Delta, though much more
transmissible, wasn’t an “escape variant”. The original, unmodified
mRNA vaccines worked perfectly well against Delta.
The same is probably not true of Omicron. Sequencing and some lab studies suggest that Omicron has evolved ways to escape both acquired immunity and vaccine immunity.
That
suggests that vaccine companies will need to make new booster shots
against Omicron. In fact, this is easy to do, and they’re already doing
this. The key is getting rapid FDA approval and getting the CDC to
recommend the boosters.
The CDC was slow to recommend
boosters against Delta in part because of concern over vaccine
availability for developing countries, but mostly because the CDC is
very parochial and didn’t trust the data on boosters and Delta that was
emerging from other countries like Israel.
Far more
effective than variant-specific boosters would be a universal
“supervaccine” that works against all possible variants of Covid.
Several labs, including Topol’s, have candidates for such a
supervaccine.
Either the U.S. federal government or a
group of countries needs to immediately coordinate and fund an effort to
create a Covid supervaccine. This would represent our best bet at
ending the pandemic once and for all.
In the meantime,
Pfizer’s antiviral drug should be effective against most or all Covid
variants, and represents a vital addition to our toolkit against new
variants like Omicron.
In other words, science is
advancing rapidly, and we really can end this pandemic once and for all.
But we cannot — we must not — rest on the laurels of our initial
vaccine achievement. We still have lots of work to do, and our public
health agencies are still not doing as good a job as they ought to be
doing.
clinicaltrials | On the topic of immune escape: Gauteng, the province where the Omicron cluster was detected, has just come out of heavy Delta wave. This suggests that the antibodies binding to Delta might not do that much for Omicron.
This is also quite possibly the reason for Omicron being discovered there – researchers encountered an unexpected and unexplained uptick in Covid numbers, prompting them to look a bit harder. Of course luck favours the prepared – the research teams there are capable, in possession of good sequencing kits and know how to use them.
I would not be surprised if Omicron arose somewhere else completely, and just got detected in Gauteng. The vast number new of mutations could be explained by an unknown population outside RSA, whether nearby in Zimbabwe or at the other ends of Africa be it in Senegal or Egypt.
This does suggest that blocking flights from RSA might already be too late. This is not to say that quarantining international flyers is a bad thing – if I were in charge that would be the case for any international arival anywhere. Pets have always been quarantined – if your dog has to do it, you should too.
Finally I have a theory why the WHO is so reluctant to ban international air travel: WHO staff are probably among the most frequent of fliers – one day in Geneva at a conference, the next day in Canada to lobby for funding and the next week in the DRC to worry about Ebola. This means that blocking flights is unthinkable for them, even if it is a sensible course of action.
medium |The
West’s Horn of Africa experts have been meeting with a TPLF leader and
TPLF/OLF supporters in secret, even as its governments claim to be
impartial — TPLF’s Berhane Gebre-Christos speaks as TPLF member,
proposed head of “transitional government” (limo/Uber drivers) and
Washington-based Ethio-American diaspora.
Donald Yamamoto, recently the U.S. Ambassador to Somalia who just retired this year, to TPLF official Berhane Gebre-Christos:
“Abiy
is not listening… Obasanjo has not been extraordinary helpful or very
active, and so are there any other opportunities that you see?”
Vicki Huddleston,
former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs
and US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa to Berhane
Gebre-Christos:
“I couldn’t agree more that you know, Abiy should step down, there should be an all-inclusive transition government.”
Former
ambassadors and current diplomats for the United States, Britain and EU
had a Zoom meeting this past Sunday with an official for the TPLF in
what amounts to a green light from the West for the terrorist group’s
attempts to overthrow the democratically elected Ethiopian government.
And there’s evidence to prove it: a phone-cam video of the two-hour
meeting.
“I
hope that you’ll have military success fairly soon, because it seems as
if the situation is only becoming more drastic,” said Vicki Huddleston,
who was Chargé d’Affairs ad interim in Ethiopia during years the TPLF
were in power.
France’s
retired diplomat and writer Stéphane Gompertz openly speculated on the
potential for Abiy to be forced from power. “Even if Abiy sticks to his
guns, which unfortunately he seems to be doing, you either hope that
people around him either in government or in the military realize that
this is going nowhere and might force him to, well, accept the cessation
of hostilities or force him to step down?”
The
Western powers — Britain, the EU and especially the United States —
have been posturing for months that they have not taken sides in the
conflict and are pushing negotiations only in the interests of peace.
But the Zoom talk rips away the façade, revealing a chummy circle of
foreign policy elite, both retired and still active who mostly know each
other and are in sympathy with TPLF objectives. They include Donald
Yamamoto, one of the U.S. government’s most senior Africa experts who
just retired this year as the American ambassador to Somalia, and
Spain’s diplomat Carmen de la Peña.
Former
EU ambassador to Ethiopia Tim Clarke admitted that all of the
attendants “maintain contacts with our former employees. Just the other
day I was talking to the existing EU ambassador to Ethiopia.”
NC | There’s a simple lesson here: Tigrayans are the bulk of
combat power in the Highlands of the Horn. You’d think that would lead
to the conclusion that you shouldn’t mess with Tigray unless you’re
ready to get in a long, nasty war, even when the conventional military
wisdom is that the Tigrayans don’t have a chance. They weren’t supposed
to have a chance against the Europeans in 1896, either–or the Ethiopian
Derg in the 1980s. If you’re running a war-nerd bookmaking business, put
a sign on the window: “No bets on wars in Tigray.”
One reason we all underestimated Tigray is that no one
outside TPLF circles seems to have admitted to themselves how much of
the combat power of both Eritrean and Ethiopian forces came from ethnic
Tigrayans. Admitting that would be politically unwise, especially in
Ethiopia. Officially, Ethiopia is a federal, multi-ethnic state in which
all ethnic groups are equal. But that’s a polite fiction. The Ethiopian
state is the product of 19th-c. conquests by the “Habesha,” which is
what the Highland Orthodox peoples, Tigrayan and Amhara, call
themselves. Ethiopia was created by Habesha armies pushing south and
east, absorbing Somali, Afar, Oromo, Sidamo, and dozens of other peoples
who became Ethiopian citizens, but had very little share in ruling the
country.
The real struggle for power was always between the two
Habesha peoples, Tigrayan and Amhara. Since Menelik II moved the capital
southward to Shewa, the Amhara seemed like the stronger of the two
groups. Amhara are a much bigger group, for starters. Tigrayans are only
about 6% of the population, Amhara about 26%.
But after the Eritrean/Tigrayan insurgents destroyed the
Derg in the late 20th c., it was the Tigrayans of the TPLF who really
ruled Ethiopia. Their domination was so clear that the TPLF tried to
minimize their power, dutifully talking about their multi-ethnic
coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). No one was fooled; it was the TPLF who had the power in Ethiopia.
The TPLF leader Meles Zenawi was
the ultimate power in the country all through the first two decades of
this century. Zenawi knew that the TPLF was so much better organized
than the other members of the EPRDF coalition that he and his fellow
Tigrayans could let the EPRDF make a show of ethnic equality while
keeping Tigrayan control. Henri IV went through the motions of
converting to Catholicism in return for the throne with the line “Paris
is worth a mass or two,” and Zenawi seems to have decided “Addis and the
whole GDP is worth letting those weaker militias from other ethnic
groups share the credit.”
Zenawi’s PR campaign worked so well that Ethiopians forgot
the hard truth that it was the Tigrayans who had the real combat power.
The Tigrayans’ only rival in terms of military power was the
Eritrean army (EDF.) The “Eritrean” label made people forget that the
EDF is also dominated by ethnic Tigrayans. Tigrinya-speakers are the majority in Eritrea, not only the dominant but the biggest ethnic group.
That has never stopped Eritrean Tigrayans from killing other
Tigrayans. That shouldn’t be a surprise — when have people of the same
ethnic group ever fretted about killing each other? — but it does
underline what seems like the dominant fact at the moment: The Tigrayans
are the most formidable people in the Horn.
nature | Researchers in South Africa are racing to track the concerning rise
of a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The
variant harbours a large number of the mutations found in other
variants, including Delta, and it seems to be spreading quickly across
South Africa.
A top priority is to follow the variant more closely
as it spreads: it was first identified in Botswana earlier this month
and has since turned up in a traveller arriving in Hong Kong from South
Africa. Scientists are also trying to understand the variant’s
properties, such as whether it can evade immune responses triggered by
vaccines and whether it causes more or less severe disease than other
variants do.
“We’re flying at warp speed,” says Penny Moore, a
virologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South
Africa, whose lab is gauging the variant’s potential to dodge immunity
from vaccines and previous infections. There are anecdotal reports of
reinfections and of cases in vaccinated individuals, but “at this stage
it’s too early to tell anything”, Moore adds.
“There’s a lot we
don’t understand about this variant,” Richard Lessells, an
infectious-diseases physician at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in
Durban, South Africa, said at a press briefing organized by South
Africa’s health department on 25 November. “The mutation profile gives
us concern, but now we need to do the work to understand the
significance of this variant and what it means for the response to the
pandemic.”
A World Health Organization (WHO) expert group will
meet on 26 November, and will probably label the strain — currently
known as B.1.1.529 — as a variant of concern or variant of interest,
Tulio de Oliveira, a bioinformatician at the University of
KwaZulu-Natal, said at the briefing. The variant will probably be named
Nu — the next available letter in the Greek alphabet naming system for
coronavirus variants — if it is flagged by the WHO group.
Researchers
also want to measure the variant’s potential to spread globally —
possibly sparking new waves of infection or exacerbating ongoing rises
being driven by Delta.
Changes to spike
Researchers
spotted B.1.1.529 in genome-sequencing data from Botswana. The variant
stood out because it contains more than 30 changes to the spike protein —
the SARS-CoV-2 protein that recognizes host cells and is the main
target of the body’s immune responses. Many of the changes have been
found in variants such as Delta and Alpha, and are linked to heightened
infectivity and the ability to evade infection-blocking antibodies.
The
apparent sharp rise in cases of the variant in South Africa’s Gauteng
province — home to Johannesburg — is also setting off alarm bells. Cases
increased rapidly in the province in November, particularly in schools
and among young people, according to Lessells. Genome sequencing and
other genetic analysis from de Oliveira’s team found that the B.1.1.529
variant was responsible for all 77 of the virus samples they analysed
from Gauteng, collected between 12 and 20 November. Analysis of hundreds
more samples are in the works.
The variant harbours a spike
mutation that allows it to be detected by genotyping tests that deliver
results much more rapidly than genome sequencing does, Lessells said.
Preliminary evidence from these tests suggest that B.1.1.529 has spread
considerably further than Gauteng. “It gives us concern that this
variant may already be circulating quite widely in the country,”
Lessells said.
Vaccine effectiveness
To understand the
threat B.1.1.529 poses, researchers will be closely tracking its spread
in South Africa and beyond. Researchers in South Africa mobilized
efforts to quickly study the Beta variant, identified there in late
2020, and a similar effort is starting to study B.1.1.529.
Moore’s
team — which provided some of the first data on Beta’s ability to dodge
immunity — has already begun work on B.1.1.529. They plan to test the
virus’s ability to evade infection-blocking antibodies, as well as other
immune responses. The variant harbours a high number of mutations in
regions of the spike protein that antibodies recognize, potentially
dampening their potency. “Many mutations we know are problematic, but
many more look like they are likely contributing to further evasion,”
says Moore. There are even hints from computer modelling that B.1.1.529
could dodge immunity conferred by another component of the immune system
called T cells, says Moore. Her team hopes to have its first results in
two weeks.
“A burning question is ‘does it reduce vaccine
effectiveness, because it has so many changes?’,” says Aris Katzourakis,
who studies virus evolution at the University of Oxford, UK. Moore says
breakthrough infections have been reported in South Africa among people
who have received any of the three kinds of vaccines in use there, from
Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer–BioNTech and Oxford–AstraZeneca. Two
quarantined travellers in Hong Kong who have tested positive for the
variant were vaccinated with the Pfizer jab, according to news reports.
One individual had travelled from South Africa; the other was infected
during hotel quarantining.
Researchers in South Africa will also
study whether B.1.1.529 causes disease that is more severe or milder
than that produced by other variants, Lessells said. “The really key
question comes around disease severity.”
threadreaderapp |23. Citizens were more tolerant and
even eager for top down direction and oversight and national leaders had
more latitude to impose order in the ways they saw fit.
24. In developed countries, this
heightened oversight took many forms, biometric IDs for all citizens,
for example, and tighter regulation of key industries whose stability
was deemed vital to national interests" END
25. Quite something isn't it.
Amazing what was outlined. I've provided the document link which is
worth reading. If you want to read just the lockstep section its pages
18-25.
Alternatively I have screen captured the relevant parts below.
26. Hopefully you're now linking RF, JH, BMGF & WEF for the last 20 months.
Now the banks. Don't forget the Fed is connected to the banks & the
likelihood of a digital currency being implemented will be through using
the covid digital pass & ultimately social credit score system
27. But where does RF fit in. In 2019 The Commons Project Foundation was founded.
Projects include CommonHealth, COVIDcheck & CommonPass. Basically Covid Apps backed by RF.
wrongkindofgreen | (wrong kind of green dollar-dollar-bill-y'all is just entirely too clever)
“The ruling class exists, it’s not a conspiracy theory.
They operate as a class, too. They share the same values, the same
sensibility and in Europe and North America they are white. They act in
accordance with their interests, which are very largely identical. The
failure to understand this is the single greatest problem and defect in
left discourse today.”
— John Steppling, Author, Playwright
“This report is crucial reading for anyone interested in creatively
considering the multiple, divergent ways in which our world could
evolve.”
— Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation
Storytelling. Dystopian scenarios. Not Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury or Brunner.
Scenario planning for corporate strategy was pioneered by Royal Dutch
Shell in the 1970s. [Further reading on scenario planning: The Art of the Long View]The
following excerpts are highlights from the May 2010 “Scenarios for the
Future of Technology & International Development” report produced by
The Rockefeller Foundation & Global Business Network. Not just the
more known “Lock Step” scenario, but all four scenarios.
Following “Event 201”
(Oct 18, 2019), we must concede that the ruling class has been gifted
with phenomenal and prophetic intuitions and insights. (They truly are
the chosen ones.) Thus it is worthwhile, even mandatory, to study their
scenario exercises and simulations.
“We believe that scenario planning has great potential
for use in philanthropy to identify unique interventions… scenario
planning allows us to achieve impact more effectively.” [p 4]
“The results of our first scenario planning exercise demonstrate a
provocative and engaging exploration of the role of technology and the
future of globalization.” [p 4]
“This report is crucial reading for anyone interested in creatively
considering the multiple, divergent ways in which our world could
evolve.” [p 4]
“*I offer a special thanks to Peter Schwartz, Andrew Blau, and the
entire team at Global Business Network, who have helped guide us through
this stimulating and energizing process.” [*Judith Rodin, President of
the Rockefeller Foundation] [p 4]
“*I hope this publication makes clear exactly why my colleagues and I
are so excited about the promise of using scenario planning to develop
robust strategies.” [*Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller
Foundation][p 5]
Peter Schwartz is an American futurist, innovator and co-founder of
the Global Business Network (GBN), a corporate strategy firm,
specializing in future-think & scenario planning. Founded in 1987,
GBN was “a membership organization comprising executives from many of
the world’s leading companies alongside individual members from
business, science, the arts, and academia.” The proprietary list of
GBN’s corporate members included “more than 100 of the world’s leading
companies, drawn from virtually every industry and continent.” Members
paid an annual subscription fee of $35,000. [Source]
Following an acquisition by Monitor in 2000, GBN then specialized in
scenario-based consulting and training. GBN ceased to be active
following the acquisition of the Monitor Group by Deloitte in 2013.
“Perhaps most importantly, scenarios give us a new,
shared language that deepens our conversations about the future and how
we can help to shape it.” [p 7]
“How can we best position ourselves not just to identify technologies
that improve the lives of poor communities but also to help scale and
spread those that emerge?” [p 8]
The Four Scenarios
“Once crossed, these axes create a matrix of four very different futures:
LOCK STEP – A world of tighter top-down government control and more
authoritarian eadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen
pushback
CLEVER TOGETHER – A world in which highly coordinated and successful
strategies emerge for addressing both urgent and entrenched worldwide
issues
HACK ATTACK – An economically unstable and shock-prone world in which
governments weaken, criminals thrive, and dangerous innovations emerge
SMART SCRAMBLE – An economically depressed world in which individuals
and communities develop localized, makeshift solutions to a growing set
of problems”
“Each scenario tells a story of how the world, and in
particular the developing world, might progress over the next 15 to 20
years,… Accompanying each scenario is a range of elements that aspire to
further illuminate life, technology, and philanthropy in that world.”
[p 17]
Scenario #1: LOCK STEP
“In 2012, the pandemic that the world had been
anticipating for years finally hit. Unlike 2009’s H1N1, this new
influenza strain — originating from wild geese — was extremely virulent
and deadly. Even the most pandemic-prepared nations were quickly
overwhelmed when the virus streaked around the world, infecting nearly
20 percent of the global population and killing 8 million in just seven
months, the majority of them healthy young adults. The pandemic also had
a deadly effect on economies: international mobility of both people and
goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries like tourism and
breaking global supply chains. Even locally, normally bustling shops and
office buildings sat empty for months, devoid of both employees and
customers.” [p 18]
“The pandemic blanketed the planet — though
disproportionate numbers died in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central
America, where the virus spread like wildfire in the absence of official
containment protocols. But even in developed countries, containment was
a challenge. The United States’s initial policy of “strongly
discouraging” citizens from flying proved deadly in its leniency, accelerating the spread of the virus not
just within the U.S. but across borders. However, a few countries did
fare better — China in particular. The Chinese government’s quick
imposition and enforcement of mandatory quarantine for all citizens, as
well as its instant and near-hermetic sealing off of all borders, saved
millions of lives, stopping the spread of the virus far earlier than in
other countries and enabling a swifter postpandemic
recovery. [p 18]
consentfactory | So, GloboCap has crossed the Rubicon. The final phase of its
transformation of society into a pathologized-totalitarian dystopia,
where mandatory genetic-therapy injections and digital compliance papers
are commonplace, is now officially underway.
Austria is just the tip of the New Normal spear. Prominent New-Normal fascists in Germany, like Der Führer of Bavaria, Markus Söder, and Minister of Propaganda Karl Lauterbach, are already calling for an allgemeine Impfpflicht
(i.e., “compulsory vaccination requirement”), which should not come as a
surprise to anyone. The Germans are not going sit idly by and let the
Austrians publicly out-fascist them, are they? They have a reputation to
uphold, after all! Italy will probably be next to join in, unless Lithuania or Australia beats them to the punch.
But, seriously, this is just the beginning of the Winter Siege
I wrote about recently. The plan seems to be to New-Normalize Europe
first — generally speaking, Europeans are more docile, respectful of all
authority, and not very well armed — and then use it as leverage to
force the new pathologized totalitarianism on the USA, and the UK, and
the rest of the world.
I do not believe this plan will succeed. Despite the most intensive
propaganda campaign in the history of propaganda campaigns, there remain
enough of us who steadfastly refuse to accept the “New Normal” as our
new reality.
wmcresearch | One may view the actions of the spike protein by reversing a well-worn saying:
“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”
The Spike prefers:
“If you stop a cell from repairing itself, it just dies. If you teach
the host to stop repairing itself, you rob it of its lifetime.”
On May 31st of this year, researchers in Israel discovered
the Fountain of Youth. They observed that SIRT6 controls the rate of
healthy aging. If you increase this, the mice live for an average of
THIRTY PERCENT LONGER. So, imagine 130 being the new 100. SIXTY being
the new THIRTY! LITERALLY!
An interesting observation was also made by the team: “If we can
determine how to activate it in humans, we will be able to prolong life,
and this could have enormous health and economic implications."
Enormous implications, indeed. Clearly there are those who certainly
DO NOT want Seven Billion people living an extra thirty years…
So, what happens if you REMOVE SIRT6? You guessed it. Very, very bad things happen. Especially death.
Without SIRT6 your body is unable to repair the DNA damage that we
experience every day, and which is ENORMOUSLY increased in states of
disease, particularly so in the case of SARS-CoV-2.
THE ENDOTHELIAL SENESCENCE CONNECTION
It has been established that endothelial cells become senescent when
transfected with the Spike Protein. They have not determined WHY it
happens, just that it DOES HAPPEN and the effects it has. I now know why
it happens. The Spike Protein is epigenetically silencing SIRT6.
What does SIRT6 do, in addition to controlling DNA repair?
DNA Repair, Gene Expression, Telomeric Maintenance, Mitosis and
Meiosis, Stem Cell Pluripotency and Differentiation (how cells obtain
their specific functionality), Metablic Diseases (Diabetes, for
example), Cancer, Immune Regulation, Stress Response, Senescence and
Aging.
Everything COVID and Long COVID.
It has already been hypothesized that Sirtuins are implicated in
COVID. In a paper on COVID and related Sepsis it was determined that
Metformin may improve metabolic derangements, improve mitochondrial
function, and decrease cytokine production. NAD+ boosters such as
resveratrol, a naturally occurring polyphenol, found in red grapes and
blueberries, activate Sirtuin activity and attenuate the NF-ĸB activity,
improve endothelial function, and decrease microvascular inflammation.
SIRT1 is also implicated in COVID: COVID-19: NAD+ deficiency may
predispose the aged, obese and type2 diabetics to mortality through its
effect on SIRT1 activity
But, what are the possible long term implications? Organisms that are
deprived of their natural SIRT6 have very, very short lifespans. Mice,
for example, die within four weeks without SIRT6.
alexberenson |This chart may seem unbelievable or impossible, but it's correct, based on weekly data from the British government.
The brown line represents weekly deaths from all causes of vaccinated people aged 10-59, per 100,000 people.
The blue line represents weekly deaths from all causes of unvaccinated people per 100,000 in the same age range.
I have checked the underlying dataset myself and this graph is
correct. Vaccinated people under 60 are twice as likely to die as
unvaccinated people. And overall deaths in Britain are running well
above normal.
I don’t know how to explain this other than vaccine-caused mortality.
caitlinjohnstone | If
your opinion about a legal case would be different if the political
ideologies of those involved were reversed and all other facts and
evidence remained the same, then it’s probably best not to pretend your
position on the case has anything to do with facts or evidence.
People who defend US foreign policy are terrorist sympathizers.
Any
time you see the US empire picking on a smaller nation just search that
nation’s name plus “Belt and Road Initiative” and you’ll usually find a
connection.
To get
an idea of just how insane things are, there are people whose actual
job is to sell policymakers on the idea that dropping more bombs would
be a good thing, and those people are paid by actual bomb manufacturers.
To
get an even clearer idea of how crazy things are, attempts to stop
dropping bombs will be opposed on the grounds that it will hurt the jobs
of bomb manufacturers. Media pundits will actually come right out and
say this on nationwide TV broadcasts.
Civilization
looks the way it looks because powerful people mapped it out that way.
Then the storytellers of civilization come in and assure us that
civilization looks this way because of an accident of democracy and
rank-and-file commerce. But we never really had a hand in this.
And
this mapping continues. All the plans for capitalism, Covid policies,
climate change, green energy transitions etc are being planned out with
no real input from the general public. The importance of our opinions begins and ends with how far we can be pushed without revolting.
nbcnews | More than a dozen people stormed a Louis Vuitton store in a
Chicago suburb and were caught on surveillance footage grabbing bags and
wiping shelves clear, according to police.
The theft took place at the store located in the Oakbrook Center in Oak Brook, Illinois, on Wednesday around 3:30 p.m., police said.
The
footage shows the suspects, wearing masks and hooded sweatshirts, burst
into the store and spread out, filling their arms with bags and other
goods before dashing out.
Police said the 14 suspects all
escaped the scene in three separate vehicles waiting for them. As of
Friday, the Chicago Police Department recovered one of the three
vehicles allegedly used in the theft: a Dodge Charger reported stolen in
October out of Chicago, Oak Brook police said.
No injuries were reported and no weapons were displayed.
Oak Brook police said in an update Friday that the merchandise taken was worth an estimated $120,000.
"We
are still developing and working several leads to identify the
offenders involved in our incident," Oak Brook police said Friday.
reuters | Police
in California on Sunday were seeking about 80 suspects who they said
swarmed into a Bay Area Nordstrom department store in a coordinated
robbery, ransacking as much as they could carry and fleeing in cars they
had parked outside.
Three
people were arrested at the scene of the "organized theft" reported
shortly before 9 p.m. local time on Saturday in suburban Walnut Creek,
about 15 miles (25 km) east of Oakland, police said.
"The
remaining participants in this criminal mob fled from the area in cars
at high speeds," Walnut Creek police said in a statement on Sunday.
The
robbery followed another brazen mob-heist of high-end stores on Friday
night in San Francisco's Union Square, about 25 miles (40 km) to the
west.
Video
posted by a KNTV television reporter showed several people running out
of the store with merchandise and climbing into about 25 parked cars
that ringed the building and jammed traffic on the streets.
"It
was crazy for a second," said Brett Barrette, a manager of a restaurant
across the street, who told KPIX-TV that the thieves wore ski masks and
were armed with crow bars and weapons. "All the guests inside were
getting concerned."
Police
said the suspects assaulted two Nordstrom employees and pepper-sprayed
another. They said they are reviewing surveillance footage in an effort
to identify them.
@sameo416 | “How Covid-19 spreads: narratives, counter-narratives and social
dramas”. Some thoughts and highlight of one aspect, how what they
describe is more representative of religion than science
They distinguish between inside track and outside track that shape
policy narratives while the inside track are the literal insiders, SAG.
This sounds like Fleck’s esoteric and exoteric circles. In the Stanford
entry on Fleck is this prescient para, h/t @awsparling
“If the position of an elite is stronger than the position of the
masses, the elite isolates itself and demands obedience from the masses.
Such collectives develop dogmatic styles of thinking in which a test of
correctness is usually located in some distant past in a more or less mythical master or savior. Collective life acquires a ceremonial
character and access to the esoteric circle is well-guarded.
Conservatism reigns: there is no place for fundamentally new ideas, and
one can only better or worse realize the revealed principles.”
If that doesn’t sound familiar read some of .@AntibioticDoc
posts. The arrogance and hubris we’ve seen out of most of the public
health policy makers has exactly followed Fleck’s thought. ‘Demand
obedience’ indeed. This bit: “This is characteristic of most religious
collectives”
Droplet dogma is the mythical master by which allegiance to the esoteric
circle is assessed. Transgression from that master results in something
many religious traditions have practiced, shunning.
I’ve worked both engineering and church ministry. Huge red flag for me
when science slips into dogmatic practice and thought. Science, by
definition, is supposed to be open to new knowledge at any point.
Fortress Infection Control does not reflect that attribute.
The article talks about ‘rituals of purification’ that ‘reinforce the
official narrative’. This too is religion writ large. Liturgy and what
you do at the altar all reinforce the underlying doctrine of the faith.
The authors are spot on.
For public masking, it’s discussed and shut down but no evidence is
offered to support the anti-mask claims. This too is an aspect of
religion. Can debate the types of robes, colours, music, but if we get
to core dogma, like the divinity of Christ, there’s no room for debate.
In discussing why the flawed narratives persist, authors highlight why
people are unlikely to change their beliefs. Use of the word belief is
significant here as that’s what is being described. I don’t have beliefs
about the behaviour of electromagnetic radiation…
I hold understandings that are open for revision with further data.
Policymakers exhibit satisficing behaviour. Further reason is scientific
elitism. This includes the fetishization of the RCT as the only source
of reality. This enables a degree of symbolic violence.
Except its not symbolic. Epistemic violence is violence, worse than
blows in many ways. That is focused on ‘outside track’ voices, those
outside the esoteric and exoteric circles. The focus on maintaining
control consumes all energy that could go to real public protection
Final super line, “…the combination of policymakers’ cognitive biases
and satisficing behaviour, scientists’ desire to protect their
interests, and politicians’ alignment with individualist values and
populist sentiment proved perilous.”
authorea | This paper offers a critique of UK government policy based on mode of
transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (which in turn followed misleading advice
from the World Health Organisation) through the lens of policymaking as
narrative. Two flawed narratives—“Covid is droplet- not airborne-spread”
and “Covid is situationally airborne” (that is, airborne transmission
is unusual but may occur during aerosol-generating medical procedures
and severe indoor crowding)—quickly became dominant despite no evidence
to support them. Two important counter-narratives—“Covid is
unequivocally airborne” and “Everyone generates aerosols; everyone is
vulnerable”— were sidelined despite strong evidence to support them.
Tragic consequences of the flawed policy narrative unfolded as social
dramas. For example, droplet precautions became ritualised; care home
residents died in their thousands; public masking became a libertarian
lightning rod; and healthcare settings became occupational health
battlegrounds. In a discussion, we call for bold action to ensure that
the science of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is freed from the shackles of
historical errors, scientific vested interests, ideological manipulation
and policy satisficing.
Policymaking is a contact sport involving competing narratives (about
problems, how they arose, and how they will be resolved), institutions
(especially government and its bureaucratic machinery) and interests
(financial, political, ideological).1 2 Policy
may—ideally—“follow science” but a key question is whosescience and why? Science shapes policy narratives via an “inside
track” (e.g. official advisory committees) and to a lesser extent by an
“outside track” (e.g. less mainstream scientists, citizen
movements).3
Pandemic policymaking has been characterised not by clearly-identified
knowledge gaps which science obligingly fills but by toxic clashes
between competing scientific and moral narratives. Policymakers have
risked losing control of the “dramaturgy of political communication”
(page 784).
Getting the mode of transmission for a contagious disease right matters,
because preventive strategies follow (Table 1).5 Being
honest about scientific uncertainty also matters, because—among other
reasons—it is hard to back-track after declaring a policy
“evidence-based”.
Table 1: Droplet versus airborne transmission:
implications for
public health and healthcare worker
protection
theatlantic | Deep in the forests of Germany,
nestled neatly into the hollowed-out shells of acorns, live a smattering
of ants who have stumbled upon a fountain of youth. They are born
workers, but do not do much work. Their days are spent lollygagging
about the nest, where their siblings shower them with gifts of food.
They seem to elude the ravages of old age, retaining a durably
adolescent physique, their outer shells soft and their hue distinctively
tawny. Their scent, too, seems to shift, wafting out an alluring
perfume that endears them to others. While their sisters, who have
nearly identical genomes, perish within months of being born, these
death-defying insects live on for years and years and years.
They
are Temnothorax ants, and their elixirs of life are the tapeworms that
teem within their bellies—parasites that paradoxically prolong the life
of their host at a strange and terrible cost.
A few such life-lengthening partnerships have been documented between microbes and insects such as wasps, beetles, and mosquitoes.
But what these ants experience is more extreme than anything that’s
come before, says Susanne Foitzik, an entomologist at Johannes Gutenberg
University Mainz, in Germany, who studies the ants and their tapeworms.
Infected Temnothorax ants live at least three times longer than their
siblings, and perhaps much more, she and her colleagues report in a study published today in Royal Society Open Science.
No one is yet sure when the insects’ longevity tops out, but the answer
is probably in excess of a decade, approaching or even matching that of
ant queens, who can survive up to 20 years.
“Some
other parasites do extend life spans,” Shelley Adamo, a parasite expert
at Dalhousie University, in Nova Scotia, who was not involved in the
study, told me. “But not like this.”
Under
typical circumstances, Temnothorax ants live as most other ants do.
They reside in communities ruled by a single fertile queen attended by a
legion of workers whose professional lives take a predictable
trajectory. They first tend the queen’s eggs as nurses, then graduate
into foraging roles that take them outside the nest. Apart from the
whole freaky parasite thing, “they are pretty boring,” Foitzik told me.
Normalcy
goes out the door, however, when Temnothorax larvae ingest
tapeworm-egg-infested bird feces trucked in by foragers. The parasites
hatch and set up permanent residence in the young ants’ abdomens, where
they can access a steady stream of nutrients. In return, they offer
their host an unconventional renter’s fee: an extra-long life span that
Foitzik and her colleagues managed to record in real time.
consortiumnews |A few days after the Nov. 2 election, The New York Times published
a vehement editorial calling for the Democratic Party to adopt
“moderate” positions and avoid seeking “progressive policies at the
expense of bipartisan ideas.” It was a statement by the Times editorial
board, which the newspaper describes as “a group of opinion journalists
whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain
longstanding values.”
The editorial certainly reflected “longstanding values” — since the Times has recycled them for decades in its relentless attacks on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
The Times editorial board began its polemic by calling for the party to “return” to “moderate policies.”
Translation: Stick to corporate-friendly policies of the sort that we applauded during 16 years of the Clinton and Obama presidencies.
The board also said the election results:
“are
a sign that significant parts of the electorate are feeling leery of a
sharp leftward push in the party, including on priorities like Build
Back Better, which have some strong provisions and some discretionary
ones driving up the price tag.”
Translation: Although poll after poll shows that the Build Back Better agenda is popular with the broad public, especially increased taxation on wealthy and corporate elites to pay for it, we need to characterize the plan as part of “a sharp leftward push.”
And the board noted:
“the
concerns of more centrist Americans about a rush to spend taxpayer
money, a rush to grow the government, should not be dismissed.”
Translation: While we don’t object to the ongoing “rush to spend taxpayer money” on the military, and we did not editorialize against the bloated Pentagon budget,
we oppose efforts to “grow the government” too much for such purposes
as healthcare, childcare, education, housing and mitigating the climate
crisis.
“Mr.
Biden did not win the Democratic primary because he promised a
progressive revolution. There were plenty of other candidates doing
that. He captured the nomination—and the presidency—because he promised
an exhausted nation a return to sanity, decency and competence.”
Translation: No
need to fret about the anti-democratic power of great wealth and
corporate monopolies. We liked the status quo before the Trump
presidency, and that’s more or less what we want now.
“‘Nobody elected him to be F.D.R.,’ Representative Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat from Virginia, told the Times after Tuesday’s drubbing.”
“Democrats should work to implement policies to help the American people.”
Translation: Democrats
should work to implement policies to help the American people but not
go overboard by helping them too much. We sometimes write editorials
bemoaning the vast income inequality in this country, but we don’t want
the government to do much to reduce it.
“Congress
should focus on what is possible, not what would be possible if Joe
Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and — frankly — a host of lesser-known
Democratic moderates who haven’t had to vote on policies they might
oppose were not in office.”
Translation:
We editorialize about social justice, but we don’t want structural
changes and substantial new government policies that could bring it much
closer. We editorialize about the climate crisis, but not in favor of
government actions anywhere near commensurate with the crisis.
epochtimes | It is too often overlooked in all the discussions about the “transition” to a net-zero emissions economy that the most consequential transition is that from democratic capitalism to feudal serfdom.
This is the conclusion of American demographer and “blue-collar Democrat” Joel Kotkin, who has highlighted that the supposedly well-intentioned green policies being adopted across the West come at enormous expense to the working- and middle-classes.
As Kotkin wrote in ‘Spiked’ earlier this year, “extreme climate measures have driven the loss of traditional blue-collar jobs in manufacturing, construction and energy, while other environmental regulations have boosted housing prices.”
Kotkin’s thesis is that the West is on the road to serfdom. Rather than maintaining our capitalist societies where a large, asset-owning middle-class underpin a stable democratic system, we are becoming stratified feudal societies.
Home and small business ownership are declining, especially among the young and the less well-off, a group of technocratic elites are establishing themselves as permanent rulers in the apparatus of the administrative state, and corporate oligarchs are coming to dominate both the economy and broader society.
his transition has been occurring for some time, but it has been accelerated by the COVID-19-inspired lockdowns and the zeal with which Western governments have thoughtlessly adopted net-zero emissions targets.
Both play out as an aggressive form of reverse Robin Hood asset stripping, taking from the poor and giving to the rich.
Australia is now officially committed to a net-zero emissions by 2050 target.
But beyond the slogan “technology not taxes,” the Australian people do not know how the government plans on achieving its newfound ambition.
The UK Treasury, by contrast, recently released a Net-zero Review report (pdf) which provides some detail of how the UK government expects to reach net-zero.
The report includes a surprisingly honest admission from the bureaucracy: “The costs and benefits of the transition to a net-zero economy will ultimately pass through to households through a range of different channels.”
It includes a helpful chart that shows that, regardless of the specific policy or mechanism, the costs of net-zero will always fall on households, that is, everyday mums, dads, and workers.
This insight is evident to many but is too often obfuscated.
medium | “I’ve
seen the classified report,” Nelson told CNN’s Pamela Brown in an
interview shortly before the June 25th “Preliminary Report on UAP” came
out. “It says basically what we thought. We don’t know the answer to
what those Navy pilots saw.”
“Now,
they know that they saw something. They tracked it. They locked their
radar onto it. They followed it. It would suddenly move quickly from one
location to another. And what the report does tell us that is public is
that there have been over 140 of these sightings, So, naturally, what I
ask our scientists to do is to see if there’s any kind of explanation
from a scientific point of view and I’m awaiting their report.”
This
summer NASA press secretary Jackie McGuinness confirmed her new boss
Nelson had directed researchers to move forward with exploring any lines
of questioning around the topic as they see fit.
“There’s
not really a lot of data and scientists should be free to follow these
leads, and it shouldn’t be stigmatized,” McGuinness said, acknowledging
that UFO research can be negatively associated with unfounded conspiracy
theories. “This is a really interesting phenomenon and Americans are
clearly interested in it so if the scientists want to investigate, they
should.”
This
is great news for large numbers of scientists who have been frustrated
about attempts to get research started because of the stigma the topic
generates. The idea that NASA itself is willing to authorize, support
and coordinate such work is revolutionary.
What Questions Did He Ask Again?
Now
you read it in the earlier breakout quote in this article, but in one
of his responses Nelson asked a series of questions. Let’s give them a
little more breathing space as we wrap up here:
What, who is out there?
Who are we?
How did we get here?
How did we become as we are?
How did we develop?
How did we civilize?
It’s worth considering that these are not the first things a public official is likely to say when questioned about the June 25 Preliminary Assessement: Undentified Aerial Phenomena,
is it? On the other hand, we know he has had the Full Monty of the
classified briefing, and probably others. We also know that if Joe Biden
wants to know what the hell is going on, he’s apt to call up Bill
Nelson.
Still,
it sure sounds like Nelson seems to be saying something with a little
more complexity than the version of human development we get taught in
high school and college. He’s asking questions that make it seem like we
had help.
Why Is He Talking Like This?
It
seems the main reason is that he believes it. That, of course, would be
refreshing and illuminating and, from what I’ve read, seen and heard,
it appears to be the truth.
But
it may also be that his age has something to do with it. Nelson turned
79 this year. He was born in World War II, fought in Vietnam, had a
lifetime of experiences that many of us will never have. He knows in his
heart that something strange is going on now, and has been for the
entire time he’s been on this Earth.
He seems ready to play his part now by saying the quiet part out loud.
Keep
it coming, Bill. Turn your teams loose on this. Tell them they can
speak truth to power. Find out some answers. Confirm what you can and
offer the best theories and interpretations that can be made about the
explanations. We’ve all been waiting a long time, too.
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
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64th day is March 5
My birthday
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4 x 3 = 12
...
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
