Linkee-poo Wednesday April 14

Sorry, crazy days and work is picking up. So just a short one today.

"A standoff has emerged between the White House and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as federal health officials have rejected the governor's repeated requests for additional vaccine doses as her state experiences a surge in cases driven by the B.1.1.7 variant of Covid-19… Although President Joe Biden and Whitmer are close allies, the two now find themselves in the middle of an awkward impasse that's complicated by a global pandemic and national clamor for vaccines." While it may seem intuitive that as an area experiences a spike of cases that you'd want to surge vaccines in, it's not a good way to manage a nationwide vaccination program. Mostly because 1) the spike is already happening, people are already infected (and in the pipeline for more infections), 2) the vaccine takes 2 shots a month apart and then 2 weeks after the second shot you have full effectiveness (but you do have some limited protection about a week after the first shot), 3) you want to contain the outbreak by vaccinating around the spike, and 4) the best way to protect people is masks and social distancing, and you can do that right now (except when you have a political party ::coughRepublicanscough:: hell bent on making things as bad as possible and are telling people "FREEDOM - don't wear a mask"). Finally, it's going to be a close race to beat this disease (and right now, our odds aren't looking good), so if you start chasing spikes all you're going to be doing is stomping out housefires, meanwhile your whole city will burn to the ground because you should be focusing on the city burning and not just one building. That may sound cruel, and I have a lot of friends in Michigan, but vaccinations have almost zero chance of combating this spike (it's too late), but if done right can stop the next spike. If done wrong, it won't stop any spikes (because the virus will have a large enough pool of infections to mutate until the vaccine is no longer effective). It doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything, restrictions should be increased and enforced, but it's passed the time of a vaccine helping with this spike.

"John Oliver explains the industry behind nursing homes and assisted living facilities, and why long-term care needs fixing."

"Out of over 5,800 warehouse workers at this location, 3,215 cast ballots. The final tally was 1,798 votes against unionizing and 738 votes for the union, with 70.9% of valid votes counted against unionizing. The union had needed 50% plus one of the ballots to win." Spot the problem.