Famous Israeli doctor can't explain new outbreak in Israel, fires shotgun blaming India variant's transmissibility, waning Pfizer immunity, lack of mask discipline

 

Asked what has brought Israel to peak transmission even as the country has already provided third doses of vaccines to 1.5 million citizens, Rahav, who has become one of the best known faces of Israel’s public health messaging, sighed, saying, “I think we’re dealing with a very nasty virus. This is the main problem—and we’re learning it the hard way.”

“It is a combination of waning immunity, so that inoculated people get reinfected, and at the same time the very transmissible Delta variant,” Rahav said, adding that Israelis lacked the discipline to revert to mask usage as the numbers began rising. “But it is not an Israeli problem,” she added. “It is everywhere.”

In other words, they have no idea why.

More.

Full FDA approval of Pfizer vaccine today means now you can sue!

 

France wasted no time getting the French the hell out of Dodge on July 17th after the US dark-of-night exit from Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, on July 2nd

 

The Pfizer vaccine is failing pretty spectacularly in Israel, which presently ranks 4th worst in the world for cases per million and 12th worst in the world for deaths per million

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

63% of the country is fully vaccinated with Pfizer, which has now rushed into a booster shot program giving a third dose to about a million to date.

Daily new cases of COVID-19 have soared in Japan since the opening ceremonies of the Olympics on July 23rd

 

Local media has reported that bars and restaurants defied restrictions during the event. One Tokyo izakaya owner told the Japan Times that he planned to serve alcohol despite a ban because he was fed up with the public "being sacrificed for the Olympics". 

More.

If you think the US FDA hasn't become a tool of the political propagandists, think again

 

Trump's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs since Oct 2019 Mark Milley in April 2019: Women should register for the draft

MARK MILLEY: Senator, I think that all eligible and qualified men and women should register for the draft.

The woke general on the right was made Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by Donald Trump effective Oct 1, 2019

He was US Army Chief of Staff 2015-2019 and Commander of III Corps at Fort Hood 2012-2014.

 

Out with the old Taliban, in with the new

 

CNBC: Pentagon orders U.S. airlines to help fly Afghanistan evacuees

 

LOL, someone's having fun with General Mark Milley's Wikipedia page today: "Huge admirer of Karl Marx, Lenin and Mao"

 

Deaths per day in the US from COVID-19 by variant type

News reports say the UK variant became dominant in the US on or about April 1, 2021.

Its reign was brief.

The India variant has dominated since July 1.

It's much too early for definitive statements (50 days) because deaths lag by weeks, but so far the India variant is proving much less deadly but highly contagious.

 

What's interesting is that the UK variant was less deadly and less transmissible than the strains which preceded it for the 456 days from the onset of infections in the US in 2020 through Mar 31, 2021.

 

The numbers so far suggest that the virus has mutated to become less deadly over time, and more transmissible. It needs hosts who are alive to thrive, and the UK variant came and went quickly because it wasn't up to this task, whereas the India variant clearly is:

Calendar 2020 - Mar 31, 2021: 66,838 cases per day; 1,210 deaths per day; case fatality rate 1.81%

Apr - Jun 2021 (UK variant):    34,736 cases per day; 580 deaths per day; cfr 1.67%

Jul - 8/19, 2021 (India variant): 76,320 cases per day; 433 deaths per day; cfr 0.57%.

 

Keep in mind that deaths per day from influenza in the United States average less than 100 over the last ten years. 

A fairer full 3-month comparison will require waiting until at least Oct 1.

 

In the meantime, inhibiting transmission is not a fool's errand. Don't share others' air in enclosed spaces, mask where appropriate, and wash frequently. Increasing numbers of breakthrough cases show that the vaccines are far from foolproof. It is not known whether this is because of the character of the new variant or because the vaccines wear out over time.

 

Public health authorities in the US have been pretty appalling in their performance. We do not test, trace and quarantine anywhere near the way we should, nor do we collect data the way we should. This is a hidden disgrace but is no smaller than the mega public disgrace going on in Kabul right now.

We are not a serious country.

All data is from The New York Times and subject to revision.

Johns Hopkins: US COVID-19 deaths crossed the 620k mark overnight Aug 12-13 and are nearly at 626k today

 

My power was out Aug 10-14, so I missed reporting on this at the time.

America's back

 

LOL, the html doesn't lie: The Guardian didn't know that the year 1336 is in the 14th-century

 https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/aug/19/meat-rich-diet-of-13th-century-monks-caused-digestive-issues-research-finds

You can change the headline, folks, but you'll always be THE GRAUNIAD.

Day Nine: Over 1k still without electricity in Michigan from Consumers Energy

 

The horror: Share paying no income taxes spikes from 44% in 2019 to 61% in 2020

 Stereotypical story here.

No one ever talks about how little Americans make.

In 2019, you'll be happy to know, 61% of individual wage earners in the US made less than $45,000. 

44% made less than $30k.

I'd like to see our legislators live on $30k, since so many of the people they claim to represent must. Maybe they'd be less inclined to rob us blind year in and year out with their trillion$ in spending.

Congressional salaries, incidentally, put the 435 members of the US House in the top 3.5% of individual wage earners.

IT'S WHY THEY RUN.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's something horribly wrong with a Rube Goldberg tax code which allows:

the rich to avoid taking "ordinary income" and pay little or zero tax on their fabulous capital returns;

more than the bottom half also to pay little to nothing (don't forget that they do pay Social Security and Medicare taxes);

and the people in-between to get squeezed to death.

Given that deficits no longer matter, why do taxes continue to matter? Just end them. We borrow the money anyway.

smdh

"Alcohol drinking was at its highest point between 1976 and 1978"

 That's because peak Baby Boom from 1957 turned 20 in 1977.

More young thirsty mouths, relatively speaking.

Gallup.

Day Eight: 3k still without power in Michigan from the electric utility Consumers Energy

 

They've trotted out the CEO of the company in radio ads the last two days to thank everyone for their patience.

No one apologizes anymore in this country, for anything.

Even Peter Bergen recognizes Biden made a huge mistake abiding by Trump's insane handover of the war on terror in Afghanistan to the Taliban

 The whole thing is worth reading, here:

Biden could have easily said the Taliban had reneged on their agreement with the United States so he could continue to keep a relatively small US military force in Afghanistan to advise and assist the Afghan Army and to support the Afghan Air Force to thwart Taliban advances.

 

... the American presence in Afghanistan had shrunk to only 2,500 troops -- particularly few for a force of 1.3 million active-duty US service personnel. That small force helped to sustain the Afghan military physically and psychologically, not least with close air support.

Now, the Biden administration unilaterally has pulled the plug on the US troop presence in Afghanistan, which cratered morale among the Afghan military and population. It also precipitated thousands of Western-allied soldiers to head for the exits, as well as the many thousands of contractors in Afghanistan that were, among other things, keeping the Afghan Air Force aloft.

 

And now the white flags of the Taliban flutter all over Afghanistan. It did not need to be this way.