☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Wednesday, April 6, 2022 ☙ MODEST AND FLEETING 🦠

Musk rockets onto Twitter’s board; a bad news roundup for boosters; 40% of congresspeople who voted to impeach Trump have dropped out; Republicans look to another sweep of local elections; and more...

Happy Wednesday, C&C! Today’s roundup includes: Musk rockets onto Twitter’s board; a bad news roundup for boosters; 40% of congresspeople who voted to impeach Trump have dropped out; Republicans look to another sweep of local elections last night; and a Bloomberg op-ed reveals most of the world opposes the US on Ukraine.

Note: Substack made a big update to its software yesterday, and I think that interfered with its email engine somehow, so Substack users got their C&C late. Apologies on behalf of Substack. Hopefully today goes better.

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

📈 That was fast! Like a Tesla on “Ludicrous” acceleration mode, Elon Musk rocketed onto Twitter’s board of directors yesterday, one day after disclosing his acquisition of 9.2% of the publicly-traded company. The announcement seemed like a hit with investors, since the share price jumped another +7% on the news.

“It became evident to us in recent conversations with Elon that he would offer enormous value to our Board,” Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal explained in a tweet. As a significant shareholder, in addition to offering “enormous value,” Musk would also have enormous influence in choosing the CEO. Just saying.

Last week on March 26, Musk tweeted “because Twitter is the de facto public town square, failure to adhere to free speech norms fundamentally damages democracy.” So.

💉 Uh-oh. More bad news for boosters. The New York Times ran an article yesterday headlined, “Covid News: Israeli Study Says Second Booster Protects Against Omicron Infection But Wanes Fast.” Gosh. Will these jabs ever catch a break?

So how fast does does the protection wane? The Times said “the booster’s effectiveness against infection in particular wanes after just four weeks and almost disappears after eight weeks.” Hahahaha! Boosters every 30 days! Wheee! It’s just a good-old normal vaccine, isn’t it?

The NYT reported that the findings, published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggest that “additional boosters are likely to provide fleeting protection against Omicron infections in older recipients.” Fleeting protection.

“For confirmed infection, a fourth dose appeared to provide only short-term protection and a modest absolute benefit,” the researchers confirmed in the study. A MODEST absolute benefit. Modest AND fleeting.

Monday evening, I was in CVS walking around the store with a pharmacist to find some sunburn treatment since I overdid it last weekend and now whenever I lie on my back it makes me thrash around like a gaffed salmon. During the five minutes I was cruising the store, two elderly ladies separately approached the pharmacist to interrupt my conversation without apology and ask if they could get their fourth boosters. Honestly, they seemed like addicts needing a fix. The bored pharmacist told them both to go make an appointment on the website.

So.

💉 The FDA’s vaccine advisory panel meets today to debate whether a fourth booster will be recommended, or something. Apparently boosters aren’t flying off the shelves for some reason. In an article about today’s meeting, the New York Times observed that “the booster campaign has stalled, with about half of eligible U.S. adults still not boosted as of Monday, according to the C.D.C..” Weird. I wonder why.

The Times guesses — through a cherry-picked expert — that removal of all the psyops tools like mandatory masks, social distancing, and “emergency” messaging is to blame. Maybe. But the Times overlooked the hypodermic elephant in the treatment room, which was even suggested by its OTHER article: that boosters don’t work. How about THAT reason? Crickets.

In worse news for boosters, Republicans in Congress say they will not approve another aid package that would be used to pay doctors to give out the jabs, unless the White House finds a way to pay for it. No more printing money, in other words. Get ready for a lot of grifters to act panicked at the thought of financially de-boosting booster programs.

Anyway, the FDA’s outside expert vaccine panel — now about as useless as a screen door on a submarine — was supposed to meet today to talk about recommending fourth boosters. But the FDA already beat them to the punch LAST Wednesday, going ahead and approving fourth boosters for adults over 50 — WITHOUT advice from its panel. SO weird. Maybe the panel will retroactively approve the decision? It’s called a rubber something. Stamp, I think.

💉 It’s not just here in the U.S., either. British media ran an article yesterday headlined, “Covid Booster: More Than 8 Million People Reject Offer Of Vaccine Despite Record Infection Rate.” This is so bizarre; why are people rejecting the safe and effective jabs? Are they prejudiced against them? It is racism?

The story notes in its subhead that, in Britain, “More people in the UK are infected with Covid-19 than at any time since the start of the pandemic.” And yet, they STILL don’t want the boosters. Odd.

According to the article, the overall daily vaccination rate in the UK has now fallen to its lowest level since the start of the pandemic, at around 34,000 jabs a day, of which fewer than half are boosters.

🐭 In what HAS to be the WORST timing imaginable, CNN ran a story yesterday headlined, “Disney Says Character Hugs, Interactions Will Return Soon.”

It gets weirder. CNN’s article reported that “Walt Disney World and Disneyland guests can get up close and personal … with Mickey Mouse and friends.” Up close and personal? Really? It’s like the reporter was trying to say it without actually saying it. If so, nice job.

It is just me? In the midst of a debate in Florida over sexual grooming of K-3rd graders, a debate wherein Disney has sided with the pro-grooming activists, Disney suddenly announces bringing back “up close and personal” “interactions” with adults in animal costumes. Look, I get it, Disney is just appealing to wholesome non-sexualized entertainment of children at its parks. And, granted, the activists are whining about being called groomers. I’m just saying the announcement is a little tone-deaf given everything going on.

Disney is keeping its indoor mask mandate for unjabbed customers. Although I’d bet the all masked attendees are actually the triple-jabbed people.

🔥 Michigan Representative Fred Upton announced he is quitting politics yesterday, becoming the fourth Republican who supported Trump’s impeachment to exit Congress, leaving only six left. Two of the remaining six anti-Trumpers, Representatives Tom Rice (R-SC) and Liz Cheney (R-WY), are both facing tough re-election campaigns. Get ready.

🔥 BREAKING: Republicans look to have swept a large number of local special elections last night in California, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Georgia, and other states. I don’t have final figures for you yet, but announcements about local school board races in particular appear to show overwhelming conservative victories. Tomorrow I’ll have more facts and figures for you on this important story.

🚀 *THE MINORITY REPORT* 🚀

🚀 Bloomberg ran super-long, insane, but nonetheless very interesting op-ed yesterday headlined, “Putin and Xi Exposed the Great Illusion of Capitalism.” The op-ed exposes the elites’ idea of how to “use” the Ukraine conflict to stand up their new world order.

That aside, a very interesting fact was buried way down in the story: a recent UN resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was supported by 141 countries but opposed by 40 — which already seems like a lot. But the 40 opposing countries included Russia (of course), China, and India — together making the majority of the world’s population and its three largest nuclear powers apart from America.

In other words, most of the world does not support the U.S.’s position on Ukraine. Try to find THAT fact in the corporate media.

The authors’ main political argument was that America is now in a position where it has to save the world from a massive geopolitical realignment. But the article admits Biden’s presidency has been “less-than-stellar thus far.” You don’t say. The paper complains that “One of the great problems with modern liberalism for the past few decades has been its lack of a gripping narrative and a compelling cast of heroes and villains.” In other words, the psyops aren’t working. How about instead of worrying about narratives and heroes and villains you come up with some helpful POLICY? Is that too much to ask?

Authors Micklethwait and Wooldridge hope that Russia will become a compelling villain, the Ukraine conflict will become a “gripping narrative,” and this will all somehow give modern liberalism a long-overdue boost, like a political vaccination or something, which will race to the rescue of the New World Order.

The article even uses the words, “new world order.” They aren’t trying to hide it at all.

The bottom line is the op-ed is an extended argument, citing loopy economist J. M. Keynes of all people, advocating for a giant America-last trade deal with Europe and China, because security, to resolve The War and all these problems. No thank you! But it’s something to keep a steely eagle eye on, to make sure these maniacs never get any traction.

Have a wonderful Wednesday, and I’ll be back tomorrow with more.

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