9 Minutes, 29 Seconds

Viral Musings: Yesterday President Biden announced another acceleration in the vaccine rollout timetable, saying 90% of adults will be eligible to receive theirs within three weeks.  At the same time he and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky warned that now is not the time to attend any Roaring Twenties parties as new cases increased 16% last week with the hospitalizations that typically lag new infections already up 4.2%.  Biden called on governors to reinstate mask mandates while Walensky who asked everyone to “just hold on for a few more weeks” to give the vaccine roll out more time to squash the virus said that current morbidity trends were giving her that “impending doom” feeling, again. Hearing that we could be following Europe into another surge is disconcerting to say the least, especially since we also learned yesterday that real world studies of the performance of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines show that they are really working, achieving 90% efficacy against disease here in the US two weeks after the administration of second doses, an indication that they are working against our current variants.  Biden and Walensky’s warnings are representative of the honesty that they promised to deliver and that we need to hear, beating the BS we got from the Former Guy who told us last year at this time that the country would be open by Easter.  As to the Former Guy he issued another one of his incoherent, nasty messages yesterday, lashing out at Drs Fauci and Birx who he called self-promotors with bad instincts.  His trash talk was in response to the scathing criticism of his actions delivered by several members of his coronavirus team during Sunday night’s CNN Covid Wars special.  Among other things we learned during the CNN special that the FG administration manipulated morbidity and mortality data and lied about the availability of COVID tests.  Most disturbingly Dr Birx, who prior to her stint at the Trump altar was actually a well-respected AIDs expert, said that while the first 100,000 COVID deaths were probably unavoidable, but in her view the 450,000 that followed could have been “mitigated” if only the Former Guy had listened to his experts, the real ones as opposed to COVID deniers like Rick Atlas and the team at Fox. Of course, a lot of what Dr Debbie had to say should be taken with a grain of salt as she was doing some self-promotion, trying really hard to resuscitate her own reputation, the one that she trashed when she praised the FG for his attentiveness to scientific literature and details and sat silently by while he advocated Lysoltinis. During the same CNN special, former CDC head Robert Redfield also pointed the finger of shame at former HHS Secretary Azar who did not participate in the CNN special, saying that he was the one responsible for manipulating data. Without any scientific evidence to back him up, Redfield also said his gut tells him that COVID -19 probably originated in a Wuhan lab, an assertion that the World Health Organization and most other scientists find highly unlikely.

Politics As Usual:  Eric’s wife Lara who is seriously considering a run for the Senate seat being vacated by North Carolina’s Richard Burr is now being paid for to appear on Fox because why shouldn’t Fox pay a Trump while also increasing her visibility in the run up to her announcing her candidacy?  It’s what they did for Sarah Huckabee Sanders who benefitted from their largesse before she announced her current run for Arkansas Governor. A number of other states with Republican led legislatures are getting ready to follow Georgia and Arizona into the voting suppression abyss because allowing for the overturning of “blue” election results while depriving long lines of wannabee voters of water and other sustenance is so much easier than actually appealing to more voters.  Civil Rights groups had hoped that corporate America would help out by speaking out for voter rights, however Instead of criticizing the recently passed Georgia legislation, in an internal memo to its employees, hometown airline Delta praised it saying it will provide for “fair and secure elections.” Though Coke, another Georgia based corporation didn’t praise the legislation their response was relatively anemic. Eyes are now on Major League Baseball, with civil rights groups calling for the moving of this year’s all star game out of the state.  The same groups are also calling for boycotts of Delta Airlines and Coke products. Absent the Senate passing some form of the ‘For the People’ voter protection legislation already passed by the House, efforts to suppress votes will continue because as the notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her Shelby County vs Holder dissenting opinion “throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes (in voting laws) is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

Out of Breath:  Yesterday marked the beginning of the testimony phase of the trial of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis policeman who we all saw press his knee into George Floyd’s neck.  Just a reminder that Chauvin’s actions and Floyd’s death took place in response to Floyd allegedly committing the truly unforgivable and horrific crime of passing a counterfeit $20 bill to a convenience store owner.  We learned yesterday that Chauvin’s knee was on Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, longer than had previously been reported, and that the police dispatcher watching the arrest unfold via a city surveillance camera was so disturbed by what she saw that she called her duty sergeant to report that something wasn’t right.  The pressure on Floyd’s neck went on so long that at one point she even thought her camera was frozen.  The prosecutor also revealed that a Fire Department employee wanted to help Floyd but was warned off by Chauvin who pointed Mace at her. Elsewhere in the world, two of the doctors who treated the now jailed Russian dissident Alexie Navalny back when he was poisoned by Putin’s thugs have died under “mysterious” circumstances and the ruling junta in Myanmar continues to shoot and bomb its own citizens.  

550,036

145,812,835 shots in arms    

15.8% Americans fully vaccinated