War is coming

 

 

When a warlike state grows soft and effeminate, they may be sure of a war.

 

-- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

LOL, The Grauniad thinks it's in the Vanguard of the press, having few scruples about printing Trump's four years filled with swearing, obviously doesn't read POLITICO

Here where it can't even bring itself to spell them out:

In remarks to diners at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Saturday night, Donald Trump called the American media “crooked ba**ards” and Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, a “fu**ing idiot”. ...

Trump’s penchant for swearing is well-known, to the extent that his four-year presidency prompted soul-searching among some US media outlets about which words could properly be printed.

The Guardian has long had few such scruples.

 

POLITICO in October:

Behind closed doors, the former Catholic school boy is quite profane, according to several current and former aides.

“When he gets going he definitely gets going,” said one White House official.

In meetings with aides, Biden’s vulgarities include but are not limited too: “Fuck them,” “What the fuck are we doing?” “Why the fuck isn’t this happening?” “bullshit,” “dammit,” or just simply: “fuck,” according to several current and former aides.

When pushing aides for better answers, he will sometimes say, “don't bullshit a bullshitter.”

Some say they find Biden’s foul mouth endearing — a part of his everyman appeal that made him president. One former aide noted that’s true just as long as you’re not on the receiving end of it.

By contrast, Vice President KAMALA HARRIS’ favorite swear word is “motherfuck-ah,” [emphasis on the ahhhhh] according to someone who worked closely with her. She also alluded to this preference in a past interview. Her office did not respond.

Trump is the idiot who elevated the idiot Mark Milley in the first place, Raheem, you idiot

 https://thenationalpulse.com/analysis/trump-is-right-mark-milley-is-in-fact-a-fucking-idiot/

There is no labor shortage when many millions sit idle along with 24% of the economy

 CNN, so predictable:

The US needs to find ways to raise the number of workers through larger and more economically motivated immigration policies . . ..

Omicron variant looks very likely to overcome natural immunity from previous infection

Very few people in South Africa have been fully vaccinated, relatively speaking, roughly a quarter of the population.

So the very rapid rise in new cases there looks likely to include the very large number of the previously infected.

Daily new cases in the 7-day rolling average have absolutely soared, from about 290 in mid-November to almost 8900 by Dec 4. 

There have been almost 2.8 million infections pre-Omicron, and fewer than 1.3% had been reinfected pre-Omicron, according to the new paper discussed in detail here:

LOL, just 20 cases of Omicron in the US but Anthony Fauci is already confident of "community spread"

“We absolutely have community spread in this country,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told Bloomberg Television on Friday. “We don’t know how many of them, but there’s no doubt there’s community spread.”

Story.

Fauci was nothing but the picture of doubt on spread on Jan 28, 2020 when there were already over 6,000 cases in the world:

He also addressed concerns about whether the virus could be easily spread by asymptomatic carriers. "The driver of respiratory outbreaks is symptomatic people, not asymptomatic carriers," said Fauci.

Video shows him saying this most emphatically:

“In all the history of respiratory-borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. … Even if there’s a rare asymptomatic person that might transmit, an epidemic is not driven by asymptomatic carriers.”

By June 10, 2020 Fauci wasn't saying that anymore and had completely reversed himself:

“In fact, the evidence we have given the percentage of people, which is about 25% [to] 45%, of the totality of infected people likely are without symptoms,” he said. “And we know from epidemiological studies that they can transmit to someone who is uninfected even when they are without symptoms.”

Waiting for the evidence on Omicron?

Fuhgettaboudit.

Flashback Sunday: Anthony Fauci Feb 17, 2020 said "there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask", danger from coronavirus is "just minuscule"

He couldn't have been more wrong, and on both counts no less.

Coronavirus went on to kill far more than flu ever has since 1918, and other "experts" now chalk up those low flu numbers partly to mask-wearing. 

USA AWAY, here in Feb 2020:

"If you look at the masks that you buy in a drug store, the leakage around that doesn't really do much to protect you," he said. "People start saying, 'Should I start wearing a mask?' Now, in the United States, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask." ...

Fauci doesn't want people to worry about coronavirus, the danger of which is "just minuscule." But he does want them to take precautions against the "influenza outbreak, which is having its second wave."

Coronavirus went on to kill 346,000 in the USA in 2020, but the flu killed just 700 over the entire 2020-2021 season.

The irony is the experts quoted by Scientific American now attribute the low number of flu deaths to mask wearing and social distancing, both of which Fauci only later embraced to stop coronavirus, but which has now gone on to kill an additional 440,000 despite those measures and mass vaccination:

Since the novel coronavirus began its global spread, influenza cases reported to the World Health Organization from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres have dropped to minute levels. The reason, epidemiologists think, is that the public health measures taken to keep the coronavirus from spreading—notably mask wearing and social distancing—also stop the flu.

Prevalence of COVID-19 in 2020 was just 6.1% of population (20m cases in 328m people) because it didn't really hit the country until March. In 2021 to date, prevalence is higher at 8.7% (28.923m cases in 332m people), about the level typical for influenza in an average year.

Why, when people have been masking, social distancing, and getting vaccinated?

Clearly something(s) has(have) stopped influenza, but the definitive transmission mechanism of coronavirus remains unsolved.

Similarly no one so far has explained how white tail deer populations have become riddled with coronavirus: We do not know how the deer were exposed to SARS-CoV-2. 

A new Penn State study is pretty certain hunters are somehow responsible:

“The viral lineages we identified correspond to the same lineages circulating in humans at that time,” said Kapur. “The fact that we found several different SARS-CoV-2 lineages circulating within geographically confined herds across the state suggests the occurrence of multiple independent spillover events from humans to deer, followed by local deer-to-deer transmission. This also raises the possibility of the spillback from deer back to humans, especially in exurban areas with high deer densities.”

But I doubt it's because they breathed on them out there in the woods.

The vectors must be human urine and feces, but to this day no one is focusing on those to explain the continuing crisis.

49.35% worked full time in Nov 2021, a new high for the year, vs. 50.52% two years ago at this time: Millions could be working who are not

That works out to 3.1 million missing full time jobs in Nov 2021 compared to Nov 2019 at current population.

We went from adding 1.7 million W-2s in 2019 to subtracting 1.7 million in 2020, a gap of 3.4 million.

Overall in 2021 to date full time has averaged 48.55% of civilian noninstitutional population, still much below the 50.4% average level in 2019.

Potential missing full time is at least 11.1 million at current population level.

The good times get smaller and smaller and smaller in the rear view mirror.

 

New Hampshire, worst in the nation, has 72 cases per 100k and Florida 6 not because of policy: It's seasonal, people move inside in the north in winter, duh

 

You know the Rush Limbaugh audience has changed when there's an ad during the break for a podcast from the intersectional feminist perspective

LOL, my doctor makes me sign this

"I am aware that the practice of medicine and surgery is not an exact science and I acknowledge that no guarantees or promises have been made to me as to the results of the care and treatment, which I have hereby authorized." 

On the other hand, COVID-19 wasn't even mentioned at the visit, so there's that. 

 

It's not my job to take care of your kid an overturned Roe v Wade won't let you abort, it's yours

 gtfo

There wasn't a single new car on the lot for sale or in the showroom at my Honda dealer yesterday, and I got the very last door lock assembly in the parts department

 Blank, like this page.

I'm all in for more immigration as long as it's rooftop Koreans

No, I'm not off my meds

 I'm on coffee.

Turns out Jussie Smollett rehearsed his attack the day before and it's on video no less

 Schmuck.

Jim Cramer needs to go back to living in his car

Boebert and Omar should settle their differences like men, in a duel to the death

Lawless anarchy will only be stopped in a hail of lawful anarchy

Though 13% less deadly in the US overall, both Alpha and Delta in 2021 have been much more transmissible than the 2020 virus types

The UK variant dominated in the US from April-June 2021. It spawned an average of 34,793 cases per day, 28% higher than the 27,128 cases per day average for Apr-Jun 2020.

The India variant dominated in the US from July 1, 2021, and still does. Average cases per day for the five months Jul-Nov 2021 were 97,449, 35% higher than the 71,932 cases per day average for Jul-Nov 2020.

The data is once again consistent with the theory that viruses evolve to survive at the expense of killing ability.

People who credit the vaccines for killing fewer people, however, must face the fact that the vaccines did nothing to reduce the increased spread of either variant.

That point needs to be underscored. Vaccinated people who abandoned all precautions are just as culpable as unvaccinated people who abandoned all precautions for making themselves vectors for the disease. US authorities at every level have failed to emphasize this, but especially the CDC, which has known since the July 4th Provincetown incident that vaccination does nothing to stop transmission. Instead they have treated the vaccines as a panacea, when they obviously are not.

For all we know, deaths are down because the variants are less deadly, or because of improved treatment methods in hospitals and outpatient settings, or because of slight but effective changes to behavior, or because the low hanging fruit is already dead, or because of some combination of these.

But one thing is for sure, the variants are spreading like crazy despite mass vaccination.