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2:00PM Water Cooler 8/28/2024

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Bird Song of the Day

Catbirds are in the Mimidae species (!), like mockingbird and thrashers. Readers have said they like the mimicry, so hopefully MacCaulay Library has enough recordings to keep us all satisfied, at least for a time.

Black Catbird, Aguadas al Sureste de Cozumel, Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Mexico. I think I’m hearing a frog in the background.

“As a Writer, You Can Never Collect Too Many Endings” [Literary Hub]. “A few years ago, at dusk, I saw an owl swoop into a low branch and start poking its beak into a catbird’s nest. The catbirds inside made a terrible hissing-screeching-gargling sound—like a baby that’s been scalded—and after a moment the owl, for whatever reason, decided it was too much and flew off. After the danger passed, dusk shifted to dark. The night deepened. It struck me that the owl could come back at any moment, and that the catbirds, whose cheery songs I loved and had been listening to all afternoon, lived under perpetual threat. While I didn’t know what story from my life the moment might make a good ending for, I knew it was an ending because in the quiet of its resolution it kept gathering significance. It was factual and also metaphorical. I’ve been those screeching catbirds. I’ve been that owl.” • I didn’t search for this, I swear! It just randomly showed up in my RSS reader.

* * *

In Case You Might Miss…

  1. The DNC was a superspreading event, and adopted a eugenicist masking policy
  2. Boeing door plug debacle reveals shop floor fiasco
  3. Vermeer’s tronie.

* * *

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

* * *

The Supremes

“Ketanji Brown Jackson Is ‘Prepared’ If 2024 Election Goes To Supreme Court” [HuffPo]. “Supreme Court Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson said in a recorded interview with CBS News that she feels ‘as prepared as anyone can be’ when asked about the possibility that the 2024 presidential election results will be contested and require the high court’s intervention.” • However Democrats are gaming 2024 out, I would think they’d want to avoid the Supreme Court. Implying they would use extra-legal methods.

2024

Less than one hundred days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

Good news for Trump in that last week’s deterioration seems to have been slowed, although we shall have to see if Kamala gets a convention “bounce.” Remember, however, that all the fluctuations — in fact, all the leads — are within the margin of error. If you read most of the press, you’d think Kamala has this race in the bag. It’s not so. Do note, however, Trump’s deterioration in North Carolina: +2.4 last week to +0.9 this week, when OG pollster Sabato moved it to “toss-up” status from “lean Republican.” No wonder Trump held a rally there this week. NOTE With Kennedy, it would seem, about to drop out, I started tracking the national percentage as “Top Battlegrounds,” where Trump’s shrinking lead is +0.1 this week (as opposed to “5-Way RCP Average, where Harris led by +1.1 last week).

Wypipo:

Note that Cook Political Report is OG, so worth paying attention to.

* * *

Kamala (D): “Could Kamala Harris really win North Carolina — and lose Georgia?” [Nate Silver, Silver Bulletin]. “The hottest club in the Electoral College is North Carolina. It’s the first state to begin any form of early voting — county officials will begin mailing out absentee ballots next week! The Cook Political Report just moved North Carolina from ‘lean Republican’ to ‘toss-up.’ And in the Silver Bulletin model, it’s the third-most-likely tipping-point state, surpassed only by Pennsylvania and Michigan.” • This devalues Pennsylvania, note well.

Kamala (D): “Why Kamala Harris Is Failing to Gain Traction With the Working Class” [Skyler Adleta (electrician), Newsweek]. “Harris needs to appeal to conservative-leaning working-class citizens who are in Trump’s camp if she hopes to be elected. Yet her railing against Trump, accompanied by the phrase ‘We are not going back!’ in response to Trump’s platform is indicative of a person who completely misunderstands half of the country. She belittles working-class Americans who view the past favorably from an economic point of view by doing this; many working-class folks remember, or have been told of, a time when desirable, living-wage jobs were widespread amongst those with or without a college degree, allowing families to have meaningful choices and secure existences. Harris wants to transform this economic nostalgia into something that is viewed as regressive and socially backward, ultimately diminishing our actual longings by portraying them as false ones.” • Excellent point! Back in the day, when I worked in the factories of Providence, RI, I could have my own apartment and buy a lot of books on my wage of $2.35 an hour, with no overtime. I was not exactly a labor aristocrat!

* * *

Trump (R): “Trump’s Ugly, Shameless New Offer to RFK Jr. Hands Dems a Big Weapon” [The New Republic]. First: “But a consummated Trump-Kennedy bargain—Kennedy endorsing Trump, followed by Trump appointing Kennedy to his transition team or administration—would actually constitute the epitome of corrupt elite self-dealing.” Just stop it. Hillary Clinton made exactly the same sort of deal with Obama in 2008, which I know Greg Sargent is old enough to remember. Next: “[C}onsider that when Kennedy was a third-party candidate and President Biden was still running, many Democrats feared he might appeal to voters who pay little attention to politics—young people, low propensity voters, people disaffected with our institutions—and who also disliked Biden and Trump. The entry of Vice President Kamala Harris into the race has caused a decline in those so-called ‘double haters,’ with many moving to Harris. But there are still untold numbers of them out there. With Kennedy not running, his endorsement of Trump could soften their impressions of the former president. What’s at issue here are not voters who were fully committed to Kennedy’s third-party run—they are probably not gettable for Democrats—but still-undecided voters who might as yet prove susceptible to Kennedy’s appeal. They might find the Kennedy name—and his vague associations with environmentalism, hostility to corporate power, and even the health of children, all of which he talks a good game about—reassuring about Trump. If Bobby Kennedy backs Trump, why, how extreme and crazy can he really be?” • I would turn that argument around. Forget about crazy, because Ashish Jha, Mandy Cohen, and Jeff Zeints are normal-coded loons. What about fascist? Would Robert Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard really join a fascist movement?

Trump (R): If this is your metric, and it’s not everyone’s:

Kennedy (R): “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Tucker Carlson: We’re Going Through A Political Realignment, Democrats Don’t Trust The People” [RealClearPolitics]. ” It’s really the, you know, the domination of, this, this corrupt merger of state corporate power. And it’s happening in Washington, DC now, where, our democracy has really been subverted by the industries that have taken over the regulatory agencies and they and transform them into sock puppets or corporate profit taking and, and basically wholly owned subsidiaries of the industries they’re supposed to regulate. And the Democrats, for a variety of reasons. And I watch it happen over many, many years, have, have clung to this illusion of these democratic institutions that they’re still democratic and they have a we all have the capacity to judge ourselves on our intentions rather than our actions.” • Not the best transcript, but not the sort of message one generally hears from either party.

* * *

Clinton Legacy

“COVID-stricken Hillary Clinton drops out of Hamptons fundraiser, Bill Clinton steps in with Doug Emhoff: sources” [New York Post]. “Hillary Clinton bowed out of a Hamptons fundraiser for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz on Monday, we hear, after the former secretary of state came down with COVID-19…. The event was held at the home of mega art collectors Lisa and Richard Perry, who are known to house works by Frank Stella, Alexander Calder, Ellsworth Kelly and Donald Judd, among other blue-chip artists. Tickets at the highest tier went for a cool $100,000 each, and an invitation seen by Page Six said, ‘This is likely to be one of the last small events in the NY area before the election, so it is not to be missed.'” • “Today, Covid no longer controls our lives.” —Joe Biden, February 7, 2023.

Realignment and Legitimacy

“New voting rules in battleground states could affect election results” (transcript) [PBS]. In Georgia: “I think that there are a lot of very red counties across the country that have been sort of playing with the idea of refusing to certify local election results. But in the past, that has not been successful, basically anywhere that it’s been tried. And I don’t see why it would be different in Georgia. Local boards are under a lot of pressure to certify from the people who live in the community. You can only certify your own election. And so, if you choose not to certify your local results, that means you’re preventing local candidates from taking office. And any of those people could sue. That’s what’s happened in the past when counties across the country have tried to do this. And I think that there probably will be a few counties in Georgia that push their luck here, but probably reverse course very quickly.” • Lots of interesting details on election officials.” • Wouldn’t the very red and very blue counties cut their own throats by not certifying?

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, KF, 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!

* * *

Transmission: H5N1

“With Only Gloves To Protect Them, Farmworkers Say They Tend Sick Cows Amid Bird Flu” [KFF Health News]. “In early August, farmworkers gathered under a pavilion at a park here for a picnic to celebrate Farmworker Appreciation Day…. No matter the menu, some dairy workers at the event said they don’t exactly feel appreciated. They said they haven’t received any personal protective equipment beyond gloves to guard against the virus, even as they or colleagues have come down with conjunctivitis and flu-like symptoms that they fear to be bird flu. ‘They should give us something more,’ one dairy worker from Larimer County said in Spanish. He spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear he’d lose his job for speaking out. ‘What if something happens to us? They act as if nothing is wrong.’… According to numbers provided by the state health department in late August, fewer than 13% of the state’s dairies had requested and received such PPE.”

Something to watch:

Vaccines: Covid

“A single-dose intranasal live-attenuated codon deoptimized vaccine provides broad protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants” [Nature]. Mouse and hamster study. From the Abstract: “Despite the success of spike-protein vaccines in preventing severe disease, long-lasting protection against emerging variants and the prevention of breakthrough infections and transmission remain elusive. We generate an intranasal live-attenuated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, CDO-7N-1, using codon deoptimization. CDO-7N-1 shows highly attenuated replication and minimal or no lung pathology in vivo over multiple passages. It induces robust mucosal and systemic neutralizing antibody and T-cell subset responses, in mice (female K18-hACE2 and male HFH4-hACE2 mice), hamsters, and macaques triggered by a single immunization. Mice and hamsters vaccinated with CDO-7N-1 are protected from challenge with wild-type (WT) SARS-CoV-2 and other variants of concern. Serum from vaccinated animals neutralizes WT SARS-CoV-2, variants of concern (beta and delta), variants of interest (omicron XBB.1.5) and SARS-CoV-1. Antibody responses are sustained and enhanced by repeated immunization or infection with WT SARS-CoV-2. Immunity against all SARS-CoV-2 proteins by CDO-7N-1 should improve efficacy against future SARS-CoV-2 variants.” • So human trials, and we wait another year? Nasal vaccines were a missed opportunity for Operation Warp Soeed, and then further advances stalled under Biden, no doubt due to Big Phama. But no little mRNA technology; good!

Transmission: Monkeypox

Infection: Covid

Sequelae: Covid

Elite Maleficence

The memo that started it all:

Apparently, the same policy carried through to masks:

The tweet that inspired the #SaltTheVibes hash tag….s

Totally not a superspreader event:

Except it is a superspreader event, exactly like the Olympics (or a Taylor Swift Concert):

“COVID-19 also attended last week’s Democratic National Convention, infecting ‘too many'” [Chicago Sun-Times]. The deck: “Health officials say they saw no sign of a COVID-19 uptick after the convention, while attendees grumble on social media about getting sick. One union official said he knows at least 14 people who tested positive since attending the convention.” The health officials “saw no sign” because the attendees flew home, bringing the virus with them. More: “How many people came down with COVID-19 after the convention? ‘Too many. I can’t even put a number on it,’ said Ronnie Reese, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s communications director…. Anthony Driver Jr., executive director of Service Employees International Union Illinois State Council, said he knows at least 14 people who tested positive for COVID-19 since attending the convention. Officially, there are no numbers and there won’t be. Many people diagnose themselves with at-home tests. With a virus incubation period of up to two weeks, many out-of-towners may just now be feeling symptoms.” • There no numbers and there won’t be because “Covid no longer controls our lives.” Except when it does:

And:

And:

Here are the views of a DNC attendee. The thread is a rich motherlode of PMC entitlement and denial, so I encourage you to click through, if you can. He keeps returning to the fray:

Classic! As if DNC attendee, who voluntarily attended the shindig in Chicago, is in the same class as the Uber Driver, who necessarily must ferry Gregory to and from the venue, to Starbucks, to brunch, because the working class must sell their labor to survive.

The venue was well-ventilated (if believe their literature) but it’s still a 3C’s space (closed, crowded, close-contact) and so a layered approach that included masks would have been the safest approach, had the heatlth of attendees and workers been the priority:

DNC mask policy:

The DNC adopted the Great Barrington Declaration’s eugenicist policy.

DNC masking policy vs. RNC masking policy:

How is it that Democrats have a more vicious and reprehensible masking policy than Republicans?

Here is a DNC minder actually getting an attendee to remove their mask:

Shortly after the convention, and after all this blows up on Twitter, a Kamala operative posted this video to TikTok, from where it propagated to Twitter. It shows a masked Kamala with cute children. Here is the Twitter version:

Being of a suspicious nature, I looked for the provenance of the video. The Kamala operative did not give a date or time. However, alert reader marym exercised her mad detective skillz and found the source: A school in West Haven, CT, story published March 26, 2021. So the vibe and the meme is “Kamala masks because she cares about kids!” But the video is almost as old as some of the kids. What brain genius on Kamala’s staff did this?

* * *

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Lambert here: Readers, I apologize for butchering the table formatting yesterday; I just spent some time reformating the HTML so it’s not so fragile. Do feel free to bring formatting issues to my attention in comments.

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC August 20: Last Week[2] CDC (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC August 17 Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC August 17

Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data August 23: National [6] CDC August 10:

Positivity
National[7] Walgreens August 20: Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic August 17:

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC July 29: Variants[10] CDC July 29:

Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC August 10: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC August 10:

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] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Keeps spreading.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular. XDV.1 flat.

[4] (ER) Worth noting Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) A tiny little jump. Let’s watch carefully. (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 then around the country through air travel.)

Lambert here: Since things are bad out on the West Coast, I went looking for California hospitalization data to compare with New York’s, and found this: “Due to changes in reporting requirements for hospitals, CDPH is no longer including hospitalization data on the CDPH dashboard. CDPH remains committed to monitoring the severe outcomes of COVID-19 and influenza, including the impact on hospitals. CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) will remain open to accept data, and CDC and CDPH strongly encourage all facilities to continue reporting.” Thanks, Mandy!

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). The visualization suppresses what is, in percentage terms, a significant increase.

[7] (Walgreens) Fiddling and diddling.

[8] (Cleveland) Jumping.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn’t even run back to 1/21/23, as it used to, but now starts 1/1/24. There’s also no way to adjust the time range. CDC really doesn’t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that’s why the shape of the curve has changed.

[10] (Travelers: Variants) The new variant in China, XDV.1, is not showing up here.

[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.

[12] Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

There are no officials statistics of interest today.

* * *

Manufacturing: “Inside Boeing’s factory lapses that led to the Alaska Air blowout” [Seattle Times (PI)]. Deck is not, but should be: “Anatomy of a Clusterf*ck.” Do read in full for the horrid details; many of us, I am sure, have been on a similar shop floor. This caught my eye; when they first open the door plug (the one that fell off, later): ‘Filling in for the veteran mechanic on vacation, the Trainee was perhaps the least equipped to do this atypical job. He’d been at Boeing for about 17 months, his only previous jobs being at KFC and Taco Bell. ‘He’s just a young kid,’ the Door Master Lead said.”

Tech: “Tesla Drivers Say New Self-Driving Update Is Repeatedly Running Red Lights” [Futurism]. “‘Thankfully I stopped it before it ran the light,’ wrote one Redditor user in a thread with several other Tesla drivers experiencing the same thing, ‘but hopefully Tesla is aware their software is at a very dangerous level right now.’… This is all happening as Musk pivots Tesla towards robotaxis, which have run into their own issues with crashes, glitches, and unpopularity with pedestrians. Will a software patch improve the red light issue? Perhaps. But there’s something that Musk can do that’s low cost and won’t hurt anybody: stop calling the Tesla auto assist software ‘Full Self-Driving’ until it really is.”

The Bezzle: “Super Micro: Fresh Evidence Of Accounting Manipulation, Sibling Self-Dealing And Sanctions Evasion At This AI High Flyer” [Hindenberg Research]. “Super Micro Computer Inc. is a $35 billion server maker based in Silicon Valley, California that has ridden the wave of AI enthusiasm. Our 3-month investigation, which included interviews with former senior employees and industry experts as well as a review of litigation records, international corporate and customs records, found glaring accounting red flags, evidence of undisclosed related party transactions, sanctions and export control failures, and customer issues.” • The shorts have entered the AI chat. About time.

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 52 Neutral (previous close: 52 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 51 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 28 at 12:57:20 PM ET.

Permaculture

“How 8,000 Food Forests Grew Africa’s Great Green Wall” (video) [YouTube]. Dubious about tree planting, because we need forests, not trees. What do readers think?

For NC on food forests, see here, here, here, here, and here.

Gallery

He saw the insulators (!):

“Masterful Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer rendered famous ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ during Golden Age” [FOX]. “The painting depicts a woman, but it’s not a portrait, but rather a “tronie,” according to the Maurithshus museum, which is a painting of an imaginary figure.” • So, word of the day: tronie. Amazingly, this FOX story is straight-up informative, with no angle at all that I can see (at least not a FOX-level angle). Maybe I was ahead of the zeitgeist on this gen-u-wine, human-made art thing, and others have the same thirst.

News of the Wired

“The flow state: the science of the elusive creative mindset that can improve your life” [Guardian]. “Studies suggest that entering the flow state can enhance our performance in activities such as sports or music, and improve our creativity and wellbeing. The late Hungarian psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, who first coined the term flow, went as far as to call it ‘the secret to happiness.’ So what is it? And how can we enter this sometimes elusive brain state? Csíkszentmihályi began his investigations in the 1970s, after interviewing hundreds of participants about the ups and downs of their lives. Contrary to the assumption that we are happiest while resting, he found that the peaks often involved very high levels of mental focus. The specific activity did not seem to matter – it could be swimming, playing the violin or performing brain surgery. What counted was the feeling of immersion and mastery.” • Which the neoliberal workplace, for example, seems determined to take away from us.

* * *

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 Carla:

Carla writes: “Perennial Hibiscus with dew on the leaves.” Lovely! (And I like the shadowy foreground with the bright background; the bright green reminds me of the bright summer afternoon lawns of my Midwestern childhood — regardless of my strictures upon lawns today!

* * *

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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83 comments

    1. t

      May be unfair to blame on this on the DNC – some of the attendees may have been infected by their children who just started school!

      (Meanwhile Novavax approval in the US still pending….)

      1. tegnost

        certainly it goes both ways…parents attend super spreader, pass it to the kids, kids to school and etc… of course parents may be expected to be responsible (adults in the room) while kids don’t know any better…ymmv…
        either way joe biden ended covid, then covid ended joe biden (h/t lambert)

        adding off topic…marym delivers, year after year
        many thanks

    2. .Tom

      Last week when we saw some clips from the Harris Vibes Fest in Chicago on the Jimmy Dore Show I mentioned to my wife, “Remember all that moral outrage at the 2020 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally?”

      1. The Rev Kev

        Wow. Yeah. Good point. But I guess that those who went to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally were of the other class. Maybe even Republicans!

        1. ambrit

          And there was a lot more cleavage at Sturgis. The DNC doesn’t seem to be a ‘cleavage’ type of organization. A bit of ‘jiggle’ perhaps, but that is as far as it goes. When I look at Democrat Party events I think that the Hayes Office is still in business.

    3. IM Doc

      This is anecdotal – but it is fitting the pattern that is becoming ever more clear.

      I had three patients who attended the RNC a month ago – 1 as a delegate – the other a spouse, the other in another role. One of these people was vaccinated once with the J&J vaxx – the other two have gotten no vaxx at all. I just called them all 3 today – no COVID – no illness no anything since their arrival home. All 3 have had COVID one time only – 1 during Delta, two during the first Omicron wave.

      I have 4 patients who were at the DNC. 2 delegates, one spouse, and one in another role. 3 of the 4 have been diagnosed with COVID this week. Previous infections of COVID among the 4 – 2 times, 3 times, 5 times, 2 times. All 4 have been vaxxed and boosted a minimum of 5 times. One has been vaxxed 8 times. 1 of these patients is quite ill, but not quite hospital level, the other 2 are not as bad but still not good.

      I may have had other people at either convention that I just do not know about. This is an important issue when no one seems to be doing any kind of investigating – and local MDs and health officials have to rely on their own wits and observations.

      Having nothing to do with the DNC – Since Monday – I have admitted 5 people to the hospital – all multiply vaxxed and multiply infected over the past 4 years.

      I have mentioned this before recently – and will say so again – the “archetype” patient in this wave is just like Biden, Fauci and now Hillary Clinton – over 60, multiply vaxxed and boosted – and with multiple previous infections. And indeed with predilections for other severe infections. The pattern is becoming hard to ignore. I do not know what else to say.

      I sincerely wish we as a health apparatus would take a very hard look at what is going on around us, maybe call a time out, and really do some serious investigating into the boosters. Especially since we have approved yet another round without a shred of evidence for efficacy. It is a bit concerning.

      1. .Tom

        Thank you, Doc. I am glad I don’t have to deal with hospital politics and can discuss things here on NC.

      3. ambrit

        Yep. The “dog that did not bark in the night” strikes again. The studious silence in the face of obvious waves of infection and reinfection has destroyed any vestiges of faith I ever had in American Corporatized Medicine.
        Anecdotally, I was at the big clinic in town to have a sonogram done yesterday. In a building with I’ll estimate about a hundred people visible to me at any one time, I was literally the only one masked. It is no wonder I am ‘slow walking’ the precautionary tests my Medica “suggests.” When she asked me this spring why I was dragging my feet so much on tests, I told her that the Coronavirus and crowded spaces “gave me pause.” She gave me a funny look in response, but did not push the issue.
        Stay safe.

        1. The Rev Kev

          You’d think that medial professionals such as doctors and nurses would be on top of things due to what they are seeing each and every day right in front of them. Sadly, the opposite has proven true and as a personal consequence have lost trust in my doctor. That Democrat convention might just as well have been a razzle-dazzle medical conference for all that they had learned.

        2. steppenwolf fetchit

          This cone of silence is not being imposed by American Corporatized Medicine. This cone of silence is being imposed by the stealth mass-democidal governmental and DemParty authorities, in pursuance of the secret Long Jackpot Plan. In my opinion.

          ( Whereas the Republican approach, to the extent that there is one, seems to be culture-war based. ” Real Americans don’t wear masks and Real Americans don’t get para-vaccinoided.” Which turns out to be a pro-survival approach, whether it was intended that way or not.)

          It is beginning to look like those who have avoided getting multiple para-vaccinoids may also be avoiding getting multiple covid re-infections. If that is so, and continues to be so, then the “trusting” may be getting selected against and the “suspicious” may be getting selected for. Several more decades of that and we will have a much more suspicious population, because the suspicious will be the survivors.

  2. lyman alpha blob

    RE: the plantidote

    Also known as Rose of Sharon or althea. I have a bush, now more of a small tree, in my yard and it was started from a sucker that my in laws dug up near their own tree and gave to us. This year was a great year for them, absolutely loaded with blossoms. Ours has been blooming for the better part of a month now.

    1. hk

      The national flower of South Korea, incidentally. Although, the picture looks a bit diffreent (petals seem a bit too long/big)

    2. Stephen V

      Omg a superspreader in my situation. And the sprouts are difficult to pull up. It had to go, beautiful as it was.

  3. Mark Gisleson

    Via Citizens Free Press, some guy I don’t know on his own platform with interesting things to say about Trump-Bernie voters.

    “Our children are now the unhealthiest, sickest children in the world,” Kennedy, the nation’s leading vaccine skeptic, said in Phoenix last week as he offered Trump his endorsement. “Don’t you want healthy children? And don’t you want the chemicals out of our food? And don’t you want the regulatory agencies to be free from corporate corruption?”

    [Raheem] Kassam told me that this focus on health was the missing piece to understand what drives the Bernie-Trump voter — and that Trump, for the first time, was paying attention to it. “Probably more than any other point in his life, Trump is on a learning trajectory right now,” said Kassam, who has ties to the campaign. “I think he probably looked at it originally from, like, ‘Okay, I’m for no war. Are you for no war?’ And they go, ‘yeah, we’re for no war.’ ‘Okay, so what else are you into?’ And they start talking about all this health stuff and everything else and he goes, ‘Oh my God, I had no idea.’” [link]

    I think he has the right sense of it and that lefties voting for Trump will be a real thing. In the ’40s and ’50s socialists became Republicans to help stick it to the communists. If I weren’t past the retirement age, I could see becoming a Republican just to stick it to the neoliberals.

      1. JTMcPhee

        If only there was not this nagging suspicion that it does not matter who sits in the Big Chair that was supposed to be Hillary’s, that every little particle of seeming light or hope that a new character in the kayfabe will in any way affect the foreordained outcome of more effing war, faster spin of the machinery that strips wealth and health from the mopes and directs all the “capital flows” ever faster and more compendiously into ever-fewer bulging pockets, an ever-tighter closing of the talons of the death cult that wants trillions to modernize the Empire’s nuclear armory in a last vain attempt to own the planet, that such particles of seeming light are just bits of the terminal manipulation afflicting us.

        Kind of sad that for some of us, the last best hope is that the horrid Commyanists, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Xi, and the people around them, have an actual multi-dimensional plan that cuts the head off the Hegemon snake without killing all of us mopes in the process. Though reading about the “revisions” to the Russian and Chinese doctrines on the use of weapons of mass destruction, crafted to mirror the death cult’s own “new strategic thinking,” one can’t help feeing that Samson is pulling at the chains that hold up the roof of the human temple, and his hair has regrown almost to its full, divinely empowered length…

        Meantime, the Empire has given 404 the tools to produce, and the green light to use, chemical weapons, has “revised” its secret guidance on the activities of Imperial UNavowed contract biological warfare laboratories in 404 and many other places (looking, I bet, for some kind of “knockout punch”), all that stuff.

        The light we so desperately want to see at the end of the tunnel is, so sad, the headlamp of the train coming at us. “Bend over, put your head between your legs, and kiss your a$$ goodbye.”

        1. Typingperson

          Well said. No reform is coming from inside US to stop the out of control imperial wars & genocide of Palestine. And now the threat of nuclear in Ukraine and Middle East.

          Nor to reign in BlackRock, other megafunds and big money interests who have our economy and US people in a stranglehold.

          China and Russia cutting off the head of the snake is our best hope, as you say. Who will save Palestine from US & Israel?

          So sick and depraved is this Biden admin — whoever is running its foreign wars & the genocide. Blinken, Sullivan, Zients? Who is running them?

    2. AG

      Yes, nice point with queueing this back into 1940s/50s context.
      Trump could become a blank page open for some decent influence.
      If that were allowed.

      p.s. admittedly a bit off:

      But recently I was reminded of a Hollywood period drama “All the King’s Men” (2006)
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_King's_Men_(2006_film)
      Based on the 1946 eponymous novel which was inspired by Huey Long´s story. I believe he was quoted on this site a couple of days ago?

  4. Samuel Conner

    Re: future instances of the partisan National ContagionConventions,

    Perhaps one could bring a note from one’s physician certifying that one’s immune system is “disabled” (in the sense that it does not provide sterilizing immunity to the CV) and this requires one to employ NPIs such as masking to protect one’s health.

  5. antidlc

    RE: the memo that started it all

    That memo from Impact Research appears on the docs.house.gov website:
    https://docs.house.gov/meetings/VC/VC00/20220302/114453/HHRG-117-VC00-20220302-SD009.pdf

    I have tried to figure out why it appears there. According to the URL it looks like it was for a meeting on March 2, 2022.

    Here is a list of the meetings for that date:
    https://www.congress.gov/committee-schedule/daily/2022/03/02?q=%7B%22chamber%22%3A%22House%22%7D

    Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t find that PDF tied to any of the meetings.

    Just curious as to why the Impact Research memo is on the doc.house.gov website.

  6. antidlc

    RE: DNC mask policy

    Thre quoted statement is from the ACCESSIBILITY section of the DNC FAQs:
    https://demconvention.com/faqs/

    Yes, masks will be allowed if necessary due to a disability. You may be asked to remove your mask when going through security.

    The section on PUBLIC HEALTH AND SAFETY is right above the ACCESSIBILITY section and it says:

    What is the COVID protocol for the 2024 DNC
    The 2024 Democratic National Convention Committee adheres to current guidance from relevant public health authorities regarding COVID-19. Masking is not required at convention events, but any participant desiring to wear a mask is welcome to do so.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      Thank you. I’m not sure contradictory policies (“allowed if necessary” vs. “welcome to do so”) is a big win for the DNC. Or are they saying that the disabled need to get permissions that others do not?

      2. fjallstrom

        My guess is that the respective paragraphs were written by different people and no one read through the whole thing to check that it made sense. Or someone did, but missed it. Sloppy, and a sign of not paying attention.

        But why would anyone pay attention to the rules of the Potemkin village? It’s just there as a backdrop after all.

      3. none

        Yeah that was kind of weird and I guess it depends somewhat on how long security makes you take the mask off. I went to the bank recently to get some cash and the bank guy asked me to take my mask off, but was careful to say it only had to be for a couple of seconds, so he could compare my face to my ID picture. No big deal holding my breath for that long, so I didn’t have a problem with that. Obviously I wouldn’t want to wait through a crazy TSA line that way.

  7. Pat

    I am not a very nice person. That said it is not surprising that my first thought was the best thing that could happen is that Hillary Clinton and any other top Democrat, along with every major donor that got Covid at the Democratic National Convention becomes part of the 15% with long Covid. Oh and I mean the kind where getting up in the morning is an effort. Thinking longer about it, we can forget getting it at the DNC, let’s just make it that everyone in the top 2% and every elected official that gets Covid at all from this summer on is not just as inconvenienced by it and its long term effects as the average joe who doesn’t have any of their advantages, but gets the worst that the disease can give.

    I wish I thought that the callus disregard for public health would change without ‘our betters’ facing real consequences for ignoring major contagious illnesses, but I no longer do. Until they need to have everyone who gets sick stay home, everyone being masked in a confined space, and real ventilation improvements to every public space and hospital it just won’t be allowed to happen, it might cost them a few hours pay.

    One other thing, it is little things like the Republicans allowing masking, actually passing some things that help the working class, holding real primary elections that weren’t entirely manipulated, or even just showing up to campaign in front of people who haven’t paid $100,000 to attend the event that is making people who might never have considered voting for a Republican reconsider who the lesser evil really is since burning both parties to the ground and salting the ashes is not possible.

    1. Pat

      Reading antidlc’s post that was dropped just before mine, I might have to cross out the allowing masking item. That said, many of those who published or sponsored misleading studies on masking could be considered to be ‘liberal’ and Democrats. And I don’t attribute the need to anything altruistic or even about freedom. It is mostly about control and the appearance of normal, with surveillance being a large part of that control. I’ll cop to that being bipartisan with the Republicans being no better, but just consider me bitter about all the subversions of the ‘science’ that were necessary to get back to that all important ‘normal’ by Democrats.

        1. Pat

          Wow. You called it

          The thread is a rich motherlode of PMC entitlement and denial

          That thread/account is almost insisting the sky is green level of denial. I’m not sure he isn’t laboring under a whole lot of cognitive dissonance. The desperation in the claims about immunity attached to being vaccinated and boosted, while Covid is a real part of his life, is almost heartbreaking. I say almost because while his bubble has been pierced his desperation to keep it inflated is continuing to fuel the misinformation regarding both vaccines AND the Democratic response most particularly Biden administration’s clear destruction of public health regarding this.

          1. Lambert Strether Post author

            > while his bubble has been pierced his desperation to keep it inflated is continuing to fuel the misinformation regarding both vaccines AND the Democratic response most particularly Biden administration’s clear destruction of public health

            “When they tell you who they are, believe them.”

    2. steppenwolf fetchit

      Thank you for saying it because I was thinking it. Hopefully every High-Ranking person there gets Long Covid. And gives it to every other High-Ranking person they know. It won’t change a single one of their minds about a single thing, but at least they will be getting their just deserts.

  8. Reader Keith

    “Super Micro: Fresh Evidence Of Accounting Manipulation, Sibling Self-Dealing And Sanctions Evasion At This AI High Flyer”

    Nothing in this report is the least big shocking, Super Micro is a dumpster fire.

  10. flora

    re: andidote.
    Lovely!
    I have two double-bloom, red, grandiflora hibiscuses in my care. (One does not ‘own’ a flowering plant, in the wider sense. / ;)
    Thanks for the violet-purple hibicus photo. Beautiful.

  11. Screwball

    The Earnie Banks Tweet is interesting. It would be fun to post that at say…Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, etc., and sit back and watch the fun. There is no way more died under Biden than Trump…so says anyone with stage 5 TDS.

    1. Samuel Conner

      The much larger total incidence of infection probably also means that during the JRB period, there were many more “odd” fatalities due to COVID or COVID sequelae in younger age cohorts with normally negligible mortality rates.

      But it isn’t just JRB public health policy; it seems to me that there is something seriously messed up with many people’s thinking (and I suspect this was also the case during the DJT period). It’s almost as if people can’t bear the thought that they have recklessly self-injured through disregard of protective measures and it’s less cognitively uncomfortable to go on taking risks than to admit that the prior risk-taking worked out badly.

    1. Jason Boxman

      Interesting — but after two cycles, pollers haven’t accounted for this known bias? I’m a bit skeptical that the bite will be so big this go around.

    2. chris

      That’s maddening. So close to something useful, and yet so far. Any advice on how to size a HEPA filter? Nope. Any explanation of MERV or other particle filters? Nope. And because this is the US, no explanation that every HEPA filter is an air purifier but not every air purifier is a HEPA filter. No explanation that you can’t just swap out your current furnace or AC filter for a higher grade because you might destroy your blower fan due to the increased pressure drop. No consideration that running the fan more often is a significant use of energy and will increase people’s electricity bills. I could go on…

      That entire presentation is built for people who have all the money they need to pay for what they need to fix their problems. Public health. For some definition of the public :/

  14. Lunker Walleye

    A few things:

    I wasn’t aware of this French village depicted in Rousseau’s painting and thought it strange it had a non-French name. The link, in French, talks about the name of the town. https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/paris-ile-de-france/hauts-de-seine/pourquoi-la-ville-de-malakoff-s-apelle-t-elle-malakoff-2980514.html
    It was a surprise to see the presence of electrical lighting in the charming painting where the artist uses his own idea of perspective. Love the story about the “tronie”. She is certainly a quietly beautiful invention by Vermeer.

    Also, link to how to pronounce Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-B0r7D1A3I

    1. Daniil Adamov

      Re: Malakoff, I guess that’s only fair when we have Parizh here in the Urals. As well as Berlin, Leyptsig, Fershampenuaz and others.

        1. Late Introvert

          Don’t forget Brooklyn. Nevada. Denver. Delhi. Essex. Fairfax. Fairbank. Lisbon. Madrid. Melbourne. Mount Vernon. New London. New Providence. New Sharon. New Virginia. Newton. Norway. Oakland. Oxford. Panama. Persia. St. Paul. Washington. West Point. Westphalia. Yorktown.

          Coon Rapids though, what a town.

          And what about What Cheer?

          1. John Anthony La Pietra

            Here in Michigan we have both Paradise and Hell. Actually, on our in-state vacation trip last month we passed through Paradise on our day-trip visit to the “root beer” of Tahquamenon Falls State Park. Missed Hell by about an hour in any direction on our way back home, though.

          1. The Rev Kev

            Paris is a dump right now and they had to clean it up for the Olympics but still couldn’t get the Seine clean. Going by what is seen in Alex Christoforus’s videos, Russian cities are cleaner and free of homeless people and graffiti. So why go to Paris?

            2. Daniil Adamov

              I’ll grant you that there are far fewer homeless people in plain view than there used to be, and than there apparently are in America. But I assure you, we have a lot of graffiti. :P I haven’t watched the videos in question – I’m not good with videos generally, unfortunately, don’t have the patience for them – but I would venture a guess he only went to the nice parts of big cities if he didn’t see any of that. Though even on the main streets here it’s not that hard to find graffiti. Granted, Yekaterinburg might be an outlier as the “capital of street art” (some of it quite inspired, but much of it just tags).

        2. Daniil Adamov

          Rather different in that it wasn’t named after the Battle of New York, as far as I can tell. :P

    2. Bugs

      It’s unfortunately one of the least attractive suburbs on the edge of the Paris ring road. I had to drive through it a couple days a week when I was teaching and there’s really nothing redeeming about it to make me ever want to do it again. Right up there with Aubervilliers and Ivry.

      At least Le Douanier found beauty in the odd and new.

  15. Jay Ess

    Regarding CDO-7N-1, unfortunately, I see no evidence that they tested with any currently circulating strain. I wouldn’t assume that a vaccine based on an early omicron variant would be more effective than natural immunity from an early omicron variant is at this point.

    1. JTMcPhee

      I’m not any kind of scientist, but maybe there are parts of the protein structure of CV that are common to all variants and thus subject to acting as triggers for immune response inoculated by an actual vaccine (old definition, from before Big Pharma regulatory capture private rewrite)?

      So it wouldn’t matter what strain, or when it was circulating?

      So many ways in which fear, uncertainty and doubt get injected into the collective mind of the body politic. In a sea of facts vastly outnumbered by factoids, falsehoods and subtle misrepresentations, it is ever harder to actually know anything. Which after all was the goal of the manipulators-in-chief: “We will know our program of disinformation is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

      1. steppenwolf fetchit

        If enough ordinary people use the word ” para-vaccinoid” to describe the mRNA para-vaccinoids, and use the word “classical vaccines” to describe “vaccines”, perhaps that just-enough ordinary people can break the effectiveness of Big Pharma’s private-capture-rewrite of the definition and nomenclature of “vaccine”.

  16. Mikel

    RNC: Cloth, N95/KN95, surgical mask allowed to be used as PPE to avoid transmission of viral infection.

    DNC: Mask allowed if necessary due to disability, may be asked to take off for security.

    We are truly in the upside down. pic.twitter.com/x6pvSjWl2B

    The national security state wants to influence the young. The common take is usually that the Democrats skew younger.

  17. Marshawn Davis

    “As if DNC attendee, who voluntarily attended the shindig in Chicago, is in the same class as the Uber Driver, who necessarily must ferry Gregory to and from the venue, to Starbucks, to brunch, because the working class must sell their labor to survive.”

    Irony, that Uber driver now has to compete with millions of new undocumented migrant drivers given licenses. Uber is under no obligation to check their immigration status because they are “independent contractors.”

    Further irony, The First Gentleman, Doug Emhoff, was a partner in a law firm which fought Starbucks unionization.

    Further further irony,
    Kamala’s sister is married to Tony West, Uber’s chief counsel.

  18. steppenwolf fetchit

    One hopes that Kennedy and Gabbard made the following deal with Trump in return for supporting him . . .

    That they both open for every Trump rally and give a short speech highlighting their own most important issues(s) in serious detail consistent with being crowd-pleasingly punchy. Then Trump himself can either follow up on what they said or not, but at least they will have gotten their important stuff said with the crowd having to wait and at least pretend to hear it.

    Kennedy could force the issue of food safety onto the fringes-at-least of the Mass Media, and Gabbard could do the same with DC FedRegime surveillance and persecution of dis-obedient political figures.

    I hope they got that, because if elected, Trump won’t keep any promises he made to them.

  19. The Rev Kev

    ‘Dr. Lucky Tran
    @luckytran
    “What is it like being in a room where four years ago this would have been a superspreader event?”
    There is so much misinformation in this interview. The DNC convention is a superspreader and happening during the peak of one of the largest summer COVID surges of the pandemic.’

    Nice to see CNN doing their part to dismiss Covid. But damn that was a healthcare professional that reporter was talking to. And that woman was saying how the government was taking care of them! She also said that they were “incredibly blessed” which may be true though not in the way that she thinks. I have see the term ‘bless you’ used as almost a curse term so perhaps that women is ‘blessed’.

    1. Daryl

      > “What is it like being in a room where four years ago this would have been a superspreader event?”

      Somehow reminded me of that Mitch Hedberg joke about how “I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to too.”

      Used to be a superspreader event. Is a superspreader event, but it used to be, too.

  20. The Rev Kev

    “Two days that led to Boeing’s near midair disaster’

    The key part there is how nobody recalls seeing who fitted the plug or was supposed to check the bolts. Those workers know the deal. Boeing is looking for sacrificial victims and the Feds will gladly hit them up with a few felony charges to make it look like that accident was the result of a “few bad apples'” rather than Boeing itself. So they all decided to have a few memory lapses and if called out on this, might claim that they had Covid at the time causing their memory problems. Tells you a lot about Boeing culture.

  21. ambrit

    As for, “Wouldn’t the very red and very blue counties cut their own throats by not certifying?”
    Yes they would if they could figure out a way to drown their political opponents in the effusion of blood.

  22. thousand points of green

    Here is a permaculture-worthy little bit of video, titled ” By digging such pits, people in Arusha, Tanzania, have managed to transform a desert area into a grassland ”
    ( background music by what I think is Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
    Here is the link.
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1f31iww/by_digging_such_pits_people_in_arusha_tanzania/

    A commenter tells the thread that a group called . . . https://justdiggit.org/
    helped organize this effort and others like it.

  23. steppenwolf fetchit

    Here is an article about how the growing shortage of insects includes a shortage of pollinators and the shortage of pollinators is limiting the amount of pollinator-critical fruit/nut/etc. plants are being produced in agriculture. Perhaps this might drive the pollinator-dependent fruit/nut/etc. lobby to demand that the Silent Slowpocalypse of the Insects be solved.

    Here is the link.
    https://www.technologynetworks.com/tn/news/global-food-production-is-being-limited-by-a-lack-of-pollinators-390232

  24. Lambert Strether Post author

    > while his bubble has been pierced his desperation to keep it inflated is continuing to fuel the misinformation regarding both vaccines AND the Democratic response most particularly Biden administration’s clear destruction of public health

    “When they tell you who they are, believe them.”

  25. Ignacio

    “A single-dose intranasal live-attenuated codon deoptimized vaccine provides broad protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants” [Nature].

    This was an interesting read and it should be specially interesting a full scientific critical read for al those “gain of function” warmongers because there are IMO mistakes made in the design of the experiments that should be addressed. Here, we are seeing “loss of function” or “fitness reduction” by multiple silent site directed mutagenesis. Silent meaning that the mutations introduced do not change the composition of the proteins encoded by the virus. In this case the changes result in codons which are less frequently found in the genome, thus “deoptimized”. As the paper states, those changes almost certainly have pleiotropic effects and might alter mRNA stability, gene expression, replication etc in a way which is barely predictable and in most cases the constructs aren’t recoverable by infection in “in vitro” cultured cells and those that could be recovered were less fit, showing much slower infection kinetics in “in vitro” cultured cells and attenuated when inoculated in animals. Any other mutational strategy would produce mostly similar results even if you were trying to “gain a function” basically because these barely predictable pleiotropic effects more over when the mutations you are trying to introduce aren’t silent. To increase the probability of success you would need to replicate exactly an existing model that you have isolated in nature and it is known to work. Let’s say, for instance, replace your spike protein of your newly created infectious construct with the spike protein of a virus that you have isolated from coronavirus-ill pangolins, rather than introducing by yourself a motif you believe might be interesting for your gain of function research. Yet I believe it would be weird for such malignant gain of function research project to be based on a search in pangolins for sequences to be used in humans frankly. Yet you would still have to deal with the pleiotropic effects that such pangolin sequence might have in the rest of your beautiful infectious construct.

    And there is a flaw in the research of this paper that shows how difficult would it be to deal with that problem. The paper states that in order to check whether those attenuated strains could revert to a highly infectious variant they did serial passage experiments through VERO cells (don’t know how many repetitions of the experiment) and the phenotype was kept throughout all the 15 passages done. That was IMO an experiment with an almost certainly guaranteed result and so a useless one. In this set of experiments in which you first isolate viral progenies from a culture and transfer those to a second culture you are breaking the biological bottlenecks that operate in vivo to select more infectious variants. What you might find in the progenies after 15 passages if you dare to sequence not a region but the whole genome is that mutations other than those you introduced are being settled in the populations and those mutations probably increase the stability of the viral RNA or the subgenomic mRNAs in VERO cells but having themselves other pleiotropic effects that might further decrease virus infectivity. That is what ordinarily occurs when you take a virus and do serial passages in lab conditions obtaining usually increasingly attenuated variants. You are doing the hard work for the virus and the virus becomes lazy.

    They also try mutation reversion analysis in vivo (in hamsters) which is much better approach but the problem here is that in order to rule out such event you would have to repeat that experiment as many times as vaccine doses might be delivered in the future so to speak.

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