COVID-19 Update

Let's start with a tweet thread about the difficulties of getting a strong and coherent public health message out when the clinical picture shifts almost by the hour, in a political atmosphere rife with cynical manipulators and smarmspace weasels.

It’s time to retire the phrase “the science has changed”. Public health leaders should not continue to use it during the pandemic. Instead, we need to explain what actually changed — is there *more* evidence? Or *stronger* evidence? Or conflicting evidence?

Say what changed.

— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) February 8, 2022

 

Black American History #8

Dr Clint Smith - Crash Course - The American Revolution

COVID-19 Update

WaPo: (freebie)

U.S. coronavirus cases are dropping. Other countries are breaking records.

In every U.S. state this past week, daily new coronavirus cases were lower than the previous week. Nationally, cases are down 42 percent week on week, according to a Washington Post tracker. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said Sunday that the state’s coronavirus positivity rate of 3.5 percent was at its lowest point since omicron was named a variant of concern by the World Health Organization.

This has led some Americans to decide that, even with omicron still spreading and hospitals overwhelmed in many states, they will start going back to their pre-pandemic lives. But elsewhere in the world, countries are experiencing surges in cases and hospitalizations, and they are reintroducing or strengthening restrictions.

Russia, facing a record-breaking surge, reported a daily count of new infections that is an increase of 10 times from the month before. South Korea, which successfully controlled the spread of the virus with strict border restrictions and high vaccination coverage, crossed the threshold of 1 million cumulative coronavirus cases Sunday and extended limits on indoor gatherings and a curfew for businesses. In Hong Kong, authorities reported a record number of daily new cases, and new restrictions are expected.

Here’s what to know

• U.S. figure skater Vincent Zhou will not compete in the Olympics after testing positive Sunday for covid-19.
• Ottawa announced a “state of emergency” Sunday after hundreds and sometimes thousands of protesters disrupted the capital for the second weekend in a row as part of the “Freedom Convoy” of truckers and their supporters opposed to vaccine mandates.
• As coronavirus cases drop in the United States, mask mandates could soon be lifted in school districts where case numbers are low, former head of the Food and Drug Administration Scott Gottlieb told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

Voices Of The Enslaved

Ted Koppel from the late 1990s

The takeaway: Governments don't grant people their rights. Rights are not given - they're inherent. We have those rights no matter what.

Petty ambitious people will always be selfishly motivated to use government power to gain advantage for themselves by denying others their rights, so government has to be constructed and maintained in ways that countervail that selfish impulse - so that government isn't allowed to deny us those rights.

FIGHTING FOR EVERYBODY'S RIGHTS

IS EVERYBODY'S FIGHT

Just Sayin'

The flap over Joe Rogan

has now lasted longer

than last week's news

about Trump trying to get

the US military

to seize voting machines.

Black American History #7

Dr Clint Smith - Crash Course - Phyllis Wheatley

Today's Pix

click

⬇︎

Dead Kids TYD

So far in 2022

American kids killed

by gunfire:

29

American kids killed

by books:

0

Jan6 Stuff

You know Republicans are a little panicked when they paste that phony smile on their ugly mugs, and practically break a sweat trying to shrug it all off - to pretend it's no big deal.

"Hey, c'mon, everybody attacks the foundations of democracy in an attempt to install the loser as a Forever POTUS, right?"

Bless their hearts.

Like the man said: "Never forget how deeply Republicans hate this country's traditions of democratic self-government. Their project is to tear it all down and replace it with plutocracy."

 --Driftglass

Here's what you don't do, Press Poodles: You don't ever give "the other side" equal footing like this.

Putting GOP apologists like Scott Jennings on your show is like saying, "Very fine people on both sides". Jennings et al should be ostracized the same as their dog ass terrorist buddies who make up the mainstream of the Republican Party.

Jennings basically says he's more worried about the negative effect on his party's chances in November than he is about the actual survival of democracy in America - glossing over his own efforts - over however many years he's been at it - to undermine that democracy.

Republicans have indulged in an awful lot of fuckery in just the last 30 years, and they have to be held to account for it.

Here's the top line for every Style Book when dealing with "conservatives" &/or Republicans: 

Fess up or shut up

BURN THE LIFEBOATS

Today's Tweet

Really, really, really not a cult. pic.twitter.com/9b76sNVYJw

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) February 6, 2022