The Abject Gotta Go Because They Will Fight Rather Than Eat Insects...,

NYTimes |  You may remember a 2019 story about how Senator Amy Klobuchar once ate a salad with a comb. According to the article, an aide purchased a salad for Klobuchar at an airport. Later, when the senator wanted to eat her salad on the plane, she discovered that there were no utensils available. After berating the aide, Klobuchar retrieved a comb from her purse and (somehow) ate her salad with it. When finished, she handed the comb to her aide with orders to clean it.

The comb story was part of a larger narrative about the senator’s treatment of her staff, which Klobuchar bravely tried to spin into evidence of her exactitude. You have to admire the effort, but the senator’s defense was useless. Nobody came away thinking that her mistake was in having high expectations. Her mistake was in doing something gross in front of multiple witnesses. That image was indelible. You couldn’t read the story without imagining the comb, a hair perhaps still caught in its teeth, plunging into an oily airport salad. Like all disgusting stories, it had a contaminating effect. Now the anecdote was in you, the voter. The taste of the comb was upon your own tongue, and you had no choice but to resent Klobuchar for putting it there.

The episode belongs to a list of disgust-related political scandals: the pubic hair on the Coke can, the stain on the blue Gap dress. On a recent weekend I passed a truck in Queens with a giant bumper sticker that said, “Any Burning or Disrespecting of the American Flag and the driver of this truck will get out and knock you the [expletive] OUT.” This was a perfect Haidt litmus test. A liberal might walk past the truck and think some version of: This guy — and it’s definitely a guy — has an anger problem. A conservative might walk past the truck and think: This guy — and it’s definitely a guy — must really love our country. As Haidt put it: “There are people for whom a flag is merely a piece of cloth, but for most people, a flag is not a piece of cloth. It has a sacred essence.” If a person views the American flag as a rectangle of fabric, it is unfathomable to be disgusted by its hypothetical desecration. If a person views the flag as a sacred symbol, it is unfathomable to not feel this way.

These two types of human — which broadly map onto “liberal” and “conservative,” or “relatively disgust-insensitive” and “relatively disgust-sensitive” — live in separate moral matrices. If it seems bizarre that disgust sensitivity and politics should be so closely correlated, it’s important to remember that disgust sensitivity is really measuring our feelings about purity and pollution. And these, in turn, contribute to our construction of moral systems, and it is our moral systems that guide our political orientations.

To ward off disgust, we enact purity rites, like rinsing the dirt from our lettuce or “canceling” a semipublic figure who posted a racist tweet when she was a teenager. We monitor the borders of mouth, body and nation. In “Mein Kampf,” Adolf Hitler described Jews as like “a maggot in a rotting body” and “a noxious bacillus.” Another category of humankind consistently deemed repulsive is women; to take one of several zillion illustrations, one reason long skirts were a dominant fashion in Western Europe for centuries, according to the fashion historian Anne Hollander, was to conceal the bottom half of the body and by extension its sexual organs. Mermaids aren’t just a folkloric figure but the expression, Hollander argues, of a horrified disgust at the lower female anatomy, which is seen as amphibiously moist and monstrous.

But purification rites may also be healthful (washing your hands) or ritually significant (baptism). We will never disentangle ourselves from the instinct to purify, even as we name different reasons for doing it: justice, patriotism, progress, tradition, freedom, public health, God, science. Beneath it all will be a confused omnivore, stumbling upon a dewy mushroom in the forest — with no clue what will happen if she eats it.

In 2022 I Resolve To Stop Expecting Negroe "Journalists" To Have Integrity...,

theatlantic |  The Brooklyn Nets have officially ended their tug-of-war with Kyrie Irving over the star point guard’s vaccination status. And Irving, who has refused to get a COVID-19 shot, is unquestionably the winner.

The rapid spread of the coronavirus’s Omicron variant has left gaps on rosters across the NBA. Because positive tests had rendered so many players ineligible, the Nets finally buckled to Irving, who had not played this season because New York City’s vaccine mandate for certain indoor facilities had banished him from home games. To let Irving on the court now, even just for away games, is a drastic turnaround for a team that had sidelined him rather than deploy him part-time. After he cleared the NBA’s COVID-19 protocols on Tuesday, Irving will be eligible to play for the Nets when they travel to Indiana to face the Pacers on January 5.

This resolution of the Nets’ high-profile dispute with Irving is part of a larger problem in professional sports: Confronted with this latest virus surge, both the NBA and the NFL have essentially waved the white flag. They are easing their health rules and sending conciliatory signals to players who have refused to get COVID-19 shots.

Both leagues had adopted a range of health protocols that strongly encouraged vaccination. But now the leagues are choosing instead to cede to the forces of capitalism. Short-term financial concerns are dictating that even as Omicron spreads, games must go on. And if that means holding vaccinated and unvaccinated players to the same standards, the leagues will do it.

After the CDC issued new guidelines Monday that will shorten quarantine times for anyone who tests positive for the coronavirus, the NBA announced that players who test positive will have to isolate for only six days, rather than 10, if they have no symptoms. The NFL and the NFL Players Association quickly announced that players with positive test results can return after five days. Stunningly, the two leagues’ abbreviated new quarantine timelines apply to both vaccinated and unvaccinated players.

Until now, the NFL had rightly made a point of imposing additional burdens on unvaccinated players. For example, unvaccinated players had to undergo daily testing and, when the team traveled, could not fraternize with anyone but team personnel. These rules reflected the greater risk that unvaccinated players pose to others. The rules also created strong incentives: Among NFL players, the policy helped produce a vaccination rate of more than 94 percent—far higher than the rate for all American adults. (The rate for NBA players is even better: at least 97 percent.)

Strangely, I'm At Ease With The Karenwaffen Boosting Itself To Death....,

NYTimes | With Omicron sweeping the world at alarming speed, governments are scrambling to figure out how to contain it in the face of significant public pressure against reimposing harsh restrictions on daily life, curbing holiday celebrations and deepening the economic pain wrought by two years of pandemic.

A new British report shows that booster doses are less effective against Omicron than previous variants, and their effectiveness wears off faster — within 10 weeks. Vaccine makers are trying to adjust their shots to target Omicron.

In addition to concerns that a fourth shot in less than a year could actually weaken immunity, some experts said Israel’s government had still not made the most of other options, such as vaccinating more of the unvaccinated or giving a third shot to about a million eligible citizens who have so far not received one.

Along with the generally sparse knowledge about Omicron, the effect of a fourth dose against the new variant is also unknown. But the country’s medical experts point to waning immunity in those 60 or older, who were the first to receive the third shot starting in August.

Israeli researchers from the Health Ministry and several academic institutions presented data to the advisory team that made the recommendation for the fourth shot on Tuesday. The presentation, obtained by The Times, showed a doubling of the rate of infection from Delta among the 60-plus age group within four or five months of the third shot.

There was no clear indication of reduced efficacy against severe illness.

Israel has confirmed a few hundred cases of Omicron, but officials say the new variant is much more widespread, and could overtake Delta as the dominant variant in the country within two or three weeks.

Denmark Puts The Lie To Official Vaxnated vs. UnVaxnated Infection And Illness Myths

 

statensseruminstitut  |  Denmark is now >80% Omikron with skyhigh case numbers, but public/media is strikingly calm.

From the 3-times weekly Omikron report: (posted Mon Wed Fri at https://covid19.ssi.dk/virusvarianter/omikron in Danish & English)

Table 4: Other variants (=delta) and omikron in over 12y olds vs. vaccination status:

Delta vs. Omikron (n = 90k cases & 41k cases since Nov 22nd = 1st Danish Omikron case)

No Jab (unvaxxed): 24 vs. 9%
1 Jab: 3 vs. 2%
2 Jabs 63 vs. 72%
3 Jabs (boostered) 11 vs. 18%

Unvaxxed to vaccinated cases
– delta : 24% to 76%
– omikron 9% to 91%

Danish vax rate for population >12y is around 81% (i.e. 19% unvaxxed)

= for delta vaxnated are slightly underrepresented (i.e. neo-vaccinoid seems to protect against infection/ being a transmitter by a small amount)

= for omikron the vaxnated are over-represented vs. their population percentage.
– is it the age-skew?
– are the vaxnated more risk-taking?
– does the neovaccinoid make one more susceptible to infection?
– are unvaxxed avoiding getting tested (counter intuative as it would give 7months valid green pass)

Who knows, but any claim to blame the unvaxxed for the transmission numbers has no basis in Danish data (Denmark having highest daily per-capita testing in the world = free PCR tests).

From the same report regarding hospitalizations (Table 5)
– omikron hospitalized number is still rising
– but omikron patients in ICU remains under 5 & has been there the last 2-3 weeks without change)
– table 6: 99.2% of omikron cases have not required hospitalisation (skewing young, but nonetheless, Danish has free health care, so no disincentives to treatment)

Before You VaxNate Your Child....,

rwmalonemd  |   Before you vaccinate your child, which is irreversible and potentially permanently damaging, find out why 16,000 physicians and medical scientists around the world signed a declaration publicly declaring that healthy children should NOT be vaccinated for COVID-19. On behalf of these MDs and PhDs, I have published a clear statement outlining the scientific facts behind this decision.

Full Text of Malone Statement

My name is Robert Malone, and I am speaking to you as a parent, grandparent, physician and scientist. I don’t usually read from a prepared speech, but this is so important that I wanted to make sure that I get every single word and scientific fact correct.

I stand by this statement with a career dedicated to vaccine research and development. I’m vaccinated for COVID and I'm generally pro-vaccination. I have devoted my entire career to developing safe and effective ways to prevent and treat infectious diseases.

After this, I will be posting the text of this statement so you can share it with your friends and family.

Before you inject your child - a decision that is irreversible - I wanted to let you know the scientific facts about this genetic vaccine, which is based on the mRNA vaccine technology I created:

There are three issues parents need to understand:

The first is that a viral gene will be injected into your children's cells. This gene forces your child’s body to make toxic spike proteins. These proteins often cause permanent damage in children’s critical organs, including

•     Their brain and nervous system

•     Their heart and blood vessels, including blood clots

•     Their reproductive system

•     And this vaccine can trigger fundamental changes to their immune system

The most alarming point about this is that once these damages have occurred, they are irreparable

•     You can’t fix the lesions within their brain

•     You can’t repair heart tissue scarring

•     You can’t repair a genetically reset immune system, and

•     This vaccine can cause reproductive damage that could affect future generations of your family

The second thing you need to know about is the fact that this novel technology has not been adequately tested.

•     We need at least 5 years of testing/research before we can really understand the risks

•     Harms and risks from new medicines often become revealed many years later

Ask yourself if you want your own child to be part of the most radical medical experiment in human history

One final point: the reason they’re giving you to vaccinate your child is a lie.

•     Your children represent no danger to their parents or grandparents

•     It’s actually the opposite. Their immunity, after getting COVID, is critical to save your family if not the world from this disease

In summary: there is no benefit for your children or your family to be vaccinating your children against the small risks of the virus, given the known health risks of the vaccine that as a parent, you and your children may have to live with for the rest of their lives.

The risk/benefit analysis isn’t even close.

As a parent and grandparent, my recommendation to you is to resist and fight to protect your children.

Crazy Narratives Make For Crazy PissAnts...,

off-guardian |  Why is the story of Covid irrational and contradictory? Why are we told on the one hand to be afraid, and on the other that there is nothing to be afraid of?

Why is the “pandemic” so completely insane?

You could argue that it’s simple happenstance. The by-product of a multi-focused evolving narrative, a story being told by a thousand authors all at once, each concerned with covering their own little patch of agenda. A car with multiple drivers fighting over a single steering wheel.

There’s probably some truth to that.

But it’s also true that control, true control, can only be achieved with a lie.

In clinical psychology one of the diagnostic signs of the psychopath is that they tell elaborate lies, compulsively. Many times they will tell a lie even if the truth would be more beneficial.

Nobody knows why they do this, but I have a theory, and it applies to the swarming groups of little rat minds running the sewers of power as much as it does any individual monstrosity.

If you want to control people, you need to lie to them, that’s the only way to guarantee you have power.

If you are standing in the road, and I yell “look out, there’s a car a coming”, and you move just as a car whips past, I will never know if you moved because I said so, or because there actually was a car.

If my interest is in making sure you don’t get hurt, this would not matter to me either way.

But, what if my only true aim is the gratification of watching you do what I say, simply because I said it?

…well, then I need to scream out a warning of a car that does not exist, and watch you dodge an imaginary threat. Or, indeed, tell you there is no car, and watch you get run over.

Only by doing this can I see my words mean more to you than perceivable reality, and only then do I know I’m truly in control.

You can never control people with the truth, because the truth has an existence outside yourself that cannot be altered or directed. It may be the truth itself that controls people, not you.

You can never force people to obey rules that make sense, because they may be obeying reason, not your force.

True power lies in making people afraid of something that does not exist, and making them abandon reason in the name of protecting themselves from the invented threat.

A Lot Of Wealthy Powerful Men Hit Epstein's Jailbait And Every Single One Of Them Will Skate...,

Guardian |  Now that the British former socialite Ghislaine Maxwell has been convicted in her sex-trafficking trial, speculation is growing that she may try to cut a deal and become a government witness in any broader investigation into the elite social circle of her ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell would be aiming for a reduced sentence by naming powerful names when it comes to others who may be involved in Epstein’s crimes.

But defense lawyers and sexual-crimes prosecutors have cast doubt on the government’s appetite to strike a bargain. They question whether Maxwell has any vital information the government does not already have, and whether it represents a strategy Maxwell has previously attempted that has failed.

“It all depends on who she would be cooperating against, and what she has to offer,” said Jeffrey Lichtman, the defense attorney who represented the Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán at trial two years ago. “I would not be surprised if she had already tried to cooperate and it had failed.”

Maxwell, who is expected to appeal her conviction, was found guilty on five of six charges for her involvement in Epstein’s sexual abuse of teenage girls. Prosecutors said Maxwell “preyed on vulnerable young girls, manipulated them and served them up to be sexually abused”. She is expected to receive a significant prison term.

According to Lichtman, there are defendants who, in the eyes of the government, are so bad that it does not want to strike a deal in exchange for testimony. “They don’t want to take the hand of someone involved a criminal operation and let them cooperate against people who are well below them.”

“That may be the case here – they just feel that she’s so bad they won’t allow her to cooperate,” Lichtman said.

But that does not preclude Maxwell and her lawyers from making an offer. “There’s a tremendous amount of information she has on some very important people. Now that she’s been convicted she may be more eager to discuss. She certainly should, in my mind, because a lot of people skated here, while she bore the brunt of the government’s full wrath,” Lichtman said.

 

Jizzlane's Going To Jail, Now We Posed To Pretend Epstein Fscked All That Jailbait By Himself?

 Business Insider

slate |  “It’s all connected,” one woman would say, repeatedly, to no one in particular. “It’s the cabal.” She at one point told me that she suspected it was a Maxwell lookalike sitting at the defense table, while the actual Maxwell was off freely gallivanting somewhere. The fifth-floor types spoke frequently of links between Jeffrey Epstein, the CIA, and Mossad, expecting anyone in earshot to understand the significance without further explanation.

Among the conspiracists, there seemed to be a belief that this trial would unlock the secrets of the universe—that it would lay bare a web touching every rich person in the world, every celebrity, every government agency, implicating them all in some sort of horrific global plot. In the end, of course, it did nothing of the sort.

The prosecution’s case was narrowly focused on the harm done to four teenage girls. It was built on the testimony of those four accusers, now women, who alleged that Maxwell aided, and sometimes participated in, Epstein’s efforts to sexually abuse them. When Epstein’s “little black book” came into evidence, it wasn’t because it included contact information for prominent politicians and businesspeople—it was because the book had phone numbers for those underage girls.

After testimony came to a close, I didn’t think the question of Maxwell’s guilt was much of a question at all. The accusers were, to my eyes and ears, extremely credible. Corroborating evidence affirmed their stories. The prosecutors were polished and effective in their presentation, while defense attorneys often stumbled and looked overmatched. When the defense team got a chance to put on its case, it turned out to be shockingly flimsy. The defense’s lead character witness—Maxwell’s onetime executive assistant—barely even managed to say anything nice about Maxwell. There was zero doubt, in my mind, that Maxwell committed the crimes she was charged with. But this was a jury trial, and with a jury, you just never, ever know.

Day after day, the deliberations went on without a verdict. The jurors requested transcripts of testimony from about a third of the witnesses—just reams of words—which made it seem like maybe they were attempting to rerun the entire trial in their chambers. As time dragged on, and they kept asking for more transcripts, I wondered if they were simply overwhelmed by the case, lost at sea, unable to make heads or tails of what they’d seen and heard in the courtroom. Some trial watchers had earlier complained that the prosecution’s case was too narrow, and that more accusers should have been called to testify, but the jury’s behavior during deliberations suggested that the case was confusing enough as it was. When the jurors requested a whiteboard, highlighters, and colored Post-it notes, I wondered if one among them was attempting to patiently explain to the rest, in a clear and visual way, what actually happened.

 

Federal Prosecutors Steered Clear Of 3rd Parties In Epstein's Orbit

miamiherald |  Maxwell was once a fixture on the New York social scene who possessed a Rolodex of names and direct phone numbers to former presidents, world leaders, billionaires and celebrities. She was also for years Epstein’s girlfriend and, according to testimony, managed his household in Palm Beach and other locales where the multimillionaire maintained estates. 

At least two women have claimed that they were trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell to powerful and wealthy men, including Prince Andrew, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Federal prosecutors purposefully seemed to steer the case around the potential minefield of identifying figures they referred to as “third parties” who were in Epstein’s orbit. All the men have denied the allegations.

David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor, said the verdict shows that prosecutors were right not to focus on these other figures. “The government’s decision to streamline their case was the right choice,” he said. 

Like Epstein, Maxwell hired a team of defense lawyers who filed a flurry of legal motions focused on undermining the credibility of the accusers and portraying them as prostitutes. “Depending on the age of the accusers during the time frame of the conspiracy, consent may be an appropriate and viable defense,’’ Maxwell’s attorneys said in one motion, noting that in Florida at the time the crimes were allegedly committed, “individuals under the age of 18 could be charged with commission of the crime of prostitution.” 

Michael Reiter, the former Palm Beach police chief who oversaw the earlier 2005-08 case against Epstein, said the verdict should send a message to everyone in the criminal justice system.

“In 2005, early in our investigation, the Palm Beach Police Department recognized the importance of stopping Jeffrey Epstein and bringing him to justice. The department never bent to the power and influence brought to bear against us.,” Reiter said. 

“Now that the courts have spoken, I hope and pray that the professionals in our justice system learn from this case. Law school professors should teach this case in legal ethics courses as an example of how not to treat victims of sex crimes and as a forewarning to prosecutors on how they can be influenced to fail in their duties to both victims and the public.” 

Maxwell’s verdict comes three years after the publication of “Perversion of Justice,” a Miami Herald investigation that told in vivid detail how Epstein and his team of high-profile attorneys manipulated the criminal justice system more than a decade earlier allowing him to escape federal prosecution. It told the stories of the girls, now women, and how they were coping years after their encounters with Epstein. Despite the fact that the FBI had evidence he sexually abused at least 34 girls, Epstein served just 13 months in the Palm Beach county jail on charges that he solicited one minor.

Beverly Hills Elite Arms Race

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lamag |  In Beverly Hills, even the purchase of a firearm comes with certain…expectations. The city’s only gun store, Beverly Hills Guns, is a “concierge service” by appointment only, for a largely affluent clientele. And business is booming.

Since opening in July 2020, the store has seen upscale residents from Santa Monica to the Hollywood Hills increasingly in a panic following several high-profile smash-and-grab and violent home invasion robberies. The apparent siege has brought in a daily stream of anxious business owners and prominent actors, real estate moguls and film execs, says owner Russell Stuart. Most are arming themselves for the first time.

“This morning I sold six shotguns in about an hour to people that say, ‘I want a home defense shotgun,’” says Stuart, whose store is discreetly located in a Beverly Hills office building, with no sign on the doors, down the hall from a diamond dealer. “Everyone has a general sense of constant fear,  which is very sad. We’re used to this being like Mayberry.”

That fear has the wealthiest of local gentry contemplating every more elaborate security measures: armored luxury cars, safe rooms and bullet-proof glass in their homes. One client asked about creating the “Tony Stark-level” security of a half-dozen automated drones to hover over his house, says Stuart, whose gun store is part of his larger security company, Force Protective Agency. “If you want the Gucci package, it’s going to cost money.”

The security business is experiencing a rebound after a couple of diminished years because of the pandemic. Some firms had their on-site security guards sent home for health and social distancing reasons. Not anymore. In Beverly Hills, the craving for additional security dates to the riot that followed an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in May 2020, with unprecedented looting along Rodeo Drive that left broken boutique windows  beneath beloved luxury brands: Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Michael Kors, MCM, Ermenegildo Zegna. Last March, a $500,000 Richard Mille watch was stolen at gunpoint from a diner at the Il Pastaio restaurant.  The Dec. 1 home-invasion robbery and shooting death of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant, 81, in her Trousdale Estates home, only accelerated the arms race among the affluent.

“Beverly Hills is definitely a target,” says security expert David Perez, CEO of Omega International Group and a former Marine who previously worked security in the Clinton White House and at the Pentagon. “We’re telling clients, ‘Hey, don’t go out with flashy jewelry. Try to keep a lower profile. Instead of driving the Bentley, maybe just take the SUV. “

Or hit the streets in a luxo ride retrofitted with countermeasures like electrified door handles, run-flat tires and armor plating that can withstand military ordnance—say, the $650,000 Mercedes-Benz S680 Guard, which can repel assault rifle rounds and the detonation of hand grenades, or the $1 million tanklike SUV from Latvia’s Dartz Motorz Co.

Making Shit Up: CDC Had No Basis For New Guidelines

Hard to believe a public health agency is running a campaign to drive vaccination by scaring people about cost of seeking care. Is CDC unaware of gaps in our healthcare system that already leave many vulnerable Americans excessively exposed to the costs and consequences of Covid? https://t.co/iEmPxYP1uO

— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) December 27, 2021

erictopol  |  There were serious problems about the new 5-day isolation period. First, there are no data or evidence to back it up. Yes, we’re facing an Omicron onslaught of cases and it would be useful to come up with a strategy to avoid a mass loss of functionality among our workforce and the on-the-go public, no less in the midst of the holiday season. But that doesn’t justify issuing a vacuous guideline. Second, there was no mention of using a test, to confirm that the isolated individual is now OK to circulate, that there is no indication of infectiousness. That could be done via a rapid antigen test, which denotes infectiousness, carries some reduced sensitivity with Omicron, or via a PCR. The cycle threshold value of a PCR test is also indicative of infectiousness; the lower it is, the more likely potential for spread. Either of these tests would be far better than no test to justify a reduced isolation time in any individual.

Third, there are no data for Omicron’s clearance time. We know the characteristics of shedding and average time it takes for clearance of the virus for Delta and preceding variants, but to date we have not seen any such data for Omicron kinetics. With the Hong Kong report of 70-fold copies of the virus in the upper airway for Omicron versus Delta and prior variants, there is no certainty yet that Omicron’s clearance is fast.

Fourth, the guidance did not mention a word about vaccinated or unvaccinated status of people. We know from past studies there is a more rapid clearance among vaccinees than people who were not vaccinated, but the recommendation does not take this knowledge into account. Fifth, it assumes that all people handle the virus similarly when, it fact, there is considerable variability.

Note from the Figure that there are significant differences for vaccinated, average 5.5 days (95% CI 4.6, 6.5), compared with unvaccinated, average 7.5 days (95% CI 6.8,8,2) There is marked inter-individual variability: for example, look at all the green dots even >20 days in the unvaccinated group, panel D. These data, representing nearly 20,000 samples, were obtained from predominantly healthy young men and may not be representative of the population at large. By the way, the NBA uses a 6-day isolation cutoff with testing with heavy emphasis on testing.

This problem can be fixed. The CDC could come out and revise their guidance and say there are no such data for Omicron (as a cover, like they did when they finally recommend boosters for all adults) and require testing. Even the airlines, which pushed for a shortened 5-day isolation period, wanted to use testing as part of that requested change in policy.

But the bad day wasn’t just about isolation in isolation. There was also the major gaffe about genomic sequencing surveillance. Here are the data from last week, and the corrected data this week, announced today by CDC. The point estimate for Omicron changed for the week ending December 18th from 73% to 22.5%, which is remarkable. We were led to believe that the country was well in the midst of the Omicron wave when, in fact, we were and are still experiencing a large number of Delta infections. As of December 25th, the point estimate is 59% with 95% confidence intervals lower 42%, upper 74%, indicating there is a lot of wobble, a relatively limited number of sequencing samples to draw upon, no less a reduction in confidence for the CDC itself.

 

CDC Provokes Great Salty Tears Of Karenwaffen Betrayal

A more accurate portrayal of the CDC in zombie movies pic.twitter.com/JaTcFiJwAM

— Ryan Ken (they/them) (@Ryan_Ken_Acts) December 28, 2021

wsws  |  Anger is growing in the working class in the United States in response to Monday’s announcement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that it was shortening its guidelines for quarantining for positive cases from 10 days to five. In remarks to the press, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and Biden’s top COVID adviser Anthony Fauci admitted that the purpose of loosening the restrictions is to ensure the supply of labor for American businesses. This occurs while the surge of the Omicron variant is expected to infect 140 million Americans in the next three months, more than 40 percent of the country.

The announcement amounts to an abdication by the federal government of any pretense of attempting to contain the pandemic. Instead, workers are being told that they must learn to live—and to die—with the virus, in the name of protecting the “economy,” a euphemism for the profit margins and share values of the major corporations. It follows a televised address last week by President Biden in which he rejected new lockdowns of schools and workplaces, and even encouraged Americans not to cancel their holiday travel plans.

However, the spread of the virus itself among airline workers forced the cancellation of thousands of flights. An appeal to the CDC by the heads of major airlines is what immediately prompted the change to quarantine guidelines.

The announcement has stunned and angered workers, who are being confronted with the fact that the corporate and political establishment consider their lives and those of their friends and relatives expendable. One tweet by a worker who was instructed to come to work even though his roommate tested positive was liked more than 360,000 times and retweeted 44,000 times. Workers flooded the replies to the tweet with their own horror stories from work and school.

One such tweet read, “I'm a high school teacher and when I was told two weeks ago during lunch that the group of people I had dinner with tested positive I told my admin that I was leaving to get tested. The [New York City Department of Education] told me if I didn't have any symptoms, I would be docked a half day. I was positive.”

Another tweet read, “My granddaughter’s Daycare sent a text last night that said one of the care givers had tested positive but is asymptomatic and will still be coming to work. Just a heads up in case someone didn’t want their kid exposed. Unbelievable.” Another said, “My sister's workplace told her to just come to work because you could test positive for 3 months so it doesn't matter if you come to work. and they didn’t tell other employees when someone got covid. gotta love america.”

Workers across the country spoke to the World Socialist Web Site.

One Southern California nurse said, “To be honest, I have lost a lot of trust in the CDC. This is the same organization that told us it was okay to come to work wearing a bandana [in the opening weeks of the pandemic, in response to widespread mask shortages]. I get it—the country wasn’t prepared and there weren't enough N95s, but they put us at risk and a lot of people got sick.

“Then we were told by Fauci, ‘If you’re vaccinated you won’t get it and you won’t spread it.’ That was also a lie and they have really undermined the legitimacy of the CDC. This is a big issue because it has played into the hands of people denying that COVID exists.”

 

Mushmouthed Professional Managerial Class Disagreement With New CDC Guidelines

pbs  |  So, they have also issued some new guidelines from the CDC for anyone who's just exposed to the virus, if you come into contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.

And I want to lay this out for people. There's a lot to digest. They are saying, if you are exposed, and you are unvaccinated, they recommend five days of isolation, plus five days of masking. If you have been vaccinated earlier, which means more than six months have passed since the time you were fully vaccinated with Pfizer or Moderna or more than two months for the J&J, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, they say five days of isolation and five days of masking.

If you were vaccinated recently — that means fewer than six months for Pfizer or Moderna, fewer than two months for J&J — no isolation recommended, and they say 10 days of masking. And if you have been boosted, they say no isolation and 10 days of masking.

Dr. Davis, it's a lot to keep up with. A lot of people are very confused. How are you making sure people in your community understand this? And how are you implementing it? 

Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis: 

Well, Amna, my background before I became the director of health for the City of St. Louis is, I'm an infectious diseases physician and a public health expert.

And so one of the things you understand in my field is that infectious diseases are not static. They're not a monolith. They evolve over time, which means the guidance is going to change over time.

So what needs to happen is that the leadership needs to do a good job of helping people to make those transitions when they occur. So, the confusion is warranted. The job now is on the CDC, on the federal government, and on local health officials to make sure that people understand the science and can make that transition.

Now, what's also a challenge is that, while I completely agree with the science, as the director of health of a major city, the implementation may take time, because we need to do it in a way that is as safe and effective for our populations.

And not every county or city has the same level of support measures to make sure that this is successful as the next. So, for example, my counterparts in New York are able to ramp up testing to support this, because part of these guidelines do make the recommendation for testing at day five for certain populations.

But if you come from a city or a county where the funds and the capabilities just aren't there for that level of testing, this may not be something that you can implement right away. They're within lies the challenge.

• 
  

The Atlantic Scapegoats The Internet For Elite Overproduction And Popular Immiseration

theatlantic  |  The internet gives groups the ability not just to express and bond over misery but to inflict it on others—in effect, to transfer their own misery onto those they resent. The most extreme examples come in the form of racist or misogynist harassment campaigns—many led by young white men—such as Gamergate or the hashtag campaigns against Black feminists.

Misery trickles down in subtler ways too. Though the field is still young, studies on social media suggest that emotions are highly contagious on the web. In a review of the science, Harvard’s Amit Goldenberg and Stanford’s James J. Gross note that people “share their personal emotions online in a way that affects not only their own well-being, but also the well-being of others who are connected to them.” Some studies found that positive posts could drive engagement as much as, if not more than, negative ones, but of all the emotions expressed, anger seems to spread furthest and fastest. It tends to “cascade to more users by shares and retweets, enabling quicker distribution to a larger audience.”

Tech executives thought that connecting the world would be an unmitigated good. Widespread internet access and social media have made it far easier for the average person to hear and be heard by many more of his fellow citizens.

But it also means that miserable people, who were previously alienated and isolated, can find one another, says Kevin Munger, an assistant professor at Penn State who studies how platforms shape political and cultural opinions. This may offer them some short-term succor, but it’s not at all clear that weak online connections provide much meaningful emotional support. At the same time, those miserable people can reach the rest of us too. As a result, the average internet user, Munger told me in a recent interview, has more exposure than previous generations to people who, for any number of reasons, are hurting. Are they bringing all of us down?

In an essay titled “Facebook Is Other People,” Munger uses one of his relatives as an example. The relative is in his 60s and has a cognitive disability. Munger describes him as “an embittered, lonely man, the perfect target for information fraudsters who will claim to explain that the source of his pain is some despised group (immigrants, the deep state).” The relative has expressed an interest in getting online, and Munger sees only downsides: “His presence as a consumer of online news will have negative consequences, both for himself and for the wider information environment.”

It may sound obvious to say that our digital spaces are not okay because people are not okay. But too many conversations about the problems in online communities elide this fact. They frame the information crisis as solely a technological issue. When Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow tech CEOs come before Congress for their bipartisan grillings, the subtext is that if the companies could only implement the proper moderation policies, remove a few of the most toxic personalities, and change the way content is recommended (according to their desired politics), the problem would go away.

Does The CIA Expend Resources Battling Cartels Like It Has Spent Resources Battling Assange?

talkliberation |  In a document titled The WikiLeaks Threat: An Overview authored by Palantir Technologies in conjunction with HBGary Federal and Berico Technologies, a slide centrally featuring the WikiLeaks logo depicts spokes leading to key public supporters. Notes at the bottom of the slide outline the corporate grievances in play, decrying “established professionals… with a liberal bent” and declaring that “this level of support needs to be disrupted”. The final line reads “without the support of people like Glenn, WikiLeaks would fold”.

What folded, in fact, was very nearly HBGary itself. CEO and minority shareholder Aaron Barr stepped down in disgrace.

 

It wouldn’t be the first time or the last that Greenwald would be targeted in some form for his journalism. That he is also named (and even central) in some of the new #WLDragnet documents, will likely come as no surprise.

Nor to the other influencers identified in the documents. Popular Australian independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone, repeatedly named in the NodeXL files said that it was “not surprising” but “still pretty freaky”.

A who’s who of high profile independent media, whistleblowers and support organizations who stand with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are named again and again in the #WLDragnet documents. 

 As are thousands of their followers, members of their personal networks and frankly, damn near anyone with even the vaguest sense of political awareness or understanding as to the historic importance of the battle to save Julian Assange.

---

It has long been assumed by all and sundry that only WikiLeaks staff, closest collaborators or other persons of significance could be plausibly caught in such a web. That those possessing insider knowledge, occupying positions of some influence or power, or with the ability to extend significant social reach were the logical focal targets of state-led efforts to clip the wings of WikiLeaks.

But new evidence points to a truly global network of digital repression targeted at WikiLeaks supporters who possess little if any such secret knowledge, significance or power. The documents we are publishing, sourced from publicly available data, contain the social media user account handles of hundreds of members of the public, with thousands collected on.

Palantir Is A Creepy Cannibalistic Eye Of Sauron

bloomberg  |  Palantir Technologies Inc. has long pursued some of the largest governments and companies in the world as customers. Now, in a dramatic shift in strategy, it’s chasing startups.

The controversial data integration and analytics company co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel plans to announce Tuesday it will sell software on a monthly subscription model to smaller companies, starting first with a handful of startups connected to former Palantir employees.

The startup sales push is a break with tradition for the $40 billion company that made its name on large contacts with the U.S. Army, Merck KGaA and a handful of other high-profile organizations -- and is part of Palantir’s larger effort to diversify its sources of revenue away from a few big customers.

The new program, called Foundry for Builders, will start with five startups in fields including robotics, health and fintech. The group will experiment with software that Palantir says functions as an operating system for company data. Palantir chose startups connected to former employees, who are already familiar with how to operate the system, and use their feedback to refine the product for startups before rolling it out more broadly in coming months.

Palantir had 149 customers driving $341 million revenue for the first quarter, with the bulk of sales coming from government contracts. A flurry of deal-making during the pandemic, including agreements with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pushed the company’s government business to more than 60% of revenue -- an imbalance that unsettled some investors.

Foundry for Builders aims to counteract that disparity by adding a larger number of potentially fast-growing companies to Palantir’s customer base. Developing closer relationships with early-stage companies appears to have been an increasing focus in recent months for Denver-based Palantir.

Besides expanding sales to startups, the company has also been investing in them. Palantir recently made a string of direct investments in companies going public through SPACs totaling more than $130 million. All of those companies also became customers, a practice that has raised some eyebrows.

Democrats Made Pie-In-The-Sky Promises And Completely Failed To Deliver...,

"The reason is that with the sheer volume of new cases that we are having and that we expect to continue with Omicron, one of the things we want to be careful of is that we don't have so many people out," Dr. Anthony Fauci explains why CDC changed Covid isolation guidelines. pic.twitter.com/g48XwcDdJh

— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) December 27, 2021

americanthinker |  Biden ran on a promise: he was going to federalize the COVID response and end COVID in America.  He introduced vaccine mandates for federal employees and those doing business with the federal government and had OSHA do the same for every business with more than 100 employees.  Various states, cities, and businesses, especially when it came to health care, followed suit.  We were also told that if we even breathed the same air as a COVID person, we had to quarantine ourselves for ten days.  In the last two days, that promised federal response, COVID mandates, and quarantines have all fallen apart, thanks to the very contagious but seemingly relatively harmless omicron variant.

I'm not going to shut down the country.

I'm not going to shut down the economy.

I'm going to shut down the virus.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 30, 2020

As omicron spreads, especially in New York City, one of the most vaccinated places in America, other Democrat-driven initiatives are falling.  The CDC has had to shorten by 50% its COVID isolation and quarantine period recommendations, reflecting (a) that omicron seems to be a cold and (b) that America can't shut down because of a cold.

And finally, and most ironically, as omicron cases increase, hospitals are facing staff shortages because their ludicrous, unscientific vaccine mandates saw them firing thousands of employees.  Last week, the CDC updated a document entitled "Strategies to Mitigate Healthcare Personnel Staffing Shortages."  It appears that more than thirteen states are struggling to deal with omicron cases because of staff shortages.  Interestingly, the Forbes article to which I linked talks about staff burnout and more patients as reasons for the shortage but makes no mention of mass firings.  Funny that.

The point is that Democrats made pie-in-the-sky promises and completely failed to make good on them.  More people died from COVID under Biden than under Trump, Biden's had to admit that Trump's state-based approach was the correct one, unreasonably long quarantines are becoming impossible to maintain, and all the things that Democrats and Democrat-driven businesses did to destroy the workforce are now becoming a serious problem.

 

Brandon Accepts The Fail Passes The Buck To Governors...,

NYPost  |  Vanity Fair reported Thursday that experts from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Rockefeller Foundation, the COVID Collaborative and other groups pitched a 10-page plan to White House officials on Oct. 22 that called for the production of 732 million tests per month for a “Testing Surge To Prevent [a] Holiday COVID surge.” The plan wanted “Every American Household to Receive Free Rapid Tests for the Holidays/New Year.” 

Three days after the meeting, White House officials told the experts that the administration would not adopt the plan. One official who participated in the meeting told the magazine, “We did not have capacity to manufacture over-the-counter tests at that scale.”

Biden ran for president last year pledging to bring competent management to the pandemic. But this year’s Delta variant surge caused his approval rating on COVID-19 to fall. Earlier this month, the number of US pandemic deaths under Biden exceeded the number of fatalities under former President Donald Trump within a nearly identical period of time — despite the mass distribution of vaccines.

Biden expressed regret last week about his seemingly sluggish response to the new Omicron variant, which has caused the highest-ever infection rates in areas including New York City and Washington, DC.

Biden said in an ABC News interview Wednesday that he should have thought more quickly of a plan to mass distribute 500 million at-home rapid tests, which was announced Dec. 21 but won’t begin to happen until January.

“The answer is, yeah, I wish I had thought about ordering a half a billion [tests] two months ago, before COVID hit here,” Biden told ABC’s David Muir as FEMA rushed to set up sites in New York City and other areas slammed by massive holiday testing demand.

In mid-January, a previously announced Biden rule will take effect requiring private insurance companies to reimburse policyholders for rapid tests that they buy themselves. Another 50 million rapid tests are in the process of being shipped by the federal government to local clinics for free distribution.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a pre-Christmas press briefing last week that details of how to mass-distribute the 500 million free at-home rapid tests are still being developed — despite the rollout being previewed to reporters last Monday and formally announced on Tuesday. It’s not yet clear how many tests each household will be allowed to request, how quickly they will be mailed or when a website will be launched.

 

 

Are Cartels Taking Over Small Town America?

westernjournal  |  While most documentaries now are either about serial killers or social justice movements, the Daily Caller’s “Cartelville, USA” brings fresh investigative journalism to the table.

The film, clocking in at a brief but impactful 36 minutes, features reporter Jorge Ventura as he delves into a troubling trend in the high desert of Los Angeles County: illegal cannabis farms.

Ventura was the perfect person to produce and narrate the documentary, as he is one of the few journalists who have covered the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border on location.

Ventura uses his own experience growing up in Palmdale, California, to explain that many families move to the desert to get out of the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles. Now, they’re starting to flee what used to be their sanctuary.

Using testimonies from local residents and law enforcement, the documentary reveals how cartels are buying up poor-quality houses with vast amounts of land in order to start pot farms without proper state licensing.

Property prices in the area have skyrocketed, ruining the region’s reputation for being more affordable. The high desert is now overrun by criminal enterprises wasting precious resources, including water, with no regard for the communities around them.

These cartels staff their operations with migrants smuggled across the southern border, many of whom are working as indentured servants.

Ventura does a fantastic job drawing distinctions between the people running the farms and the ones laboring on them.

He tells a far more nuanced story about the average person coming across the border than the hyper-partisan narrative coming from both sides of the aisle.

 

 

Grisly Meso-American Syncretinism Coming Soon To A Hamlet Near You!

NYPost |  Santa Muerte has a fondness for tequila, cigarettes, candy — and human blood.

The saint is a favorite of Mexican and Central American drug traffickers who are known to leave the severed heads of their enemies at improvised shrines, featuring wax effigies and votive candles emblazoned with the skeletal image of the one also known as Holy Death.

Dressed in a flowing white robe and often wielding both a scythe and a globe, Santa Muerte — a cross between the Grim Reaper and the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Mexico’s patron saint — is just one of a rapidly growing religious movement of “narco saints,” worshiped by drug traffickers who pray to them for protection, riches and the silence necessary to mask their underworld dealings.

“The narcos and the gangs all believe in the power of prayer,” said Robert Almonte, a Texas-based security consultant and former deputy chief of the El Paso Police Department who specialized in narcotics. “They believe that the saints will protect them no matter what they do — and that’s dangerous because it emboldens the traffickers who truly believe they can get away with murder and still go to heaven.”

The movement is growing, with estimates of up to 12 million devotees in Mexico and, now, parts of the US. American law enforcement officials struggling under the recent wave of illegal migrant crossings are increasingly documenting altars to the macabre saint — and another, Jesus Malverde — in stash houses in US border communities where Mexican drug cartel members often hold migrants for ransom, Almonte said.

Not that these saints are canonized. The Catholic Church has condemned Santa Muerte worship as “blasphemous and Satanic.” When Pope Francis visited Mexico for the first time in 2016, he condemned the cult, which is one of the fastest growing new “religious” movements in the world, according to the Catholic Herald.

“I am particularly concerned about those many persons who, seduced by the empty power of the world, praise illusions and embrace their macabre symbols to commercialize death in exchange for money,” the Pope said, referring to Santa Muerte. “I urge you not to underestimate the moral and antisocial challenge which the drug trade represents for Mexican society as a whole, as well as for the Church.”