Who's The Worst Pandemic Governor? Missouri's Mike Parson Making A Play For The Title

Last night we saw how Michigan congressional candidate, former MAGA bride and all-around nutcase, Audra Johnson, is predicting an imminent Civil War... here in America. Johnson, who has refused to be vaccinated, should probably move south for the civil war... or secession, where she can be with her fellow imbeciles refusing to be vaccinated as the delta variant sparks more and more cases across Trumpland.

Yesterday, CNN reported on 5 giant red clusters of counties filled with idiots refusing to be vaccinated where daily cases and hospitalizations are surging. (For those with memory dysfunction, what follows increasing daily case loads and hospitalizations are daily death rates. Let's pray that only Trump supporters die.) "The five clusters," wrote Elizabeth Cohen and John Bonifield, "are largely in parts of eight states, starting in the east in Georgia and stretching west to Texas and north to southern Missouri. The clusters also include parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee, and are made up of mostly smaller counties but also cities such as Montgomery, Alabama; Shreveport, Louisiana; and Amarillo, Texas.

Those vulnerable clusters put all of the United States -- and to some extent, the world-- at risk for going back to 2020, since high-transmission areas can become breeding grounds for Covid-19 variants that could go on to evade Covid-19 vaccines.

"These clusters of unvaccinated people are what is standing in the way of us putting this virus down permanently," said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a CNN medical analyst and professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University.

About one-third of Americans have not received even a single Covid-19 shot-- and the Georgetown analysis shows that these people are not evenly spread around the United States.

Analyzing county vaccination data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments, the Georgetown researchers found 30 clusters of counties throughout the US that have low vaccination rates compared to the national average and also have significant population size.

The five most significant clusters together include more than 15 million people. Of those, only 27.9% are fully vaccinated-- far lower than the national rate of 47.6%.

The Delta variant, which now comprises more than half the cases in the United States, is the latest in a long string of Covid-19 variants that have spread more easily and in some cases caused more severe illness.

That's why the clusters are so worrisome. Each time a virus spreads, it has an opportunity to learn how to mutate.

"We know that if you give the virus the opportunity to circulate and replicate, you give it the opportunity to generate more variants," Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser, told CNN.

The Delta variant has learned how to evade Covid-19 vaccines to a small degree, but they still offer excellent protection against severe disease and hospitalization.

The fear is that the next variant might be able to outsmart the vaccine more thoroughly, causing problems even for parts of the country that have high vaccination rates.

"We've been lucky with the variants so far that they've been relatively susceptible to our vaccine, but the more you roll the dice, the more opportunities there will be for a resistant variant," Reiner said.

I was so happy-- and relieved and even proud-- when the U.S. dropped out of the top 10 countries for daily new cases over month ago. Thanks to the idiots who refuse to be vaccinated, we're back in the top 10 again and the U.K. is back in basket case territory. Yesterday:

1. Brazil- 53,749

2. Indonesia- 38,391

3. India- 34,443

4. U.K.- 32,551

5. Russia- 24,818

6. Iran- 23,391

7. Colombia- 23,275

8. South Africa- 22,910

9. US- 19,321

10. Argentina- 19,256

And in the U.S.-- not counting Florida, which is covering up their pandemic by refusing to report new cases and deaths-- 4 of the 5 states that are juicing the U.S. rates and are now causing problems for the rest of the country, are, as you can imagine, Trump states California and Texas have high numbers because they have much higher populations that other states:

• Texas- 2,341

• California- 1,821

• Missouri- 1,678

• Arkansas- 1,210

• Georgia- 932

Yesterday Wallethub ranked each state by how safe they are now, safety measured by rates of COVID-19 transmission, positive testing, hospitalizations and death, as well as the share of the eligible population getting vaccinated. terrible to worst:

• Idaho- R+19

• Florida- R+3

• Mississippi- R+10

• Louisiana- R+12

• Arizona- R+3

• Wyoming- R+26

• West Virginia- R+23

• Nevada even- PVI

• Arkansas- R+16

• Missouri- R+11

Missouri now leads the nation in a list no one wants to be on-- the most new coronavirus cases per capita in the last two weeks. Health experts point to the delta variant, especially in southwest and northern Missouri, where vaccination rates are very low. And Governor COVID (R-MO) is still trying to politicize the pandemic, whispering QAnon conspiracy theories about federal government emergency health teams in the worst hit counties of the state, counties he's virtually abandoned to their fates.