Wednesday, August 25, 2021
Laugh of the Day: Peter Meijer, MI-03, the Republican version of drama queen AOC, pulls stunt and flies into Kabul
Peter Meijer, billionaire scion, West Point drop out, & leader of an aimless, mediocre life, is a drama queen who desperately wants to cover himself with the patina of the brave soldier in extreme circumstances one last time before it's all over. Just like Jan 6.
Mike Pompeo pretends it was smart diplomacy to negotiate with terrorists in the first place, and to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan
The Taliban’s threat has been a constant for years; it was a very real threat during President Donald Trump’s administration. We met that threat with American strength and smart diplomacy. ... The Trump administration’s Afghanistan strategy utilized a combination of deterrence and negotiated agreements based on conditions in the country to keep the Taliban in check while we withdrew our forces. This kept Americans who were still there safe while reducing our military footprint in the region.
Tuesday, August 24, 2021
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.
Monday, August 23, 2021
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.
Sunday, August 22, 2021
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.
Saturday, August 21, 2021
Friday, August 20, 2021
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
Thursday, August 19, 2021
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.
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
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