Virus Axis

The Dog Days of Summer: It’s been a rough few days.  Though not surprising it’s hard to watch the dissolution of Afghanistan and it’s not like the news on the virus front is providing much joy.  Though it’s not surprising that Republicans have jumped on the distressingly messy withdrawal using it as a cudgel against President Biden, their chutzpah is remarkable.  The Former Guy who previously attacked Biden for not getting out sooner is all over it, issuing lots of his “From the Desk of 45” twitter replacement statements. It should surprise no one that after saying that were he still in the Oval Office, the spot he’s only not in because his coup failed, all our Afghan helpers would have been safely removed by now, he’s moved to slamming Biden for working to get them out because it’s not like immigrants from “sh-thole” countries (his adjective not mine), especially Muslim ones, are his thing.  Besides some of his favorite influencers like Tucker and Laura have already stepped up their anti-immigrant rhetoric.  His VP who came close to being hung from the rafters on January 6^th by that day’s “tourists” actually wrote in a WSJ op-ed that had Biden stuck to the May 1 deadline in the agreement that the FG and his team negotiated with those nice and honorable Taliban guys, the withdrawal would have gone off without a hitch because the Taliban would have honored all of their promises.  Funny how Pence failed to mention that just about everyone knew the Taliban who spent the months after that agreement was negotiated strengthening their hands had no intention of sticking to its terms; the question was only how long it would take them to get to Kabul not if they would. Then again, Pence is the guy who doesn’t like meeting with women without the supervision of Mother, so maybe a part of him relates to Taliban philosophy.  For his part, Biden is not backing down from his decision to end the almost endless war.  Yeah he regrets that the withdrawal is such a mess and no doubt that it played out so publicly, but he says he remains okay with his decision, that the mess was unavoidable.  He gets credit for his candor but you know that his stumbling words will now be played over and over again on campaign ads for election cycles to come giving new meaning to the word endless.  One more thing, the State Department clearly is way behind on processing visas, a situation that is having dire consequences for too many of our interpreters and the like but keep in mind that a certain former president and his team spent four years eviscerating State and the visa application process, and that the State bureaucracy, never known for speed, could have and should have been issuing a lot of those visas during his administration but didn’t because he didn’t really want them to.         

Viral Musings:  Though the final approvals aren’t in place yet, yesterday the Biden virus advisory team said that COVID booster shots will be made available to all Moderna and Pfizer recipients on the eight month anniversary of their second jab starting on or around September 20th.  They didn’t address J & J recipients, not because they think that the smaller J & J cohort won’t need another jab but because they need more time to evaluate the J & J data. They believe they have that time since the J & J jabs only started going into arms in March. As to the shots for the under twelve year old set, they’re still waiting approval and though it’s extremely frustrating that the school year is beginning without that approval, the consequences of rolling out the shots to the younger set without first making sure that they do far more good than harm would be dire.  Absent the availability of shots for kids, at this point the solution is indoor masking, for them and for everyone else in high risk areas. Of course a number of red state governors including COVID axis Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott are still fighting those mask mandates which is why the only thing surprising about Abbott’s current COVID positivity is that it took so long for it to happen.  Abbott who of course got some Regeneron antibodies, the best that medical science has to offer right now, seems to find the fact that thousands of school children throughout the country are already in quarantine and that four districts in his state with mask optional policies have already been temporarily closed due to outbreaks be of no concern.  Likewise DeSantis who is making life as difficult as possible for those county and school officials in his state who are trying to protect kids doesn’t seem worried that more than 10,000 Tampa area students are in quarantine as are 1000 in Nashville, 3000 in New Orleans, more than 800 in Ware County, Georgia and 20,000 in Mississippi. The pollsters say most parents want their kids to be masked if that’s what it takes to protect them so I don’t get why DeSantis and Abbott think endangering kids is a good thing to run on but they’re the politicians so maybe they know something the rest of us don’t.  There were more than 160,000 new cases and more than 1100 COVID deaths in the US yesterday.   Cases are also still surging in Israel, but an first to emerge study by one of Israel’s health care providers shows that their booster shot rollout which like their initial rollout of COVID vaccines started before ours is starting to work, cutting both infection and serious illness.  Let’s hope so.  

Legal Footnote:  Before he left office the FG issued a whole bunch of friends and family pardons.  One of those pardons went to Jared Kushner friend Ken Kurson who got caught cyber spying and trashing the reputation of his former wife.  Yesterday Kurson was arrested in NYC for that spying.  It turns out that since unlike one time FG campaign manager and all around criminal Paul Manafort Kurson was never tried and convicted for his crimes NY can go after him without running afoul of the state’s double jeopardy laws.  That’s something that should have Steve Bannon’s Spidey senses twitching as he could be next.