U.S. Cancels Contract With Moderna to Develop Bird Flu
Vaccine
-- May 29, 2025
“When
the next flu pandemic occurs, there is not going to be enough vaccine
for everyone who wants it unless we invest to broaden the types of flu
vaccines being made and the number of companies that make them,” said
Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University
School of Public Health.
“Pandemic
preparedness is about being proactive, fast and adaptable
— the mRNA vaccine platform is all of that,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an
infectious disease physician and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins
Center for Health Security.
“The
rationale given is likely fabricated and more of a function of R.F.K.
Jr.’s assault on vaccines, the value of which he evades,” he added.
“Canceling this contract makes the world less safe.”
Crumbs
-- November 9, 2024
So,
all the election analysis of why Kamala Harris lost has become
ridiculous. She lost because she didn’t pay enough attention to women.
She ignored black men. She didn’t relate to young white men. And don’t
forget about the Catholic vote? Those were all actual articles in the
New York Times. But when (and this is not satire this time) a bald,
white professor comes on the screen and says she failed to respond to
masculine white men, that one broke me and the camel’s back.
I’m
not
sure what specific crumbs she was expected to scatter among these
groups, but what I heard her saying with consistency was that she
represented a vision for the country where all its people of whatever
race, creed, color, gender or religion had the opportunity to not just
survive but to prosper.
Stop
trying to come up with nitpicky items that feed your special agenda.
Take the data at its word, Trump got 74 million votes in 2020. He got
74 million in 2024. Ten million less people voted in 2024, either
because they couldn’t vote for a woman or they didn’t care enough to
make the effort (along with the 50 million eligible voters who
seemingly never vote). White people elected the president, over half of
them white women.
A Republic -- If you can keep It
-- November 6, 2024
That
seals it. The great American Experiment of Democracy survived nearly
250 years, but now the country's citizens have chosen fascism. Orwell
was off by 40 years, but Big Brother now controls all three branches of
government and was deeded free reign by one of those branches to commit
whatever crimes he desires with impunity.
It
is indicative of the complacency of the nation's populace that In the
most important election in the history of the country, the lack of an
historic turnout,
nearly 25 million less than 2020, and that's not even counting the 50
million eligible voters who also didn't vote in last election. It is
also demoralizing to see the majority of white women and young men who
voted for a dictator.
As
Benjamin Franklin said, "A republic -- if you can keep it."
We
clearly could not. So, I am a man without country. I'm too old to fight
and no other country wants me.
Who's
the worst U.S. president in history?
by
William Weir, who describes himself a true conservative
There
was this one guy who started a trade war that killed 300,000 American
jobs in his first two years. Then he signed a tax bill that flatlined
the stock market and forced the Fed to start lowering interest rates to
try to prevent a recession. Then he said a global pandemic was a
liberal hoax to kill the economy he spent three years destroying and he
set records for the six worst point drops in the history of the Dow,
most new unemployment claims in history, and the largest deficit in
history. He was investigated and found to have welcomed and encouraged
election interference by a foreign government and to have obstructed
justice to cover his crimes. He got impeached once for abusing his
office to try to coerce a foreign leader into helping him smear a
political rival. Then he got impeached again for inciting an
insurrection to try to stay in power after easily and predictably
losing his re-election bid. Then he got indicted for almost 100
felonies after leaving office.
I
forget his name. Draft dodger. Admitted sex offender. Painted himself
orange and wore a dead rodent on his head. Wore elevator shoes.
Misspelled three letter words on a smartphone. Kept filing bankruptcy.
Called himself a winner. Dump? Rump? Plump? Chump? Something like that.
When
Just Getting Covid is No
Longer the Issue
-- August 21, 2021
The
news media, even NPR, Twitter, and government news releases are filling
up with info about fully-vaccinated people more likely to die from the
flu than from getting a case of breakthrough Covid.
A
breakthrough infection may cause few symptoms in many, but a growing
number of vaccinated people who get infected develop long Covid, with
symptoms that persist after the active infection is resolved. Also, a
growing number who had Covid before vaccines are suffering a return of
symptoms months later, on a regular basis.
We
are seeing people who have neurologic issues, described as a brain fog,
who have long-term cardiac issues, kidney issues and the like. “We’re
seeing things like fatigue, headaches, brain fog, sleep disturbances,
ongoing change in smell and taste,” said Dr. Molly Wilson-Murphy.
Some
symptoms resemble effects of concussions and other brain injuries.
Another theory was that “the immune system somehow gets deranged and
then it’s hard to shut down,” or that residual virus or genetic
fragments keep immune responses activated.
Deaths and hospitalizations are
not the issue. Getting Covid is not like getting the flu. I've gotten
over the flu. With my luck, I'd never get over Covid.
Aint No Cure
-- August
5, 2021
Vaccines do
not stop the spread of Covid-19 and its variants.
Vaccinated individuals can carry the virus. Slowing the spread
is a different thing
entirely and should have been presented differently than "stops the
spread."
Certain health
professionals and even the new President of the United States claimed
that if
we were fully vaccinated, it would be safe to return to pre-covid
activities.
The
fully-vaccinated who bought into the "safeness" and protections
promised
by the vaccines charged out into an unvaccinated world returning with
loads of virus,
variants, and their own breakthrough
infections (not tracked unless resulting in hospitalization).
Currently, there
is little if any evidence of immunity from having a case of Covid, and
troubling evidence of re-infections of people who have had a case.
When an
extended family of 15 fully-vaccinated had a long awaited reunion, they
discovered shortly
afterward that ten of
the 15 tested positive for the virus.
Of
the ten positive, two ended up hospitalized.
At least half had symptoms they felt were severe,
even if the official
determination was reduced to "mild case."
“I feel like
I had very inaccurate information,” one of the family told me, “and I
would
have made my decisions in a very different light if I knew what I know
now.”
The growing
consensus that at least some Americans will need a booster is partly
tied to
research suggesting that Pfizer’s vaccine is less effective after about
six
months.
This should
have been our chance to re-set, to go back to before we knew what this
was. Instead,
the vaccinated acted as if they'd been given a cure. There aint no cure
for the
common cold or for Covid viruses.
The
former rarely kills you, the latter can kill you or, perhaps worse,
debilitate
you for the remainder of your life.
Court of Public Opinion
-- No longer in
Session, June 26, 2020
The Court
of Public Opinion is conducted in the nation's
media. I was
reminded of that fact after watching Steven
Spielberg's The Post about the
publishing of the Pentagon Papers and Mark Landesman's Mark Felt about
the Watergate break-in and subsequent investigation.
I needed to be reminded because I realized
the concept dates badly because the nation's media no longer conducts
such a
court.
Both movies included
partisan backlash against the media's
efforts to inform the public, but what was different then than now was
the media's
dedication to the verifiable and documented as if the story might be
admissible in a
court. The media
stayed on stories back
then, especially when someone in power, political, economic, or
governmental,
attempted to stonewall or shut down their investigations.
The media was
impartial to the extent that it didn't strain
the bounds of credulity. They
didn't
re-hash Nixon's boilerplate denials and playing the victim of a
hounding
press. Instead,
they concentrated on the
spine of the story. All
the information
gathered led right to the top. There
was
no other plausible conclusion.
That's why Reagan's
people came up with the idea of "plausible
deniability." It
shouldn't have
mattered because nothing could have absolved Reagan of responsibility
for the
Iran-Contra crimes, but the media, like some ill-advised juries, paid
lip-service to that infinitesimal amount of doubt.
Since then, the W.
Bush and Trump Administrations have
ascribed to the theory that whatever the President says will be covered
with
significant weight vs. the facts or the truth.
It will likely be covered more than facts or truth,
and if repeated
often enough through the offices' publicity function, may take on the
impression of fact or truth.
We are informed
constantly by the media that this is the
most divisive time in our history. That is verifiably untrue. At no time in our history
has such a minority
held the majority in a stalemate as if the split were 50-50 when
polling shows
a 60-40 or 65-35 or even a 70-30 split favoring progressive versus
conservative
ideas. Reducing corporate influence in elections, protecting voting
rights, expanding
public healthcare, increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy,
and even
abortion, guns, and black lives have all polled solidly 56% or higher
across
the country.
In fact, a sizeable
portion of those people identifying as
conservative believed erroneously that the progressive idea was a
conservative value. That
is an issue of media reporting and lack
of clarification.
Edward R. Murrow, in
reviewing Joseph McCarthy's rise and
eventual fall, claimed the fault lay, not with McCarthy, but with us,
the
American People, for allowing him to exploit our fears.
That would only be possible if the
People were informed, and clearly informed, with reporting
unsullied by
alternate realities and untruths which are given similar
weight to
actual facts and sourced information.
Why wasn't he forced
to defend himself in the media? Why
wasn't he questioned until satisfactory
answers were provided or he was forced to admit unethical behavior or
to
resign? Nixon
resigned because he knew
the media would pursue the questions until his administration and the
country
would be rendered ineffectual and torn apart.
As he expressed in later interviews, he didn't
resign because he
believed he was wrong or guilty of anything. "Well,
when the president does
it, that means
that it is not illegal." That was the mantra of the
W.
Bush Administration
and has been expressed unironically in similar terms by the current
administration.
A
list of the administration's unethical activities
from the firing of Inspector Generals to the interference in court
cases of
cronies like Stone and Flynn to the many violations of the constitution
would
be another entire article, but I will list two recent actions that have
the
potential to do irreparable harm to the country:
RIGGED
2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS
OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE
PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR
TIMES!
-- Trump tweet
The
federal government is
ending its support for 13
drive-through coronavirus testing sites on June 30, asking states to
take over
their operations, even as cases spike in several parts of the country.
Police Reform
(even though we are
not allowed to use the word "reform" because it's a
trap word)
-- June 12, 2020
A
quick survey of recent (last ten-fifteen years) police department
reform success stories have a few fundamental things in common: The
first is:
They
are not inexpensive. You don't get a better police force by spending
less.
Second,
in almost all cases, success comes from hiring more officers (sometimes
twice as many), not cutting the number, and displaying a visible police
presence with a concentration on "community" interaction and
communication.
Third,
a fundamental change to the "Us vs. Them" mentality which develops in a
lot of cases when police are spread too thin and asked to take on
expanded duties. This fundamental culture change requires the authority
to fire, re-assign, or demote any current member of the department.
This often requires changing department rules and sometimes civil
service protections.
Fourth,
and the biggest downfall of failed attempts, is that the process takes
time and commitment. It takes time to re-train officers, to build trust
with the community, to recruit officers who reflect the community. Many
attempts at reform had the rug pulled before the four to five years
needed to achieve ten to fifteen year success stories.
Never
forget that cuts to mental health, social services, and public defender
departments were passed by conservative, anti-progressive political
majorities. Many laws allowing "no-knock warrants" the use of military
armaments, choke-holds and other combat tactics were passed in the "get
tough on crime" era of the 1990s and early 2000s. These political
realities are alive and strong in our country.
June 12, 2012
"A person’s last days can be spent in
any number of ways. But on the phone pleading with an insurer, that’s
only in America."
-- from ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D. review of
T.R. Ried's Healing of America
"One
Injury, 10 Countries: A Journey in Health Care"
NYT, September 14, 2009
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