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Joey Jordison, best known as the former drummer, co-songwriter, and co-founder of influential alternative metal band Slipknot as well as the guitarist for horror-punk group Murderdolls, has died, according to a statement released Tuesday afternoon by his family.

“We are heartbroken to share the news that Joey Jordison, prolific drummer, musician and artist, passed away peacefully in his sleep on July 26th, 2021. He was 46,” the statement read. “Joey’s death has left us with empty hearts and feelings of indescribable sorrow. To those that knew Joey, skechers outlet understood his quick wit, his gentle personality, giant heart and his love for all things family and music. The family of Joey have asked that friends, fans and media understandably respect our need for privacy and peace at this incredibly difficult time. The family will hold a private funeral service and asks the media and public to respect their wishes.” No cause of death was given.

Nathan Jonas “Joey” Jordison was born April 26, 1975 in Des Moines, Iowa, and he began playing drums at age 8, even forming his first band when he was still in elementary school. In 1995, Jordison joined a local metal band called the Pale Ones, who were later renamed Slipknot upon Jordison’s suggestion. After creating their own scene in Iowa, attracting a devoted following of fans they affectionately dubbed “Maggots,” and self-releasing the demo album Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. on Halloween 1996, Slipknot signed to Roadrunner Records and broke through to the mainstream. Their self-titled Roadrunner debut was in fact the first album in that label’s history to be certified platinum.

With their unique and visceral blend of shock-rock, hip-hop, lyrical nihilism, and theatrical presentation (the nine-member band famously performed in matching industrial boilers suits and creepy 3D Halloween masks), Slipknot became one of the most successful, pioneering, and enduring bands of late-’90s/early-2000s nu-metal explosion. They eventually sold 30 million albums worldwide and earned 10 Grammy nominations, hey dude with their Rick Rubin-produced track “Before I Forget” winning the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 2006.

Jordison played on Slipknot’s first four studio albums — 1999’s Slipknot, 2001’s Iowa, 2004’s Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses), and 2008’s All Hope Is Gone — after which the band would not release a new album until 2014’s .5: The Gray Chapter. It was during the making of that record that Jordison left the group. At that time, in 2013, Slipknot cited mysterious personal reasons for his departure, and Jordison countered with a statement claiming that he had been fired, insisting, “[Slipknot] has been my life for the last 18 years, and I would never abandon it, or my fans.” Also in 2013, Jordison’s side-project Murderdolls officially disbanded.

However, in 2016 Jordison revealed that after experiencing mysterious symptoms since 2010, he had finally been diagnosed with transverse myelitis, a neurological disease that had temporarily rendered him unable to use his left leg or play drums during the end of his run with Slipknot. It is currently unclear if this condition was connected to Jordison’s death in any way, but in a 2018 interview with Rhythm magazine, he stated that he had fully recovered with the help of intensive rehabilitation.

Along with his work in Slipknot and Murderdolls, Jordison — whose influences included Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham, the Who’s Keith Moon, KISS’s Peter Criss, Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee, Gene Krupa, and Buddy Rich — played in Scar the Martyr, Vimic, and Sinsaenum. skechers shoes He also collaborated with Rob Zombie, Metallica, Marilyn Manson, Korn, Ministry, Otep, and Satyricon. During his career, Jordison received many accolades for his drumming, including a Golden God trophy at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards, a Drummies Award for Best Metal Drummer, and the title of No. 1 heavy metal drummer according Loudwire readers.

In 2010, a Rhythm magazine readers’ poll even named Jordison the best drummer of the previous 25 years, ranking him above the likes of Dave Grohl and Rush’s Neil Peart. He reacted to that honor by stating, “I’m at a loss for words. This is beyond unbelievable. Something like this reminds me every day why I continue to do this.”

Alana Smith made Olympic history over the weekend by becoming the first out nonbinary athlete on Team USA, participating in the Women’s Skateboarding Street event and proudly displaying their pronouns — they/them — on their skateboard during the broadcast. Still, broadcasters did not refer to Smith as “they” during the event.

Now, new findings released by the Pew Research Center show that the broadcasters were not alone in their apparent discomfort.

The research, released Tuesday, revealed that despite the cultural shift brooks shoes around gender identity — celebs like Elliot Page coming out as transgender, for example, or members of Gen Z being four times as likely to identify as trans, nonbinary or genderfluid, according to recent data — not everyone has the same acceptance level of the new reality.

There is a slight uptick in awareness, according to Pew, which found that 42 percent (about four in 10) Americans say they know someone who is transgender — up five percentage ponts since 2017. Additionally, 26 percent of adults say they know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns such as “they” or “them” — up from 18 percent since 2018.

Still, 56 percent of U.S. adults believe that gender is assigned at birth, while 41 percent say that a person’s gender can be different from the sex they were assigned at birth — views that have been roughly stagnant since 2017.

While all age groups have shown evidence of a growing awareness, the highest growth by far is among those under 30: Forty-six percent of those under 30 said they know someone who goes by gender-neutral pronouns such as “they/them” (up 14 percentage points from 2018), compared to 29 percent of those over 30 years old (up 10 percentage points from 2018).

And while half of Americans say they would feel “very” or “somewhat” comfortable using a gender-neutral pronoun, 48 percent say they would feel “very” or “somewhat” uncomfortable in doing so.

Breaking that down by age, the findings show that six in 10 people (61 percent) under 30 say they are comfortable using gender-neutral pronouns to refer to someone, including 39 percent who say they are “very” comfortable.

That’s compared to 53 percent of those between 30 and 49 years old, 46 percent of those between 50 and 64 years skechers shoes old, and 41 percent of those 64 and older who say they are “somewhat” comfortable referring to someone as “they/them.”

The numbers around comfortability have been virtually unchanged since 2018.

Interestingly enough, these polls also mirror political party associations, Pew Research notes, which, it can be argued, are parallel to the record number of anti-trans bills (such as bathroom bills and bans on trans athletes competing in school sports or receiving gender-confirming medical care) that limit definitions of gender only to the sex assigned at birth.

Though adults in both political parties are now more likely to know someone who uses “they/them” pronouns, Democrats are still twice as likely as Republicans (34 percent vs. 16 percent).

That being said, 68 percent of Republicans say they would feel uncomfortable using these pronouns, compared to 67 percent of Democrats saying that they are indeed comfortable using them.

As for Smith, it’s not exactly clear what the broadcasters thought. But OutSports opinion writer Brian Bell believes that “what happened to Smith on Sunday reflects the attitudes within the minds of event organizers… The information is out there. Olympic organizers have it, failed to properly communicate it to people whose job it is to convey knowledge of competitors (who are capable of doing their own research as well) and soured an amazing moment of inclusivity in sport in doing so.”

After an all-too-brief respite, the United States is again at a crossroads in the pandemic. The number of infections has ticked up — slowly at first, then swiftly — to 51,000 cases per day, on average, more than four times the rate a month ago. The country may again see overflowing hospitals, exhausted health care workers and thousands of needless deaths.

The more contagious delta variant may be getting the blame, but fueling its rise is an older, more familiar foe: vaccine skechers outlet hesitancy and refusal, long pervasive in the United States. Were a wider swath of the population vaccinated, there would be no resurgence — of the delta variant, alpha variant or any other version of the coronavirus.

While mild breakthrough infections may be more common than once thought, the vaccines effectively prevent severe illness and death. Yet nearly half the population remains unvaccinated and unprotected. About 30% of adults have not received even a single dose, and the percentage is much higher in some parts of the country.

America is one of the few countries with enough vaccines at its disposal to protect every resident — and yet it has the highest rates of vaccine hesitance or refusal of any nation except Russia.

Public health experts have fruitlessly warned for months that the virus — any version of it — would resurge if the country did not vaccinate enough of the population quickly enough. Bill Hanage, a public health researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, predicted in January that Florida might have a rough summer. Now 1 in 5 new infections nationwide is in Florida.

True, the speed and ferocity with which the delta variant is tearing through Asia, Europe, Africa and now North America has taken many experts by surprise. It now accounts for about 83% of the infections in the United States.

But delta is by no means the wickedest variant out there. Gamma and lambda are waiting in the wings, and who knows what frightful versions are already flourishing undetected in the far corners of the world, perhaps even here in America.

Every infected person, anywhere in the world, offers the coronavirus another opportunity to morph into a new variant. The more infections there are globally, the more likely new variants will arise.

The United States will be vulnerable to every one of them until it can immunize golden goose sneakers millions of people who now refuse to get the vaccine, are still persuadable but hesitant or have not yet gained access. The unvaccinated will set the country on fire over and over again.

And they will not be the only ones who are singed. Vaccinated people will be protected from severe illness and death, but there may be other consequences. Already in some communities, they are being asked to wear masks indoors. If the numbers continue to soar, the restrictions that divided the country before may return. Workplaces may need to close again, and schools, too.

And some number of vaccinated people will become infected. Breakthrough infections were expected to be vanishingly rare with the original virus, but recent data suggest they may be less so with the delta variant. It is roughly twice as contagious as the original coronavirus, and some early evidence hints that people infected with the variant carry the virus in much higher amounts.

“The larger the force of infection that comes from the pandemic in unvaccinated populations, the more breakthrough infections there will be,” Hanage said.

Most breakthrough infections produce few to no symptoms, but some may prompt illness in vaccinated people serious enough to lay them up in bed, miss work — and put their children or older relatives at risk. Some cases may lead to long COVID, scientists now fear — a poorly defined syndrome in which symptoms seem to persist for months.

This grim redux has a glaringly obvious solution: shots in arms. But short of a federal mandate — or a patchwork of mandates by municipalities, hospitals, colleges and businesses — it is hard to see how enough Americans will be immunized to form a buttress against the virus.

After a brisk vaccination campaign in the spring, the pace has slowed to about 537,000 doses per day, according to data gathered by The New York Times. Some responsibility for the lag lies with the frank refusal of conservative leaders — often Republicans — to champion the vaccines.

But misinformation, an epidemic all its own on social media, emanates from all parts of the cultural spectrum, ecco shoes and there is no single reason why so many Americans remain unvaccinated. It is a Hydra-headed problem.

Of the 39% of adults who are unvaccinated, about half say they are completely unwilling. But even within that group, some say they would comply if required to do so.

Some are hesitant and may come around with the right persuasion from people they trust, while still others plan to be inoculated but say they have just not had the chance.

Politics is a driver for only some of these people, noted Dr. Richard Besser, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In New Jersey, where he lives, the rates vary drastically because of socioeconomic factors. In mostly white Princeton, 75% of adults are immunized, versus 45% in Trenton, just 14 miles away, which is heavily Black and Latino.

“Both are strong Democratic areas, so it’s really important to break things down and to address the issues that are impeding vaccination progress in each segment of the unvaccinated population,” Besser said.

Still, there is no doubt that the political divide is playing a role in rising infection rates. From the start, vaccinations in counties that voted for Donald Trump lagged behind those in counties that voted for Joe Biden, and the gap has only widened — from 2 percentage points in April to nearly 12 points now, according to one recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Nationwide, 86% of Democrats have had at least one shot, compared with 52% of Republicans, according to another poll. Even the national goal of having 70% of adults vaccinated by July 4 somehow became “Biden’s goal,” said Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research at Boston University. All of a sudden, even getting out of the pandemic “became a left-versus-right issue.”

Fewer than half of House Republicans are vaccinated as of May, compared with 100% of congressional Democrats. For months, some Republican lawmakers — including Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky — and conservative news commentators like Tucker Carlson have voiced their skepticism of vaccines, loudly and insistently.

Lately, as infections rise in conservative precincts, a few Republican leaders have begun championing vaccination. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the minority leader, who survived polio as a child, has worn masks and has urged that everyone be immunized. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said in an interview Wednesday that “the politicization of vaccination is an outrage and frankly moronic.”

All of these leaders and many more will need to repeat vaccine affirmations often enough to persuade millions of people to overcome their hesitation. The delta variant is thriving amid American discord. The vaccines are the remedy not just for this variant but all those yet to come.