Something Of An Anthem

She's imperfect, but she tries
She is good, but she lies
She is hard on herself
She is broken and won't ask for help

She is messy, but she's kind
She is lonely most of the time
She is all of this mixed up
And baked in a beautiful pie
She is gone, but she used to be mine

Shoshana Bean, from the musical adaptation, Waitress, by Sarah Bareilles

Today's Beau

On Gov Cuomo, and learning about not being a dick - almost literally.

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

What you're really asking is: "How can I get away with it?"

BTW, if Cuomo did anything for which he deserves to burn, then let that fucker burn.

And here's the consent thing Beau mentioned:

How To Prevent Rape

1. Don’t put drugs in a woman’s drink
2. When you see a woman walking by herself, leave her alone
3. If you pull over to help a woman whose car has broken down, always remember not to rape her
4. If a woman steps into an elevator with you, don’t rape her
5. Should you encounter a woman who’s asleep or otherwise unconscious, the safest thing to do is not rape her
6. Don’t break into a woman’s house, and don’t pounce on a woman in the parking garage, so as not to rape her
7. Remember, some women will go alone to the laundry room or storage lockers - avoid raping them
8. Buddy System - often, a friend is all you need to help you not rape
9. Be honest - state your intentions so the woman doesn’t get the mistaken idea that you won’t try to rape her
10. Always carry a Rape Whistle. If you’re about to commit rape, blow the whistle and wait for somebody to come and stomp your punk ass ’til there’s nothing left but a greasy spot on the pavement

COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   293,327 (⬆︎ .26%)
New Deaths:      6,693 (⬆︎ .26%)

USA

New Cases:   53,147 (⬆︎ .18%)
New Deaths:    1,439 (⬆︎ .27%)

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations:          50.7 million
Total Priority Population: 41.6%
Total Population:             15.3%

It's not about small government vs big government. It's about the differences between Republicans always doing everything they can think of to fuck up government so they can pimp their bullshit ideas of The Libertarian Utopia vs Democrats who're looking for ways to make Self-Government work for us the way its supposed to.

It's about a government that's Right-Sized and Cost-Effective.

WaPo:

How does the Johnson & Johnson vaccine work? When is it available? What to know about the new shot.

Biden to announce ‘historic partnership’: Merck will help make Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, officials say

The administration brokered the arrangement amid concerns about Johnson & Johnson’s production delays

President Biden will announce Tuesday that pharmaceutical giant Merck will help make Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot coronavirus vaccine — an unusual pact between fierce competitors that could sharply boost the supply of the newly authorized vaccine, according to senior administration officials.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a matter that has not been announced, said they began scouring the country for additional manufacturing capacity after they realized in the first days of the administration that Johnson & Johnson had fallen behind in vaccine production. They soon sought to broker a deal with Merck, one of the world’s largest vaccine makers, which had failed to develop its own coronavirus vaccine.

Under the arrangement, Merck will dedicate two facilities in the United States to Johnson & Johnson’s shots. One will provide “fill-finish” services, the last stage of the production process during which the vaccine substance is placed in vials and packaged for distribution. The other will make the vaccine, and has the potential to vastly increase supply, perhaps even doubling what Johnson & Johnson could make on its own, the officials said.

“It’s a historic partnership,” said one of the officials, adding that the companies “recognize this is a wartime effort.” He praised their sense of “corporate citizenship.”

The officials declined to provide details about how Merck’s involvement will affect the projected supply of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and the timetable for distributing it. It could easily take two months to get the “fill-finish” plant ready and a few more months to equip the other facility to make the vaccine, according to a person familiar with the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue.

The Biden administration’s efforts to ramp up production of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine suggest that it sees the vaccine playing a bigger role in addressing the challenges ahead, such as the eventual need for children’s vaccines and possibly for boosters to counter virus variants, said a person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it. Johnson & Johnson is conducting a trial of a two-shot vaccine regimen, with the doses given two months apart; results are not expected until at least May.

Johnson & Johnson did not respond to a request for comment. Merck did not comment on the deal but said it “remains steadfast in our commitment to contribute to the global response to the pandemic.''

The administration officials indicated Biden would wield the powers of the Defense Production Act, a Korean War-era law, to give Merck priority in securing equipment it will need to upgrade its facilities for vaccine production, including the purchase of machinery, bags, tubing and filtration systems.

In teaming up with Merck, Johnson & Johnson has a partner with a century-long tradition of making vaccines. In the United States, Merck is the sole supplier of the combination childhood vaccine that protects against measles, mumps and rubella. It developed Gardasil, which protects against the human papillomavirus. And it won Food and Drug Administration approval for an Ebola vaccine in 2019.

But the company, which makes vaccines in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, encountered setbacks in its quest to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Merck announced Jan. 25 that it was halting work on two experimental shots for the virus. The vaccine did not stimulate enough antibodies in Phase 1 human clinical trials to justify continuing, the company said.

Johnson & Johnson has been searching the world for manufacturing sites where it could produce doses of its vaccine on a global scale. It has publicly disclosed more than half a dozen manufacturing sites on four continents that it said were winnowed from more than 100 possibilities.

“While the science and the biology, the chemistry is certainly challenging … the engineering feat of actually producing it is just as challenging, and we’ve been working very, very closely with partners around the world,” Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky told CNBC on Monday.

Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine uses an adenovirus vaccine as a vector — a harmless cold virus that does not replicate in the body — to deliver DNA instructions into a healthy human cell. The cell uses the genetic instructions to create a replica of a coronavirus spike protein that triggers an immune response that can recognize — and respond to — the real thing. The U.S. government paid the company $2 billion for development and clinical trials and preorders at a price of $10 per dose just days after it received emergency authorization from federal regulators.

The FDA on Saturday authorized the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for use in those 18 and older. The company said it would immediately ship nearly 4 million doses in the United States, and a total of 20 million by the end of March, which is 17 million less than expected under its government contract. Its current schedule calls for a recovery from those delays, with the company saying it is on track to deliver 100 million doses by the end of June. A top company executive told Congress last week that it has a goal of manufacturing 1 billion doses worldwide by year’s end.

Most of Johnson & Johnson’s partners disclosed to date are contract manufacturing companies, but now it is moving to team with larger drug companies that have seen their own vaccine projects delayed or fizzled.

Sanofi — which had to reboot its clinical trials of a vaccine candidate after early stumbles — announced last week that it would help Johnson & Johnson with final production steps and bottling in vials in Europe. Projected capacity from a Sanofi plant in France is 12 million doses per month.

BioNTech, Pfizer’s German partner on its mRNA vaccine, also announced deals in January for rivals Sanofi and Novartis to fill and finish vaccine vials in Europe.

The manufacturing process is time-consuming: Johnson and Johnson ferments large batches of its vaccine in vats at a contract manufacturing facility in Baltimore operated by Emergent, as well as locations in the Netherlands and India. That brewing step takes two months.

Then, the vaccine needs to be put into its final formulation and packaged into vials for shipping, which takes another five to six weeks, including testing for purity. In the United States and Europe, that final “fill-finish” process for vaccines has created bottlenecks across the industry, as manufacturers have flooded the supply chain with demand to finish hundreds of millions of doses.

Johnson & Johnson has agreements for fill-finish work to be done by two companies in the United States: Grand River Aseptic, with plants in Michigan, and Catalent, at a plant in Indiana. Catalent also is performing fill-finish operations for Moderna, which is obligated to deliver 300 million doses of its mRNA vaccine to the government by the end of July.

In Italy, Catalent also is helping Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca manufacture their vaccines.

Moderna said on Feb. 16 that Catalent had suffered short-term delays on final production of Moderna’s vaccine, but that the disruptions would not affect monthly deliveries to the U.S. government. The Financial Times reported on Saturday that Catalent’s system for automatic visual inspection of Johnson & Johnson vials had broken down, forcing staff members to inspect vials manually.

Catalent did not respond to a request for comment. The company told investors in an earnings call last month that it had sufficient, dedicated capacity at its Bloomington, Ind., plant to handle the vaccine volume for both companies.

Merck’s help in making Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine probably will require it to examine its product lines and decide what can be delayed or shifted, said John Grabenstein, a consultant and former executive director of medical affairs for vaccines at Merck.

“The question is, where is the bottleneck? The filling machines and the packaging machines are often the rate-limiting step,” he said. From a technical standpoint, it’s not too hard for other companies to help out, he said.

“It’s not just a mechanical engineering problem. It’s what products might get displaced to do this extra work,” he said. “Is there idle equipment? Oftentimes, there isn’t.”

Merck continues working on a pair of coronavirus treatments. One is an antiviral pill it is developing with a small company called Ridgeback Bio. It purchased worldwide rights to the drug last year from Ridgeback and has entered a late-phase clinical trial in an ongoing collaboration.

The other experimental Merck drug is an anti-inflammatory protein that it received as part of the purchase last year of a smaller company, OncoImmune.

Don't let your guard down

Today's Beau, Part 2

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

CPAC, Part 2 - The Dems

Today's Beau, Part 1

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

CPAC, part 1

About That Nazi Shit

Press Poodles have to stop asking the assholes if they're really assholes.

Laura Ingraham throws a Nazi salute in prime time at the 2016 convention.

"Very fine people" after Charlottesville in 2017.

"Stand back and stand by" in 2020.

"March on the Capitol" and "stop the steal" in 2021

And a host of other instances of Qult45 telling us straight up and out loud that they're fascists, and that they have no intention of stopping - they'll go right on pushing for authoritarian minority rule, while denying it the whole time.

WaPo: (pay wall)

As CPAC dismisses claims that its stage resembled a Nazi insignia, Hyatt calls hate symbols ‘abhorrent’

For four days at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Orlando, speakers at the Conservative Political Action Conference shared a number of contentious views, from echoing false claims about election fraud to undermining the seriousness of a pandemic that has killed more than 512,000 Americans.

But some critics also took aim at a seemingly more mundane detail: the shape of the conference stage.

Images of the CPAC stage went viral this weekend as many noted a resemblance to the Odal or Othala Rune, a symbol emblazoned on some Nazi uniforms. The Anti-Defamation League has classified the insignia as a hate symbol, which has been adopted by modern day white supremacists.

CPAC’s organizers vehemently denied any link between the stage design and the Nazi symbology, calling the criticism “outrageous and slanderous.”

“We have a long standing commitment to the Jewish community,” Matt Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union, said on Saturday in a tweet. “Cancel culture extremists must address antisemitism within their own ranks. CPAC proudly stands with our Jewish allies, including those speaking from this stage.”

As the controversy continued on Sunday, Hyatt Hotels said in a statement that it had addressed the concerns with the conference and denounced any use of hate symbols.

“We take the concern raised about the prospect of symbols of hate being included in the stage design at CPAC 2021 very seriously as all such symbols are abhorrent and unequivocally counter to our values as a company,” said Hyatt, which had faced pointed criticism for hosting the event.

The hotel noted that it allowed the event to continue after organizers “told us that any resemblance to a symbol of hate is unintentional.”

The blowback comes after CPAC organizers disinvited a scheduled speaker, social media figure Young Pharaoh, after liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America reported he had made anti-Semitic comments on Twitter. Pharoah tweeted that Judaism is a “complete lie” and “made up for political gain,” and said Jews are “thieving.”

According to the ADL, hate crimes against Jewish people in 2019 reached the highest number since the organization started keeping track in 1979, with 2,107 incidents, a 12 percent increase from the previous year.

Christian nationalists and QAnon followers tend to be anti-Semitic. That was seen in the Capitol attack.

The Othala Rune, which was derived from the Germanic alphabet used in pre-Roman Europe, was used by Nazis in an “attempt to reconstruct a mythic ‘Aryan’ past,” according to the ADL. The rune was used as insignia for two units in the Waffen-SS, which was “heavily involved” in carrying out the Holocaust, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

More recently, neo-Nazis and white supremacists have reused the symbol. Members often feature it in tattoos, in logos, or on flags, according to the ADL. The symbol was reportedly seen on at least one a banner at the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

"Reportedly".  Fuck you, Press Poodles. I was there that day. I saw that Nazi shit.

Antisemitic symbols were also used by some members of the pro-Trump mob that violently stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. One man wore a “Camp Auschwitz” shirt, and many held “America First” flags, a reference to a podcast hosted by Nick Fuentes, whose followers call themselves “Groyper Army.” According to the ADL the group embraces racist and anti-Semitic views.

CPAC this weekend gave a notable platform to Trump, who used the conference to attempt to solidify his hold on the GOP. The former president also said he would consider running again in 2024.

Trump’s campaign has had to disavow Nazi symbology in the past. In November, his reelection campaign posted dozens of ads on Facebook with red inverted triangle, a symbol used by Nazis to identify political prisoners in concentration camps. Facebook deactivated the ads.

Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, claimed that the shape is an “antifa symbol.”

“We would note that Facebook still has an inverted red triangle emoji in use, which looks exactly the same, so it’s curious that they would target only this ad,” Murtaugh said.

COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   311,937 (⬆︎ .27%)
New Deaths:      6,226 (⬆︎ .25%)

USA

New Cases:   49,433 (⬆︎ .18%)
New Deaths:    1,285 (⬆︎ .24%)

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations:          49.8 million
Total Priority Population: 40.9%
Total Population:             15.0%

A year ago, we were told that just a handful of Americans were sick, only one had died, and we had nothing to worry about - let's just get out there and keep Wall Street happy.

Over the last year, an American has been killed by COVID-19 every 60 seconds.

The Med-Nerds are worried about evolution - and what havoc the variants are likely to wreak on us.

I can hope they're just being overly cautious so as not to give anyone reason to let down their guard, but no matter - they've been right about almost everything so far.

WaPo:

Downtrend in new U.S. infections stalls, fueling concerns over virus variants’ spread

A steady decline in new coronavirus cases in the United States appears to have stalled in recent days, public health officials said, warning that new, more transmissible variants could be taking hold. The number of new infections has started to plateau and remains critically high, with more than 76,000 cases reported Saturday, even as hospitalizations continue to drop.

The apparent reversal in the course of the outbreak comes as Johnson & Johnson prepares to begin distributing its one-shot coronavirus vaccine following emergency use approval from the Food and Drug Administration over the weekend. The company will initially supply a limited number of doses, after which it will ramp up production. The hope is that the more flexible vaccine will be easier to deploy in harder-to-reach areas.

Other Stuff:

• Following approval by the FDA of the Johnson & Johnson single-shot vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending its use, with deliveries to start this week.
• Israel’s lightning-fast vaccination program is providing a wealth of information on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, including that it is safe for pregnant and nursing women as well as for those with food allergies and autoimmune disorders.
• Former president Donald Trump urged people to get vaccinated in his speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference, something he declined to advocate while in the White House.
• Mexico’s Oaxaca depends on tourism and is glad to have many visitors return, but their lax attitude toward the coronavirus restrictions is a problem.
• More than 512,000 people have died in the United States from the coronavirus with 28.5 million cases reported since the virus was first identified. The rolling average for both deaths and new cases has been on the rise this week. So far, 15 percent of the population has received at least one vaccine shot.
• A new survey of several industrialized countries reports coronavirus vaccine acceptance is on the rise since December. Interest in the United States has increased from 58 percent to 64 percent, and 89 percent of Britons are ready to be vaccinated.

Fun At CPAC

I think this may cause damage to your internal organs, so be advised.

Today's Wisdom Of The Internet

My online dating profile is "Microwave Dinner".

I look nothing like my picture, I'm done in about 5 minutes, and I'm just satisfying enough for you to try me again the next time you're feeling a little desperate.

COVID-19 Udate

World

New Cases:   432,779 (⬆︎ .38%)
New Deaths:      8,101 (⬆︎ .32%)

USA

New Cases:   64,320 (⬆︎ .22%)
New Deaths:    1,554 (⬆︎ .30%)

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations:          48.4 million
Total Priority Population: 39.8%
Total Population:             14.6%

Vaccine questions are rife, and as usual, the clinicians are reluctant to answer definitively, because that's their training - they know there's always some margin for error, or the possibility (no matter how slight) that their conclusions will end up being wrong in spite of their having great confidence in their interpretation of the data. 

And there are always exceptions. Some patients just insist on dying when they shouldn't, and some refuse to die even though they have practically nothing keeping them alive.

That's just how that shit goes sometimes.

But anyway - vaccines...

WaPo:

Getting the vaccine will protect you from the coronavirus — and it may keep people around you healthier, too

Health experts say the coronavirus vaccines may do more than protect recipients from covid-19. Researchers say people who are vaccinated and still contract the virus may carry less of it and also shed less of it — meaning those whom they expose to it may not become as sick.

There isn’t a lot of evidence yet to support this hypothesis, but researchers say it is likely the case based largely on observations in animal studies, as well as some preliminary research in humans.

This, however, doesn’t mean that vaccinated people should stop taking precautions, such as wearing a mask.

“Even if you’re vaccinated and you’re going out, keep masking up until we get more people vaccinated,” said Ilhem Messaoudi, director of the Center for Virus Research at the University of California at Irvine.

If I get vaccinated and later contract the virus, will I have a lighter viral load?

Experts say it’s a logical conclusion, but we don’t have enough evidence to say for sure.

Although there is no conclusive data to answer this precise question, recent preliminary studies have gotten close. In one preprint, researchers examined saliva samples in patients with covid-19 and discovered that those with a higher viral load had more severe cases. So it’s reasonable to assume the reverse could be true — that a lower viral load could result in less severe cases — said Ben Neuman, a virologist at Texas A&M University.

In another, researchers found a lower viral load in covid patients who had been vaccinated, allowing them to infer that people who contract the virus post-vaccination shed less of it than the placebo recipients.

“But I don’t think we have systematic data from vaccines to see whether or not their levels of virus are lower,” said Stuart Ray, professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University.

There is also evidence to suggest the vaccines could prevent people from getting the coronavirus all together.

In Moderna’s trial study, there was some provisional evidence that the vaccine could prevent some asymptomatic cases. Another study showed the Pfizer vaccine significantly prevented spread in animals, according to the company’s chief executive. That’s promising, but we don’t yet have any results from that kind of a study in humans.

The Israeli Health Ministry found that one week after being fully vaccinated, only 317 people out of 715,425 tested positive for the coronavirus. That suggests the vaccines are preventing some asymptomatic infection, but it was only a survey and not a rigorous study.

Does that mean I will transmit less of it to others?

Ray said researchers can extrapolate that people who catch the virus after they are vaccinated “would probably shed less virus because they are at least partially immune,” meaning that they would also transmit less of the virus to others.

“But one of the things we need is a standard viral load [test], and we don’t have that,” he added.

Does that also mean people I expose will not get as sick?

Again, probably. But the data is lacking.

The question has been answered in animals, though. Neuman, the virologist with Texas A&M, said that with most viruses, including the coronavirus, “when you put it into animals, if you put in low amounts of virus, quite often you don’t get an infection. It’s not enough to take hold.”

But “putting in more virus leads to more disease. You can get mild, moderate and severe disease depending on how much you put in and on which animal model you’re using and on which route the virus goes in,” he said.

By extension, it is likely that the same would be true in humans, according to the researchers.

Why are these questions so difficult to answer?

Because, Neuman said, the experiments needed to prove many of these concepts in humans would involve “deliberately infecting people with different amounts of the virus,” which would be “totally unethical.”

“But we have a lot of information from animal experiments that I think kind of points to what the likely answer is,” he said.