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I’m an Addiction Medicine physician and I work via telehealth in TN. Most of my patients are not vaccinated for COVID19. Yesterday I spoke with one patient who’s 42 year old son in law died of COVID19. She scoffed that he died of pneumonia not COVID19 and they’re just blaming COVID19. Then another patient told me they’d had four family members die of COVID19 but they still won’t get vaccinated. I’ve seen a shift over the past few weeks. More people are getting vaccinated but not nearly enough. I had a colleague who made fun of a patient who had COVID19 to other staff, made a joke about a patient being lazy and not coming into the office because they were “hacking up a lung.” This pivot towards sanity is really hard for those who followed an insane bigot in the White House blithely for five years. Thanks for speaking truth to power. And thanks to Soledad O'Brien for always backing sanity over all the crazy. Ida Santana, MD

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I can’t imagine what’s it’s like to be watch patients do this up close

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Mostly it’s very scary. Half our counselors at the office I was working at last year got COVID and most of them quit. TN has a horrible Governor and State Legislature who fired the Director at the Health Department for advocating for the vaccine for children 12 and older. I think it’s going to get much much worse in red states.

Thanks for being honest/brave.

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Thank you for your first hand view of all you see as a health care provider in TN. We’re there w/you in spirit.

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By giving Trump supporters so much attention the media has given them far more influence and power than they should have. In contrast the media ignored all those women who supported Hillary and were heartbroken at her loss. Who cares about women? They are only over 50% of our population. And who cares that an openly misogynistic, incompetent, con man destroyed our first chance at a woman president — and a highly qualified one at that? It’s the Trump voters that matter.

These days the media is giving far more attention to statements from the anti-vax governors than they are to this statement by WVa’s not- crazy Republican governor Jim Justice:

https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1435635717078671362?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1435635717078671362%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdigbysblog.net%2F

Call me crazy but it seems to me that it might be helpful for people to hear from Justice more than from DeSantis and Abbott.

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Good pt. WV Gov barely made headlines. press much prefers GOP VS Biden storyline

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Who cares about women indeed, especially black women, especially urban women who work in service jobs such as nurses, home health care aides and teachers? There's nothing there to romanticize. I've been saying since 2016 that I'd be glad to provide the NY Times with a list of black city-swelling women who will be glad to talk about how and why they supported Hillary.

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Excellent assessment. Interesting to note that the Florida "governor's" response to calls for vaccines and mandates is to restrict reporting of statistics on Covid hospitalizations and deaths, among the other idiotic actions he's perpetrated to insure the pandemic is still raging during the run-up to the mid terms. Where is the press on this and other news from the blood red (and gasping) states?

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agreed. press continues to give DeSantis a pass

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The CCCP has made it clear that if they can't have Trump they will do and say anything to put DeSantis in the White House.

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I can hardly think of anything more dangerous. There was a saner time when his actions would have disqualified him a long time ago. He barely got into office (by 4/10ths of a point) and while there has dedicated himself to killing the citizens of his state. The media should be eviscerating him, not touting him as a presidential prospect. Can you imagine what they'd be saying if he was a Democrat? Any presidential aspirations he harbored would've evaporated.

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Presstitutes don't care one bit about COVID until it strikes them.

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My concern with the failure of mass media is greater than ever, and I think it's because we need mass media more than ever. I read about all this money and funding these far right groups have, how they are trying to take over local politics. How many billionaires are actively supporting the far right views. It's alarming, especially at the local level.

We need the mass media to counter balance that far right funding, to defeat the large amount of propaganda being spread by the far right. Instead, the mass media organizations are both siding us to potential destruction.

What some of these Republican politicians are doing is not logical. It's not Democrats are doing this, Republicans are doing that, we'll write that both are just two sides of reasonably handling a problem. The Republican politicians and their supporters are actively putting in place policies or spreading lies that are directly causing the death of people, including children. That is not one side of the coin.

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I despair of the mainstream media. I was just watching Deadline Whitehouse. After an in depth discussion of how the strong evidence that 1/6 was going to be violent was ignored, they turned to a discussion of 9-11. Of course there was no discussion of the many dire warnings that Bin Laden was planning to attack us that the Bush administration ignored. Next was NY Times’s Elizabeth Bumiller talking about her experiences on 9-11. She ended her remarks with the statement that although not everything we have done since then has been good, we are much safer now. Then she said that we haven’t had a terrorist attack in the US since then. The U.S. federal code defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives”. Clearly January 6th attack on the Capitol fits that definition to a “t”. Our government also counts other attacks like the ones at Mother Emmanuel in Charleston, Fort Hood, the Sikh temple, etc.

If a top NY Times reporter can’t be honest and objective about the serious threat of right wing terrorism in this country or the blatant incompetence of the Bush administration I doubt the recast of the mainstream media will be, either. Like most of the media Bumiller 9-11 has erased the horrors of Oklahoma City bombing from her mind and is refusing to acknowledge that right wing terrorism is a major threat to our democracy.

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It makes you think they are waiting for civil war to break out and the ending will be different this time. What scares me are the women who side with the right like Bumiller saying we are safer tell me where is she living. The media has lost any respect they could claim they had. When they made trump normal for me that was the beginning of the end. When they stood by and listened to his racist speak, his hateful speak against women, his hateful speak against military men/women never serving a day in his hateful life that was the beginning of the end for mainstream media for me. So if it wasn't for newsletters like this and some others we would be lost I thank you PressRun for standing up for truth.

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No former president continues to get as much media attention. TFG plays a willful media. Why not ask Bush, Clinton or Obama what their plans are for Saturday night? Can we graduate from HS and grow up? A brainwashed electorate is supported by brainwashed "both sides media" funded by dark $ and they don't want to be left out on what conservative media is covering. Thank you for your work, Eric

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No former president has had the classless, unmitigated gall to continually force himself upon the nation. But you are right, Mary...the media doesn't have to slavishly reproduce every idiotic utterance from this clown. Jimmy Carter and Bush the Smarter were also one term presidents, and they gracefully exited the stage. As both Mary Trump and Bill Maher (Bill Maher!) predicted: the Former Guy simply cannot "move on." His narcissism won't allow it.

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The QAnon idiots we deal with at work screaming that Medicare won't reimburse them for Ivermectin...

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Oh geez!

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OMG!

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Ha! Your Q buddies seem to be........wait......Socialists??????

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Dan they call us...and scream about Gawdless Biden while Fox, Newsmax, OANN, Hate Radio or Jesus TV is blaring in the background...

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I bet many of them also refused to get vaccinated because it hadn’t been fully approved by the FDA.

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Quick note: for some reason the audio doesn't work for today's podcast version of column. Apologies.

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Your lede should be etched into a monument somewhere (with slight verb tense change). That way future generations might understand the madness that ruined the nation. As for the media, the fawning coverage of Trump voters is all the more remarkable when one considers their widely held belief (no, psychosis) that the election was stolen and that the insurrectionists were patriots. Maybe interviewing people who are grotesquely deluded about so many things isn't a good idea.

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Agree on the lede. I printed it out; it made the refrigerator.

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I'm beginning to think that it's more than just the fear of being labeled as liberally biased. Billionaires control the mainstream media and have more to lose in a land of progressive agendas. Keeping Republicans in power, no matter how corrupt, is likely the reasoning for this constant coddling. If sales of newspapers and electronic subscriptions is the media's goal then why wouldn't they want to be selling to us, the 70 to 75 percent that are sane, don't like war, want nice roads, healthcare for all, a fixed climate, and are vaccinated. Something simply doesn't add up when you look at how much attention the media gives to Trump supporters and the wacky Republican platform in general.

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And I am sick and tired of seeing how the CCCP (Corporate Controlled Conservative Press) endlessly wants to talk with Trump voters in Ohio or Northwestern PA.

It would be nice if JUST ONCE they talked to Hillary or Joe voters...

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Biden got 80M votes….how many Biden Voter stories have you seen?

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You think that once...JUST ONE CENSORED ONCE...The New York Times would go to a place where Biden voters go.

But knowing the Times they would go to a black church and report how upset the congregants are that Biden can't pass voting rights laws ignoring that two sellouts are siding with Charles Koch...after he bribed Boris Manchin and Natasha Sinema...

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Dems are boring, Joe. Especially us white ones. Remember?

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And the majority are women; the media prefers manly men — or those who pretend to be over silly, weak, irrational females.

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Biden got well over 81 million.

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"Biden & Republicans Spar Over New Vaccine Requirements" is a headline on MTP Daily. Is there anything more that says our MM media is broken?

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Which is why I refer to that clown as Chuck U Todd hosting Press The Toot.

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At this point they (trumpers/gop/covid deniers) would argue the merits of 2+2=4 or present 'another view' if it was presented to them by a Democrat or woman or person of color or someone from another country.

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Even after the election was over, the reporters were back in the diner to see how these salt of the earth Americans were coping.

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It totally outraged me then & it still does. They should have devoted equal space to 'Trump's won the electoral college vote and the presidency, but millions more voters chose Hillary Clinton. Who are these voters and how do they feel now?" The problem is that many of us were women and many were black so we don't count in their world. We're not even on their radar. These white male — I hate to use the word but, elites — tend to romanticize the white blue collar male, as the "salt of the earth" and create a fantasy alternative identity. I think it's the same syndrome that leads to Bruce Springsteen's fan base to be heavily upper-middle class white professional men although that is a far less twisted and distorted version of it; Springsteen isn't selling dangerous political ideas. But it is interesting how, when he started to get more political, supporting Kerry and Obama and Biden, some of his and grumbled and told him to "shut up and sing."

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There is something remarkable in The NY Times on the eve of 9/11. Multiple opinion columns are noting that the real threat to America that emerged after that day is the Republican Party. Paul Krugman is particularly scathing in his indictment of the GOP.

Of course, the Times also had to run one that calls Biden’s vaccine mandate a mistake.

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Maybe I've missed journalists asking DeSantis, Abbott, and others of their ilk what they're doing to protect their residents from Covid. If they quote Republicans criticizing the mandates, then they should press them hard for how they would end the pandemic.

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“[T]he Trump voter coverage deliberately failed to pull back the curtain and reveal even small glimpses of today’s manic, anti-mask and anti-vaccine mobs.”

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As I was saying before some spirit - not me — hit the Post button: The pathology is not new. There’s been a huge segment of the base that was let’s say hateful, delusional since at least 90s, probably longer. But they were getting their fixes from the conservative media. Trump’s innovation, so to speak, was legitimatizing the insanity. And now the GOP pols are required to match the irresponsibility and insanity.

As for shaming the vaccine deniers: Some have good excuses and some are just insane. And you can on a county by county map such at the Times how the various forms of denial are sourced. I think it’s very safe to say that the inability to get the ‘Rona under control isn’t due to deniers in general but specific deniers in specific locations if you know what I mean.

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If anyone has a stomach for it, Politico Playbook is now blaming Joe Biden for NOT declaring a mandate sooner:

"The only group of people that has disappointed JOE BIDEN more than the Afghan national army is unvaccinated Americans.

“Our patience is wearing thin,” Biden said last night of the 80 million Americans who haven’t received a shot, “and your refusal has cost all of us.”

"We don’t mean to make light of the Taliban takeover or the Covid pandemic, but in both cases Biden has responded to policy failures by placing most of the blame outside the White House.

"On Thursday, Biden was unsparing about the burdens that the unvaccinated have thrust onto the rest of us: thousands more dead, overflowing hospitals, a rebounding economy showing signs of retreat.

"Pandemic politics, as Biden called it, are not simple. But eight months into the crisis, any new set of rules offered by the president raises an obvious question: Why didn’t he do this already?...

"When press secretary JEN PSAKI was asked about Ivey’s comment on July 23, she responded, “Well, I don’t think our role is to place blame.” A reporter followed up wondering if it was time for vaccine mandates. “That’s not the role of the federal government,” Psaki said.

"How many lives could have been saved if it hadn’t taken two more months for Biden to reverse those stubborn views?"

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An NPR reporter this morning interviewed a doctor who plays a prominent role in the federal government's vaccination efforts. The reporter's first question: why weren't these mandates implemented months ago. The doctor's response, in essence, was that everyone assumed people would voluntarily get vaccinated against a deadly disease.

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Duh?

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