Alabama port awash in COVID insanity

[misanthrope]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/anti-vaccine-insanity-is-sweeping-through-mobile-alabama?ref=home

snip-

The metro area surrounding Mobile Bay is Alabama’s COVID-19 hotbed. We’re also below the state’s vaccination average—the nation’s lowest—while leading in COVID-19 positivity at nearly 20 percent. Hospital beds are filling across the county.

snip-

Those around me generally eschew masks, even in crowded rooms. They demand everything continue in a pre-pandemic manner with no mask or vaccination mandates. Open schools. Flout caution. March everyone into epidemiological machine-gun fire. Politicians catered to the insanity by prohibiting private businesses from enforcing their own measures.

snip-

People here pride themselves on stereotypes of hospitality, grace, and conscientiousness. I guess COVID-19 will kill that myth, too, since those who genuinely care about others don’t spread death through inaction.

[Treefrog]

1. Rec in angry astonishment.

I truly don’t understand these people.

[Skittles]

2. I have always known that "friendly" southern stuff was very superficial

ask any gay person who grew up in the south

[misanthrope]

3. Mobile's COVID positivity rate has been updated

It was 20 percent when this was written. It's been updated as nearly 35 percent in the last 24 hours.

[viva la]

4. What does that mean?

That 35% of people taking tests are positive ?

That sounds like NYC during its worst time last spring.

[misanthrope]

5. Exactly

It's worse than people here will admit to themselves and Mobilians are exceptionally good at delusion and denial. The current mayor got in a public pissing match with the leader of the county health department last spring when the health official told the bars and restaurants to close. The mayor's ire was raised partly from his ego at not being the one who made the call, and partly because he is a firm right-winger who believes the private sector is holy.

If this gets bad, they aren't going with shutdowns here. Not after all that. The downtown bars are already circulating publicity material for their annual Tiki Week celebrations in mid-August.

[misanthrope]

6. More than Mobile, it's the I-10 corridor

https://www.al.com/news/2021/08/covid-surging-along-i-10-corridor-on-gulf-coast-from-lafayette-to-jacksonville.html

Several counties along the Gulf Coast are experiencing similar - or higher - numbers. A belt of counties running roughly the same path as I-10 from Lafayette, La., to Jacksonville, Fla., have many of the highest per capita COVID case rates in the nation, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.