By The New York Times Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
As you can see, working-class members of every group are less likely to have received a vaccine and more likely to be skeptical. “No matter which of these groups we looked at, we see an education divide,” Mollyann Brodie, who oversees the Kaiser surveys, told me. In some cases, different racial groups with the same education levels — like Black and white college graduates — look remarkably similar.
This poll did not break out Asian-Americans, but other Kaiser surveys have, and it’s consistent: Asian-Americans have a higher median income than Black, Hispanic or white Americans and also a higher vaccination rate.
All of which points to the fact that the class divide is bigger than the racial divide.
ETA: Also sorry if I’m writing in a confusing way, meds + no sleep.
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Thanks- that’s interesting to look at.
I totally agree with you that there is a class divide. But, as your data shows, there is correlation to political party as well.
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Yes, you are correct and I was incorrect. I confused political gaps with racial gaps.
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Which is also very interesting. I would have thought there were bigger racial gaps; though maybe mistrust is so heavily tied to economic/education level?
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It feels intuitive to me that people in the same economic class would be more similar to each other (in a lot of ways) than people who happen to belong to the same racial/ethnic group, but might not have anything else in common. It’s super interesting for sure! I feel like you see similar things with marriage age, family structure, educational attainment, religion, beliefs on gender equality, etc. within social classes.
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Just wondering what everyone is seeing on vaccines for the littles lately? Basically no one I know in real life is concerned about Covid for their kids. Whether or not they got the vaccine for themselves, most people seem to believe that a new vaccine has worse (possible) future outcomes for their kids, than the risk of Covid.
I’m trying to be reasonable, DH and I are both vaccinated, so we’re feeling ok venturing out a bit more. I know the kid risk is low, but then again, Covid hasn’t been studied for the long term, and I feel it’s best to keep the kids from exposure if I can.
I’m sorry this is rambly. I guess I’m wondering for those of you with kids (or IF you had kids), are you booking the first possible appointment, waiting a while, or skipping it for your kiddo altogether?
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I know that my grandson (who is 5, and we’re in the same household) will have an appointment as soon as they open up. His mom is very pro-vax and we’re in a high vax area.
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I’ll do a data review when the trial results come out and then decide.
Eta but, if it passes authorization I’ll almost certainly be comfortable with the findings.
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I think that even where I see parents hesitant, the over 12s are so excited that they are pushing for it and vaccinated. The parents of younger kids that I know, including me, are glad to wait a bit before deciding. My guess is that we’ll do it but maybe not right away. My view is that if we can control spread by vaccinating teens and adults, that buys us time to where risk is low.
And my kid reacts hard to all of his vaccines, and has big feelings. I think that to space vaccines out in a way that I’m comfortable, we’d be looking at no sooner than 22 months
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Everyone I know with older kids is chomping at the bit to get them vaccinated. They are so excited. Younger kids a bit less so, my pediatrician has told us the current risks a non vaccinated toddler is about the same as a vaccinated adult. (Of course we don’t know if a minor case has long reaching effects.) But still, if the vaccine is approved for my 2 and 4 year old, we will almost certainly get it ASAP. But I don’t want them to rush approval.
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