Move Along Now, Nothing To See Over Here...,

miamiherald |  The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has cleared Palm Beach state prosecutors and the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office of any wrongdoing in connection with the lenient criminal prosecution and liberal jail privileges received by sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

FDLE investigators found no evidence that Barry Krischer, who was the Palm Beach state attorney when the case was investigated in 2005-2006, or his assistant state attorney on the case, Lanna Belohlavek, committed any crimes, accepted any bribes or gifts, or did anything improper in their handling of the case, according to a 24-page summary of the state probe into their actions obtained Monday by the Miami Herald.

FDLE’s criminal investigation was ordered by Gov. Ron DeSantis following a series of stories in the Miami Herald, beginning in 2018. The series detailed how Epstein received unprecedented federal immunity and served a short jail sentence in 2008. After the series, Epstein was indicted in New York in 2019 on new sex trafficking charges, but died a month later behind bars while awaiting trial. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging.

The state’s probe was two-fold: focusing on Krischer’s initial decision not to prosecute Epstein, a wealthy New York financier accused of molesting and raping more than a dozen middle and high school girls at his Palm Beach mansion; and on Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw’s role, if any, in Epstein’s unusual accommodations while he was in custody in the Palm Beach county jail.

In 2007, Epstein’s criminal case was taken over by the Miami U.S. Attorney’s Office, which compiled enough evidence to charge him in a 53-page sex crime indictment. However, Miami’s U.S. attorney at the time, Alexander Acosta, approved a non-prosecution agreement giving Epstein and an untold number of other conspirators immunity in exchange for Epstein agreeing to plead guilty to relatively minor state charges and serve what turned out to be a 13-month sentence in the Palm Beach county jail. 

FDLE released three summaries of its investigation Monday — an examination of the state attorney’s office’s handling of the case; a look at allegations that Epstein sexually abused two women while he was on work release in Palm Beach; and an inquiry into whether anyone in the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office committed any crimes or received any benefits for giving Epstein special privileges while he was incarcerated.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article251285139.html#storylink=cpy

 

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article251285139.html#storylink=cpy

 

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article251285139.html#storylink=cpy

Those Who Are Left Behind The Spike Protein Curtain

NYTimes | At Fort Bragg, soldiers who have gotten their coronavirus vaccines can go to a gym where no masks are required, with no limits on who can work out together. Treadmills are on and zipping, unlike those in 13 other gyms where unvaccinated troops can’t use the machines, everyone must mask up and restrictions remain on how many can bench-press at one time.

Inside Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles, where lines not long ago snaked for miles with people seeking coronavirus vaccines, a special seating area allows those who are fully inoculated to enjoy games side by side with other fans.

When Bill Duggan reopens Madam’s Organ, his legendary blues bar in Washington, D.C., people will not be allowed in to work, drink or play music unless they can prove they have had their shots. “I have a saxophone player who is among the best in the world. He was in the other day, and I said, ‘Walter, take a good look around because you’re not walking in here again unless you get vaccinated.’”

Evite and Paperless Post are seeing a big increase in hosts requesting that their guests be vaccinated.

As the United States nudges against the soft ceiling of those who will willingly take the vaccine, governments, businesses and schools have been extending carrots — actually doughnuts, beers and cheesecake — to prod laggards along. Some have even offered cold hard cash: In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine this week went so far as to say that the state would give five vaccinated people $1 million each as part of a weekly lottery program.

On Thursday, federal health officials offered the ultimate incentive for many when they advised that fully vaccinated Americans may stop wearing masks.

Now, private employers, restaurants and entertainment venues are looking for ways to make those who are vaccinated feel like V.I.P.s, both to protect workers and guests, and to possibly entice those not yet on board.

Come summer, the nation may become increasingly bifurcated between those who are permitted to watch sports, take classes, get their hair cut and eat barbecue with others, and those who are left behind the spike protein curtain.

 

 

Wow, That Sounds Like A Really Good Deal, How Bout I Give You The Finger?

 cdc | If you’ve been fully vaccinated:

• You can resume activities that you did prior to the pandemic.
• You can resume activities without wearing a mask or staying 6 feet apart, except where required by federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance.
• If you travel in the United States, you do not need to get tested before or after travel or self-quarantine after travel.
• You need to pay close attention to the situation at your international destination before traveling outside the United States.
  • You do NOT need to get tested before leaving the United States unless your destination requires it.
  • You still need to show a negative test result or documentation of recovery from COVID-19 before boarding an international flight to the United States.
  • You should still get tested 3-5 days after international travel.
  • You do NOT need to self-quarantine after arriving in the United States.
• If you’ve been around someone who has COVID-19, you do not need to stay away from others or get tested unless you have symptoms.
  • However, if you live or work in a correctional or detention facility or a homeless shelter and are around someone who has COVID-19, you should still get tested, even if you don’t have symptoms.

No Jab No Job - Compliance And Obedience Are Mandatory Beehotches....,

 WaPo  |  Delta Air Lines chief executive Ed Bastian said Friday that new employees who join the company will be required to be vaccinated for the coronavirus.

The announcement makes Delta the only major U.S. airline to require vaccines for at least a portion of its workforce. While most carriers have taken steps to boost vaccination rates, including setting up centers at airports to encourage employees to get the shot, others aren’t requiring they do so.

In an interview on CNN, Bastian said: “Any person joining Delta in the future, we’re going to mandate that they be vaccinated before they can sign up with the company.” The vaccine will continue to be optional for workers already at the airline.

“I’m not going to mandate and force people if they have some specific reason why they don’t want to get vaccinated, but I am going to strongly encourage them and make sure they understand the risk to not getting vaccinated,” Bastian said.

Even so, those who opt not to be vaccinated might encounter limits to the work they can do, he said. For example, he said unvaccinated employees may not be able to fly international routes since shots might be required in other countries.

Bastian said more than 60 percent of Delta’s 75,000 employees have received at least one dose of the vaccine, adding that he expected between 75 and 80 percent ultimately would be vaccinated. 

Cornpop And The Karenwaffen Don't Want "Unity" They Want Compliance And Obedience

realclearpolicy |  We hear a lot about “unity” these days. The Biden administration promises and even demands it. Meanwhile, Republicans (and some Democrats) charge the administration with hypocrisy because its radical programs can’t garner a legislative majority — let alone the consensus support the word “unity” implies. But the charge of hypocrisy misses the point: The demand for unity is dangerous because it aims to undermine the genuine diversity that is essential to a free people.

To call for unity is, in effect, to call for obedience. But free people are not obedient. Free people should obey the law, of course, but they do so only because they have consented to the law. And before consent comes debate: Free people air differing opinions that reflect their differing backgrounds and experiences, rather than bowing to those who claim they know what’s best. Free and open debate — and the diversity of viewpoint such debate implies — is therefore essential to lawmaking in a democratic republic.

This is our constitutional inheritance. Our lawmaking process is structured by mechanisms — such as the separation of powers, checks and balances, and lesser rules like the Senate filibuster — that ensure the views of the minority are not simply brushed aside by a fleeting political majority. Of course, from time to time, Americans do come together as one nation, for instance in the face of great tragedies or crises. Yet, unfortunately, such crises can easily be exploited or manipulated to stifle dissent and centralize political power.

 

Definition Of Anti-Vaxxer Now Includes Those Who Oppose Forced Vaccination

RT  |  Merriam-Webster is again redefining language to fit a narrative, this time framing its definition of “anti-vaxxer” to include not only people who oppose vaccination, but also those who are against inoculation mandates.

The definition on Merriam-Webster's website says “anti-vaxxer” means “a person who opposes vaccination or laws that mandate vaccination.” It’s not clear when it was written to include opposition to forced jabs, but many observers noticed for the first time on Wednesday.

“Welcome to ‘1984.’ This is the Ministry of Truth,” rapper and podcaster Zuby said on Twitter, referring to George Orwell’s dystopian novel.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary has changed their definition of 'anti-vaxxer' to include

'people who oppose laws that mandate vaccination'.

Welcome to 1984. This is The Ministry of Truth. pic.twitter.com/a62lBOCJDj

— ZUBY: (@ZubyMusic) May 12, 2021

Other reactions were similar, with many commenters noting that they now fit the dictionary definition of “anti-vaxxer,” even though they believe in the benefits of vaccinations and choose to receive the shots themselves. Merriam-Webster's definition appears to dismiss the concept of favoring a product personally but being opposed, on principle, to forcing others to use it.

Smart Scientifically Literate Folks Can Interpret Data For Themselves And Disagree With "Experts"

arvix |  Controversial understandings of the coronavirus pandemic have turned data visualizations into a battleground. Defying public health officials, coronavirus skeptics on US social media spent much of 2020 creating data visualizations showing that the government’s pandemic response was excessive and that the crisis was over. This paper investigates how pandemic visualizations circulated on social media, and shows that people who mistrust the scientific establishment often deploy the same rhetorics of data-driven decision-making used by experts, but to advocate for radical policy changes.Using a quantitative analysis of how visualizations spread on Twitter and an ethnographic approach to analyzing conversations about COVID data on Facebook, we document an epistemological gap that leads pro- and anti-mask groups to draw drastically different inferences from similar data. Ultimately, we argue that the deployment of COVID data visualizations reflect a deeper sociopolitical rift regarding the place of science in public life.

This paper has investigated anti-mask counter-visualizations on social media in two ways: quantitatively, we identify the main types of visualizations that are present within different networks (e.g., pro-and anti-mask users), and we show that anti-mask users are prolific and skilled purveyors of data visualizations. These visualizations are popular, use orthodox visualization methods, and are promulgated as a way to convince others that public health measures are unnecessary. In our qualitative analysis, we use an ethnographic approach to illustrate how COVID counter-visualizations actually reflect a deeper epistemological rift about the role of data in public life, and that the practice of making counter-visualizations reflects a participatory, heterodox approach to information sharing. Convincing anti-maskers to support public health measures in the age ofCOVID-19 will require more than “better” visualizations, data literacy campaigns, or increased public access to data. Rather, it requiresa sustained engagement with the social world of visualizations andthe people who make or interpret them.While academic science is traditionally a system for producing knowledge within a laboratory, validating it through peer review,and sharing results within subsidiary communities, anti-maskers reject this hierarchical social model. They espouse a vision of science that is radically egalitarian and individualist. This study forces us to see that coronavirus skeptics champion science as a personal practice that prizes rationality and autonomy; for them, it is not a body of knowledge certified by an institution of experts. Calls for data or scientific literacy therefore risk recapitulating narratives that anti-mask views are the product of individual ignorance rather than coordinated information campaigns that rely heavily on networked participation. 

Recognizing the systemic dynamics that contribute to this epistemological rift is the first step towards grappling with this phenomenon, and the findings presented in this paper corroborate similar studies about the impact of fake news on American evangelical voters [98] and about the limitations of fact-checking climate change denialism [42].Calls for media literacy—especially as an ethics smokescreen to avoid talking about larger structural problems like white supremacy—are problematic when these approaches are deficit-focused and trained primarily on individual responsibility. Powerful research and media organizations paid for by the tobacco or fossil fuel indus-tries [79,86] have historically capitalized on the skeptical impulse that the “science simply isn’t settled,” prompting people to simply“think for themselves” to horrifying ends. The attempted coup on January 6, 2021 has similarly illustrated that well-calibrated, well-funded systems of coordinated disinformation can be particularly dangerous when they are designed to appeal to skeptical people.While individual insurrectionists are no doubt to blame for their own acts of violence, the coup relied on a collective effort fanned by people questioning, interacting, and sharing these ideas with other people. These skeptical narratives are powerful because they resonate with these these people’s lived experience and—crucially—because they are posted by influential accounts across influential platforms.Broadly, the findings presented in this paper also challenge conventional assumptions in human-computer interaction research about who imagined users might be: visualization experts tradition-ally design systems for scientists, business analysts, or journalists. 

Researchers create systems intended to democratize processes of data analysis and inform a broader public about how to use data,often in the clean, sand-boxed environment of an academic lab.However, this literature often focuses narrowly on promoting expressivity (either of current or new visualization techniques), assuming that improving visualization tools will lead to improving public understanding of data. This paper presents a community of users that researchers might not consider in the systems building process (i.e., supposedly “data illiterate” anti-maskers), and we show how the binary opposition of literacy/illiteracy is insufficient for describing how orthodox visualizations can be used to promote unorthodox science. Understanding how these groups skillfully manipulate data to undermine mainstream science requires us to adjust the theoretical assumptions in HCI research about how data can be leveraged in public discourse.What, then, are visualization researchers and social scientists todo? One step might be to grapple with the social and political dimensions of visualizations at the beginning, rather than the end, of projects [31]. This involves in part a shift from positivist to interpretivist frameworks in visualization research, where we recognize that knowledge we produce in visualization systems is fundamentally“multiple, subjective, and socially constructed” [73]. A secondary issue is one of uncertainty: Jessica Hullman and Zeynep Tufekc

 

 

 

 

YKYDFU When Sen. Susan Collins Comes For Your Dome Piece....,

themainewire |  A report published earlier this month in the New York Post revealed emails between the CDC and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) where recommendations from the union made their way into the official CDC guidance documents verbatim.

Dr. Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco called the exchange “very, very troubling.”

“What seems strange to me here is there would be this very intimate back and forth including phone calls where this political group gets to help formulate scientific guidance for our major public health organization in the United States,” Ghandi told The Post. “This is not how science-based guidelines should work or be put together.”

The New York Times on Tuesday published a report from David Leonhardt that questioned the CDC’s recent guidance on mask wearing outdoors. Upon releasing the new guidelines in April, the agency announced that “less than 10 percent” of COVID-19 transmission was occurring outdoors.

According to the report, the 10 percent figure is “almost certainly misleading.” A review of the data by the Times found that certain cases in the study were misclassified as outdoor transmission and quoted numerous experts who contend the share of cases linked to the outdoors is less than 1 percent, and could be as low as 0.1 percent.

“I’m sure it’s possible for transmission to occur outdoors in the right circumstances,” Dr. Aaron Rictherman of the University of Pennsylvania told the Times, “but if we had to put a number on it, I would say much less than 1 percent.”

As noted in the report, the CDC’s newest guidance on summer camps says these facilities should require mask wearing “at all times” with few exceptions. Considering the low rate of outdoor transmission and the fact that many summer camp activities take place outside, it seems unnecessary to have hordes of children playing outside with masks on.

“Dr. Walensky, I used to have the utmost respect for the guidance from the CDC. I always considered the CDC to be the gold standard. I don’t anymore,” Collins said Tuesday during the hearing.

“Here we have unnecessary barriers to reopening schools, exaggerating the risks of outdoor transmission and unworkable restrictions on summer camps. Why does it matter? It matters because it undermines public confidence in your recommendations,” Collins said.

Havana Syndrome A Scientifically Implausible Hoax - Just "Russia, Russia, Russia" Nonsense...,

foreignpolicy |  “It’s an act of war,” said Christopher Miller, former President Donald Trump’s last acting secretary of defense. He was talking about alleged attacks on diplomatic and intelligence personnel by an unknown microwave directed-energy weapon. But before the United States declares war on the unknown enemy wielding that weapon, we should know what it is—and whether it exists at all.

Every few weeks, another alleged attack on Americans is reported, some recent, some decades ago. The symptoms are neurological, such as dizziness, headaches, and brain damage. The first wave of reports came in 2016, from the American and Canadian diplomatic missions in Havana, hence the name “Havana syndrome.” Since then, similar cases have been reported in other places, including China; Washington, D.C.; and Syria. State Department and intelligence personnel make up most of those affected.

The State Department and the CIA have investigated Havana syndrome, with much criticism by the victims and their legal counsel. The Jasons, a group of defense advisors, have been reported to be studying the incidents. Most recently, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine also conducted a study that concluded a microwave attack was the most plausible explanation; it also considered chemical pollutants, infectious agents, and psychological and social factors, and found all these explanations wanting.

Here’s the problem. Aside from the reported syndromes, there’s no evidence that a microwave weapon exists—and all the available science suggests that any such weapon would be wildly impractical. It’s possible that the symptoms of all the sufferers of Havana syndrome share a single, as yet unknown, cause; it’s also possible that multiple real health problems have been amalgamated into a single syndrome.

It’s not the first time microwaves and embassies have mixed. From 1953 to 1976, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow was bathed in high-powered microwaves coming from a nearby building. The purpose seems to have been related to espionage—activating listening devices within the embassy or interfering with American transmissions. But a 1978 study concluded that there were no adverse health effects.

Back in the United States, microwave ovens came into common use during the 1970s. Their ability to heat food by imperceptible waves created many myths. How they actually work is well understood. Some molecules, notably water, absorb microwaves and turn them into heat. That happens across the microwave and visible spectrum: Substances absorb energy of a higher frequency and turn it into heat. It’s why sunlight heats surfaces.

There’s a persistent myth that microwaves heat things from the inside out. Anyone who has heated a frozen dinner knows that this is not true. The outer part of the frozen food thaws first, because it absorbs the microwaves before they can reach the inner part. Back in the day, when I was working for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, I had to debunk the idea that microwave heating could produce oil from underground oil shale. Water and minerals between the shale and the microwave source above ground would absorb the microwaves. In the same way, if a directed microwave beam hit people’s brains, we would expect to see visible effects on the skin and flesh. None of that has accompanied Havana syndrome.

This Negroe Had The AUDACITY To CONFISCATE A Vial Of Sacred Johnson & Johnson BEAST JISM...,

 

"It's not a vaccine anyway?" She is admitting having conscious awareness, she never informed him before he took his sample away for analysis ... Is that the first to cry ... "I was just doing my job"

 

Luke 1-5 Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. 2 For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. 3 Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops. 4 And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. 5 But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him. Fist tap Dale.

The Incorporation Of Free Speech Built Around A Presumption Of Corporate Censorship

jonathanturley |  Under a free speech approach, cakeshop owners have a right to refuse to prepare cakes that offend their deep-felt values, including religious, political or social values. Thus, a Jewish cakeshop owner should be able to decline to make a “Mein Kampf” cake for a local skinhead group, a Black owner to decline to make a white supremacist-themed cake, or a gay baker to decline to make a cake with anti-LGBT slogans. While these bakers cannot discriminate in selling prepared cakes, the act of decorating a cake is a form of expression, and requiring such preparation is a form of compelled speech.

In the same way, NFL teams have a free speech right to prevent kneeling or other political or social demonstrations by players during games, Citizen’s United has a right to support political causes — and, yes, Facebook has a right to censor speech on its platform.

Free speech also allows the rest of us to oppose these businesses over their policies. We have a right to refuse to subsidize or support companies that engage in racial or content discrimination. Thus, with social media companies, Congress should not afford these companies legal immunity or other protections when they engage in censorship.

These companies once were viewed as neutral platforms for people to exchange views — people who affirmatively “friend” or invite the views of others. If Big Tech wants to be treated like a telephone company, it must act like a telephone company. We wouldn’t tolerate AT&T interrupting calls to object to some misleading conversation, or cutting the line for those who misinform others.

As a neutral platform for communications, telephone companies receive special legal and economic status under our laws. Yet, it sometimes seems Facebook wants to be treated like AT&T but act like the DNC.

In defending Big Tech’s right to censor people, University of California at Irvine law professor Richard Hasen declared that “Twitter is a private company, and it is entitled to include or exclude people as it sees fit.” That is clearly true under the First Amendment. It also should be true of others who seek to speak (or not speak) as corporations, from bakeries to sports teams.

Yet, when the Supreme Court sent back the Masterpiece Cakeshop case in 2018 for further proceedings, an irate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared: “Masterpiece Cakeshop is a commercial bakery open to the public, and such services clearly must be made available to the public on equal terms … No business or organization open to the public should hide their discriminatory practices behind the guise of religious liberty.” But Pelosi applauded when social media companies barred some members of the public based on viewpoint discrimination on subjects ranging from climate change to vaccines to elections.

The difference, of course, is that Masterpiece Cakeshop was willing to sell cakes to anyone but refused to express viewpoints that conflict with the owners’ religious beliefs. Conversely, social media companies like Twitter and Facebook are barring individuals, including a world leader like Trump, entirely from their “shop.” And, taking it one step further, Facebook has declared it will even ban the “voice of Donald Trump.”

Big Tech is allowed to be arbitrary and capricious in corporate censorship. However, our leaders should follow a principled approach to corporate speech that does not depend on what views are being silenced. Because Elizabeth Warren was right. This “never was about a cake” or a tweet or “likes” for that matter. It was always about free speech.

The Panicdemic Has Really Rewired Some Nervous Systems

nationalreview  |  The association of danger with permissiveness has warped the “expert class” that is supposed to inform the public. Throughout the pandemic, public-health officials have betrayed their view that they do not trust the public with good news; they seem to fear that an inch given will be a mile taken. And so, even during one of the most successful vaccine rollouts in the world, CDC director Rochelle Walensky warned of “impending doom” just a month ago. But no doom was in the offing.

And the expert class has also corrupted itself. The short circuit of the pandemic has led to a dramatic tightening of groupthink among public-health pundits. One would normally expect that a variety of experts would come up with a variety of recommendations, precisely because, like everyone else, they value the risks differently. But instead, public-health pontificators have tried to guard their authority with an ersatz sheen of unanimity.

When Dr. Martin Kulldorff expressed his view that the pause of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine would do more harm than good, the CDC threw him off its vaccine-safety advisory committee. Four days later, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine was made available again, but the visible dissent was too much to abide. Kulldorff had pioneered many of the processes by which the CDC detects the safety of vaccines. But he had expressed his view that the urge to vaccinate everyone was as superstitious as being anti-vaccine. Twitter, preposterously, put a misinformation tag on this tweet, based on the superstition that there is only one valid “expert” answer — and no valid debates among experts. Kulldorff’s worst crime, apparently, was expressing his views in person in the presence of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.

I used to think that the COVID era would snap to a close once vaccines removed the danger from the most vulnerable — and that the human urge to connect would assert itself dramatically in a new roaring ’20s. Now I’m not so sure. A significant portion of the public and some of our leading institutions have internalized entirely new habits of thought and life. The circuit between truth, science, fear, and caution and virtue needs to be unwired — and reprogrammed.

If You Believed Something Different...,

caitlinjohnstone  |  It sure is interesting how stuff keeps happening that makes free speech on the internet something dangerous which must be curtailed. Covid, the Capitol riot, Russian propaganda, all of which just happen to require tightening restrictions on our single best tool against the powerful.

Had online platforms not agreed to curtail speech in alignment with the US empire, they would with 100 percent certainty have been broken up by antitrust cases and been replaced by other monopolistic companies that would censor in alignment with imperial interests.

You’re not permitted to ascend to power within the system unless you cooperate with existing power structures. If you don’t, you’ll be stopped in your tracks and replaced with someone who will.

A rookie journalist who doesn’t advance narratives favorable to US imperialism will keep getting called to the editor’s desk until they get the message. When rookie social media sites first showed up it was the same thing, except instead of the editor’s desk, it was US congressional hearings.

Sen. Rand Paul Goes In On Lil'Fauci's Gain Of Function Culpability

NYMag  |  Take, for instance, this paper from 1995: “High Recombination and Mutation Rates in Mouse Hepatitis Viruses Suggest That Coronaviruses May Be Potentially Important Emerging Viruses.” It was written by Dr. Ralph Baric and his bench scientist, Boyd Yount, at the University of North Carolina. Baric, a gravelly voiced former swim champion, described in this early paper how his lab was able to train a coronavirus, MHV, which causes hepatitis in mice, to jump species, so that it could reliably infect BHK (baby-hamster kidney) cell cultures. They did it using serial passaging: repeatedly dosing a mixed solution of mouse cells and hamster cells with mouse-hepatitis virus, while each time decreasing the number of mouse cells and upping the concentration of hamster cells. At first, predictably, the mouse-hepatitis virus couldn’t do much with the hamster cells, which were left almost free of infection, floating in their world of fetal-calf serum. But by the end of the experiment, after dozens of passages through cell cultures, the virus had mutated: It had mastered the trick of parasitizing an unfamiliar rodent. A scourge of mice was transformed into a scourge of hamsters. And there was more: “It is clear that MHV can rapidly alter its species specificity and infect rats and primates,” Baric said. “The resulting virus variants are associated with demyelinating diseases in these alternative species.” (A demyelinating disease is a disease that damages nerve sheaths.) With steady prodding from laboratory science, along with some rhetorical exaggeration, a lowly mouse ailment was morphed into an emergent threat that might potentially cause nerve damage in primates. That is, nerve damage in us.

"And we need to stop hunting for new exotic diseases in the wild, shipping them back to laboratories, and hot-wiring their genomes to prove how dangerous to human life they might become." https://t.co/N2Cnhk5Xde

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) May 11, 2021

A few years later, in a further round of “interspecies transfer” experimentation, Baric’s scientists introduced their mouse coronavirus into flasks that held a suspension of African-green-monkey cells, human cells, and pig-testicle cells. Then, in 2002, they announced something even more impressive: They’d found a way to create a full-length infectious clone of the entire mouse-hepatitis genome. Their “infectious construct” replicated itself just like the real thing, they wrote.

Not only that, but they’d figured out how to perform their assembly seamlessly, without any signs of human handiwork. Nobody would know if the virus had been fabricated in a laboratory or grown in nature. Baric called this the “no-see’m method,” and he asserted that it had “broad and largely unappreciated molecular biology applications.” The method was named, he wrote, after a “very small biting insect that is occasionally found on North Carolina beaches.”

In 2006, Baric, Yount, and two other scientists were granted a patent for their invisible method of fabricating a full-length infectious clone using the seamless, no-see’m method. But this time, it wasn’t a clone of the mouse-hepatitis virus — it was a clone of the entire deadly human SARS virus, the one that had emerged from Chinese bats, via civets, in 2002. The Baric Lab came to be known by some scientists as “the Wild Wild West.” In 2007, Baric said that we had entered “the golden age of coronavirus genetics.”

“I would be afraid to look in their freezers,” one virologist told me.

Baric and Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the two top experts on the genetic interplay between bat and human coronaviruses, began collaborating in 2015.

Gain Of Function Program For Covid-21: Build Back Better!

Over the weekend I watched a very interesting discussion between Dutch virologist, Geest Vanden Bossche and Bret Weinstein. Vanden Bossche made exactly this point about using vaccinations in the middle of an epidemic – he points out that - this is the first time a major vaccination program has taken place while a pandemic is at its peak.

He particularly emphasized that ‘two shot’ vaccinations have a longer immunological ramp up time, giving the virus more time to evolve. The mRNA therapeutic program is nothing other than an active gain of function experiment on the virus at a global scale.

The real worries here are the following:

First, the breakthrough (mRNA therapeutic breach) cases are asymptomatic/mild now, but they will not be mild later in the year, as antibodies for the synthetic spike protein decline in those who received these shots.

Second, and most important, from the evolutionary perspective of the virus, its evolutionary “goal” is not just to survive, but to make as many copies of itself as possible. Milder cases tend to have less of the virus (yes, there are completely asymptomatic superspreaders that generate a huge amount of virus in their upper respiratory tracts, but in general, if Covid-21 can get past the upper respiratory tract and cause real damage, that means a lot more copies of the virus.) Clearly the evolutionary pressure is there for Covid-21 to evolve in that direction.

Whatever can escape the antibodies generated by the mRNA synthetic spike protein and lead to more replication will be selected for. That will mean a much more contagious and virulent virus (Covid-21_ just from that.) So far, immune escape has evolved hand in hand with stronger affinity for the ACE2 receptor, which directly translates into higher contagiousness and also elevated virulence as well. The likely mutations to come next have been identified in vitro (to be noted, in vitro evolution had already correctly identified the ones that characterize the current variants, so it has a good track record so far).

In vitro has also identified ways for it to get deadlier through a different mechanism – that is - shutting down innate immunity by inhibiting the interferon response. This second mutation is a key strategy that these viruses have evolved in their battle with bats’ immune systems.  There is some evidence that Covid-19 is actually not all that good at this compared to, for example, the first SARS virus from 2003. I suspect that this was a major reason why SARS-1 was much more lethal.

Can the mRNA therapeutic regimen select for a reversion back to that state, i.e. it goes in the direction of countering the immune system as a whole by becoming better at overcoming the innate arm of the immune system. When the adaptive arm of Covid-19 has been strengthened by mRNA therapeutics, the evolutionary potential for a much more contagious and lethal Covid-21 may become evident?

I don’t have an answer, but I sure hope that it does not.

The mRNA therapeutic approach runs the risk of breeding something much more contagious and deadly Covid-21. And because it may well happen in stages, there is also the risk of it becoming gradually normalized, just as the current level of death has become normalized.  I remember learning about gain of function research reading Annie Jacobson's Operation Paperclip. So it's not as if potential outcomes aren't well understood.

So not only do we have lying officials that did everything possible to help the spread of an aerosol pathogen, now those same officials are running a playbook for creating more virulent strains taking us from Covid-19 to Covid-21. Meanwhile, we're drowned in and overwhelmed by dueling narratives Outside of what you read here, there's scant information to be gotten about gain of function mutations and the rate of infection of those whose mRNA therapeutic injections have been breached.

"Trust the science" pretenders like the frightening Dr. Kavita (force the injections) Patel are pretending that shots will get the virus under control - and they won’t. mRNA therapeutic jabs won't even get degenerating public health care systems under control. So, not only does this grand Covid-21 gain of function experiment have the potential to be even more deadly, nary any of the deep seated issues with any of the impacted health care systems have been fixed.

Dr. Kavita Patel Out'Chere Calling For An mRNA Jab Mandate And Jab Passports

thehill |  In the current phase of this ever-changing pandemic, we are witnessing the emergence of two Americas. One where fully-vaccinated Americans often remain highly reluctant to remove masks with examples of “mask shaming.” At the opposite pole, another country where large unmasked crowds gather in public, such as at sports events, unclear of who has or has not been vaccinated. What links both of these Americas? Neither one is following the CDC’s updated COVID-19 recommendations.

Recommendations are often complex and confusing. Trust in science and the CDC, damaged by politicization, has deteriorated. As an example of how acute these challenges are — four out of every 10 health care workers remain unvaccinated. Recommendations alone are not enough. New requirements for vaccinations and reporting are required to move the country forward that will “open” the country back up in ways that are practical and safe at the same time.

The country needs to implement vaccine requirements, especially in high-priority settings including hospitals, nursing homes and schools. Without vaccine requirements the country will face significant difficulties and delays in safely opening back up. In turn, public health will be compromised, and the economy will face avoidable burdens. These types of vaccination requirements aren’t new and are done routinely in hospitals and schools. There are several reasons why these measures are needed.

First and most important is the direct health consequences of unvaccinated individuals in critical settings. The lack of a vaccine requirement in health care settings has resulted in superspreader events and preventable deaths posing a health risk to patients. It is reasonable for many patients to assume that health care workers are all immunized. Additional critical settings where requirements should be considered are institutions of education or childcare, transportation, law enforcement and hospitality industries -all places where close contact indoors can pose risks, particularly to infants and children for whom there is currently no available Covid-19 vaccine. While some universities are moving ahead with mandates, a disturbing trend has erupted: Public colleges in red states are less likely to have a vaccine requirement compared to private universities in blue states. Law enforcement, including police officers were some of the earliest eligible essential works for vaccines, but in same large urban areas such as Columbus, Ohio only 28 percent of the employed police officer have received a vaccine to date.

Vaccination requirements will need to be augmented through mechanisms to demonstrate proof of vaccination and reporting requirements. Without this type of transparency, rebuilding the social trust needed to return to normalcy will continue to lag. We are in a transitional period where the number of immunized Americans is increasing but we are not yet at a level where mitigation measures can easily be lifted, if at all. Federal officials should work with state and local authorities to consider how best to establish fair and accurate reporting mechanisms — without overburdening already stressed businesses — to reflect actual levels of immunization. Employers, especially large ones, are already embracing vaccine requirements partly because they know that customers might choose to seek services elsewhere, which could have significant financial impact.

Anti-feminist Negroes Reacting To The Demise Of The Black Nuclear Family...,

level |  Like so many online communities, the Black Manosphere is rife with internal divisions and disputes, each more ridiculous than the last; what unites it is its founding principles of anti-feminism. Most of these are cribbed from the larger “manosphere,” an umbrella term for a collection of subreddits and “men’s rights” forums claiming that women and a feminist-leaning society have robbed men of their power, and then tailored to Black women specifically. Black women lack femininity, says Black Manosphere dogma; they refuse to be submissive; they are the ones responsible for Black family dysfunction.

As with the manosphere at large, the Black Manosphere traffics in jargon that makes them sound like Matrix superfans whose experience with actual women doesn’t extend beyond fantasy. “Red pill” ideology casts followers as visionaries who dare to see through the illusion; they divide other men into “alpha” and “beta” categories to denote their power and status (“betabux,” for example, is a term used for weak men whose only value to women is as sugar daddies). Sexually empowered women are denigrated as riding the “cock carousel” until they hit “the wall” in their mid-twenties and their “sexual market value” drops; the 80/20 rule dictates that women find only one out of every five men attractive enough to have sex without added incentives like money (at which their “hypergamy,” or drive to marry up a class, kicks in).

As with the manosphere at large, the Black Manosphere traffics in jargon that makes them sound like “Matrix” superfans whose experience with actual women doesn’t extend beyond fantasy.

Unlike the larger, ostensibly White manosphere, the Black Manosphere isn’t a pathway into the alt-right. It reserves its ire solely for its own community: Black women and men who violate its expectations. Black women in particular are its targets, with men referring to them as “scraggle daggles,” “demons,” and “the most filthy and disease-ridden women on the planet.” It’s a codified system of misogynoir — misogyny toward Black women in particular — that gives stark form to an attitude Black women have been noticing and discussing for well over a decade.

Before the Black Manosphere, there was the men’s rights movement, and lo, it was bad. It was also predominantly White, or at least non-Black. A Philadelphia-based man who calls himself Mumia Obsidian Ali sought to change that. After coming across men’s rights activists online in the mid-2010s, he began to contribute pieces to blogs like A Voice for Men and Return of Kings, and eventually launched a radio show where he holds forth on his favorite topic: Black women. (The seeds of his own anti-feminism were sown in childhood, he suggested in one article, when he saw his grandmother and mother being verbally abusive toward his grandfather and father, respectively.) “Black women [in America], as a group, suck,” he tells me in an email exchange.

As the Black Manosphere proliferated, so did a deluge of content. Men — mostly from North America and Western Europe — write ceaseless articles referencing other articles, and upload videos as long as 12 hours blaming Black women for every societal ill plaguing Black communities in Western societies. Literally, every one: crime rates, single motherhood, STD rates, killing sprees, lagging school performance, out-of-wedlock births; abortions, incarceration rates. To bypass YouTube’s content moderation policies, some make their videos age-restricted. Others post their content on BitChute or Free Speech Avenger, both of which can feature profane or even pornographic content, as well as their own websites, blogs, podcasts, private Facebook pages, and Telegram chat groups. Some self-publish books. Revenue builds through donations during livestreams, one-on-one consultation fees, book sales, merchandise, and Patreon subscriptions. A nearly two-hour video can generate more than $200 in donations.

Clearest Possible Affirmation That Wokeness Is A Tool Of The Establishment

I Trust My Mind And My Cells More Than I Trust You!!! Everything Else Is Conversation...,

theatlantic |  For both yes-vaxxers like me and the no-vaxxers I spoke with, feelings about the vaccine are intertwined with feelings about the pandemic.

Although I think I’m right about the vaccines, the truth is that my thinking on this issue is motivated. I canceled vacations, canceled my wedding, avoided indoor dining, and mostly stayed home for 15 months. All that sucked. I am rooting for the vaccines to work.

But the no-vaxxers I spoke with just don’t care. They’ve traveled, eaten in restaurants, gathered with friends inside, gotten COVID-19 or not gotten COVID-19, survived, and decided it was no big deal. What’s more, they’ve survived while flouting the advice of the CDC, the WHO, Anthony Fauci, Democratic lawmakers, and liberals, whom they don’t trust to give them straight answers on anything virus-related.

The no-vaxxers’ reasoning is motivated too. Specifically, they’re motivated to distrust public-health authorities who they’ve decided are a bunch of phony neurotics, and they’re motivated to see the vaccines as a risky pharmaceutical experiment, rather than as a clear breakthrough that might restore normal life (which, again, they barely stopped living). This is the no-vaxxer deep story in a nutshell: I trust my own cells more than I trust pharmaceutical goop; I trust my own mind more than I trust liberal elites‪.

So what will change their minds?

I cannot imagine that any amount of hectoring or shaming, or proclamations from the public-health or Democratic communities, will make much of a difference for this group. “I’ve lost all faith in the media and public-health officials,”said Myles Pindus, a 24-year-old in Brooklyn, who told me he is skeptical of the mRNA vaccines and is interested in the Johnson & Johnson shot. “It might sound crazy, but I’d rather go to Twitter and check out a few people I trust than take guidance from the CDC, or WHO, or Fauci,” Baca, the Colorado truck driver, told me. Other no-vaxxers offered similar appraisals of various Democrats and liberals, but they were typically less printable.

From my conversations, I see three ways to persuade no-vaxxers: make it more convenient to get a shot; make it less convenient to not get a shot; or encourage them to think more socially.

 

 

Deplorables Understand That Wokeism Is A PsyOp...,

theatlantic |  Nonprofit organizations that provide these training sessions argued that the order violated their free-speech rights and hampered their ability to conduct their business. In December, a federal judge agreed; President Joe Biden rescinded the order the day he took office. But by then, critical race theory was already a part of the conservative lexicon. Since Trump’s executive order, Rufo told me, he has provided his analysis “to a half-dozen state legislatures, the United States House of Representatives, and the United States Senate.” One such state legislature was New Hampshire’s; on February 18, the lower chamber held a hearing to discuss Keith Ammon’s bill. Rufo was among those who testified in support of it.

Concerned that the measure might fail on its own, Republicans have now included its language in a must-pass budget bill. In March, Republican Governor Chris Sununu signaled that he would object to “divisive concepts” legislation because he believes it is unconstitutional, but he has since tempered his stand. “The ideas of critical race theory and all of this stuff—I personally don’t think there’s any place for that in schools,” he said in early April. But, he added, “when you start turning down the path of the government banning things, I think that’s a very slippery slope.” Almost everyone I spoke with for this article assumed that Sununu would sign the budget bill, and that the divisive-concepts ban would become law.   

Although free-speech advocates are confident that bills like Ammon’s will not survive challenges in court, they believe the real point is to scare off companies, schools, and government agencies from discussing systemic racism. “What these bills are designed to do is prevent conversations about how racism exists at a systemic level in that we all have implicit biases that lead to decisions that, accumulated, lead to significant racial disparities,” Gilles Bissonnette, the legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, told me. “The proponents of this bill want none of those discussions to happen. They want to suppress that type of speech.”

Conservatives are not the only critics of diversity training. For years, some progressives, including critical race theorists, have questioned its value: Is it performative? Is it the most effective way to move toward equity or is it simply an effective way of restating the obvious and stalling meaningful action? But that is not the fight that has materialized over the past nine months. Instead, it is a confrontation with a cartoonish version of critical race theory.

For Republicans, the end goal of all these bills is clear: initiating another battle in the culture wars and holding on to some threadbare mythology of the nation that has been challenged in recent years. What’s less clear is whether average voters care much about the debate. In a recent Atlantic/Leger poll, 52 percent of respondents who identified as Republicans said that states should pass laws banning schools from teaching critical race theory, but just 30 percent of self-identified independents were willing to say the same. Meanwhile, a strong majority of Americans, 78 percent, either had not heard of critical race theory or were unsure whether they had.

Last week, after President Biden’s first joint address to Congress—and as Idaho was preparing to pass its bill—Senator Tim Scott stood in front of United States and South Carolina flags to deliver the Republican response. “From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven’t made any progress,” Scott said. “You know this stuff is wrong. Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country.” Rufo immediately knew what he meant. “Senator Tim Scott denounces critical race theory in his response to Biden’s speech tonight,” he tweeted. “We have turned critical race theory into a national issue and conservative political leaders are starting to fight.”