Category: Coronapanic

A corrected history of mRNA vaccines

by philg

According to the world’s most prestigious scientific journal, here’s how the history of mRNA vaccines begins:

In late 1987, Robert Malone performed a landmark experiment. He mixed strands of messenger RNA with droplets of fat, to create a kind of molecular stew. Human cells bathed in this genetic gumbo absorbed the mRNA, and began producing proteins from it.

Realizing that this discovery might have far-reaching potential in medicine, Malone, a graduate student at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, later jotted down some notes, which he signed and dated. If cells could create proteins from mRNA delivered into them, he wrote on 11 January 1988, it might be possible to “treat RNA as a drug”. Another member of the Salk lab signed the notes, too, for posterity. Later that year, Malone’s experiments showed that frog embryos absorbed such mRNA. It was the first time anyone had used fatty droplets to ease mRNA’s passage into a living organism.

Those experiments were a stepping stone towards two of the most important and profitable vaccines in history: the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines given to hundreds of millions of people around the world. Global sales of these are expected to top US$50 billion in 2021 alone.

The above Nature article is dated September 14, 2021. In late December 2021/early January 2022, the above-referenced Robert Malone was censored by YouTube (UK Independent) and unpersoned by Twitter (Daily Mail). A mixture from the two sources:

Given the doctor’s contested views on Covid-19, including his opposition to vaccine mandates for minors, the act by YouTube has sparked several accusations of censorship amongst right-wing politicians and political commentators.

Malone even questioned the effectiveness of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine in a tweet posted the day before his account was suspended on December 30

He told Rogan that government-imposed vaccine mandates are destroying the medical field ‘for financial incentives (and) political a**-covering’

Malone responded by questioning: ‘If it’s not okay for me to be a part of the conversation even though I’m pointing out scientific facts that may be inconvenient, then who is?’

(What did Malone do for work between 1987 and now? According to Wikipedia, he graduated medical school in 1991, was a postdoc at Harvard Medical School (yay!), and then worked in biotech, including on vaccine projects. “Until 2020, Malone was chief medical officer at Alchem Laboratories, a Florida pharmaceutical company,” suggests that he might live here in the Florida Free State.)

How long would we have to wait for a corrected history of mRNA vaccines from which the unpersoned Malone would be absent? January 15, 2022, “Halting Progress and Happy Accidents: How mRNA Vaccines Were Made” (New York Times), a 30-screen story on my desktop PC. The Times history starts in medias res, but if we scroll down to the point in time where Nature credits Malone, both Malone and Salk are missing:

The vaccines were possible only because of efforts in three areas. The first began more than 60 years ago with the discovery of mRNA, the genetic molecule that helps cells make proteins. A few decades later, two scientists in Pennsylvania decided to pursue what seemed like a pipe dream: using the molecule to command cells to make tiny pieces of viruses that would strengthen the immune system.

The second effort took place in the private sector, as biotechnology companies in Canada in the budding field of gene therapy — the modification or repair of genes to treat diseases — searched for a way to protect fragile genetic molecules so they could be safely delivered to human cells.

The third crucial line of inquiry began in the 1990s, when the U.S. government embarked on a multibillion-dollar quest to find a vaccine to prevent AIDS. That effort funded a group of scientists who tried to target the all-important “spikes” on H.I.V. viruses that allow them to invade cells. The work has not resulted in a successful H.I.V. vaccine. But some of these researchers, including Dr. Graham, veered from the mission and eventually unlocked secrets that allowed the spikes on coronaviruses to be mapped instead.

Perhaps the Times just didn’t have enough space in 30 screens of text to identify Malone? The journalists and editors found space to write about someone who wasn’t involved in any way:

“It was all in place — I saw it with my own eyes,” said Dr. Elizabeth Halloran, an infectious disease biostatistician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle who has done vaccine research for over 30 years but was not part of the effort to develop mRNA vaccines. “It was kind of miraculous.”

There was plenty of space for a photo of an innumerate 79-year-old trying to catch up on six decades of biology. The caption:

From left: Dr. Graham, President Biden, Dr. Francis Collins and Kizzmekia Corbett. The scientists were explaining the role of spike proteins to Mr. Biden during a visit to the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory at the N.I.H. last year.

For folks in Maskachusetts who’ve had three shots and are in bed hosting an Omicron festival, the article closes with an inspiring statistic:

He was in his home office on the afternoon of Nov. 8 when he got a call about the results of the study: 95 percent efficacy, far better than anyone had dared to hope.

See also the NYT for Massachusetts hospitalization stats in a population that is 95 percent vaccinated with a 95 percent effective vaccine:

So… it was two weeks from Robert Malone being unpersoned by the Silicon Valley arbiters of what constitutes dangerous misinformation to an authoritative history in which Malone is not mentioned.

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Did your free COVID tests arrive yet?

by philg

Who has received his/her/zir/their free-from-Joe-Biden COVID-19 tests? This handout seems like an ideal political strategy. People will be delighted to pay $40,000 per year in local, state, and federal taxes as long as they can get $40 (retail) in COVID tests “for free” from the benevolent pharaoh.

I’m wondering if the typical household receives these tests just as Omicron (“in retreat” due to muscular government efforts, not because of Farr’s law) has disappeared and, more importantly, if Americans will be told to discard these tests when the next wave hits because the tests won’t be sufficiently sensitive to whatever variant comes after Omicron.

Readers: What’s your prediction as to whether 90% of these tests ultimately are discarded?

Related:

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At-home test kits are back in stock; triumph of central planning?

by philg

As of last night, CVS in the Palm Beach area has at-home test kits back in stock.

Do we call this a failure of central planning? The site to order “free” (i.e., paid for by us via taxes) kits went live only on January 19 delivery time was supposed to be “within seven to 12 days” (USA Today). In other words, the central planners’ fix for the shortage will not ramp up until after the shortage is over.

Or do we call this an example of the success of central planning? Secure in the knowledge that Joe Biden is sending them four kits per household, Americans have ceased their panic buying of test kits at retail.

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Omicron is in Retreat

by philg

Adding some support to the Vietnam War analogy, today’s New York Times says “Omicron Is in Retreat”, with the implication that any decline in “cases” is due to the efforts of the human army and its generals (the Covidcrats):

In the human v. virus war (it has to be a war because one army is retreating), humans are “winning” and it will be humans who decide on when to “close the books” on the spread of the virus:

Since early last week, new cases in Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey and New York have fallen by more than 30 percent. They’re down by more than 10 percent in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. In California, cases may have peaked.

“Let’s be clear on this — we are winning,” Mayor Eric Adams of New York said yesterday. Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York State, said during a budget speech, “We hope to close the books on this winter surge soon.”

The Tet Offensive of SARS-CoV-2 may continue through Tet (February 1), however:

The Covid situation in the U.S. remains fairly grim, with overwhelmed hospitals and nearly 2,000 deaths a day. It’s likely to remain grim into early February. Caseloads are still high in many communities, and death trends typically lag case trends by three weeks.

On FaceTime last night with a group of friends back in Lincoln, Maskachusetts, a physician said that his hospital was full and transferring patients to other hospitals. Quite a few of the “COVID cases” within the hospital had been acquired in the hospital, due to folks ignoring the April 2020 idea of building renal dialysis-style clinics for COVID treatment (would keep most COVID patients from going to the hospital in the first place). The Democrats in the group then riffed about their dream of denying medical care to the unvaccinated. In their view, it was inconceivable that a vaccinated (“responsible”) human could require hospitalization for COVID-19, but the unvaccinated were nonetheless making it tough for the vaccinated to get ordinary hospital care, e.g., for cardiac issues.

My response to this virtue-based triage system was that, due to American incompetence with keeping medical records and the country’s persistent refusal to implement a chip-in-the-neck system, anyone who was about to be kicked out of the hospital for being unvaccinated (“Djokoviced,” after the first athlete to be banned and deported for not taking drugs) could simply say “I was vaccinated at a Walmart in Punxsutawney,” but lost my vaccine papers. How would the hospital in Maskachusetts be able to check?

A generally conservative member of the group (though he had voted for Obama) pointed out that we did not deny medical care to the obese, to alcoholics, or to drug addicts (I corrected him using CDC preferred terms, such as “Persons who use drugs/people who inject drugs” and “Persons with alcohol use disorder”). This was not persuasive, however, and the Democrats still wanted to exclude the unvaccinated from health care, as they are already excluded from public places in Boston. Confirming our loyal reader/commenter Mike’s worst suspicions, I suggested that the final stage of the Democrats’ triage system for the unvaccinated could be a job as an extra in the next Alec Baldwin film.

Speaking of Massachusetts, it look as though the January 15, 2022 implementation of a vaccine paper check requirement was highly effective. Nearly 15,000 cases of COVID-19 occurred on January 14. Excluding the unvaccinated from restaurants, etc., reduced infection to 0 cases on January 15. From Google:

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Will we ever know how the CDC’s cloth mask recommendations changed the COVID-19 death statistics?

by philg

“The C.D.C. concedes that cloth masks do not protect against the virus as effectively as other masks.” (NYT, Friday):

When the C.D.C. finally recommended masks for ordinary Americans, it emphasized cloth face coverings. It took months more for the C.D.C. and the W.H.O. to concede that the coronavirus can be carried by tiny droplets called aerosols, which can linger indoors for hours.

After nearly two years we learn that a bandana is not “the best” PPE.

I’m wondering if there would be any way to tease out the effects of federal and state government mask orders and propaganda campaigns on COVID-19 deaths. (Here’s one place in Jupiter, Florida that takes CDC guidance seriously…

)

Theory 1: while cloth masks are garbage compared to a professionally fitted N95 mask used with a full set of Ebola ward precautions, including frequent hand-washing and disposing of the mask after one use, they “did something.” So COVID-19 deaths were perhaps delayed (14 days to flatten the curve) or maybe even prevented (though the mechanism for prevention is unclear).

Theory 2 (core Church of Sweden): cloth masks had almost no effect, just as other Western government efforts were doomed to fail in a “virus in charge” world.

Theory 3: Anders Tegnell, the MD/PhD at the Swedish public health helm in spring 2020, suggested that European Covidcrats consider whether cloth masks and surgical masks could actually intensify a COVID-19 epidemic due to giving people a “false sense of security.” In other words, people who would have stayed home would instead go out with a cloth mask on. People who would have kept a 6′ distance would instead forget.

A friend criticized me for heaping scorn on well-meaning public health officials in the U.S., e.g., calling them Karens and referring to “face rags” rather than “protective cloth masks.” My response:

You’re basically saying “How can you question the $10 trillion two-year anti-COVID war in which the best and brightest U.S. bureaucrats have embroiled American schoolchildren and taxpayers?” Isn’t this the same question that people who supported the Vietnam War (albeit much much cheaper, even adjusted for inflation, and much less disruptive to the average American’s life, and probably far less deadly to Americans (lockdown-induced extra opioid deaths alone will soon exceed American Vietnam War deaths)) asked of the anti-Vietnam War contrarians? For the supporters of the Vietnam War, anyone who said that it was unwinnable and/or actually immoral was unpatriotic as well as crazy/stupid/unscientific. JFK and Lyndon Johnson had assembled the smartest people in the U.S. to hang out at the White House and they’d proven with charts and statistics that the Vietnam War could be won and was being won. Added to this technocratic competence, the pro-Vietnam War folks were motivated by the purest of intentions.

My mocking the cloth masks that the experts told Americans to wear could actually have saved lives, no? By urging people to use common sense and reflect that a wet bandana was not effective PPE, the term “wet face rag” could have resulted in someone either (a) using an N95 mask that would actually provide some protection, or (b) staying home. Why not reserve your criticism for the public health officials who told people that cloth masks were effective? Isn’t it a far greater sin to have told people to nurture a bacteria colony in front of their piehole as a COVID-preventive than anything I did?

… Because of misplaced faith in masks and vaccines, Americans avoided the hard work of restructuring society to thwart respiratory viruses. Los Angeles will soon host a 200,000-person gathering (Super Bowl). Disney and Universal keep thousands of people from all over the country and the world crammed together in indoor lines every day. If not for faith in masks and vaccines, everyone would agree with me that it is crazy to allow these parks to reopen before they restructure their lines to be outdoors-only.

You can infer from the above that I am a Church of Sweden parishioner. However, as is typical for Church of Swedeners, I admit that I can’t be sure that I’m right.

Will #Science ever convincingly settle this debate? The one good study of masks as a public health intervention (as opposed to masks in a lab setting) is the Bangladesh randomized controlled trial (Nature summary). It showed a slight reduction in infections over an 8-week period with surgical masks (no statistically significant effect with cloth masks), but in a society where people have less control over their environment than in the U.S. The typical resident of Bangladesh can’t choose whether to say home and work via Zoom, whether to use a private car instead of public transport, whether to isolate in a corner of the 2,300 square-foot house shared by 3 people, etc.

Maybe Florida versus California is the best that we can do as a natural experiment within the U.S.? Both have climates that enable a lot to be done outdoors. From a Stanford Medical School heretic:

From the above data we could infer that the central Church of Sweden tenet (Theory 2) is the correct answer, i.e., that masks had no effect. But we could also infer that the (cloth) mask orders increased the death rate (Theory 3). By September 2021, when the above chart was published, California had enjoyed nearly 1.5 extra years of protection via lockdown/shutdown compared to Florida, in addition to the masks. So if we believe that the lockdown/shutdown (except for “essential” marijuana stores of course) orders reduced the COVID-19 death rate, we have to suspect that California’s mask orders pushed California COVID-19-tagged deaths up.

Speaking of risk compensation, here’s a message from a physicians’ discussion forum right at the peak of the Omicron surge:

“My twins turned 14 today and had 8 (immunized and also mostly previously infected) kids over for a party. I was told none of them are straight. They played spin the bottle, apparently, and I thought how awesome a game, when everyone feels comfortable kissing everyone! That was NOT my middle school experience. I know there’s a pandemic, but I still thought: cool.”

Maybe a COVID-19-safe version of spin the bottle could be played on Zoom? Each time a person is selected to kiss, he/she/ze/they kisses his/his/zir/their family pet. Mindy the Crippler would be a fan!

And, finally, since this post mentions Sweden:

In response to a comment below, about the CDC recommending cloth masks only as an emergency measure in spring 2020, a current CDC web page, updated August 2021:

Note that the only example are cloth masks.

Related:

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The 6-year-old hater

by philg

Rousseau thought that children were innately innocent, but maybe that is because he never reared any.

On the way to the Stuart Boat Show, we stopped at a favorite local restaurant for breakfast. I finished my Egg McMuffin before our 6-year-old had consumed his Big Breakfast with Hotcakes and decided to share with him some news of the world. I stumbled upon “China Bans Flights From U.S. as Covid-19 Measures Intensify” (WSJ):

The 6-year-old’s comment? “But they started Covid.”

Freed from the supervision of Senior Management, the young hater enjoyed his first caramel apple later that day. After sampling this new delicacy, he said, “You know what would be better? A caramel apple with no apple. The same size and shape, but all caramel.”

(Why don’t the Chinese postpone the 2022 Olympics until they’re willing to allow spectators? If the Japanese could kick the Olympics a year down the road, what would be wrong with a postponement to December 2022 or February 2023, for example? If we believe Science, COVID-19 won’t be a problem then. See “Fauci: US can get Covid under control by next year with more jabs” (Guardian, November 16, 2021), for example.)

Related:

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The Serbian Mushrik is cast out of the Antipodal Mecca

by philg

From “Why Are Non-Muslims Not Allowed Into The Cities Of Mecca And Madinah?” (Inside Saudi):

In Islam, the cities of Mecca and Madinah are considered as places of peace, refuge, and sanctuary for Muslims only. Non-Muslims termed Mushriks are prohibited in order to keep it that way.

For example, Hindus believe that Brahma is one and many. Also, 80% of Christians believe in the Trinity that God is three equal and eternal persons in the form of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

The very fact that the Mushrik believes and acts on the basis of polytheism makes him/her a Mushrik and in effect spiritually Narjis (unclean) in the eyes of Allah.

It is NOT the case that he/she is unclean in the physical sense but only in the spiritual sense.

From CNN:

“Rightly or wrongly” tennis star Novak Djokovic is perceived as endorsing anti-vaccination views — and his presence in Australia could influence people, said lawyer Stephen Lloyd, who is acting for the government.

Lloyd said it was “common sense and uncontroversial” to assume that people would listen to Djokovic’s views, given what we know about the power of celebrity.

According to Lloyd, Immigration Minister Alex Hawke doesn’t need to show evidence that Djokovic is influencing people’s views to cancel his visa — just that there’s a risk that he might.

He said Hawke made the decision to cancel Djokovic’s visa in accordance with the Australia’s Migration Act that enables the minister to bar someone who “may” or “might” pose a risk to public health.

From an American point of view, the Australian government’s position isn’t novel. While at least 10 million undocumented immigrants are welcome to stay in the U.S. (even after being ordered deported, as with Barack Obama’s Aunt Zeituni) and there is no requirement that those who walk across the border and avail themselves of our multi-year asylum process accept Science and the Sacrament of Vaccination, there is no realistic way for an American to express him/her/zir/theirself if he/she/ze/they endorse anti-vaccination views. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube will ban heretics. I recently met a recruiter who had 5,000 LinkedIn contacts and was subject to a “lifetime ban” in the fall of 2020. (She appealed the decision and got a response that they’d “reviewed [her] private messages” and decided to sustain the ban.) She had posted skepticism that mask orders (bandanas at the time!) and U.S.-style lockdowns were effective in long-term reduction of COVID-19 deaths.

The New York Times says that Djokovic has been cast out via a flight from Australia to comparatively free Dubai. Let’s check “the curve”. From a few days ago:

Now that Djokovic has left via Dubai, and thus the sanctity of Australia has been restored, it does look as though the curve is flattening. From the Google:

Advantage, #Science?

Samizdat currently circulating among Irish sports fans via WhatsApp:

(Facebook owns WhatsApp, but due to tech limitations, it can’t read messages that are exchanged among users and therefore it can’t easily hunt down and ban the unrighteous.)

Related:

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Trying to make sense of the Supreme Court rulings on the vaccine orders

by philg

We tried to predict what the Supreme Court would do with President Biden’s vaccine mandates on health care workers and on employees of larger companies (see Supreme Court hears arguments on forced vaccination in two parallel universes).

In the ruling on the health care industry, dependent on the twin rivers of Medicare and Medicaid cash, the Supreme Court said the following:

In many facilities, 35% or more of staff remain unvaccinated, … and those staff, the Secretary explained, pose a serious threat to the health and safety of patients. That determination was based on data showing that the COVID–19 virus can spread rapidly among healthcare workers and from them to patients, and that such spread is more likely when healthcare workers are unvaccinated.

the Secretary also found that “fear of exposure” to the virus “from unvaccinated health care staff can lead patients to themselves forgo seeking medically necessary care,” creating a further “ris[k] to patient health and safety.”

(The last one is interesting. Suppose that we find that patients are uncomfortable with white cisgender heterosexual physicians, whom they perceive as intellectually inferior due to being able to slide into medical school via privilege. Can the government order that the health care industry hire only the BIPOC and 2SLGBTQQIA+? Otherwise patients might forgo seeking medically necessary care.)

The core of the above-cited section is that a lawyer, with no technical or scientific training, has decided to disagree with a Stanford Medical School professor (see “Benefit of COVID-19 vaccination accounting for potential risk compensation” (Nature)) who found that the vaccinated might actually be more likely to get infected and spread disease if you assume (a) an imperfect vaccine, and (b) humans take more risks once they’ve been told that they’re invulnerable due to vaccination. (see also Perfect illustration of risk compensation rendering COVID-19 vaccines ineffective and Why doesn’t the raging plague in Maskachusetts cause doubt among the true believers in Faucism?)

So the Supreme Court accepts as scientific fact that vaccination and casting out the unvaccinated are critical to #StopTheSpread. This, plus potential patient discomfort with heretical providers, led to the Court approving Biden’s order.

In the ruling on generic private employers, however, COVID-19 seems to be a different, much milder, disease. Certainly COVID-19 does not present a “grave danger” to humans nor is SARS-CoV-2 “toxic or physically harmful.”

[workplace-related orders from the Pharaoh] are permissible, however, only in the narrowest of circumstances: the Secretary must show (1) “that employees are exposed to grave danger from exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or from new hazards,” and (2) that the “emergency standard is necessary to protect employees from such danger.”

So too could OSHA regulate risks associated with working in particularly crowded or cramped environments. But the danger present in such workplaces differs in both degree and kind from the everyday risk of contracting COVID–19 that all face. OSHA’s indiscriminate approach fails to account for this crucial distinction— between occupational risk and risk more generally—and accordingly the mandate takes on the character of a general public health measure,

The last paragraph says that there is an inevitable risk of COVID-19 exposure based on inhabiting the biosphere for workers, but, based on the previous ruling, this is apparently untrue for patients visiting Medicare- and Medicaid-funded health care facilities.

Let’s see who among us got this right…

  • I was at 50% (correct about health care order being approved, a 95 percent prediction and incorrect on my “less confident” prediction that the workplace order would be approved)
  • Craig said “I’m predicting the court will find the federal vaccine mandate to be an overreach simply because the narrative is already shifting towards Omicron <= flu and we must learn to live with it (like you predicted). There is no federal mandate for flu vaccinations, although I believe some federal agencies like VA hospitals can require staff to have flu immunizations.” (he didn’t separate out the two issues before the Court, but I think we might have to give him 100% since he mentioned “federal agencies” (and any enterprise on the Medicare/Medicaid dole is essentially a federal agency)
  • Jack was at 50%: “My guess is the Court will rule against the Biden administration — seems that a substantial number of Americans are opposed to the vaccine mandate & therefore any mandate will be widely ignored. Affects the Court’s legitimacy to uphold law that will be ignored & will encourage civil disobedience. Also, as a matter of numbers, the statist justices are in the minority.”
  • JT was at 50%: “Predict struck down and that it’s a blessing for Biden. It’s obvious it doesn’t stop the spread so all a mandate could possibly do is create onerous bureaucracy people hate.”

Can these rulings be considered logically consistent? There are sicker/older people who go to hospitals than to work. But on the other hand, hospital staff are highly competent at using the masks that the government says stop COVID-19 transmission. Also, the ruling is based on the vaccines being highly effective and sicker/older people are generally vaccinated. And if they can catch COVID-19 nonetheless, they will eventually catch COVID-19 indirectly from people who get COVID-19 in the unsafe workplaces. Ivan pointed out that “Sotomayor claimed that the federal government has ‘a police power to protect workers'”. If we combine these two orders do we find that the federal government has a police power to protect those visiting health care facilities, but as soon as the visit is over the police power evaporates?

Color me confused! The Supreme Court accepts that vaccination leads to reduced COVID-19 infection and transmission, and that the peasantry believe this as well, and therefore the government can order doctors and nurses to be vaccinated. Yet the government cannot order this vital protection for workers outside of health care? And, though this issue wasn’t before the Court, it sounds as though, unless prohibited by state law (as in Florida!), a mayor can order the peasants within a city to be vaccinated if they want to leave their hovels (see Washington, D.C. vaccine papers and Photo ID checks start tomorrow for example).

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School administrators comfort the afflicted

by philg

Everyone and his/her/zir/their brother/sister/binary-resister in fully-masked fully-vaccinated Massachusetts is testing positive for a deadly virus (but this in no way diminishes our faith in masks and vaccines). The exponential spread of the mask-blocked vaccine-neutralized plague in the masked-and-vaccinated school population leads to a rash of emails from schools informing parents that a child has been tarred with the “close contact” brush. Here’s an example from a middle school in Maskachusetts:

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

I am writing to inform you that we learned today that a student in 7th grade tested positive for Covid. Your child is considered a close contact. The date of the last exposure was January 12, 2022.

Close contacts will participate in the Test and Stay program with a daily test through Tuesday of next week. You will only be notified if your child tests positive during Test & Stay. As a reminder, students who are identified as close contacts who are participating in the district COVID Testing Program may stay in school as long as they are asymptomatic.

Close contacts are not permitted to attend after school activities. Please limit exposure outside of the home and monitor for symptoms.

A close contact at school is defined as someone who has been within 3 feet of distance of the positive individual while indoors, while wearing a mask, for at least fifteen minutes, within a 24 hour period.

We cannot provide specific information about the person who tested positive. School personnel are working with the family as they navigate this stressful experience.

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact me.

Respectfully,

[*** name elided ***]

Lincoln School, 5-8 Principal

The highlighted content is what fascinates me. Suppose that the family comprises typical Massachusetts residents, a.k.a., Followers of Science. In that case, they believe that they have been exposed to a virus that often has crippling and/or fatal consequences within households containing middle school-age kids. Who will comfort them as they shop for coffins and grave sites? “School personnel.”

My Facebook feed was packed with parents proud of youngsters who are refusing to attend in-person school. See “Students don’t want to learn in a ‘COVID petri dish.’ They’re walking out to prove their point.” (USA Today, 1/14):

Despite surging COVID-19 cases across the country, fueled by the highly-contagious omicron variant, Quinlan said many Boston schools have started to take precautions less seriously, often not enforcing masking or social distancing.

“We are the ones who have been in this environment every day. It’s our bodies that we’re putting at risk,” said Kayla Quinlan, a 16-year-old student activist at Boston Day and Evening Academy. “Students should have a say in what their learning environment looks like, but our voices are always left out.”

“It feels like a breeding ground for COVID, like a COVID petri dish,” she said. “How are you supposed to feel safe?”

See also “Students, seeing lax coronavirus protocols, walk out and call in sick to protest in-person classes” (Washington Post):

Thai Jones, a lecturer at Columbia University who studies radical social movements, said the rise of student activism amid the omicron threat reminds him of the youth movement for gun safety that sprang up after the 2018 mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school and of ongoing teen-led advocacy around climate change.

“What ties those movements together is these are all times when grown-ups have failed young people, where the politics of adults have really let down teenagers,” Jones said. “And so young people have decided to take matters into their own hands.”

(Old people have failed young people by not locking them down for another few years in order to protect old people from a virus that kills old people?)

Circling back to Facebook, each post celebrating the walkout was heavily “liked” and attracted supportive comments.

What’s happening in the Florida Free State, by contrast? We went to the Stuart Boat Show yesterday and found a fellow refugee from New England. Her summary of Massachusetts-based relatives’ current concerns: “Omicron is an anagram for ‘moronic’.”

Lest you think that everyone in Florida is ignorant regarding #Science-based methods of fighting a virus that attacks the obese, here’s a fully-masked Follower of Fauci ordering fried Oreos and a funnel cake:

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Washington, D.C. vaccine papers and Photo ID checks start tomorrow

by philg

Let’s check in to see how things are going at the Center of the Free World (TM). From the mayor of Washington, D.C.:

Adults need a photo ID to go more or less anywhere in the city. If we believe the Washington Post, restaurants, coffee shops, gyms, and bowling alleys in D.C. are about to get richer, whiter, more Anglophone, and younger… “Getting a photo ID so you can vote is easy. Unless you’re poor, black, Latino or elderly” (WaPo, May 2016):

many election experts say that the process for obtaining a photo ID can be far more difficult than it looks for hundreds of thousands of people across the country who do not have the required photo identification cards. Those most likely to be affected are elderly citizens, African Americans, Hispanics and low-income residents.

“A lot of people don’t realize what it takes to obtain an ID without the proper identification and papers,” said Abbie Kamin, a lawyer who has worked with the Campaign Legal Center to help Texans obtain the proper identification to vote. “Many people will give up and not even bother trying to vote.”

What does a Washington Post-selected expert on being poor, Black, Latinx, and elderly look like? From abbiekamin.com:

vaxdc.dc.gov provides a helpful poster for local businesses:

“Beginning on January 15, 2022, businesses shall display prominently, visible to patrons prior to entry, a notice informing patrons that proof of vaccination is required to enter any indoor portion of a covered location. Before patrons can access the indoor portion of the business, a business is required to check the patron’s proof of vaccination.”

Related:

  • “Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Authorizes Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for Emergency Use in Adolescents in Another Important Action in Fight Against Pandemic” (fda.gov): Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration expanded the emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for the prevention of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to include adolescents 12 through 15 years of age. (i.e., the medicine that 12-year-olds are required to take in order to eat in a restaurant is not FDA-approved, but can be used for “emergency use” (e.g., if a doctor thinks that a slender healthy 12-year-old might be killed by a virus that regularly kills senior citizens with multiple comorbidities, he/she/ze/they could roll the dice with the 12-year-old’s immune system and stick the kid))
  • ACLU on photo ID: Voter ID laws deprive many voters of their right to vote, reduce participation, and stand in direct opposition to our country’s trend of including more Americans in the democratic process. Many Americans do not have one of the forms of identification states acceptable for voting. These voters are disproportionately low-income, racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
  • ACLU on Civil Liberties and Vaccine Mandates: Far from compromising civil liberties, vaccine mandates actually further them.
  • ACLU on mask mandates: As millions of children head back to school, some states have banned mask mandates on school grounds [including Florida!]. As of this recording, school districts in eight states cannot require students to wear a mask in school; if they do, many risk losing crucial state funding. This ban ignores national recommendations by the CDC to wear a mask indoors for those who are unvaccinated or in an area of high COVID transmission. For children with disabilities or families with high-risk medical conditions, the ban makes in-person learning perilous. Many children are forced back into remote learning even though studies have shown students — particularly students of color and those with disabilities — fall behind when they can’t attend school in person. Excluding these children from in-person learning violates federal law which is why the ACLU’s Disability Rights Program is suing on behalf of groups of parents with vulnerable children in both South Carolina and Iowa.
  • “Voter ID laws a burden on poor, black Americans, research shows” (Guardian) (“research” can be considered another word for “Science”!)
  • “Why It Is so Hard to Vote If You’re Black, Poor or Elderly in America” (Newsweek): More than half of all states require voters to show ID when they cast a ballot, yanking the most vulnerable in U.S. society from the electoral process. On Monday, a federal judge ruled that Texas’ electoral law, which requires voters to show photo ID before casting a ballot, intentionally discriminates against black and Hispanic voters.
  • “Voter Suppression Is Warping Democracy” (Atlantic): Nine percent of black respondents and 9 percent of Hispanic respondents indicated that, in the last election, they (or someone in their household) were told that they lacked the proper identification to vote. Just 3 percent of whites said the same.
  • and… from the academic heavyweights: “Racial Microaggressions Related to Voter ID Laws in the United States” (Race, Gender & Class, Vol. 24, No. 1-2): This paper attempts to examine the microaggressions related to current voter ID laws along with various moderns tactics of disenfranchisement, many of which were adopted in 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.
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