By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Eastern Phoebe, Leo’s House, Lumpkin, Georgia, United States. “Leo’s House” is such a great location. Is there a person named Leo, who has a house? (Lumpkin has a historic preservation program, so it’s possible there is a house named “Leo’s House,” with a plaque, but if so, it doesn’t show up in search. Lumpkin readers?)
In Case You Might Miss…
(1) Trump’s conviction and the aftermath.
(2) Biden and the youth vote .
(3) CDC scientists knew Covid was airborne on January 30, 2000.
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
2024
Less than a half a year to go!
A mixed bag for Team Trump, this week with some Swing States (more here) Brownian-motioning themselves back toward him, including Pennsylvania. Not, however, Michigan, to which Trump paid a visit. Of course, it goes without saying that these are all state polls, therefore bad, and most of the results are within the margin of error. If will be interesting to see whether the verdict in Judge Merchan’s court affects the polling, and if so, how.
* * * Trump (R) (Bragg/Merchan): “Queens man convicted” [Queens Daily Eagle]. “Former Jamaica Estates resident Donald Trump was convicted by a Manhattan jury on Thursday of 34 counts of falsifying business records in an effort to cover up a sex scandal he feared would ruin his chances of winning the 2016 presidential election. The jury’s verdict, which came after only two days of deliberations, makes Trump the first president from Queens – or anywhere in the United States, for that matter – to become a felon. The conviction puts an end to the trial in Manhattan Criminal Court that began a month and a half ago, and brought hundreds of journalists and spectators of all stripes to the aging courthouse at 100 Centre Street. The trial was overseen by another man from the World’s Borough, Justice Juan Merchan, who was raised in Jackson Heights.” • Commentary:
Correct, the conviction of Trump is both legitimate and political retribution. When elite lawlessness is rampant, that's what implementing the rule of law means. https://t.co/stlxslQDoR
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) May 31, 2024
A “criminogenic environment,” as Bill Black used to say.
Trump (R): “Prosecutors Got Trump — But They Contorted the Law” [Ellie Honig, New York Magazine]. Worth reading carefully and in full. “Both of these things can be true at once: The jury did its job, and this case was an ill-conceived, unjustified mess. Sure, victory is the great deodorant, but a guilty verdict doesn’t make it all pure and right…. The district attorney’s press office and its flaks often proclaim that falsification of business records charges are ‘commonplace‘…. But when you impose meaningful search parameters, the truth emerges: The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever…. So, to inflate the charges up to the lowest-level felony (Class E, on a scale of Class A through E) — and to electroshock them back to life within the longer felony statute of limitations — the DA alleged that the falsification of business records was committed ‘with intent to commit another crime.’ Here, according to prosecutors, the ‘another crime’ is a New York State election-law violation, which in turn incorporates three separate ‘unlawful means’: federal campaign crimes, tax crimes, and falsification of still more documents. Inexcusably, the DA refused to specify what those unlawful means actually were — and the judge declined[1] to force them to pony up — until right before closing arguments. So much for the constitutional obligation to provide notice to the defendant of the accusations against him in advance of trial (This, folks, is what indictments are for.)” As I have been muttering for some time. More: “In these key respects, the charges against Trump aren’t just unusual. They’re bespoke, seemingly crafted individually for the former president and nobody else.” That would be called a bill of attainder[2].” • Again, well worth a read. NOTES [1] Merchan and Bragg worked “in concert.” [2] I’ve been thinking hard about the case architecture and concluding that was expertly constructed to bring about this result; the concealment of the “object offense” in the charges, for example, confused coverage throughout and, as Honig points out, denied the defendant the chance to prepare a defense. I muttered today to Yves about “crafted,” though I don’t think I used that work. But an entire liberal Democrat flex-net — I would speculate — including Bragg and quite possibly Merchan, worked on this project; they did well. (On the flex-net, see “Inside the Off-the-Record Calls Held by Anti-Trump Legal Pundits.” Legal eagles, media personalities, former prosecutors. No mention of organs of state security. Oddly.)
Trump (R): “Article 390 – NY Criminal Procedure Law, PRE-SENTENCE REPORTS” [The Law Firm of Andrew M. Stengel]. “S 390.30 Scope of pre-sentence investigation and report…. 2. Physical and mental examinations. Whenever information is available with respect to the defendant’s physical and mental condition, the pre-sentence investigation must include the gathering of such information. In the case of a felony or a class A misdemeanor, or in any case where a person under the age of twenty-one is convicted of a crime, the court may order that the defendant undergo a thorough physical or mental examination in a designated facility and may further order that the defendant remain in such facility for such purpose for a period not exceeding thirty days.” • Hmm. At least for the “New York State Health Service Corps“: “(c) Designated facility or agency shall mean a facility or institution designated by the Commissioner of Health, in consultation with the State Health Service Corps advisory committee that is: (1) operated by: …. (iii) the Department of Correctional Services…,” among other entities. It would be nice if the office of the practitioner doing the examination were not a patronage gift (i.e., controlled by the Democrat Party), but who can say?
Trump (R): Editors everywhere wrote exactly the same headline (with a few variations way lower in the thread):
Let’s do this. As I’ve said in the past, nothing makes a statement on important news close to the newspaper front page. Across America, almost every editor went with the simple fact, “Guilty.”
Let’s start with the biggest circulation. /1 pic.twitter.com/7i2Ab6daW4— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) May 31, 2024
The thread concludes:
That’s the end of my tour. Of course, I work exclusively on the future of news and entertainment and these are newspapers but always like to lay out the importance of our local markets, a plural press and how we record history across them. /20
— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) May 31, 2024
“The importance of our local markets, a plural press”… without a shred of irony! Looks more like PMC schooling behavior to me.
* * * Trump (R): “We Are Starting to Enjoy Hatred” [Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal]. “But some enjoy their hatred—this is the new part, and I think pretty widespread—because it helps them avoid seeing that they are involved in a tragedy. The tragedy is that one of two old men, neither of them great, neither of them distinguished in terms of character or intellect, who are each in his way an embarrassment, and whom two-thirds of voters do not want as presidential candidates, will be chosen, in this crucial historical moment in which the stakes could not be higher, to lead the most powerful nation on earth. One will likely fail physically in coming years—he’s failing now—and be replaced by a vice president who is wholly unsuited for the presidency because she is wholly unserious, who has had four years to prove herself in a baseline way and failed to meet even the modest standards by which vice presidents are judged. The other may, on being elected or even before then, be thrown into the slammer for one of the felony charges against him, including those connected to attempting to overthrow a democratic national election. This is a tragedy—that this is what we’ve got, these are our choices. When you’ve got a major hate on, you don’t have to notice.” • Hate as a form of denialism; interesting concept.
Trump (R): “Trump campaign hauls in $35M, says it broke fundraising record after conviction” [Axios]. “Former President Trump’s campaign said Friday that it had a $34.8 million windfall after he was convicted of 34 felonies in his New York hush money trial. The presumptive GOP presidential nominee’s campaign said the haul was ‘nearly double’ its previous single-day fundraising record on the WinRed platform for Republican donors.” • Woo hoo!
Trump (R): “Karl Rove Warns That a Guilty Verdict Could Cost Trump Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania” [Mediaite]. “Fox News contributor and veteran political strategist Karl Rove said that a guilty verdict in presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump’s hush money trial could cost him the key swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania on Thursday. During an appearance on America Reports, Rove was asked to evaluate a recent NPR/PBS Newshour poll gauging how voters might react to a conviction. It found that 15% of both registered and independent voters would be more likely to vote for Trump in the case of a guilty verdict, while 17% of the former group and 11% of the latter would be less likely to support him. The remainders in both groups said a conviction would make no difference to their decision.” • As Rove points out, 15% (registered, more) – 17% (registered, less) = 2% less. The margins are too small to cr*p around.
Trump (R): “Guilt Complex: Trump’s Felony Convictions Are a Big Political Problem” [Politico]. “Trump simply cannot beat President Joe Biden relying solely on the votes of people who think his legal travails are a politically motivated scam, and who cheer Trump not in spite of his transgressions but because of them…. There are plenty of such people — enough to power this generation’s most important political movement — but still not enough to win the election…. [Clinton’s email scandal resonated] because for many people it painted a picture of someone who thought she operated above the rules. The Manhattan conviction, according to operatives in both parties, allows Biden to put Trump in a similar box. There are two demographic slices he’ll be aiming at with such an appeal. One is highly educated, highly informed traditional Republicans, who can reliably be expected to vote. They don’t like Trump but are open to voting for him because they regard Biden as too old or his administration as too anti-business. The conviction makes it harder for this group to rationalize a Trump vote as the best among bad alternatives. The other is low-information, less reliable voters. They typically aren’t paying close attention to the news, but a big event like the conviction can penetrate their consciousness in lasting ways. Among both groups the argument is less that Trump is a would-be dictator who could end democracy. It is that he is a self-absorbed agent of chaos who is too preoccupied with his own troubles to govern effectively. In both cases, small movements could have large consequences.” • Except that “Trump is a would-be dictator who could end democracy” is a message the Democrats have had the knobs up to 11 on for months (“What if This Is Our Last Real Election?”) Can they really just turn those knobs down to zero? And turn up the “agent of chaos” knob?
* * * Biden (D): “What the Biden campaign thinks the Trump verdict means” [CNN]. “The convictions might not move the needle in a major way in the election, those close to the Biden reelection effort told CNN, but an acquittal could have really helped Trump – and that makes Thursday’s historic decision a win for the Biden campaign, if only because it is not a loss. A sense of despondency had started to creep in from top supporters and donors in recent weeks, as more moments that reelection campaign strategists had projected would shift the race – the beginning of the 2024 calendar year, the end of the Republican primaries, the coming of spring when they figured more people would pay attention to Trump’s record—have come and gone without any notable movement in the polls or overall dynamics…. But the conviction on 34 counts has reassured some of their mantra that the more people focus on Trump and the choice ahead of them, the better Biden’s November is going to be – and to push back on the ‘nothing matters’ sensibility that has helped power Trump through so many other dark moments over his last nine years in politics.” • I suppose “nothing matters” is a lowbrow way of saying nihilism; perhaps a compliment, in a way.
* * * Biden (D): “Biden’s problems with younger voters are glaring, poll finds” [NPR]. “Voters 18-29 years old made up roughly 1 in 6 voters in 2020, and President Biden won them by more than 20 points, according to exit polls. He won voters under 45, who were 40% of the electorate, by double-digits, too… [T]he latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll underscores the depth of his problems…. In a head-to-head matchup with Trump, Biden and Trump are in a statistical tie, with Biden narrowly ahead 50%-48%. He leads by just 4 points with voters under 45 and by 6 with Gen Z/Millennials. But when independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, as well as Green Party candidate Jill Stein are introduced, Biden trails Trump by 4 points. Trump leads by 6 with Gen Z/Millennials and by 8 with the under 45 group in this scenario.” Of those 18-29: “62% have an unfavorable opinion of him, while Trump gets a net-positive rating — 49%-42%. That’s the highest favorability rating for Trump of any of the age groups.
Biden (D): “One explanation for the 2024 election’s biggest mystery” [Eric Levitz, VOX]. “I’ve been toying with a different theory of the president’s woes, one that makes better sense of his peculiar demographic weaknesses: Voters with low levels of trust in society and the political system are shifting rightward. Donald Trump redefined the GOP in the eyes of many, associating the party with a paranoid vision of American life and a populist contempt for the nation’s political system. In response, Democrats rallied to the defense of America’s greatness, norms, and institutions. As the parties polarized on the question of whether America was ‘already great,’ voters with high levels of social trust and confidence in the political system became more Democratic, while those with low social trust and little faith in the government became more Republican. This miniature realignment was apparent in 2016 and 2020, according to some analysts. And there is some reason to think that it may have accelerated over the past four years. If it did, then Biden’s peculiar difficulties with young, nonwhite, and/or low-propensity voters would make more sense, as those demographic groups evince unusually little trust in their government or fellow Americans. This theory is merely speculative. It’s consistent with many data points but proven by none. If true, however, it does not bode well for the Biden campaign.” • Levitz, not unexpectedly, erases Covid; here I urge that “belief scarring” from lying and betrayal during the Covid pandemic led to lowered trust.
Biden (D): “‘A dying empire led by bad people’: Poll finds young voters despairing over US politics” [Semafor (Nippersdad)]. “As part of the online poll of 943 18-30-year-old registered voters, Blueprint asked participants to respond to a series of questions about the American political system: 49% agreed to some extent that elections in the country don’t represent people like them; 51% agreed to some extent that the political system in the US ‘doesn’t work for people like me;’ and 64% backed the statement that ‘America is in decline.’ A whopping 65% agreed either strongly or somewhat that ‘nearly all politicians are corrupt, and make money from their political power’ — only 7% disagreed. ‘I think these statements blow me away, the scale of these numbers with young voters,’ Evan Roth Smith, Blueprint’s lead pollster, told Semafor. ‘Young voters do not look at our politics and see any good guys. They see a dying empire led by bad people.'” Importantly: “The data also found the COVID-19 pandemic has left a lasting, bad taste in the mouths of young voters: 51% of those polled said they were happier before the COVID-19 pandemic, 77% said that the event changed the country for the worse, and 45% said they feel less connected to friends and acquaintances compared with five years ago.” • See comment on “belief scarring” immediately above.
Democrats en Déshabillé
“Joe Manchin leaves the Democratic Party, files as independent” [Axios]. Joe: “My work here is done.”
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
* * * Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC,
Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard);
MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard);OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
* * *
Censorship and Propaganda
I don’t know how Trump’s Surgeon General became one of the few sane voices around, but here we are:
Adams is also 100% correct on the bleach myth; I’m too time-pressed to look it up, but I checked the transcript, and Trump didn’t say it. Pelosi said he said it, and the press ran with it. When is Adams going to run for President so I can vote for him?
Infection
“Hawaii sees rise in COVID-19 positivity amid variant spread” [Star Advertiser]. “The Hawaii Department of Health has tracked consecutive increases in COVID-19 positivity rates over the past five weeks as new variants take hold in the islands. Health officials today reported an average positivity rate of 10.5%, up from 8.5% the previous week. On May 1, the average positivity rate was at 4.3%. he FLiRT variants — named after the technical names for their mutations — are descendants of JN.1, which was dominant in the U.S. earlier this year. The mutations potentially make the variants more immune-evasive by improving their binding ability to cells, and could possibly drive a wave of new COVID cases this summer, according to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. State health officials, meanwhile, are warning that COVID activity is on the rise, based on DOH’s new respiratory disease activity dashboard.” • Fortunately, Hawaii doesn’t have a major international airport, with a lot of passangers travelling to and from… Oh, wait…
Elite Maleficence
Recently I saw some Risk assessment documents from CDC on covid from Jan & Feb 2020. They are interesting to say the least.
So what is a Risk Assessment (RA)?
RA is a formal process of analyzing a situation & understanding the hazards of what are you dealing with.
1/x— Dr James Morris (@James___Morris) May 30, 2024
Alert reader DD threw the entire RA form over the transom:
Does make you wonder where the CDC whistleblowers were. Is there a culture of feat at CDC? If so, it’s exceptional.
* * * Lambert here: Patient readers, I’m going to have to rethink this beautifully formatted table. Biobot data is gone, CDC variant data functions, ER visits are dead, CDC stopped mandatory hospital data collection, New York Times death data has stopped. (Note that the two metrics the hospital-centric CDC cared about, hospitalization and deaths, have both gone dark). Ideally I would replace hospitalization and death data, but I’m not sure how. I might also expand the wastewater section to include (yech) Verily data, H5N1 if I can get it. Suggestions and sources welcome. UPDATE I replaced the Times death data with CDC data. Amusingly, the URL doesn’t include parameters to construct the tables; one must reconstruct then manually each time. Caltrops abound.
TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts
Cases ❌ National[1] Biobot May 13: ❌ Regional[2] Biobot May 13: –>
Variants[3] CDC May 25 Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC May 18 < Hospitalization ★ New York[5] New York State, data May 30: National [6] CDC May 11: Positivity National[7] Walgreens May 28: ‘ Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic May 18: Travelers Data ★ Positivity[9] CDC May 13: ★ Variants[10] CDC May 13: 
Deaths ‘ Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC May 18: ‘ Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC May 18: 
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (Biobot) Dead.
[2] (Biobot) Dead.
[3] (CDC Variants) FWIW, given that the model completely missed KP.2.
[4] (ER) This is the best I can do for now. At least data for the entire pandemic is presented.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Still going up, though fortunately no sign of geometric increase. The New York city area has form; in 2020, as the home of two international airports (JFK and EWR) it was an important entry point for the virus into the country (and from thence up the Hudson River valley, as the rich sought to escape, and around the country through air travel)
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). This is the best I can do for now. Note the assumption that Covid is seasonal is built into the presentation. At least data for the entire pandemic is presented.
[7] (Walgreens) Going up.
[8] (Cleveland) Going up.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Flattening.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) KP.2 enters the chat, as does B.1.1.529.
[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.
[12] Deaths low, ED not up.
Stats Watch
Personal Income: “United States Personal Income” [Trading Economics]. “US personal income rose by 0.3% from the previous month to $23.234 trillion in April of 2024, slowing from a 0.5% increase in the prior month, in line with market forecasts. Compensation of employees rose by 0.2%, a slight ease from the 0.6% gain the previous month, driven by slower increases in both wages and salaries (0.2% vs 0.6% in March) and supplements to wages and salaries (0.3% vs 0.4%).” • You say “ease” like that’s a good thing.
Manufacturing: “United States Chicago PMI” [Trading Economics]. “The Chicago Business Barometer, also known as the Chicago PMI, dropped to 35.4 in May of 2024 from 37.9 in the prior month, sharply missing market forecasts that ranged from 41 to 42.”
* * * Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 42 Neutral (previous close: 45 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 51 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated May 31 at 1:32:37 PM ET.
News of the Wired
I am not feeling wired today.
* * * Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From DW:
DW writes: “A Star Magnolia (magnolia stellata) reflecting light from the kitchen window, and blooming about two weeks earlier than last year. The birds using the feeder are a tad nonplussed by the blossoms, but are quickly adjusting to them. Coos County, Oregon.” I’m not sure this challenging photo is a complete success, but it’s a neat idea and I include it in the hopes that others will be inspired to experiment with the technique.
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55 comments
Comments are closed.
RE: “Recently I saw some Risk assessment documents from CDC on covid from Jan & Feb 2020. They are interesting to say the least.”
They knew. Even Trump knew.
https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-woodward-book-09-09-2020/h_0dd825ef6f8574e19835190690f77d5a
Trump told Woodward he knew virus was airborne, yet held packed rallies anyway
He did. Importantly, Trump heard that from Xi. So Xi knew too. And did the lockdowns but without airborne mitigations.
It’s kind of unfathomable to see it out in the open, so pointedly, though. The entire program from the beginning is clearly one of GBD’s making, fully embraced by the public health establishment under two presidencies. To say this is casual murder and stochastic eugenics is to be kind. And five years in, we’re seeing it play out in over a million dead Americans, and millions disabled by long-COVID. The toll keeps climbing. That’s an impressive level of callousness and disregard.
And so far to a person, every nurse that’s responded to my COVID safe query on Hinge tells me that it’s over, that it’s just a cold. The destruction of public health is complete. You gotta see the messages to believe it.
I’m just glad that the economy is doing well because of this approach and that it was all worth while. /sarc
Doing so well Target and Kolhs were down like 15-20% recently on earnings calls, it seems some Americans are increasingly tapped out.
Bidenomics is working!
I read a piece recently that said Walmart, Target, and some other large retailer had realized that sharply raising their prices wasn’t working to increase revenue; people just stopped buying as much as they had before.
They decided that it was time to start dropping prices.
I doubt these lower prices will have an effect on inflation statistics because they have such lousy methodology.
However, it will help a lot of the folks who need it. I wonder it people who notice the decreases will give credit to Biden. I doubt it considering the low level of trust in government.
“Xi knew too. And did the lockdowns but without airborne mitigations.”
Forgive me, but this is incorrect.
The Chinese response to the coronavirus from middle January 2020 took account of airborne transmission. This includes hospitals with negative air pressure rooms being used for patient care, temporary hospitals built with negative air pressure rooms for patients. Ambulances fitted with negative air pressure patient compartments. Medical staff roomed away from homes in hotels and like facilities. Masks were used everywhere.
All these and additional precautions taken were extensively publicized and discussed in China.
Chinese scientists had identified the coronavirus by January 10, 2020 and immediately distributed the genetic codes to scientists globally. The Chinese developed testing reagents in a couple of days and distributed them accordingly.
WHO officials had been informed of the illness with pneumonia-like symptoms by December 31, 2019. Chinese reactions from late December 2019 were recorded each day and in January 2020 were sent for publication in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Chinese domestic publications on what would come to be COVID-19 were all made available to the WHO and to the CDC. The CDC had important difficulty developing a test for Covid, but the Chinese sent a test to the WHO and offered the test to any country early in January.
Yes, and the Chinese scientist who distributed that genetic code to scientist globally is now being suitably persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party authorities. Here is the title of the article from Nature Magazine.
” Chinese virologist who was first to share COVID-19 genome sleeps on street after lab shuts
Zhang Yongzhen shared the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 with the world, speeding up the development of vaccines.”
And here is the link.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01293-0
https://www.nejm.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/mms/journals/content/nejm/2020/nejm_2020.382.issue-13/nejmoa2001316/20200320/images/img_xlarge/nejmoa2001316_f1.jpeg
January 29, 2020
Onset of Illness among the First 425 Confirmed Cases of Novel
Coronavirus (2019-nCoV)–Infected Pneumonia (NCIP) in Wuhan, China. *
* https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001316?query=featured_coronavirus
Early Transmission Dynamics in Wuhan, China, of Novel
Coronavirus–Infected Pneumonia
And so a temporary if unpleasant pandemic was transformed into a endemic disease that might yet collapse the planetary political system and economy, which eventually will out, because reasons. Maybe as a species we are too dumb to live.
This is not the conclusion I would make. We have leaders who may well have organised the synthesis of the virus and who don’t care if we live or die.
Yes.
How do we set up systems that remove these psychopaths from power and prevent them returning?
If we’re not smart enough to sort this, jbird is right.
https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2024/Moderna-Receives-U.S.-FDA-Approval-for-RSV-Vaccine-mRESVIAR/default.aspx
Moderna Receives U.S. FDA Approval for RSV Vaccine mRESVIA(R)
I wonder if any data is available on this one? The FDA played hide the ball with the data on the last one. I wouldn’t touch another modified RNA vaccine.
Re Stoller–so is he willing to apply that ‘rule of law’ to his hero Biden or is he just posturing?
Rhetorical question.
Meanwhile
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/after-conviction-trump-is-the-outsider-tribune-again/
So arguably the reason we should be upset about this is not because Trump is likeable but because it’s we the public versus the Masters of the Universe–in other words the same reason Bush v. Gore was an outrage. However I don’t expect Dems like Stoller to make the connection.
A pox on all their houses.
I’d settle for Covid in all their houses, preferably multiple times.
> Re Stoller–so is he willing to apply that ‘rule of law’ to his hero Biden or is he just posturing?
I don’t expect across-the-board perfection. What I want to be able to do is apply a proper discount to their views and behavior. Stoller is quite sound on monopoly and antitrust, and those are good things to be sound on. It’s natural that for him, Biden has a bit of a halo; Biden did, after all, appoint Lina Khan.* So I can discount for that. (Same with his views on China, thought AFAIK that comes from personal reasons I can’t discuss.)
NOTE * I happen to think Biden will heave Khan under the bus the minute he can extort something from Google for bringing Khan’s cases to a halt, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
Don’t forget head of antitrust, J. Kanter at DOJ. Stoller is major fanboy. Kanter has some righteous kills under his belt already but some very dubious ones as well. Killing the Spirit/Jetblue merger has put consumer villain Spirit into a death spiral and has grievously wounded an already down-trodden JetBlue, historically a consumer darling. The big winners from the DOJ victory- the already too-big ‘Big Four’ with United scooping up deferred A321 Neo orders that were slated for delivery at the new combined entity. Both Spirit and JetBlue are slashing routes, shrinking their footprints and retrenching in a desperate attempt to avoid anything resembling competition with other airlines as they seek to eek out a meager profit in a incredibly concentrated and rigged industry where two giant airlines are currently enjoying 90% of all profits being made in the industry. Smells a bit fishy to me? Zealotry gone wrong is the most charitable assessment of the DOJ’s actions. Stoller was over the moon as usual. Bit too high on his own supply and increasingly partisan lately for my tastes.
“… I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.”
Au contraire mon interlocuteur. It looks like Google is betting the server farm on it. (For some definition of “it.”)
We have Trump as a great source on covid is airborne, which aligns with the timing of the CDC risk document. On Feb 7, 2020, Trump told Woodward
“You know it’s a very tricky situation. It’s, ah, it goes, it goes through air, Bob, that’s always tougher then the touch. You know the touch you don’t have to touch things, right. But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s, ah, passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. Ah, it’s also more deadly than your, ya know, your even your strenuous flues.” You may recall the (comical?) emphasis Trump puts on the word “flues”.
I have transcribed the quote above from a sound file I made of the released Woodward tape. (happy to share it).
To confirm when the above quote was made, I found this article: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-told-bob-woodward-he-knew-february-covid-19-was-n1239658 . It’s interesting to read now because 1) What Trump said (above quote) is abbreviated and cleaned up. The part of air being tougher than touch is omitted. 2) Pelosi criticizes Trump for knowing it was airborne while still holding packed rallies (no note if indoor or outdoor). How times have changed!
On February 7, 2020? That is really early in the Pandemic. It was only about a month after the first articles showed up on NC about a new mysterious virus sweeping Wuhan city in China.
Re “Leo’s House”. Yes, there is undoubtedly a person named Leo who lives in Lumpkin, Georgia, and the recording was made at his house. Many recordings (and bird sightings) in the Macaulay Library at Cornell are made by people in their own yards.
The Trump-conviction means the libruls get a few moments of distraction from Joe’s genocide(s) (plural, if you count Ukraine).
It’s kinda funny about how when guys lie about fvcking a porn-star, it usually works the other way. Trump should have learned from Clinton’s Monica, done what he does best– brag about it: “…yeah, I know, and by now you’ve probably heard about those Russian prostitutes too– but that’s not the half of it! Man, wait till you hear about this!!!
I am neither a ‘librul’ nor was I distracted from Joe’s genocides nor did I pay much attention to the hoorah the last six weeks. I have no doubt that the facts as presented are accurate. I suspect that the motivation was related to the election. What the appellate courts are shall say about the questions that will be presented to them is quite another matter. Will the conviction have am effect on the election? Opinions differ. Let’s see what happens.
Lambert, typo: year needs to be changed to 2020.
“(3) CDC scientists knew Covid was airborne on January 30, 2000.”
I dunno, when did gain-of-function first get floated?
Regarding the above comment from the Surgeon General about Trump and the bleach issue.
As I look back on the entire COVID fiasco, I must say the reaction of the national press at that exact moment was the stimulus for me to have the scales fall off the eyes. I had been highly suspicious of the lying before that – but that one event sealed it for me.
Trump literally said no such thing. Go back and look at it. That was a very desperate time in the early days and he was talking about a possible new modality for treatment of placing substances and even UV light down into the lungs to kill the virus. What I do fault him on was the WAY he said all that – but we also have to give people a break who are in the middle of a crisis like that. I am almost certain that he was sitting around a table in the Oval Office and the medical advisers were telling him some possible new whiz-bang Star Trek kind of thing that may have been coming down the pike. As a PCP, I hear all day every day lay interpretations of what this or that specialist told them. I am immune to all the crazy talk that often gets said in such times because they are doing their best to relay what was told to them. I have heard that so often that I could tell instantly that was what happened in the Trump/bleach event.
It was actually liars like Rachel Maddow who went the Full Monty with all the bleach business. Then Joe and Mika on Morning Joe. It was that exact moment that exposed all 3 as TOTAL frauds to me. I never watched them again. It was not long thereafter that Rachel started in on the guy in AZ that drank bleach to treat COVID and died. And doing her best to blame Trump for that death. She forgot to tell her audience a few days later that the wife had made up the whole story trying to disguise the fact that she murdered him. Yeah – our MSNBC. I used to laugh out loud about Fox. MSNBC took it and ran with it. It was only months later that Rachel Maddow said with a straight face that there were so many deaths in Oklahoma from Ivermectin poisoning that gunshot wounds were being turned away from the ER. Within days, the entire piece was exposed as a hideous lie – but it is to this day still on her Twitter feed as the gospel truth. She is truly the biggest spreader of misinformation during this entire COVID time.
The truth of the matter is that when people are in the ICU and on ventilators – all kinds of stuff gets poured down their tubes into their lungs. Sterile water, surfactants, antifungals, anti TB meds, etc. It is sheer torture – the look in those patients eyes as their lungs are being irritated on the inside out and having to cough it all back out in a small tube haunts me everytime I see it. I have often wondered as I have gotten older if this activity is at least partly why ventilated patients have such high mortality rates.
The medical leadership has to know this just like I do – and not a word was said to correct the Maddow lies. I knew the brainwashing was complete and the humiliation for the profession was incoming – when a colleague of mine who had been pouring liquids into a patient’s lung that AM with me standing right there – began disparaging Trump at lunch that afternoon for advocating meds in the trachea. I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. An old professor of mine warned years ago during AIDS that politicizing pandemics and their medical response was the WORST thing to do ever. He was a very wise man. He predicted all kinds of things that have happened during this COVID time – 25 years after his death.
The “bleach” thing was the event that opened my eyes. It has been downhill since.
Between that and the canonization of Fauci, the political destruction of the trust in public health was begun.
There were so many steps along the way to a pretty much complete ending of that trust, but it is interesting watching the media coverage, or rather lack of coverage, of the continuing Covid problems combined with the low key laid back don’t look too close coverage of bird flu. It is illuminating how different and how influential the coverage was and is in the process. And yes, if H5N1 becomes the pandemic it is possible of being, I don’t know how the public will react. (I now only trust the CDC and NIH to follow the will of the oligarchs, science be damned.)
Thanks IM Doc. Being a lay person medically speaking, I have always thought the ventilator was a breathing assistance mechanism. It never occurred to me that drugs were administered through the tube(s).
Alas IM Doc … I remember when being informed and intelligent was favorable, then marketing took over everything. Superseded even hard Royal Sciences being applied in doing anything when profit drives all outcomes.
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. First published February 1, 1996
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17349.The_Demon_Haunted_World
Spectacular quote, frighteningly prescient. Thank you for bringing it here.
Thank you!
Yet I’m told Maddow is a top notch journalist. When that is the case it also tells me how truly awful our news media is.
Another example. CNN’s medical expert Sanjay Gupta was dumb enough to go on Joe Rogan’s show. This was after Rogan had COVID which was played up to the max because of the “horse paste” angle.
I watched it all. Rogan asked Gupta why his network kept calling it horse paste, then told him there is a human form and took a box of pills and stuck it in his face. He then told him there “is a human form.” It was part of what Rogan took and seemed to help. Other data seemed to confirm this. Small sample size, I get it.
Gupta admitted the network probably shouldn’t have said it that way. The next day he was on CNN saying it doesn’t work.
We know this is an off-patent drug that is cheap, widely available, and has a good safety profile. At the time we were in the middle of a pandemic – so why the *family blog* not? I don’t know, I’m not a doctor, but I have read too many stories where this drug seemed to help people. Again, why not?
Money, politics, power. It’s worth dying for as long as we serfs are the ones dying.
Do no harm and the rule of law is long gone. I’m glad I’m old.
Thanks again IM Doc.
> the look in those patients eyes as their lungs are being irritated on the inside out and having to cough it all back out in a small tube haunts me everytime I see it.
Thank you for the humanity. I hope my doctor would feel the same but after watching both my parents end of life “care” at Staten Island University Hospital, I doubt it.
I, too, will be interested to see how polling goes next week. It wouldn’t be the first time I am surprised, but I will be shocked if the Biden camp considers the verdict a win next Friday.
They really really do not want to have to even pretend to be interested in the needs of the populace and trying to govern to make their lives better. This is the third election where the whole campaign is Clinton/Biden/Biden is better than Trump. I somehow ended up on Biden’s email list (I blame Goldman). I am regaled multiple times a day by DeNiro or Hammill and the Biden campaign telling me just that. (My favorite was DeNiro telling me how wonderful it was that Biden “restored decency, compassion, and honest, intelligent leadership to the presidency.” Yup that was Bob on our hair sniffing, influence peddling genocidal commander in chief.
The best thing in my life I ever did was figure out how to bounce all NGPVan or whatever with Google Workspace for $7.20/mo for email hosting. NGP handles like 98% of all liberal Democrat email campaigns. quite a racket if you can get it. I haven’t seen a fundraising email in like 9 months. Before that I’d get them from whatever campaigns, no idea how. I think it was from donating to a service workers fund in 2020 or Sanders? Or from liberal Democrat donations back in the early Obama days. Dunno. I don’t miss the garbage though.
“‘A dying empire led by bad people’: Poll finds young voters despairing over US politics”
Those kids are right as they know what is going on in their lives and are comparing notes. The gaslighting is not working and I am still seeing articles wondering why Americans are unhappy when the economy is doing so well. And if they recognize a dying empire, it is no wonder that they are not signing up to become Imperial Stormtroopers either. Biden’s America has got nothing for these kids and the campus crackdowns shows showed them their place on the totem pole. Not that Trump’s America would be much different.
One prexy’s America would be more internally violent than the other prexy’s America. One prexy wants ” two, three, many OWS-style protest shutdowns. The other prexy would seek ” two, three, many Kent States”.
Which one would seek which outcome? Choose wisely, young padawan.
“Voters with low levels of trust in society and the political system are shifting rightward.”
I don’t think that is what is happening. I offer this alternative explanation. Voters with low levels of trust in society and the political system and who are “on the left” have disengaged to some degree or another from political participation. Bernie Sanders’ two presidential campaigns presented large opportunities for the Democratic Party establishment to draw in and welcome those “on the left.” This the establishment refused to do, other than the important but not sufficient acts of the Biden administration in areas such as anti-trust.
This alternative explanation is based on my own personal observations of the Democratic Party in the North Carolina, and of how “the squad” has been neutralized nationally. Long time Democratic Party officials are much more excited by the prospect of anti-Trump Republicans joining the Democratic Party than by the prospect of attracting the support of younger and left-of-center voters who are highly skeptical of the status quo.
And reminding them that Bernie would have won in 2016 over Trump make no impression whatsoever.
As the next link states: “Young voters do not look at our politics and see any good guys. They see a dying empire led by bad people.’”
The invasive and traumatic nature of medical interventions in hospitals, as I’ve seen family members go through, and as I’ve experienced myself, along with some basic observations about hospitals (keeping all the sick people in one place) has led me to believe that hospitals aren’t places where one gets healthier, but rather the opposite. I also have been on Medicaid for years, and have chronic health issues, which I no longer seek any treatment for, due to the results of the treatment I’ve been the beneficiary of. The incompetence, obvious guesswork, and disorganization, as well as the side-effects and other iatrogenic mutations from nearly any initial visit make seeking care less worthwhile than suffering.
I’d rather die early, at this point, and I do have stories which provide some reasoning.
I agree the best thing to do is try to stay healthy as possible through diet and exercise and avoid all medical care except for actual injuries, especially any prescriptions these pill pushers have on offer. The minute you get in their grips, they milk you dry and then you die.
Personal experience with many good people I’ve met at the local senior center where I work, and my brother and mother-in-law in the past 2 years. Best friend’s mom also in their grips. It would have been better to just bring her home and then host her in “the parlor” after she passed. A tradition that died out once the funeral homes got going.
Chas Freeman on the Dialogue Works Youtube channel discussing the Georgia “Transparency Law” requiring any NGO that receives more than 20% of its funding from abroad, to register itself as a foreign agent, and to disclose the source of its funding.
The US Trapped in Delusions as Russia & China Experience a Transformational Moment | Chas Freeman
At the 18:20 time point.
” Hailstones the size of DVDs”. Wow! Really? Story on the Weather Channel.
https://weather.com/storms/severe/video/dvd-size-hailstones-fall-in-texas-0
One sincerely hopes these stones fell on the homes of the deserving petro-executives and major shareholders and such, rather than on the homes of the petro-working-class job hostages. But what are the chances?
The Universe is cold, callous and indifferent. There is no justice and there is no moral arc that bends toward anything in particular.
Oh, and … thousands of Joshua trees to be cut down to make way for a solar farm. ” How Green Was My Energy” — eh?
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/solar-panels-to-replace-thousands-of-historic-joshua-trees
Here in the Midwest now we have Derechos on top of Tornadoes. Straight line winds at 120 mph wreak havoc on the houses and other buildings, even in flyover. Now insurers are abandoning us like California. They hate paying claims it turns out.
I think this storm chaser went looking for the giant hail, and found it:
GORILLA HAIL DESTROYS STORM CHASING VEHICLE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpYateQ3rIU
Warning! Lots of yelling. Not swearing, just like to yell.
Now will insurance cover this fool?
Are we sure any of the birds in the bird-audio are eastern phoebe? Here is an eastern phoebe calling and singing the way I remember.
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=sfp&p=you+tube+eastern+phoebe+song#id=1&vid=1dd074d472619a0f38959973789b5d5b&action=click
Toward the start of the audio we heard a pack of blue jays, of course. I also heard something else singing.
It reminds me of tufted titmice I have heard. Here is a tufted titmouse calling and singing. At timepoints 0:10 on the slider bar it sings a short song a few times. This song reminds me of the song I am hearing on the daily bird song audio every few-to-several seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MYmFdwUBEU
Did the bird song library people mislabel this audio?
Now’s a really good time to be a Fed: think of the overtime.
‘Death, chaos, civil war’: Furious Trump supporters out for blood after conviction
Ex-US president’s supporters flood social media with all-out threats of violence and ‘insurrection’
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/-death-chaos-civil-war-furious-trump-supporters-out-for-blood-after-conviction/3236326
Right wingers have called 1000 of the last 0 insurrections in the US. Think about it, doing one actually involves getting out of the couch, something that might cause a heart attack for half of the general population.
Larping at its finest.
They got up off the couch for Jan 6 at the capitol building.
https://zowe.substack.com
re: TRUMP and US left press
The US leftwing press which I read is of course more disaster than not.
As good a job they have done when reporting on Gaza , with Trump they are mostly incapable.
There is this by Ralph Nader, who of course does not speak about NYC, he focuses on what he usually does but that doesn´t help in the current case, for legal discussions:
“Year after year and decade after decade, the courts have shielded presidents from accountability for perpetuated crimes committed either by the White House or by the president’s administration.”
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/are-presidents-above-the-law
There is a bit of criticism by Jacobin, but the same here, in essence focus elsewhere:
“The Rule of Law Being Applied to Trump Is Good”
by Ben Burgis
https://jacobin.com/2024/05/trump-law-criminal-conviction-presidents
“(…)It’s disgusting that our courts take millions of foreigners being killed, tortured, maimed, or displaced from their homes less seriously than a relatively petty crime like falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to a porn star. And that Obama, for example, wasn’t criminally charged when he extrajudicially executed American citizens Anwar and Abdulrahman al-Awlaki with drone strikes.
That doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing that Trump was just found guilty, though. It’s good for presidents and ex-presidents to be subject to the same laws as the rest of us.
When Trump supporters notice double standards, they seem to want them to be corrected in the wrong direction. Rather than objecting to the fact that Bush walks free, they seem to think that the fact that Trump used to be president and very well could become president again soon is enough to make the prosecution “political.” But that’s just a demand for presidents and ex-presidents to have a pass to break whatever laws they want.(…)”
Matt Taibbi´s piece is mostly pay-walled unfortunately
The introduction can be read.
https://www.racket.news/p/a-sham-case-and-everyone-knows-it
He quotes a NYT op-ed from yesterday morning which I link here:
“Holy Cow, 34 for 45!”
by Maureen Dowd
https://archive.is/WAgtl
This has the air? odor? dare I say fragrance? of an AI mix-mastering famous phrases. It is exactly at the edge between “creation of a smart AI” and “statement by a pompous autodidact”.