Today's Tweet

Also today's eternal sadness.

A 5 year old child was killed in a home in Minnesota on Thanksgiving by a 13 year old making a video for social media. I do not see an end to gun violence in America, even though I am screaming that it has to stop. https://t.co/TLQWpkBkl6

— Barbara Malmet (@B52Malmet) November 28, 2021

COVID-19 Update

WaPo: (freebie)

As omicron variant is detected around the world, travel bans may be too late, experts say

As governments scrambled to close their borders to southern African countries as a shield against a potentially dangerous new coronavirus variant, experts warned the travel bans may be too late — with confirmed and suspected cases cropping up as far away as Asia and Australia.

The variant, dubbed omicron, has a high number of mutations that could make it more easily transmissible. It was identified by scientists in South Africa, where early data suggest it is spreading more quickly than the now-dominant variant known as delta. Several countries, including the United States, have curbed flights from the region while epidemiologists work to identify how far the variant may have spread.

“By the time we have enough information to institute a travel ban, the cat’s already out of the bag, so to speak,” Nicole A. Errett, a professor at the University of Washington who has done research on public health emergency preparedness, said in an email. “Omicron has already been detected in other continents. A travel ban could in theory buy some time by reducing the spread of new seed cases, but we are talking on the order of days to weeks,” she added.

What to know about the omicron variant of the coronavirus

Confirmed and suspected covid-19 cases caused by the new variant have been detected in a growing number of regions, including Britain, Belgium, Botswana, Germany, Italy, Hong Kong, Israel and the Czech Republic. Most of the cases outside Africa appear to involve people who had traveled to the continent.

Austria also joined the growing list of countries where the variant has been reported, detecting its first suspected case of the new variant in the Tirol region, Reuters reported Sunday, citing Austrian officials.

Authorities said in a statement that a traveler who returned from South Africa last week had tested positive for the coronavirus with indications of the new variant, though further sequencing will take place over the next few days to confirm the variant.

Earlier this month Austria became the first country in Europe to say it will mandate the coronavirus vaccine for everyone eligible and ordered a fourth national lockdown.

Two planes carrying about 600 passengers from South Africa landed in the Netherlands on Saturday with 61 people infected with the coronavirus — including 13 cases of the new omicron variant — Dutch health authorities said Sunday.

Health officials in Australia on Sunday confirmed two fully vaccinated, asymptomatic passengers on a flight into Sydney tested positive for the new coronavirus variant and are now in government isolation. They were among 14 people from southern Africa who arrived Saturday evening on a flight from Doha, Qatar, officials said. All 260 people aboard the plane are considered close contacts and have been ordered to self-quarantine. Canberra announced a two-week travel ban on nine southern African countries.

“This clearly demonstrates the pandemic is not over,” Dominic Perrottet, the premier of New South Wales state, home to Sydney, told reporters on Sunday. “There are limits to what the state and federal government can do: These variants will get into the country. It is inevitable.”

The emergence of a new and potentially more menacing variant raises questions about what lessons officials have learned in the past two years, and whether they’re prepared for worrisome mutations that could evade current vaccines.

In Britain, the former head of the government’s vaccine task force accused leaders of ignoring a plan to prepare for the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants. Clive Dix, who chaired the vaccine task force until April, told the Guardian’s Observer that he wrote a “very specific proposal on what we should put in place right now for the emergence of any new virus that escaped the vaccine,” adding: “I haven’t seen a sign of any of those activities yet.”

On Sunday, Britain’s health secretary Sajid Javid said vaccines may be less effective against Omicron, admitting “we just don’t know enough” about the new variant to know for sure what the risk might be.

“There is reason to think that maybe, and I stress the word may, that this variant may turn out to make our vaccines less effective, it may not,” he told Sky News on Sunday as the government announced new measures to slow transmission of the virus.

From Tuesday, face masks will be compulsory in shops and on public transport in England. The U.K. will also require all international travelers to take a PCR test, which can detect the new variant, and to self-quarantine until results are returned.

Europe is in the grips of an increasingly deadly outbreak of the fast-spreading delta variant that has prompted officials in some countries to revert to measures such as lockdowns used to control the virus in the early days of the pandemic.

Singapore, which has been easing border restrictions, is watching the new omicron variant “very closely” and may be forced to roll back some easing measures, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a speech Sunday, Bloomberg reported.

White House officials said that the world’s failure to contain the rapid spread of delta this spring demonstrated the need to be vigilant in staving off omicron, which public health experts fear could sicken vaccinated people and spread more rapidly than delta.

In designating omicron a “variant of concern,” the World Health Organization said Friday that preliminary evidence suggests an increased risk of reinfection with this variant for people who have previously had the virus, compared with other variants. However, there are also high rates of people living with HIV and AIDS in southern Africa, which experts said makes it harder to interpret the effectiveness of either vaccine-induced or natural immunity against infection.

U.S. officials said they quickly jumped into action after learning that the new variant contained long-feared mutations, such as the potential ability to evade vaccinations, and appeared to descend from a different genetic lineage than delta. Senior officials such as Fauci, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky and others began discussions with government scientists, South African officials and vaccine manufacturers that intensified on Thanksgiving Day.

President Biden and White House officials this weekend also urged unvaccinated Americans to get inoculated and called on eligible adults to get booster shots, saying that the vaccines remain the best protection against the virus.

Only about 24 percent of South Africans are fully vaccinated, according to Johns Hopkins University data, compared with nearly 60 percent of Americans.

“Every time the virus reproduces inside someone, there’s a chance of it mutating and a new variant emerging,” said Vinod Balasubramaniam, a virologist at Monash University in Malaysia. “The main way to stop variants is equal global vaccination. The emergence of omicron reminds us of how important that goal remains.”

The world’s major manufacturers of coronavirus vaccines, including Pfizer and BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna and Chinese vaccine maker Sinovac said they are working to investigate the new strain of the virus and adapt their shots if needed.

Experts cautioned that the flurry of activity to fight omicron may turn out to be largely unnecessary, as researchers learn in the coming days whether current vaccines can ward off the variant or successfully limit symptoms.

“Not all covid-19 variants cause trouble. For example, lambda and mu have not taken off globally. So it is possible that the new variant, omicron, could hopefully fizzle out,” said Sanjaya Senanayake, an infectious diseases expert at the Australian National University.

Omicron’s emergence underscored the complexities countries face in trying to return to parts of pre-pandemic life alongside ongoing viral waves and variants.

In one encapsulating image, Czech President Milos Zemen ended his country’s weeks-long political crisis and swore in a new prime minister from behind a box of transparent panels on Sunday after Zemen, who has preexisting health problems, tested positive for the coronavirus last week.

The Continuing American Tragedy

This story perfectly illustrates the fallacy of "A Good Guy With A Gun".

Oh, you acted on impulse and did a little vigilante shit for us? Great - here's a fatal bullet wound in the back, courtesy of the cops you were "helping". Thanks. Anything you want us to tell your family?

A gun fight is ridiculously fluid and chaotic. The last thing the actual good guys need is for some random asshole with a gun and a Wyatt Earp complex to make it worse.

The Denver Post: (pay wall)

2 minutes, 20 gunshots, 3 dead: How the Olde Town Arvada shootings unfolded minute by minute

Law enforcement released some details over five months, but new documents paint fullest picture yet

Twenty gunshots exploded in Olde Town Arvada one Monday afternoon last June, shattering windows, killing three and undermining the sense of safety previously held by those who live and work nearby.

In less than two minutes, the scene turned from a pleasant summer day in suburbia to a cacophony of screams and sirens. Diners sitting outside restaurants in the Colorado sunshine heard shotgun pellets whiz by their ears. People in the busy commercial district hid behind dumpsters and in restaurant attics.

In the end, three men lay bleeding outside the library: a beloved police officer, a gunman intent on killing as many law enforcement officers as possible, and a nearby shopper with a legally concealed handgun who stepped in and prevented further bloodshed.

In the five months since the June 21 shootings, police and prosecutors have released information in fits and starts. But records obtained by The Denver Post after First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King announced on Nov. 8 that she would not prosecute the Arvada police officer who shot and killed “good Samaritan” Johnny Hurley offer the most complete picture of the chaos that day and how law enforcement responded.

The 1,090-page report includes interviews and accounts from dozens of law enforcement officers who responded to the scene as well as descriptions of radio traffic and witness interviews. Though Arvada police officers did not wear body cameras at the time of the shooting, The Post used the documents, surveillance videos and body camera footage from other responding agencies to piece together the following account of the chaotic scene.

“It was the absolute scariest thing I’ve been a part of in 15 years at this police department,” said one of the first officers on scene, whose name was redacted from the report. “I thought that I was going to have to either have to use lethal force or I was going to be murdered.”

One witness, a guitar teacher, told investigators he heard gunshots and saw Beesley fall. He fled as the sound of more gunfire echoed in the square.

“I was visualizing that Olde Town Square was a bloodbath,” the witness, whose name also was redacted, told police. “I was freaking out.”

- more -

The piece goes on to detail the kind of cluster fuck we all knew was coming. And what we all know this is bound to happen again and again until we figure out how to sit down and hash out a few sensible rules to govern the sick shit growing from the worship of guns and violence here in USAmerica Inc.

Describe Libertarians For Me

Libertarians are like house cats - they perceive themselves to be fiercely self-reliant, while being utterly dependent on a system they don't appreciate and can't understand.

Bonhoeffer Revisited

"Reasons fall on deaf ears."

Stupidity - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

How Rich?

It would be good if I could figure out how to embed this, but I can't - and it's possible the people who came up with it are smart enough not to give me the chance.

Anyway, go look it over, and scroll all the way thru it so you get the full effect of just how fucked up our system of "meritocratic capitalism" has become.

https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/

I got ridiculously lucky and made a few million dollars in my career. If you take all that money and make a stack of 100-dollar bills, it would be about 10 feet tall.

If you take all of Jeff Bezos's money (let's be really conservative and say $150 billion), and you make a stack of 100-dollar bills, it would be over 100 miles tall.

100 MILES

COVID-19 Update

In yesterday's update, there was a quote from a guy in Europe bitching about how hard it is to run his business, and this sat on my brain:

“It seems the government is always running behind the facts,” Dossche said. “They shouldn’t be changing the rules every two weeks.”

I hate that shit. Governments aren't changing the rules just for grins-n-giggles, dummy. Governments have to change their response to circumstances dictated by the virus, and people's behavior.

Maybe you'd like it better if we go back to leeches and incantations - that way, you never have to be burdened with learning anything new, and you can just die after infecting your whole neighborhood.

I'll make a radical assumption here, and say you may be ignorant but that doesn't make you uneducable.

So here's the short version - it's not my job to change your fuckin' diaper. Time to grow up a little.

WaPo: (freebie)

What to know about the omicron variant of the coronavirus

A new variant of the coronavirus that causes covid-19 is raising concern around the globe.

South Africa on Thursday confirmed that scientists there had detected a variant with a high number of mutations that could make it more easily transmissible. On Friday, the World Health Organization labeled it a “variant of concern,” a classification it has given to only four other variants so far. The global health agency also gave it a Greek letter designation: omicron.

Several countries, including the United States, moved to curb flights on Friday Saturday from southern Africa, while pharmaceutical makers vowed to keep close watch on how well their vaccines hold up against the new variant.

Thus far, there is too little research to draw conclusions, with experts urging caution but not panic.

“This is the most concerning variant we’ve seen since delta,” Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said in an interview Friday. “It’s going to take a really high bar for something to take over for delta, and we don’t know whether this is going to do it.”

Here’s what you need to know:

Where has omicron been confirmed?

Although it is unknown where the variant came from, it was first detected in the southern region of Africa. On Tuesday, scientists in South Africa made data of the variant public. Noticing the distinct sequence, a virologist at Imperial College London, Tom Peacock, raised alarms about the “really awful Spike mutation profile.”

In South Africa, where just 35 percent of people are fully vaccinated, the variant has begun to spread rapidly. A number of factors could be contributing to the rising caseload, including the nation’s low vaccination rate. Researchers are also working to determine if the mutations make the variant more easily transmissible or if it has a mechanism that allows the variant to escape a natural or vaccine-acquired immune response.

At a news conference Friday, Ian Sanne, an infectious-disease specialist who is a member of South Africa’s Ministerial Advisory Council on covid-19, said that “Overall, we do think it’s more transmissible.”

Thus far, some cases have also been identified in Belgium, Botswana, Hong Kong and Israel. But officials from a number of countries warn that the variant, also known as B.1.1.529, may already be spreading undetected.

The United Kingdom on Friday reported that while no cases have been detected there, the variant’s large number of mutations “are likely to be biologically significant.”

Scientists have cautioned that while more cases are expected to crop up, it’s unclear if the variant will match the reach of the delta variant, by far the world’s most dominant, according to the WHO.

“It’s concerning, but it’s still iffy,” Topol said.

What do we know about the variant?

While there’s much to still learn, scientists have confirmed some important details.

For one, its genetic profile is unique from other circulating variants, meaning it represents a new lineage of the virus.

The new variant is distinct from other variants in another critical way: There’s a greater number of mutations. Tulio de Oliveira, director of the Center for Epidemic Response and Innovation in South Africa, said there are more than 30 mutations in the spike protein, the part of the virus that binds to human cells, allowing it to gain entry.

Scientists are worried that could mean omicron is more transmissible and better at evading the body’s immune defenses, making vaccines less effective.

“The one good news, if there’s any good news, is that this variant, the B.1.1.529, can be detected by one particular PCR assay,” de Oliveira said at a news conference, meaning diagnostic labs can quickly identify the new variant rather than having to rely on whole genome sequencing.

Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who has conducted mutational scanning experiments for the B.1.1.529 variant, noted that three mutations of the variant could make the virus a more elusive target for antibodies produced through vaccines or prior infection but cautioned that there is still much to learn.

“What that’s going to mean for how likely people are to get infected, even if they’ve been vaccinated, it’s too early to say,” Bloom said, noting that more traditional experiments should provide more data. “But having a drop in the antibody neutralization is never a good thing.”

What’s being done about it?

Within days of the discovery of the variant, several countries began imposing restrictions on flights to and from South Africa and its neighbors.

Britain, Australia, Japan, Thailand and others introduced travel bans or quarantine rules for air passengers arriving from the southern African region. The European Union and the United States have also announced restrictions.

The U.S. restrictions will apply to travelers from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi. They do not apply to American citizens and lawful permanent residents. President Biden, in a statement, said the move is “a precautionary measure,” and urged Americans to get vaccinated and get booster shots.

“If you have not gotten vaccinated, or have not taken your children to get vaccinated, now is the time,” he said.

Officials in South Africa expressed concern about the travel bans, while some experts cast doubt on the efficacy of the restrictions and whether they could “give a false sense of security.” The nation’s health minister, Joe Phaahla, characterized them as a “draconian reaction.”

“It really doesn’t look scientific in any way,” he said. “That kind of reaction is quite a knee-jerk and panicked and almost wants to put a blame on other countries rather than work together.”

Do we know if vaccines are effective?

Even if the variant limits the effectiveness of vaccines, it’s unlikely to completely subvert the protections that vaccines provide, experts say.

“My expectation would be that the mutations in this variant are not going to ablate or completely escape that type of antibody neutralization” from vaccines or prior infection, Bloom said.

“Regardless of whether or not this new variant ends up spreading, I would suggest that people do what they can to minimize their chances of getting infected with SARS-CoV-2,” Bloom added, referring to the virus by its technical name. “There are certain obvious things you can do: Get vaccinated, get a booster vaccination, wear a mask.”

Though the sample size is still small, Sanne said physicians have seen a higher rate of breakthrough infections among those previously vaccinated in South Africa. But he added that initial data indicates the vaccines are still proving effective, with the majority of hospitalizations being among those who hadn’t gotten the shot.

“We have every indication that the vaccines are still effective in preventing severe disease and/or complications,” he said. “The data, however, is small and early.”

Meanwhile, vaccine-makers, which have done preliminary research using vaccines with formulas tailored for other variants, are working to understand how well their vaccines can counter omicron.

“In the event that vaccine-escape variant emerges, Pfizer and BioNTech expect to be able to develop and produce a tailor-made vaccine against that variant in approximately 100 days, subject to regulatory approval,” a Pfizer spokesperson said in a statement.

Given the spread of B.1.1.529 in South Africa, several experts have pointed to the critical need to vaccinate underserved countries to bolster the world’s protection from future, more-evasive variants.

COVID-19 Update

I guess we can look forward to another rude surprise this winter, but maybe we can dodge the bullet a little as more people start to understand they're being uncool and unfashionable by refusing to do the right thing / the smart business thing / the patriotic thing / the thing that makes it so grandma can see your kids again etc etc etc.

WaPo:

‘We let our guard down’:

Frustrated Europe heads into second pandemic winter

KNOKKE-HEIST, Belgium — Life was finally starting to feel normal. An online flier for an October party in this Belgian beach town cursed the coronavirus and invited people to dance and drink again, to “get your clacker back from the attic” and kick off Carnival season.

Hundreds attended that event and another Carnival party the next night. Most of the town is vaccinated, and people were required to show proof, or a recent negative test, to enter. But it wasn’t enough. Coronavirus cases spiked the week after. Officials worried about pressure on the local hospital. And soon the town found itself under semi-lockdown once more.

As Americans catch up with family and friends this holiday week, with some trepidation about enduring risk, Europe is facing another wave of the virus — and a gloomy and frustrating second pandemic winter.

Despite vaccine supplies that are envied by much of the world, Europe is the only region where covid deaths are on the rise, according to the World Health Organization.

Reported deaths reached nearly 4,200 a day last week, doubling since the end of September, for the 53 countries the WHO counts as part of the European region. The organization predicts “high or extreme stress” on intensive care units in 49 of those countries between now and March.

What’s driving the surge in infections? The WHO cites the prevalence of the highly contagious delta variant, people gathering in indoors without the precautions they took when the virus was considered an emergency, pockets of people who remain unvaccinated, and declining protection among those who were vaccinated last winter or spring.

Europe has been behind the United States in its booster rollout. But otherwise, the same factors could shape the U.S. situation in the weeks ahead.

The new wave in Europe has led towns, cities and countries to bring back the sorts of restrictions that people hoped they were done with.

Slovakia, which has more new infections per capita than any other European Union country, declared a two-week lockdown on Wednesday. People are allowed to leave home for a limited number of reasons, including buying groceries, going to work and to school, and getting vaccinated. And starting next week, all workers will have to show they’ve been vaccinated, recovered from the coronavirus or had a recent negative test.

Austria, too, has imposed a lockdown that will last at least 10 days but more likely 20. The Netherlands, known for its nightlife, has ordered bars and restaurants to close at 8 p.m. Belgium has mandated that all but essential employees work from home four days a week.

“I look for it every day, but I don’t see any sign of slowing down yet,” Steven Van Gucht, head of viral diseases at Belgium’s national public health institute, said in a local news interview this past week. “The number of infections has even accelerated somewhat.”

Many of the restrictions across the continent are expected to be lifted before Christmas. Still, people are growing more fatigued, impatient and angry with repeated disruptions that, even after 21 months, have yet to rid their communities of the virus. Protests erupted across Europe this month, with people decrying new measures in Rotterdam, Brussels, Vienna and elsewhere.

“I don’t want to get into politics, I just want to run a bloody restaurant and see some tourists and pay my bills,” said Hans Blanckaert, who owns a restaurant and nightclub in the Belgian city of Bruges and helped organize a protest in Brussels last weekend.

Under Belgian law, Blanckaert must check that customers are vaccinated, recently tested negative or have recovered from the virus before they can enter his establishment. Belgium also reinstituted an indoor mask mandate this month, which means partygoers must be masked on the dance floor.

“They shut us down, and then shut us down again,” said Blanckaert, who predicts his restaurant wouldn’t survive another lockdown. “It’s just one big massive lie. It’s not working.”

Blanckaert is unvaccinated, as are many of the protesters across Europe. They argue that new measures to control the virus, on top of what in effect amount to vaccine mandates, are infringing on their freedoms.

Most people in the European Union, though, have now received two — and in some cases three — doses of coronavirus vaccines. They had expected the shots to bring back their pre-pandemic lives.

“I have the third vaccination, so okay, we must be a bit more careful, but the problem is that not everyone’s vaccinated,” said Luc Daems, an Antwerp resident who has a home in Knokke-Heist.

Frustration is to be expected, said Jeffrey V. Lazarus, a health systems and policy professor at the Barcelona Institute of Global Health. He said government messaging has been poor and inconsistent throughout the pandemic. For example, he said, it was never realistic to tell people life would return to normal if they got vaccinated. And he said it’s hard to convince people that stricter policies are necessary when different European countries are taking drastically different approaches.

“Europe needs to come together and come to an agreement on what it means to end this pandemic in broad strokes,” Lazarus said. “Every time we get good news in Europe, we let our guard down.”

That’s basically what happened with the Carnival parties in Knokke-Heist. Afterward, officials feared infection numbers would continue to rise, as more vacationers and second homeowners arrived, further straining the hospital in a town that has a large elderly population. Already, the nine ICU beds were filled, two of them by covid patients.

So they made a decision that shops and restaurants could remain open, but all indoor events on city property — including youth sports, theater productions and regular gatherings of elderly people in recreation centers — would be banned.

Anthony Wittesaele, Knokke-Heist’s alderman for tourism and European affairs, said town officials got plenty of feedback, both positive and negative. “You have people sending messages saying you have the balls to do what’s necessary,” he said. “And then you have people saying dirt on Facebook. It’s dividing deeper and deeper, with all the measures taken.”

Stefan Dossche, owner of Marie Siska, a Knokke-Heist restaurant and hotel that has been in his family since 1882, said he’d rather the Belgian government enact stricter policies now to avoid a lockdown, which would force him to take another financial hit.

Business has been back to what it was like during the slow winter seasons before the pandemic, he said. Local residents, along with Dutch and Belgian vacationers, have been coming to Marie Siska’s for the specialty waffles and rounds of minigolf.

Dossche, whose vaccinated mother-in-law was hospitalized with covid this month, has two employees checking the vaccination status of customers as they enter. He keeps masks at the door for those who forget they now have to wear them while they walk to their table or the bathroom. He said customers are often confused about the latest rules, particularly since policies are different in the Netherlands, just a few miles away.

“It seems the government is always running behind the facts,” Dossche said. “They shouldn’t be changing the rules every two weeks.”

COVID-19 Update

Be smart. Be safe.

WaPo:

A flood of covid patients causes ‘almost unmanageable strain’ in Michigan as cases rise nationwide

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — At Spectrum Health, a major health-care system here, officials spent part of last week debating whether to move to “red status” in a show of how strained hospitals had become.

A flood of mostly unvaccinated covid-19 patients was arriving at emergency departments already packed with people suffering other medical issues, sending capacity to unprecedented levels. The only hesitation for Spectrum’s decision-makers? Data suggested the covid surge was not over.

“We don’t have a darker color,” said Darryl Elmouchi, president of Spectrum Health West Michigan. “So if we’re red now, what are we in two weeks?”

He and other leaders ultimately decided Thursday to make the change, upgrading the health-care system to the most serious tier for the first time since the pandemic began. In recent days, the state had emerged as a new covid hot spot, leading the nation in new infections and hospitalizations. By the end of last week, its seven-day average of new cases had hit a pandemic high. State leaders asked the U.S. Department of Defense to provide emergency hospital staffing to handle the surge — a request granted Wednesday.

Coronavirus cases are on the rise nationally, an unwelcome trend after leveling off earlier this fall. On Monday, the United States reported a seven-day daily average of just under 93,000 cases — an 18 percent jump from a week earlier, according to figures from a briefing by the White House covid-19 response team. Hospitalizations were also up, increasing 6 percent to about 5,600 patients admitted per day.

At least two dozen states have seen cases rise at least 5 percent in the past two weeks, with Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New Hampshire and North Dakota each recording per capita jumps of more than 60 percent. Some highly vaccinated states, including Vermont and Massachusetts, were also seeing steep rises in cases.

The growing caseload across the country has raised the specter of another surge this winter — what would be the nation’s fifth. Expert opinions vary, but Amber D’Souza, a professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said a surge seems imminent. This one, though, could prove to be much milder than last winter’s due to vaccines, boosters and therapeutics that were not available last year.

“We are absolutely heading into an additional wave this winter across the country that may hit at different times and it may be at different extents in different parts of the country,” she said. “The good news is that we really do have hope that the toll from this wave this winter will be much less than last winter.”

- more -

Jan6 Stuff

It's just not possible to cover up conspiracies that require the participation of a whole big bunch of conspirators. Somebody's gonna spill the beans, or leave some evidence, or something.

And so let us now re-affirm: three people can keep a secret as long as two of them are dead.

Also - I guess if you're prone to buy into the weird "theories" about stolen elections and liberal shape-shifting lizard people eating babies, and how it can all be kept hidden from the public because everybody's in on it expect you and Mike Flynn - then you're probably a good candidate to go along with a shitty little plot to overthrow the government, and believe it's all OK cuz it's a secret that no one will ever find out about, and after all, you're just doing the lord's work, and...whatever the fuck (?)

Anyway, let's take a look at this new wrinkle.

The Hill:

Organizers of the "Stop the Steal" rally that preceded the deadly Capitol attack on Jan. 6 allegedly communicated with members of former President Trump's family and administration, according to Rolling Stone magazine.

Multiple sources told Rolling Stone that Kylie Kremer, an organizer for the rally that took place at D.C.'s Ellipse park, had an aide buy three burner phones a few days before Jan. 6. Kremer said that it was "of the utmost importance" that the phones be purchased with cash, one source, who was a member of the March for Trump team, told the magazine.

Kremer kept one of the phones herself, while another was reportedly given to her mother, Amy Kremer, who was also an organizer of the rally. Sources could not say who the third was given to.

According to Rolling Stone, the phones were used to communicate with high-ranking members of Trump's inner circle, including his son Eric Trump, daughter-in-law and former campaign official Lara Trump, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Trump surrogate Katrina Pierson.

Speaking of when Kylie Kremer bought the phones, the March for Trump member said, “That was when the planning for the event on the Ellipse was happening, she needed burner phones in order to communicate with high-level people is how she put it."

When reached for comment by The Hill, representatives for Donald Trump, Eric Trump and Kim Kremer did not immediately respond to the Rolling Stone article.

Rolling Stone reported last month that Trump White House officials and many of his GOP allies had been involved in the planning of the Jan. 6 rally, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Paul Gosar (Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Mo Brooks (Ala.), Madison Cawthorn (N.C.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Louie Gohmert (Texas.).

Meadows, who was subpoenaed by the House Select Committee on Jan. 6, was reportedly "100 percent made aware of what was going on,” according to planners of the rally. The committee has recently demanded to know whether Meadows was using a private cell phone on Jan. 6 and has asked where his text messages from that day are.

The scope of this attempted coup is wide and deep. Which is why the coverup was bound to fail in the first place, but also why it takes a really long time to develop the case. The guiding principle is that you have to know a lot about the overall criminal activity before you can bring the charges, and you never ever go into court - or into a committee hearing that'll be televised around the whole fucking planet - without knowing the answer to every question you're going to ask every witness.

This is likely to get weirder and bigger as we go, which is both good and bad. Bad because the other side intends to run out the clock, hoping to take back majorities in Congress, which of course will kill the investigations. But good because the more people who get caught up in the probe, the better the chances are that somebody will crack and become the new John Dean (one confession is worth a thousand accusations).