Today's Black History Thing

Dr James Derham

James Derham was enslaved at birth in Philadelphia in 1762. As a child, Derham was transferred to and enslaved by, Dr. John Kearsley Jr. under whom Derham studied medicine. From Dr. Kearsley, Derham learned about compound medicine with a focus on curing illnesses of the throat, as well as patient bedside manner. Upon Dr. Kearsley’s death, Derham, then fifteen years old, was moved between several different enslavers before finally ending up with Dr. George West, a surgeon for a British regiment during the American Revolutionary War. He was eventually transferred again, this time becoming enslaved to New Orleans doctor Robert Dove. As an assistant at Dove’s practice, Derham and Dove became friends, and Dove eventually granted Derham his freedom. With some financial assistance from Dove, Derham opened his own medical practice in New Orleans. By 1789, his practice is reported to have made about $3,000 annually. In 1788, Derham and Dr. Benjamin Rush met each other in Philadelphia, and corresponded with one another for twelve years. Derham's final letter to Rush in 1802 is the last record of his existence. It is believed that after the Spanish authorities restricted Derham to treating throat diseases in 1801, Derham left his practice in New Orleans.

Ed Note:

The man pictured above also comes up on a google search as Dr James McCune Smith, the first black man in America to hold formal certification as a Medical Doctor (although, even as a free black, he was denied schooling here, and had to go to Scotland and then France to be trained in medicine).

One of the enduringly shitty things about our beloved country is the fact that we've played so fast and loose with people lives - to the point of rendering very large percentages of our fellow Americans virtually invisible - all while telling ourselves the reassuring lie that we care about what happens to every individual.

In some ways, America is the Disney-fied version of a very dark fairytale.

COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   452,463 (⬆︎ .44%)
New Deaths:    14,750 (⬆︎ .66%)

USA

New Cases:   114,785 (⬆︎ .43%)
New Deaths:      3,644 (⬆︎ .80%)

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations:          26.8 million
Total Priority Population: 23.5%
Total Population:               8.1%

The new administration is still ramping up the vaccination program, but they seem to be running ahead of their goal of a million vaccinations per day, averaging close to 1.3 million per day so far.

There are some vexing supply chain issues, and it remains to be seen whether or not the vaccines will suffice against the new variants. It's a race, and something of a gamble.

For me, the good news is that we can be more confident the SNAFUs will be of the normal everyday variety and not something deliberate, built into the policy of the national government itself, or because of some rent-seeking asshole looking to turn pain and suffering into a profit opportunity. There will always be that, but I think the chances are much lower now.

WaPo:

AstraZeneca vaccine shows strong effect against coronavirus with just one dose

Researchers at Oxford University released new results from their vaccine, which is being manufactured by British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca, showing it gives 76 percent protection for three months after just one dose. Testing also reveals that those vaccinated are much less likely to transmit the disease, which will help stem the continuing spread of the virus.

The good news comes amid worrying discoveries by scientists over a mutation in the coronavirus variant identified in Britain that makes it more resistant to the vaccines. The mutation, dubbed “Eeek” by scientists, alters the part of the virus targeted by most vaccines and antibodies — making it stealthier.

More:

• Some U.S. pharmacies will be getting shipments of vaccines directly in a new White House strategy to simplify getting shots into people’s arms.
• Sir Tom Moore, who captured British hearts for his efforts to raise funds for the National Health Service, died at 100 from the virus he battled.
• The majority of infected people develop antibodies that last for at least six months, likely offering temporary protection against reinfection, a new study says.

Today's Today

While tens of thousands of people traditionally travel to Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, PA, to watch, the ceremony was closed to the public this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Word is though, that Phil did see a shadow, and now Spring will arrive when Spring has arrived every year for as long as there have been people trying to keep track of this stuff - Phil or no Phil.

Here's the official announcement:

Americans are so fuckin' weird.

COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   392,583 (⬆︎ .38%)
New Deaths:      9,260 (⬆︎ .41%)

USA

New Cases:   125,454 (⬆︎ .47%)
New Deaths:      1,904 (⬆︎ .42%)

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations:          26.2 million
Total Priority Population: 22.9%
Total Population:               7.9%

There's some weirdly and seemingly contradictory information going around - not in the "fake news" kinda way, but in some of the things being talked about regarding vaccines and new Rona variants.

On the one hand, we've got people telling us that while the vaccines aren't iron-clad, and we're not getting enough people vaccinated quickly enough, even at current levels, the vaccines are preventing a lot of negative outcomes.

And even though the virus is doing what viruses do (ie: mutate in an attempt evolve its way around our defenses), the vaccines in their current form should be of some use against the new strains, plus they're engineered so as to be tweakable - they can be "reprogrammed" to be more bug-specific.

All of which sounds about right.

While on the other hand - WaPo:

New coronavirus cases in the U.S. declining, but deaths still on the rise as variants spread

The rate of new coronavirus infections is declining in the United States after rapid increases over the holiday season. The seven-day average of new U.S. cases was down 13 percent as of Tuesday, with an especially dramatic drop of 30 percent in Arizona. Deaths, however, increased across the country by 2 percent, following record hospitalizations early in January, according to data tracked by The Washington Post.

More than 441,000 people have died after contracting the coronavirus in the United States, and there have been more than 26 million infections over the past year. Data also shows growing instances of new variants of the virus, particularly the one identified in Britain.

So I guess we're still stuck in "We don't know enough yet" mode, which is another reason to stay pissed off.  Because of Former President Stoopid, we lost a whole year while his Qult45 assholes got deeper and deeper into their willful negligence bullshit.

The Death Of Irony, Part ∞

CNN:

They stormed the Capitol to overturn the results of an election they didn't vote in

They were there to "Stop the Steal" and to keep the President they revered in office, yet records show that some of the rioters who stormed the US Capitol did not vote in the very election they were protesting.

One was Donovan Crowl, an ex-Marine who charged toward a Capitol entrance in paramilitary garb on January 6 as the Pro-Trump crowd chanted "who's our President?"

Federal authorities later identified Crowl, 50, as a member of a self-styled militia organization in his home state of Ohio and affiliated with the extremist group the Oath Keepers. His mother told CNN that he previously told her "they were going to overtake the government if they...tried to take Trump's presidency from him." She said he had become increasingly angry during the Obama administration and that she was aware of his support for former President Donald Trump.

Despite these apparent pro-Trump views, a county election official in Ohio told CNN that he registered in 2013 but "never voted nor responded to any of our confirmation notices to keep him registered," so he was removed from the voter rolls at the end of 2020 and the state said he was not registered in Ohio. A county clerk in Illinois, where Crowl was once registered, also confirmed he was not an active voter anywhere in the state.

Crowl was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of destruction of government property and conspiracy for allegedly coordinating with others to plan their attack. He remains in custody after a judge said, "The suggestion to release him to a residence with nine firearms is a non-starter." In an interview cited by the government, Crowl told the New Yorker that he had peaceful intentions and claimed he had protected the police. Crowl's attorney did not provide a comment about his client's voting record.

But it's not irony at all. Not really. It's a complete abandonment of reason and the very "common sense" these assholes are always posting about on social media.

This is brainwashing at a level unseen for a very long time. And it's not that these clowns are having ideas put in their heads - their brains are being scrubbed clean of any cogent thought at all, so they can be reprogrammed on the fly and sent off to do whatever their handlers tell them to do.

Today's Today

The first day of Black History Month - which I hope can become outmoded and unnecessary as we continue to flesh out a more complete understanding of American History.

All lives matter when black lives matter too.

Until all of us are free, ain't none of us free.

How It Happened

Jonathan Swan at AXIOS lines out the events from Election Day to Jan6.

First 3 episodes from AXIOS (more to follow):

Woe Is 45*

Trump just can't let go of his bullshit. And because of that, he can't keep a legal team in place.

Quick reminder:

Charles Manson carved a swastika on his forehead, and his lawyers didn't quit.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Trump’s legal team exited after he insisted impeachment defense focus on false claims of election fraud

The implosion of former president Donald Trump’s legal team comes as Trump remains fixated on arguing at his second impeachment trial that the 2020 election was stolen from him, a defense that advisers warn is ill-conceived and Republican strategists fear will fuel the growing divide in the GOP.

South Carolina lawyer Karl S. “Butch” Bowers Jr. and four other attorneys who recently signed on to represent the former president abruptly parted ways with him this weekend, days before his Feb. 9 Senate trial for his role in inciting the attack on the U.S. Capitol. On Sunday evening, Trump’s office announced two new lawyers were taking over his defense.

Two people familiar with the discussions preceding the departure of the original legal team said that Trump wanted them to make the case during the trial that he actually won the election. To do so would require citing his false claims of election fraud — even as his allies and attorneys have said that he should instead focus on arguing that impeaching a president who has already left office is unconstitutional.

That approach has already been embraced by many Republican senators, many of whom cited it when they cast a test vote against impeachment last week.

Trump’s lawyers had initially planned to center their strategy on the question of whether the proceedings were constitutional and on the definition of incitement, according to one of the people, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal conversations.

But the former president repeatedly said he wanted to litigate the voter fraud allegations and the 2020 race — and was seeking a more public defense of his actions. Bowers told Trump he couldn’t mount the defense that Trump wanted, the person said.

“It truly was mutual,” the person said. “The president wanted a different defense. The president wanted a different approach and a different team.”

Trump spokesman Jason Miller also said Sunday that the split with his lawyers was mutual but rejected the notion that the former president wants to focus on election fraud in the Senate trial, calling that account “fake news.”

“The only guidance offered has been to focus on the unconstitutional nature of the impeachment to which 45 senators have already voted in agreement,” Miller wrote in a text message.

Bowers and the other lawyers who quit Trump’s defense team did not respond to requests for comment. CNN first reported that Trump wanted his attorneys to center his defense on his claims of election fraud.

On Sunday evening, Trump’s office announced in a statement that Atlanta-based trial attorney David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor Jr., a former district attorney in Montgomery County, Pa., would lead his defense team. The two lawyers will bring “national profiles and significant trial experience in high-profile cases to the effort,” the statement said.

Schoen previously served as a lawyer for Trump adviser Roger Stone when he sought to appeal his conviction for lying and witness tampering in a congressional investigation. He also was in discussions with financier Jeffrey Epstein about representing him days before his death while awaiting sex-trafficking charges and has said he does not believe Epstein killed himself. During his time as district attorney, Castor had declined to prosecute actor Bill Cosby and was later sued by accuser Andrea Constand in a case that was settled.

The disarray inside Trump’s circle comes as the House Democratic impeachment managers focus intensely on building a powerful and emotionally compelling argument that the former president’s words led his supporters to ransack the Capitol.

The House impeachment article charges Trump with “incitement of insurrection” in the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by a pro-Trump mob.

The Democrats have been working around-the-clock in preparation for the trial — including on Saturday night, when the news broke of Trump’s legal team collapsing, according to people familiar with their activities.

The impeachment managers are compiling footage from Jan. 6, including cellphone recordings of protesters attending Trump’s rally that morning and video from inside the Capitol after protesters breached it.

Their aim is to present stark evidence of how Trump’s words and actions — including his long-running attacks on the integrity of the election — influenced the rioters. The attempted insurrection left five dead, including one member of the U.S. Capitol Police. In addition, two officers, one with the D.C. police, have since died by suicide.

Both sides face tight deadlines to prepare for the trial. The House team must file its briefs Tuesday. Trump’s defense team lawyers must file their briefs on Feb. 8.

Democrats face a difficult task in persuading enough GOP senators to join them in voting to convict the former president. During a key test vote last week, all but five Republicans backed Trump in an objection to the proceeding lodged by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

But Trump’s determination to mount a defense centered on the false claims that fraud tipped the outcome to President Biden could rattle GOP senators at a time when some in the party are facing pressure from donors and more moderate voters to reject such conspiracy theories.

“Trump went 0 for 60 in trying to make the voter fraud argument,” said veteran GOP lawyer Ben Ginsberg. “So Republican senators have no desire to be put on the spot in having to judge his unproven allegations of voter fraud.”

Ginsberg warned that Democrats have “so much raw material” that will allow them to “paint a picture of Trump that’s never been painted before of his involvement in the violence and insurrection.”

“And Trump plays right into their hands in talking about the fraud, for which he has been unable to produce any proof,” he said. “Which is why it’s a completely perilous defense. I can’t imagine any lawyer agreeing to present that case.”

It is also unclear whether Democratic Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), who will preside at the trial, will permit the president’s team to introduce claims of alleged voter fraud.

The collapse of Trump’s legal team could “force the president now to turn to a better strategy,” one that would save him “from self-immolation,” said Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University who declined an offer to represent the president at the impeachment trial.

If Trump insists on arguing that the election was stolen, he would be on a destructive path, Turley said.

“That claim is viewed by many senators as one of open contempt for their institution,” he said. “As it stands now, he would be acquitted by a fair margin. If he pursued that path, it could change the view and the votes of some senators.”

The former president’s allies have also urged him to move forward with a defense based on constitutional questions.

In a recent interview with The Washington Post before Trump split with his lawyers, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said the legal team planned to argue that impeaching a president who had already left office was unconstitutional, without getting into any battle over who won the election.

“It’s a simple case, really,” he said.

But Trump, who has been ensconced at his private estate in Florida since leaving the White House, has continued to insist that he actually won the election, according to people familiar with his comments.

As the trial nears, the former president’s circle of advisers has drastically narrowed. He is continuing to talk with his personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, who led his efforts to subvert the election results. But former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, outside lawyer Jay Sekulow and former campaign lawyer Justin Clark have made clear they want no part of his defense strategy over the Capitol attack.

Some advisers have told Trump that he should testify in his own defense, but that is broadly seen as a bad idea and is unlikely to happen.

Cipollone and Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment.

With the help of Graham, Trump had assembled a team of five lawyers led by Bowers, an ethics and campaign law expert in South Carolina who had worked in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush.

The group included three former federal prosecutors in the state — Deborah Barbier, Johnny Gasser and Gregory Harris — as well as a North Carolina lawyer, Josh Howard. All left the Trump defense team Saturday, according to people familiar with the situation.

Miller said that only Barbier and Bowers had officially been named to the team.

The selection of a South Carolina-based legal team was a dramatic shift from Trump’s previous impeachment last year, when he was charged with abusing his power and obstructing Congress in pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden and his family.

During that trial, Trump was defended by lawyers experienced on the national stage. They included Kenneth Starr, the former special prosecutor whose work led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment; Sekulow, who had defended Trump in other cases; and Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard University law professor known for his work in high-profile, controversial cases.

Losing his legal team days before the Senate trial presents a serious challenge, said Norm Eisen, an attorney who served as co-counsel to the Democratic managers during Trump’s first impeachment.

“This is a total disaster,” he said. “These are real trials, even if they are being litigated in the U.S. Senate, and I can tell you, the defense team needs to be prepared for what’s ahead.”

He said the late decision by Trump’s legal team to withdraw was a sign that the lawyers faced a deep ethical conundrum.

“It is anathema under our code of ethics to pull out on a client on the eve of a trial — unless that client places you in an impossible situation,” Eisen said.

If the Trump legal team had argued Trump’s claim that the election was stolen, “they would be arguing an out-and-out lie, and these lawyers were looking at the consequences of that,” he said, noting that other Trump lawyers are now facing ethics complaints, court sanctions and libel suits for pursuing fraud claims with no basis.

“I believe they were unwilling to expose themselves to years of repercussions for doing that,” Eisen said.

IMO - Trump is less interested in "winning" his case than he is in staying in front of a very large audience (his lawyers and his GOP supporters had to insist that he not appear at the trial to argue his own case). 

And as usual, since he has no honor or sense of shame, he doesn't care if the attention he gets is humiliating - it only matters that he gets the attention.

I'll be watching how the GOP Senators vote during and after the trial, and how the arguments are framed. I think we're likely to see an attempt to dog-whistle their approval of the election fraud meme. ie: They'll say the election was stolen without saying "it was stolen" out loud and on the record.

Republicans are so bereft of honor that they can't stand up and take the hit for backing Trump in the first place for fear of losing the rubes, so they're burning through all their political capital trying to figure out how to dump Trump in a way that shifts the blame onto someone else.

And the Grievance Wheel keeps right on a-rollin'.

COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   395,513 (⬆︎ .38%)
New Deaths:      9,327 (⬆︎ .42%)

USA

New Cases:   107,816 (⬆︎ .40%)
New Deaths:      1,886 (⬆︎ .42%)

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations:           25.5 million
Total Priority Population:  22.5%
Total Population:                7.7%

Just as it seems we're getting better at this Infection Control thing - and as the big Weekend Slump seems to reappear - we get a gloomy assessment from Sam Baker at AXIOS.

Chilling trend: A longer, deadlier pandemic

Mutated versions of the coronavirus threaten to prolong the pandemic, perhaps for years — killing more people and deepening the global economic crisis in the process.

The big picture: The U.S. and the world are in a race to control the virus before these variants can gain a bigger foothold. But many experts say they already expect things to get worse before they get better. And that also means an end to the pandemic may be getting further away.

“It may take four to five years before we finally see the end of the pandemic and the start of a post-COVID normal,” Singapore’s education minister said last week, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Where it stands: 

• "There are essentially two separate COVID-19 epidemics," Dutch officials said recently, referring to the original strain of COVID-19 and the burgeoning threat from mutated versions of the virus.
• There’s light at the end of the tunnel for the first epidemic. Although the virus is still spreading uncontrolled across the U.S. and much of the world, cases and hospitalizations are down from their peak, and vaccinations are steadily increasing.
• But the next iteration, fueled by variants of the virus, is already taking hold.

What’s next: 

• A British variant of the coronavirus will likely become the dominant strain within the U.S. pretty soon, experts say. It’s significantly more contagious than the virus we’ve been dealing with so far, and some researchers believe it may also be about 30% more deadly.
• “That hurricane's coming,” Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota and Biden transition adviser, said Sunday on “Meet the Press.”
• A more contagious and more lethal strain of the virus could easily send cases, hospitalizations and deaths soaring right back to record levels, even as vaccinations continue to ramp up.

“We are going to see something like we have not seen yet in this country,” Osterholm said.

It’s already happening in the U.K., where skyrocketing hospitalizations prompted another round of lockdown measures — and pushback against those restrictions.

Vaccines work against the British variant, and they will help control its spread, just as they’ll help control the pandemic overall.

But vaccinations can only ramp up so quickly. The Biden administration is trying to push doses out the door as fast as it can, but there’s a very good chance the more contagious virus is moving faster.

The existing vaccines don’t appear to work as well against some other variants, including a particularly troubling one first identified in South Africa. They do work, and they appear to prevent serious illness and death, which are the most important things — but they may not prevent as many infections overall.

Vaccine makers can rework their recipes and come up with booster shots to help address more resistant strains, but that will take time.

How it works: 

• All of these problems stem from the same underlying problem — the unchecked spread of the virus.
• More cases mean more hospitalizations and more death. Bigger outbreaks also provide more opportunities for mutations to arise, and to spread.
• A more transmissible virus means that a greater share of the population — maybe as much as 85% — would have to get vaccinated in order to reach herd immunity. That’ll be a stretch, given the widespread vaccine hesitancy across the country.

Because vaccine production is still scaling up, getting things under control well enough to head off a second phase of the pandemic would have to rely heavily on social distancing and mask-wearing.

That’s not a very promising position to be in, especially for a country like the U.S.

The bottom line: Vaccines work, and they are still the key to ending this pandemic. But leaning on them almost exclusively only makes the job harder and will likely prolong this pandemic for years.

wear your mask

keep your distance

wash your hands

Not The Onion

Today in Stoopid Rube Tricks

Detroit Free Press:

Whitmer kidnap suspect wants out of jail. He's diabetic, and fears COVID-19

After three weeks in jail, one of the suspects charged with plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is asking the judge to reconsider her decision to keep him locked up:

He's worried about getting the COVID-19 virus.

Kaleb Franks of Waterford, a recovering heroin addict who says he has turned his life around after doing time for cocaine and home invasion, has diabetes and high cholesterol, takes insulin daily and fears contracting COVID-19 in jail, his lawyer argued in court documents filed this week.

The filing shed more light on the life of the 26-year-old defendant known as 'Red Hot,' who maintains that he can be trusted not to flee and that he is not a threat to society, despite the judge concluding on Oct. 13 that "he remains a danger to the community."