Today's Wingnut

Right Wing Watch looks at Nick Fuentes again.

It's hard for me not to think this guy's trying to pull some kind of super judo double twisting back flip in the ironic pretzel position - like he's gotta be a Poe. Either that or the GRU's got some serious kompromat on him. Or maybe he's makin' bank, and he'll just keep running towards whatever pays for his next car and his girlfriend's new tits.

At any rate, we seem to have a rather serious Honor Deficit going on.

Today's Pix

click

COVID-19 Update

Worldometer will show the USA has gone over 1,000,000 dead tomorrow or Friday.

CDC projections put the date in May.

JHU falls somewhere in between.

Wapo: (pay wall)

Moderna says its coronavirus vaccine for young children is safe, but efficacy is a more complicated picture

Vaccine maker Moderna announced Wednesday its two-dose pediatric coronavirus vaccine was safe in young children, toddlers and babies in a study.

But the effectiveness of the shot in children 6 months to 5 years old was more of a mixed picture because of the challenge presented by the highly transmissible omicron variant.

In a trial of the vaccine, the shot met the main criteria the company and regulators had defined for success, generating immune defenses equivalent to those that protected young adults before the omicron variant emerged, according to a Moderna news release.

But in the face of omicron, the immune defenses mustered by two doses in adults were less robust, particularly in preventing infections — and the same pattern was seen in children, with vaccine efficacy of about 40 percent.

Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, progress toward a pediatric vaccine has been impatiently awaited by parents and pediatricians as children younger than 5 remain the last group not eligible for a vaccine. There are about 19 million children in this age group in the United States.

Moderna said it plans to submit the data on children 6 months to 5 years old to the Food and Drug Administration in the coming weeks. In a briefing Tuesday, company representatives told government officials they planned to file for emergency authorization in mid-April, according to a senior Biden administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak.

Children received two shots of a 25-microgram dose, a quarter of the adult dose. The data has not been published or peer-reviewed. The findings reflect the complicated and changing landscape of the pandemic.

The original vaccine trials enrolled tens of thousands of participants and waited to see whether participants who received a vaccine were less likely to get sick than those who received a placebo. Those trials showed that, against an earlier version of the virus, the Moderna vaccine was more than 90 percent effective in preventing illness in adults.

To swiftly extend eligibility of the vaccine beyond adults, the children’s trials were designed primarily to measure safety and whether the vaccines conjured the same levels of virus-fighting antibodies. When the trial of the Moderna vaccine started, success was defined as immune responses equivalent to what was reported among young adults in the pre-omicron period.

The Moderna trial hit that benchmark in young children. But two doses have turned out to be far less effective against the highly transmissible omicron variant in adults, and that also held true for children. While protection against infection in young children was about 40 percent overall, it was slightly lower in children younger than 2 years old.

Because the children’s trial wasn’t designed primarily to measure vaccine effectiveness, there are wide statistical uncertainties about the findings on efficacy, but the company said its statistical analysis showed it was above zero.

There were no cases of serious illness or hospitalizations in the trial, which included close to 7,000 children 6 months to 5 years old, making it impossible to detect the vaccine’s possible protective effect against the worst outcomes.

Jacqueline Miller, Moderna’s senior vice president of infectious diseases, acknowledged it was more challenging to interpret the data than early in the pandemic but said the immune responses provoked in children were similar to adults — and so was their protection against the omicron variant.

“We’re optimistic that we can bring the vaccine forward, hopefully reasonably quickly,” Miller said. She added that the company plans to test a booster dose in children, and is submitting a proposal to regulators to test that four months after children complete their initial series of two shots.

In sharp contrast to the easy path of the first vaccines, children’s vaccines have had stops and starts, missing projected timelines and sowing frustration, confusion and impatience among parents and pediatricians.

In December, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that in 2-to 4-year-olds, a two-dose regimen failed to muster an immune response equivalent to the one that protected young adults. The companies added a third shot — and months of waiting — to the trial.

Then, in an about-face in late January, federal officials indicated there could be a path forward for two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, a strategy intended to allow children to start building immunity as officials awaited data on a third dose. But then the FDA said no decision would be made till results on a third dose arrived.

The failure has led some experts to question whether the Pfizer-BioNTech dose is too low, but Pfizer scientists have said they chose the low dose for the youngest children because it caused fewer severe fevers.

The Moderna pediatric vaccine caused fevers above 100.4 degrees in about 1 in every 6 of the youngest children under 2 years old. Among the 2- to 5-year-olds, the rate of fevers was slightly lower. Fevers higher than 104 degrees were rare, reported in just a few children, according to the company. There were no cases of myocarditis or pericarditis, heart inflammation that rarely occurs after messenger RNA vaccination.

Moderna has faced delays with pediatric vaccines. Its vaccine is authorized only for people 18 and older in the United States, while Pfizer’s shot has been authorized for children as young as 5 years old.

Moderna filed for authorization in teenagers last June, but a regulatory decision has been delayed, in part because of concerns that Moderna’s higher dose may increase the risk of myocarditis in that age group. The company is evaluating the potential of a half-dose for those teens.

The company announced Wednesday it would be submitting updated data in all young age groups and would seek authorization in children 6 to 11 years old, too. That is less likely to spark interest among families, because the Pfizer-BioNTech shot is already authorized for that age group.

Children have been spared the worst of the pandemic, suffering lower rates of severe illness and death than older adults. But their hospitalization rates soared to the highest level of the pandemic during the winter omicron surge, according to a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

During the peak of the omicron variant surge in January, children younger than 5 were hospitalized at five times the rate as during the peak of the delta surge in early September. There was also no reliable way to predict which young children would end up in the hospital, because nearly two-thirds of children who were hospitalized had no underlying medical conditions.

Today's Quote

George Carlin 1937 - 2008

I wanna live my life backwards.

You start out dead - get that out of the way.

Wake up in a nursing home, feeling better every day.

Then they kick you out for being too healthy, enjoy your retirement and collect your pension.

Then, when you start work, you get a gold watch on your first day, and you work 40 years until you're too young to work.

You get ready for high school - drink, party, and you're generally promiscuous.

Then you go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, and have no responsibilities.

Then you become a baby, and then ... you spend your last nine months floating peacefully in spa-like conditions - central heating and room service on tap.

And you finish it all off as an orgasm.

Music In the Madness

The top priority for me in times of war is looking for signs that even in the midst of a bloody struggle for survival, there are signs that people are not letting go of their humanity.

If we let these people down, then we leave them to a fate of base animal instinct - we're condemning them to an existence no better than what any given asshole authoritarian decides for them.

Mr Putin has chosen the way of death. And while the world has to figure out how best to accommodate him in that regard, we also have to make sure it doesn't all degrade into nothing more than a lust for blood and vengeance.

Ukraine

This is a little puffy, but it deals with something that has barely been talked about at all.

NYT: (pay wall)

How Ukraine’s Outgunned Air Force Is Fighting Back Against Russian Jets

LVIV, Ukraine — Each night, Ukrainian pilots like Andriy loiter in an undisclosed aircraft hangar, waiting, waiting, until the tension is broken with a shouted, one-word command: “Air!”

Andriy hustles into his Su-27 supersonic jet and hastily taxis toward the runway, getting airborne as quickly as possible. He takes off so fast that he doesn’t yet know his mission for the night, though the big picture is always the same — to bring the fight to a Russian Air Force that is vastly superior in numbers but has so far failed to win control of the skies above Ukraine.

“I don’t do any checks,” said Andriy, a Ukrainian Air Force pilot who as a condition of granting an interview was not permitted to give his surname or rank. “I just take off.”

Nearly a month into the fighting, one of the biggest surprises of the war in Ukraine is Russia’s failure to defeat the Ukrainian Air Force. Military analysts had expected Russian forces to quickly destroy or paralyze Ukraine’s air defenses and military aircraft, yet neither has happened. Instead, Top Gun-style aerial dogfights, rare in modern warfare, are now raging above the country.

“Every time when I fly, it’s for a real fight,” said Andriy, who is 25 and has flown 10 missions in the war. “In every fight with Russian jets, there is no equality. They always have five times more” planes in the air.

The success of Ukrainian pilots has helped protect Ukrainian soldiers on the ground and prevented wider bombing in cities, since pilots have intercepted some Russian cruise missiles. Ukrainian officials also say the country’s military has shot down 97 fixed-wing Russian aircraft. That number could not be verified but the crumpled remnants of Russian fighter jets have crashed into rivers, fields and houses.

The Ukrainian Air Force is operating in near total secrecy. Its fighter jets can fly from air strips in western Ukraine, airports that have been bombed yet retain enough runway for takeoffs or landings — or even from highways, analysts say. They are vastly outnumbered: Russia is believed to fly some 200 sorties per day while Ukraine flies five to 10.

Ukrainian pilots do have one advantage. In most of the country, Russian planes fly over territory controlled by the Ukrainian military, which can move anti-aircraft missiles to harass — and shoot down — planes.

“Ukraine has been effective in the sky because we operate on our own land,” Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force said. “The enemy flying into our airspace is flying into the zone of our air defense systems.” He described the strategy as luring Russian planes into air defense traps.

Dave Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and the principal attack planner for the Desert Storm air campaign in Iraq, said the impressive performance of the Ukrainian pilots had helped counter their disadvantages in numbers. He said Ukraine now has roughly 55 operational fighter jets, a number that is dwindling from shoot-downs and mechanical failures, as Ukrainian pilots are “stressing them to max performance.”

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has appealed repeatedly to Western governments to replenish the Ukrainian Air Force and has asked NATO to enforce a no-fly zone over the country, a step Western leaders have so far refused to take. Slovakia and Poland have considered sending MiG-29 fighter jets, which Ukrainian pilots could fly with minimal additional training, but as yet no transfers have been made.

“Russian troops have already fired nearly 1,000 missiles at Ukraine, countless bombs,” Mr. Zelensky said in a video address to Congress on March 16, appealing for more planes. “And you know that they exist, and you have them, but they are on earth, not in Ukraine — in the Ukrainian sky.”

Mr. Deptula said transferring these jets into Ukraine is critical. “Without resupply,” he said, “they will run out of airplanes before they run out of pilots.”

Pilotless drones are also a tool in the Ukrainian military’s arsenal, but not in the battle for control of the airspace. Ukraine flies a Turkish-made armed drone, the Bayraktar TB-2, a plodding, propeller aircraft that is lethally effective in destroying tanks or artillery pieces on the ground but cannot hit targets in the air. If Ukraine’s air defenses fail, Russian jets could easily pick them off.

As in other aspects of Ukraine’s war effort, volunteers play a role in the air battles. A volunteer network watches and listens for Russian jets, calling in coordinates and estimated speed and altitude. Other private Ukrainian pilots have removed up-to-date civilian navigation equipment from their planes and handed it over to the air force, in case it can be helpful.

Air-to-air combat has been rare in modern war, with only isolated examples in recent decades. U.S. pilots, for example, have not flown extensive aerial dogfights since the first Iraq War in 1991. Since then, U.S. fighter jets have engaged in air-to-air combat on just a few occasions, shooting down 10 planes in the Balkan wars and one plane in Syria, according to Mr. Deptula.

In the night sky, Andriy said he relies on instruments to discern the positions of enemy planes, which he says are always present. He has shot down Russian jets but was not permitted to say how many, or of which type. He said his targeting system can fire at planes a few dozen miles away.

“I mostly have tasks of hitting airborne targets, of intercepting enemy jets,” he said. “I wait for the missile to lock on my target. After that I press fire.”

When he shoots down a Russian jet, he said, “I am happy that this plane will no longer bomb my peaceful towns. And as we see in practice, that is exactly what Russian jets do.”

Most of the aerial combat in Ukraine has been nocturnal, as Russian aircraft attack in the dark when they are less vulnerable to air defenses. In the dogfights over Ukraine, Andriy said, the Russians have been flying an array of modern Sukhoi jets, such as the Su-30, Su-34 and Su-35.

A satellite image of destroyed Russian helicopters at an airfield in Kherson, Ukraine
Maxar Technologies, via Associated Press

“I had situations when I was approaching a Russian plane to a close enough distance to target and fire,” he said. “I could already detect it but was waiting for my missile to lock on while at the same time from the ground they tell me that a missile was fired at me already.”

He said he maneuvered his jet through a series of extreme banks, dives and climbs in order to exhaust the fuel supplies of the missiles coming after him. “The time I have to save myself depends on how far away the missile was fired at me and what kind of missile,” he said.

Still, he said in an interview on a clear, sunny day, “I can still feel a huge rush of adrenaline in my body because every flight is a fight.”

Andriy graduated from the Kharkiv Air Force School after deciding to become a pilot as a teenager. “Neither me nor my friends ever thought we would have to face a real war,” he said. “But that’s not how it turned out.”

Andriy has moved his wife to a safer part of Ukraine, but she has not left the country, he said. She spends her days weaving homemade camouflage nets for the Ukrainian army. He never tells family members when he is going on duty, he said, calling only after returning from a night flight.

“I only have to use my skills to win,” said Andriy. “My skills are better than the Russians. But on the other hand, many of my friends, and even those more experienced than me, are already dead.”

Overheard

Fact:

Voter fraud is exceedingly rare.

Fact:

More than 1 in 5 members of Congress voted to overturn the results of the presidential election of 2020, but not their own.

Let's be clear about what - and who - threatens American democracy.

Today's Trae

Trae Crowder - on Repubs acting like Repubs

Scary Stories

"...a cult of male force, which is communicated by state media and the leader's example, sets expectations for perpetrators' behavior."

Daddy State Awareness, Rule 2a:

What sounds like boasting ("I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any votes") may be intended to soft-peddle some horrific thing they've done, or intend to do, which makes the "boast" instructive as to what the devotees will be expected to embrace.

CRUELTY IS THE POINT 

Today's Ukraine Thing

This is borderline spectacular.

Ali Velshi standing in for Rachel Maddow.

Heather Conley (German Marshall Fund) explains the Russia-NATO-Ukraine thing.