-- Martin Luther King
Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column
Sep 13, 2021
COVID-19 Update
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
Beau does the math - and explains the fallacy of "Orwellian" arguments against mandating vaccinations.
Sep 12, 2021
COVID-19 Update
Coupla things that seem to be at odds:
President Biden’s far-reaching assertion of presidential authority to require vaccines for 80 million American workers relies on a first-of-its-kind application of a 51-year-old law that grants the federal government the power to protect employees from “grave dangers” at the workplace.
White House officials believe the emergency authority provided by Congress under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 is a legitimate and legal way to combat the coronavirus pandemic. But they acknowledge that the law’s emergency provisions, which were employed in previous decades to protect workers from asbestos and other industrial dangers, have never been used to require a vaccine.
The novelty of the effort is at the heart of legal threats from Republican lawmakers, governors, pundits and others, many of whom have vowed to challenge the president’s use of the workplace rules. Gov. Brian Kemp, Republican of Georgia, said the move “is blatantly unlawful, and Georgia will not stand for it.” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, called Mr. Biden’s actions “utterly lawless” on Twitter.
In a fund-raising email sent on Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican who has issued antimask orders, wrote, “Joe Biden has declared war on constitutional government, the rule of law, and the jobs and livelihoods of millions of Americans.”
But top aides to the president do not appear to be shaken by what they say was an expected response from those quarters. On Friday morning, Mr. Biden responded to threats of lawsuits from his adversaries.
“Have at it,” he said.
And experts said the administration appeared to be on strong legal ground because it was relying on existing authority granted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration by the legislative branch and supported by decades of judicial rulings.
As schools resume in-person classes across the United States, many parents have grown increasingly anxious for their children under 12, who remain ineligible for Covid vaccinations. And so some of those parents are taking extraordinary steps to get their younger children vaccinated in one available channel: enrolling them in clinical trials.
Dr. Tina Sosa, a pediatric hospitalist and mother of two, was able to get her 3-year-old son vaccinated by enrolling him in a Pfizer trial at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center during her fellowship there. He had no side effects from the two shots he received in April, she said. “I even squeezed his arm and asked did it hurt, and he said no.”
Now at the University of Rochester Medical Center in upstate New York, Dr. Sosa enrolled her 7-month-old in a Moderna trial set to there begin next month.
Another parent, Leng Vong Reiff of Clive, Iowa, jumped when she heard of openings in a Pfizer trial taking place hours away at a Nebraska clinic.
But spots in clinical trials are relatively rare, and it will be months before the F.D.A. can fully assess the results and decide whether lowering the age of eligibility is warranted — so some parents have even sought, through their pediatricians, off-label shots that are adult doses, a practice the F.D.A. discouraged on Friday.
This summer has been particularly trying for parents, especially after public health experts warned that the Delta variant was highly transmissible — even from vaccinated household members. Although children still are less likely than adults to be hospitalized or die from Covid, nearly 30,000 children with Covid were admitted to hospitals in August, the highest level to date.
As many as 48 million U.S. children are under 12, and Covid concerns about them extend beyond their immediate health. They form a sizable pocket of vulnerability for the nation, one that will remain even if President Biden succeeds in vaccinating 80 million people or more under the mandates he announced on Thursday.
First is Biden's use of the OSHA statutes to mandate vaccinations vs the GOP taking up the cry of "lawlessness" (because of course - they're fucking Republicans after all)
And the other one is parents in the US are trying to wrangle NIH and the vaccine makers to get their kids signed up for the clinical trials for the Under-12 Cohort Studies. Plus the weirdly not-so-weird phenomenon of parents asking their doctors to go around the prescribing rules in order to get their kids vaccinated
President Biden’s far-reaching assertion of presidential authority to require vaccines for 80 million American workers relies on a first-of-its-kind application of a 51-year-old law that grants the federal government the power to protect employees from “grave dangers” at the workplace.
White House officials believe the emergency authority provided by Congress under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 is a legitimate and legal way to combat the coronavirus pandemic. But they acknowledge that the law’s emergency provisions, which were employed in previous decades to protect workers from asbestos and other industrial dangers, have never been used to require a vaccine.
The novelty of the effort is at the heart of legal threats from Republican lawmakers, governors, pundits and others, many of whom have vowed to challenge the president’s use of the workplace rules. Gov. Brian Kemp, Republican of Georgia, said the move “is blatantly unlawful, and Georgia will not stand for it.” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, called Mr. Biden’s actions “utterly lawless” on Twitter.
In a fund-raising email sent on Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican who has issued antimask orders, wrote, “Joe Biden has declared war on constitutional government, the rule of law, and the jobs and livelihoods of millions of Americans.”
But top aides to the president do not appear to be shaken by what they say was an expected response from those quarters. On Friday morning, Mr. Biden responded to threats of lawsuits from his adversaries.
“Have at it,” he said.
And experts said the administration appeared to be on strong legal ground because it was relying on existing authority granted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration by the legislative branch and supported by decades of judicial rulings.
And then the second bit - which tells me most people are anti-anti-vax, and, dare I say it, we seem to have turned that old "silent majority" thing upside down so it's working in favor of what this country's supposed to be about.
But BTW, I really do think most of us are on the right side of not only COVID, but most things right now - abortion, gun regulation, tax the rich, better social programs, good government, etc - while the bullying minority are busy pimping the bullshit that their shrinking base (18-23% of the people) constitute the "real America", which is what keeps leading them to step on their own dicks pretty much every time outa the gate.
Anyway, the second part - NYT:
As schools resume in-person classes across the United States, many parents have grown increasingly anxious for their children under 12, who remain ineligible for Covid vaccinations. And so some of those parents are taking extraordinary steps to get their younger children vaccinated in one available channel: enrolling them in clinical trials.
Dr. Tina Sosa, a pediatric hospitalist and mother of two, was able to get her 3-year-old son vaccinated by enrolling him in a Pfizer trial at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center during her fellowship there. He had no side effects from the two shots he received in April, she said. “I even squeezed his arm and asked did it hurt, and he said no.”
Now at the University of Rochester Medical Center in upstate New York, Dr. Sosa enrolled her 7-month-old in a Moderna trial set to there begin next month.
Another parent, Leng Vong Reiff of Clive, Iowa, jumped when she heard of openings in a Pfizer trial taking place hours away at a Nebraska clinic.
But spots in clinical trials are relatively rare, and it will be months before the F.D.A. can fully assess the results and decide whether lowering the age of eligibility is warranted — so some parents have even sought, through their pediatricians, off-label shots that are adult doses, a practice the F.D.A. discouraged on Friday.
This summer has been particularly trying for parents, especially after public health experts warned that the Delta variant was highly transmissible — even from vaccinated household members. Although children still are less likely than adults to be hospitalized or die from Covid, nearly 30,000 children with Covid were admitted to hospitals in August, the highest level to date.
As many as 48 million U.S. children are under 12, and Covid concerns about them extend beyond their immediate health. They form a sizable pocket of vulnerability for the nation, one that will remain even if President Biden succeeds in vaccinating 80 million people or more under the mandates he announced on Thursday.
Sep 11, 2021
Missed This One
Smithsonian Magazine:
About 115,000 years ago in what is now present-day Poland, a large bird ate a child. As Laura Geggel at LiveScience reports, it’s not known whether the bird killed the Neanderthal child or happened upon its body and scavenged its remains, but two tiny finger bones found by paleontologists tell a gruesome tale, all the same.
The two phalanges, each about one-third of an inch long, were found several years ago in Ciemna Cave (also known as Ojcow Cave) along with an assortment of animal bones. When researchers took a closer look at the cache they realized two things: that those two digits came from a hominin species and that the bones were dotted with holes. “Analyses show that this is the result of passing through the digestive system of a large bird,” Paweł Valde-Nowak from the Institute of Archeology of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków says in a press release. “This is the first such known example from the Ice Age.”
The bones are too deteriorated to perform DNA tests on, but the researchers say they are certain that the digits come from a Neanderthal youth between the ages of 5 and 7, and their work will be detailed later this year in the Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology. “[We] have no doubts that these are Neanderthal remains, because they come from a very deep layer of the cave, a few meters below the present surface,” Valde-Nowak says. “This layer also contains typical stone tools used by the Neanderthal.”
It’s not clear how the bones ended up in the cave and whether Neanderthals put them there or if they were deposited by the bird. It’s possible that the Neanderthals only used the cave seasonally and wild animals used it the rest of the year.
Prior to this find, the oldest known remains of human ancestors or relatives in Poland were three Neanderthal molars dating to 52,000 to 42,000 years ago. According to Valde-Nowak, Neanderthals likely first appeared in Poland—and in Eurasia as a whole—some 300,000 years ago.
The lingering question, however, is what kind of bird could attack and eat a human child? The researchers don’t address the topic, but Sarah Sloat at Inverse reports that the fossil record shows other instances of hominin children becoming bird food. She reports that the remains of the Taung child, a 2.8 million-year-old Australopithecus africanus found in the Republic of South Africa in 1924 and reanalyzed in 2006 shows puncture marks below its eye sockets consistent with eagle talons. In fact, today's African crowned eagle is known to prey on large monkeys that weigh about the same as a human child. Typically, the birds kill their quarry on the spot, only taking bits and pieces back to the nest. If a similar eagle killed the Neanderthal child, that would certainly explain why only two small finger bones were found together.
It’s not clear how the bones ended up in the cave and whether Neanderthals put them there or if they were deposited by the bird. It’s possible that the Neanderthals only used the cave seasonally and wild animals used it the rest of the year.
Prior to this find, the oldest known remains of human ancestors or relatives in Poland were three Neanderthal molars dating to 52,000 to 42,000 years ago. According to Valde-Nowak, Neanderthals likely first appeared in Poland—and in Eurasia as a whole—some 300,000 years ago.
The lingering question, however, is what kind of bird could attack and eat a human child? The researchers don’t address the topic, but Sarah Sloat at Inverse reports that the fossil record shows other instances of hominin children becoming bird food. She reports that the remains of the Taung child, a 2.8 million-year-old Australopithecus africanus found in the Republic of South Africa in 1924 and reanalyzed in 2006 shows puncture marks below its eye sockets consistent with eagle talons. In fact, today's African crowned eagle is known to prey on large monkeys that weigh about the same as a human child. Typically, the birds kill their quarry on the spot, only taking bits and pieces back to the nest. If a similar eagle killed the Neanderthal child, that would certainly explain why only two small finger bones were found together.
When you dig into it, there’s actually somewhat of a rich history of avian hunters gobbling up children. Just a few years ago, researchers found evidence that the Maori legend of Te Hokioi, a giant eagle that snatched children, was likely based on a real species as well. CT scans of the bones of the large Haast eagle, which went extinct in New Zealand about 500 years ago, showed that it was a predator, not a scavenger, and had talons strong enough to pierce a human pelvis.
Even today, there are occasional reports from Alaska of Thunderbirds—eagles the size of small airplanes—including one reported earlier this year, though there's no concrete evidence such a bird ever existed.
Today's Tweet
Choices
1991: I think it would be amazing to be a college professor some day.
— Carl T. Bergstrom (@CT_Bergstrom) September 10, 2021
2021: I wonder if I should prop open the classroom doors in violation the University Directive on Active Shooter Prevention in order to protect my students from the Pandemic that has killed 650,000 Americans.
COVID-19 Update
Biden has issued mandates for all federal employees, and all companies doing business under federal contract, to get vaccinated. And of course, there's a double-digit percentage of contrarians who will continue behaving like punk-ass cry-babies about it.
And he's ordered the Labor Department to write up some rules for workplace safety that require vaccination or weekly testing.
Bob Harvey’s phone did not ring.
In Washington, a political furor had erupted over President Biden’s new coronavirus vaccine and testing mandate for businesses, with Republicans howling about an unconstitutional power grab and vowing to challenge him in the courts.
But in Houston, where Harvey heads the city’s largest business group, employers took the news in stride.
“I have not heard from my members today, which is interesting. I think the reason is what he announced is so in line with the conversations we’ve been having,” Harvey, the chief executive officer of the Greater Houston Partnership, said Friday. “This will come as a relief to the business community, to have an order that requires all of them to move together.”
The president’s decision to require medium and large companies to subject their employees to mandated vaccination or weekly coronavirus testing represents a sharp expansion of the federal government’s workplace powers, according to political scientists and legal experts.
For a leader who has said he is committed to reviving Washington’s bipartisan impulse, it amounted to an unapologetic offensive in the culture wars that have divided the country and inflamed its politics.
Instead of directly mandating Americans take the vaccine, Biden effectively outsourced the job to the business community. But unlike previous White House interventions in the market — notably including President Barack Obama’s 2010 health insurance mandate — Biden’s action was welcomed by many bosses.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) called Biden’s move “an assault on private businesses,” but businesses in his state’s largest city did not see it that way.
“The context in which this is occurring really matters,” said Harvey, a former energy industry executive. “We’ve been hit hard by this fourth wave [of the virus] … and employers simply must play a role in addressing this problem. We’ve tried it every other way.”
In a recent survey, 23 percent of partnership members already required coronavirus vaccines for some or all employees and an additional 30 percent were considering doing so. Of the remaining 46 percent that were not, most said they feared that some workers would quit rather than submit.
The president’s blanket order, applying to all companies with at least 100 employees, eliminated that worry, Harvey said.
Texas is a hotbed of resistance to pandemic health measures. Its vaccination performance — 58.6 percent of those 12 and older are fully vaccinated — trails the national average, according to state and federal data.
Employers in the Houston area have been talking for weeks about what to do in response to the virulent delta strain of the coronavirus, which has emptied workplaces and filled hospitals, Harvey said. Now, they can get down to it.
“The reality is there are a number of businesses that are wanting the government to step in. This gives them the cover to do what they want to do anyway,” said Charles Shipan, a political scientist at the University of Michigan.
Indeed, the vocal Republican opposition to the president’s initiative threatens to leave the GOP at odds with its traditional business constituency.
Houston is a largely Democratic city. But Harvey’s group has members in 11 counties, nine of which backed former president Donald Trump last year, and includes numerous companies in traditionally conservative industries, such as oil and banking. Among them: ExxonMobil, Chevron, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo.
Biden’s new covid plan also drew backing from some national business groups, such as the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American Apparel and Footwear Association
And the president cited the example of several large companies that already require employees to be vaccinated, including Disney and United Airlines and “even Fox News.” (The cable network actually required employees to disclose their vaccination status, not get vaccinated, according to published reports.)
“We’re going to reduce the spread of covid-19 by increasing the share of the workforce that is vaccinated in businesses all across America,” Biden said, speaking in the State Dining Room.
The president said he was acting, in part, to protect the economic recovery. In recent weeks, the resurgent virus has drained momentum from industries that had been rebounding, such as the airlines.
Employers added just 235,000 jobs last month, well below economists’ expectations, and forecasts for September aren’t much better.
In August, the University of Michigan consumer sentiment gauge fell to its lowest mark since the pandemic’s initial weeks. Wholesale inflation on Friday hit a new annual high of 8.3 percent. And on Wall Street, stock prices have drifted sideways for two months.
If the need for federal action last week seemed clear, the response in some quarters to Biden’s announcement was hostile.
Several Republican governors, including in Texas, Georgia, and South Dakota, vowed to fight the mandate in court.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said Biden and the Democrats had “declared war against capitalism” and he pledged to “fight them to the gates of hell to protect the liberty and livelihood of every South Carolinian.”
Even before the president spoke on Thursday afternoon, the Federalist, a right-wing publication, assailed the vaccine-and-testing plan as “a fascist move.”
J.D. Vance, a Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, called for “mass civil disobedience,” urging Americans to refuse to comply with any new requirement or to pay any subsequent fine. And Josh Mandel, another Senate aspirant in Ohio, warned that Biden would use “the Gestapo” to enforce his directive.
Social media chatter about workers quitting their jobs rather than complying with the new federal mandate has left Wall Street economists unimpressed. Michael Feroli of JPMorgan Chase called it “noise,” pointing out that employees who quit are not eligible for unemployment insurance.
Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. macro strategist for TD Securities, said the option of weekly testing would offer vaccine skeptics an alternative, thus minimizing any workforce loss. And cautious service-sector workers might be drawn back into the labor force if it appeared that more of their co-workers were likely to be immunized, he said.
Biden’s action is the latest in a long expansion of presidential involvement in business affairs. From a laissez-faire stance in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Washington responded to war and economic crises by increasing its sway over commercial activities.
Numerous White House occupants have battled with powerful industries over their commercial practices. President Theodore Roosevelt broke up John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil trust. President John F. Kennedy forced U.S. Steel to roll back price increases at a time of incipient inflation. President Richard M. Nixon went farther in 1971, imposing economy-wide wage and price controls.
Yet Biden’s coronavirus plan tests the limits of presidential power, according to Shipan, who has written on the subject. The president is requiring employers to delve into employees’ personal medical practices, not companies’ market behavior.
“This is a break from what presidential power has done in the past,” said Shipan. “That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily outside the boundaries of what presidents have the power to do.”
Biden has ordered the Labor Department to write an emergency rule requiring employers with more than 100 workers to demand weekly tests or proof of vaccination. Violations are punishable with fines up to $14,000 each.
Up to 80 million Americans could be covered by the action.
In 1970, Congress gave the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) authority to write regulations governing workplace safety, including emergency standards that are valid for six months.
In June, the agency issued an emergency rule to prevent the spread of coronavirus in health care settings. But courts have fully or partially struck down five of the nine emergency rules OSHA has promulgated, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Josh Blackman, a constitutional law specialist at the South Texas College of Law, said Biden was attempting to stretch a half-century old law beyond what Congress had intended.
OSHA regulations customarily deal with workplace conditions that directly affect employee health and well-being, such as the handling of hazardous chemicals, slippery floors or dangerous stairs.
“This is completely novel. There’s a credible argument it goes beyond the scope of delegated authority,” he said. “Lawsuits will be filed and inevitably some judge will find this goes too far.”
It goes too far? Requiring a business to take steps to better ensure safety in the workplace for both staffers and customers - that's going too far?
Fuck that shit, Peewee. Sometimes you have to shut the fuck up and eat your vegetables.
The Lie Itself Is The Point
Facts are stubborn things.
Second, it's not only a pretext for pushing their voter suppression laws, it acts as inoculation for them.
We have to be able to establish agreement on the facts as they are.
2 + 2 = 4. It's not 3 and it's not 6.9, and we're not going to negotiate and then settle on 5.1.
Either it's 4 or y'all can fuck off and stay home.
Brian Tyler Cohen
First, the big lie makes Trump and Republicans seem more marketable to the rubes.
Second, it's not only a pretext for pushing their voter suppression laws, it acts as inoculation for them.
ie: They say "the election was rigged!", and everybody else says "bullshit". Then they can go about actually rigging the next election, pointing back to all of us, saying "bullshit", and they'll defend it with "even the Democrats say there's no fraud etc etc etc".
- Authoritarians lie as a means of demonstrating their power
- Every accusation is a confession - the lies tell us what they're up to
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