☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Thursday, August 4, 2022 ☙ MONKEY SHINES 🦠
DeSantis on monkeypox emergencies; media hopelessly confuses Americans about MPX; a Biden rebound update; gain of function hearings start; new military jab lawsuit; China surrounds Taiwan; and more...
Good morning C&C, it’s Thursday! Where does the week go? In today’s roundup: Governor DeSantis responds about MPX emergencies; an unsurprising new survey shows the media has hopelessly confused everybody, again; a covid rebound update on Biden; the Senate committee on gain of function research is finally underway; Coast Guard members file a new anti-jab lawsuit; China completely surrounds Taiwan and sends Nancy Pelosi a designer gift basket; an update on freedom of speech in Russia; and spokeslady Christina Pushaw is such a tease.
🗞 *THE C&C ARMY POST* 🗞
🔥 Operation Multiplier news: I am still trying to get hold of the figures from our Dr. Gold multiplier; please stand by.
🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞
🦸♂️ The Hill ran a short but surprisingly positive story about Governor DeSantis and the latest emergency yesterday, headlined, “DeSantis Says Monkeypox Concern Overblown: ‘We Are Not Doing Fear’.”
The article is capped with a video clip of Dr. Fauci listing reasons why monkeypox outbreak is different from other, more challenging pandemics. America’s Top Covid Doc listed four differences, which were each just as good as the two reasons that I gave you yesterday for why MPX is different from covid:
(AF) We know the agent (unlike HIV)
(AF) We have a vaccine
(AF) We have diagnostics
(AF) We have therapy developed years ago
(JC) Mortality is near-zero
(JC) Requires physical contact for transmission.
So now we have six reasons, and four of them came right from the most trusted pandemic doctor in America.* There are a lot of folks who built cute little shrines to Fauci and bought his bobblehead, who are going to see this as rank monkeypox denialism. I wonder if they’ll take the tiny altars down now that Fauci doesn’t seem to be all the way on the MPX bus.
(* results may vary.)
The article then gets to Governor DeSantis who thinks — you’d better sit down — the media and some politicians are unnecessarily fear mongering about MPX. Can you believe that? The Governor is tired of it: “I am so sick of politicians, and we saw this with COVID, trying to sow fear into the population.”
Apparently, citizens terrified by politicians and corporate media articles have been calling Florida’s Department of Health for help. “We had people calling, mothers worried about whether their kids could catch it at school,” DeSantis explained.
Half the time, the Hill referred to DeSantis merely as the “Republican governor” — with a lower-case ‘g’, to avoid using his name. It must be hard for them.
Anyway, DeSantis continued saying that Florida will not be locking down for MPX or anything else: “We are not doing fear,” he promised. “And we are not going to go out and try to rile people up and try to act like people can’t live their lives as they’ve been normally doing because of something.”
DeSantis seemed a wee bit skeptical about the intentions of the states of emergency in California, New York, and Illinois. “You see some of these states declaring states of emergency. They’re going to abuse those emergency powers to restrict your freedom. I guarantee you that’s what will happen,” DeSantis explained.
For “balance,” the Hill quoted clinically-insane failed politician and throwaway gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist, who thinks Governor DeSantis is way off base, because stoking fear is ABSOLUTELY the way to go. “While Governor DeSantis dismisses Monkeypox, at-risk Floridians still need better information, better testing, and access to vaccines for prevention,” Crist tweeted.
Okay, Charlie.
Crist probably wants to lock down all public places where MPX is spread. Oh wait … scratch that. Come to think of it, he probably wants to shut down all public places EXCEPT where MPX is spread. Haha, the responses to Crist’s tweet are universally pretty spicy. I think the public voted against his proposal, essentially suggesting he shove it where the monkeypox grows.
As for C&C, we say: No thanks Charlie! We’re all stocked up on Governors and are satisfied with our current provider. Thanks for stopping by, but we’ve got a Python in the backyard and have to go now.
The Hill’s article was surprisingly positive — okay, maybe it would be more accurate to say it was surprisingly NEUTRAL toward the Governor. It’s not like the Hill praised him or anything. But it didn’t sneak in the usual undermining words like writing “DeSantis claimed” instead of “DeSantis said.”
So add a seventh difference between MPX and covid: you’re allowed to criticize the government’s response to MPX. That may be the most important difference yet.
🔥 Maybe Governor DeSantis is exactly correct that the media has been stoking people’s MPX fears. The Annenberg Public Policy Research Center released a survey report a few days ago titled, “Survey: 1 in 5 Americans Fear Getting Monkeypox but Many Know Little About It.” It had some pretty shocking results, even after what we’ve seen with covid fears.
First, 2/3 as many people are worried about catching MPX (19%) as are still worried about catching covid (30%):
Corporate media is obviously doing a terrific job of confusing everybody. Get this — the survey showed “Women were more worried about contracting monkeypox than men, even though the overwhelming majority of cases in the U.S. have been among men.” I would say something at this point but every way I tried to draft it still sounded sexist. I’ll just say: So.
Media and politicians like Newsom and Charlie Crist are also doing a great job of burying the single most important fact about how MPX is transmitted. Anenberg said, “When asked whether the CDC advises that men who have sex with men are a higher risk of infection with monkeypox, a third of those surveyed (33%) said yes. Two-thirds (66%) either said this is false or they did not know.”
False or they don’t know.
It’s not just the media and politicians. The professional expert disinformation engine is running at full steam, with the media-appointed covid experts now out in force with lots of advice about MPX. I hesitated to show you this next one from just two days ago, because it is going to drive you certifiably bonkers:
Check out Bar-Yam’s Twitter self-appointed expert profile, and note his 100,000 followers.
He has a college degree and he’s been “studying pandemics.” He hasn’t even stayed at a Hotel 6. I keep asking you guys when we are going to flush these so-called “experts.” It used to be that lawyers were at the bottom of the professional esteem pile. But now, we’re the heroes and the overcredentialed experts have been exposed as the true stinkers.
💉 The Hill ran another story this morning about Biden’s fifth day locked down in his second consecutive covid quarantine headlined, “Biden Tests Positive for Fifth Straight Day After ‘Rebound’ COVID Infection.”
The gist is Biden tested positive for covid yesterday, again, but feels great! Apart from loose, um, coughing. His lungs are clear, according to the White House doc. He’s had four jabs plus thirty Paxlovid tablets, which equals two cases of back-to-back symptomatic covid. It’s ironic; Joe beat oil cancer but this covid thing is kicking his butt.
Here are two Biden pictures tweeted yesterday. Make it make sense.
🦇 The Daily Wire reported on Senator Paul’s committee hearings on gain of function research yesterday in an article headlined, “In ‘Damning’ Capitol Hill Testimony, Scientists Contradict Fauci’s Claim That NIH Never Funded Gain-Of-Function Research.” Uh oh.
So-called doctor Anthony Fauci previously testified to Congress that the NIH never EVER funded gain of function research, no way, no how, what a perfectly ridiculous idea, how dare you. But the committee’s three witnesses yesterday all testified to the EXACT OPPOSITE.
They didn’t mince words, either. Responding to a question from Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), Rutgers University microbiologist Dr. Richard Ebright testified, “The statements made on repeated occasions to the public, to the press and to policymakers by the NIAID director, Dr. Fauci, have been untruthful. I do not understand why those statements are being made because they are demonstrably false.”
Senator Paul has taken the eminently reasonable position that if we have strict controls over exporting nuclear technology, we should also have similar strict controls over exporting other weapons of mass destruction like DNA manipulation technology. In other words, our gain of function research should have never been in a lab in Wuhan, China.
Who could argue with that?
🔥 Over 130 Coast Guard members filed a class action lawsuit last week alleging the Coast Guard unlawfully denied their religious exemptions, and challenging whether the mandate is even constitutional in the first place.
Their complaint makes what is now the glaringly obvious point:
> “Because of their vaccination status, Plaintiffs have been harassed, treated differently than their peers, singled out publicly by their leaders, had their normal leave and liberty restricted, been removed from senior/leadership positions, been denied promotion, received official discipline, been barred from training, travel, new assignments and permanent change of station (‘PCS’) orders, and face imminent involuntary separation, all while they have continued to perform the mission alongside their ‘vaccinated’ peers, in many cases, while their ‘vaccinated’ peers got sick with COVID-19 in large numbers.”
Haha, safe and effective.
I wish them great success. The legal environment is becoming much more receptive to anti-shot arguments. While there are still some fearful holdouts in some areas, the courts have mostly concluded that the “emergency” is over, so the courts’ normal executive-branch deference during states of emergency will be drying up.
🚀 As soon as Pelosi left the scene, China began its “largest in history” military drills — ostensibly in retaliation for Pelosi’s reckless visit — which now completely surround Taiwan and even push into its sovereign territory in the north and south:
Here’s a thought experiment for you. If your sworn public enemy completely surrounded your island with massive military hardware bristling with hot ammo, would you worry that something more than just a “live fire drill” was going on? I’m starting to wonder if Pelosi was actually helping Taiwan, or was really secretly helping the Chinese, by giving them an excuse to get in position for an invasion.
I’m not the only one wondering about Pelosi’s intentions. Some memes trending online:
I wonder if the Taiwanese might be having some buyer’s remorse about inviting Pelosi into their country in the first place. I know we have it, in spades. Anyway, Pelosi claims she made the trip to prove the U.S.’s unwavering support for Taiwan:
Great. So I guess the U.S. needs to show up with something tangible that the Taiwanese could use pretty soon, like an army or something, or maybe the Pelosi trip is enough support by itself. What do you think? Someone criticized me in the comments yesterday for not recognizing how Pelosi’s visit was super important so we could show the Chinese they can’t boss us around. Mission accomplished, but has the analysis changed any now that Taiwanese are about the endure what — at best — is going to be a painful and inconvenient interlude?
Yesterday Taiwan recommended all its citizens install an app to help them find a nearby bomb shelter.
Thanks for stopping by, Nancy!
🔥 Recently I’ve been following some Russian news sources to get their take on Ukraine war events. A headline on one Russian news site Novaya Gazeta (the New Gazette) yesterday reads, “Russian Teacher Handed Suspended Sentence for Spreading ‘Fake News’ About Russian Army. Her Students Reported Her to Police.”
Irina Gen, an English teacher, evidently not one hundred percent happy with the Putin regime, allegedly told her students that the Russian military was unlawfully seizing the territories of other states, started the war in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” in 2014, shot down the MH17 flight, attacked a civilian maternity hospital in Mariupol, and was plotting to illegally overthrow the Ukrainian president.
Gen’s students recorded her and turned her in to Russian authorities. The Russian court gave her a five-year suspended sentence for spreading disinformation, and she lost her teaching job. I’m just mentioning it for balance, since some people have been suggesting I’m some kind of crypto-Russophile. You know who you are.
🦸♂️ Finally, Governor DeSantis’s plucky spokeslady Christina Pushaw teased a big, fun announcement coming today:
She normally doesn’t disappoint. So prepare yourselves for a spicy update tomorrow!
Have a terrific Thursday and I’ll see you then.
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Gov DeSantis has a highly intelligent and respected surgeon general. Two years ago, he took his advice from. Drs. Atlas, Battacharya and Kuldorff and never looked back. Don’t you wish the governors of illinois, California and New York had the wisdom to do the same.
Jeff, your updates are always too short. I find myself sad on coming to the end of them.