H5N1

COVID-19 in the US: Thomas Massie is a monster Republicans created

A column in The Washington Post: Thomas Massie is a monster Republicans created. This guy would make a great cellmate for Rush Limbaugh in Leavenworth, or better yet, a USMC brig. Excerpt:

Republicans were aghast that one of their own had committed such a monstrously selfish act.  

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), in purely symbolic opposition to the $2.2 trillion emergency coronavirus legislation, forced hundreds of his colleagues to risk their lives — literally — by flying back to Washington. So what if many of the lawmakers are elderly and at high risk? 

In order to thwart Massie’s pointless protest, an attempt to force a roll-call vote instead of a simple voice vote, leaders had to summon 216 members to fill the chamber, eerily separated on the floor and in the gallery above to limit infection. This fruitless, immoral gesture by the 49-year-old legislator was in service of another: to thwart a nearly unanimous Congress from dispensing aid to the sick and suffering in the middle of a pandemic.

President Trump called Massie a “third rate Grandstander” and proposed to “throw Massie out of Republican Party!” 

Joining in bipartisan revulsion, former secretary of state John Kerry shared Trump’s tweet and added: “Congressman Massie has tested positive for being an asshole. He must be quarantined to prevent the spread of his massive stupidity.”  

But if Republicans are disturbed by Massie, they might pause for self-reflection. Massie is the epitome of the anti-government culture they have nurtured and encouraged. He embodies the drain-the-swamp political philosophy they have embraced.  

“I came here to make sure our Republic doesn’t die by unanimous consent in an empty chamber, and I request a recorded vote!” the bespectacled rebel said in his quickly-stifled stunt. 

“Shut the fuck up,” Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) replied from the gallery, an ABC News journalist heard.  

Massie has it backward. Unanimous consent doesn’t kill the Republic. Unanimity, or at least consensus, is what we need in Washington, and what we have lost. Massie and scores like him in the congressional GOP exist to break up consensus, to throw sand in the gears, to hobble government. Maybe Massie’s antics in this moment of national crisis will help Republicans remember that the government they’ve been demonizing is the only thing they have to save a collapsing national economy and stop a deadly disease. 

Massie, a believer in the “deep state” conspiracy, is a product of the tea party, a protege of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and a collaborator with outgoing Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who is becoming Trump’s chief of staff, when they tried to oust then-Speaker John Boehner. “I’m ready to be unpopular,” Massie said after his 2012 election, and he has opposed even anti-lynching and human rights legislation — and celebrated when he uses “the process” so that “things die.”

Rush Limbaugh on COVID-19: Health experts are part of the "Deep State" and shouldn't be trusted

Via Media Matters for America: Rush Limbaugh: Health experts are part of the "Deep State" and shouldn't be trusted. From his March 27 broadcast and then a comment:

RUSH LIMBAUGH (HOST): It's a fascinating case study to me, and it's worrisome and it's troublesome. And then the other side of it is, through all of this, I've never had any doubt we're going to come out of it. I've never had any doubt we're going to come out of it stronger, and we're going to come out of it healthy. And I think it's imperative that we have somebody like Donald Trump, who is outside the establishment, expert class, who has a history of solving problems, to actually lead the country through this.  

You know, we've talked about the “Deep State” all these years since Trump was elected — the Trump-Russia collusion, the FBI — well, the Deep State extends very deeply. And the American people did not elect a bunch of health experts that we don't know. We didn't elect a president to defer to a bunch of health experts that we don't know. And how do we know they're even health experts? Well, they wear white lab coats, and they've been in the job for a while, and they're at the CDC and they're at the NIH, and they're up, well — yeah, they've been there, and they are there. But has there been any job assessment for them? They're just assumed to be the best because they're in government. But, these are all kinds of things that I've been questioning.  

And I've been watching people routinely accept whatever the authorities say. Where I live, the local town government is driving around town, trying to spot people violating the social distancing ordinances. And when they see it, they publish it on their web site, “This is very troublesome. We at the town are very troubled by groups of people congregating, violating the social distancing.” Well, what do you think people are going to do? People are not just going to sit around here and stop living. 

Anyway, most of this is for next week, I'm just kind of setting the table. Because once I get going, the time starts flying here, and I'm going to be out of here before I know it.

After Pearl Harbor, Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Canadians were deprived of their homes and property and put into concentration camps simply because of their ancestry, not because of anything they'd done or said against the war effort.

I would love to see Limbaugh and his sympathizers experience something similar, like the jailing of Typhoid Mary.

Public health advice from Rush Limbaugh

Via the Rush Limbaugh show, a transcript: Overhyped Coronavirus Weaponized Against Trump. Excerpt, and no comment at all:

RUSH: Folks, this coronavirus thing, I want to try to put this in perspective for you. It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. (interruption) You think I’m wrong about this? You think I’m missing it by saying that’s… (interruption) Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks. 

The Drive-By Media hype of this thing as a pandemic, as the Andromeda strain, as, “Oh, my God, if you get it, you’re dead.” Do you know what the — I think the survival rate is 98%. Ninety-eight percent of people get the coronavirus survive. It’s a respiratory system virus. It probably is a ChiCom laboratory experiment that is in the process of being weaponized. All superpower nations weaponize bioweapons. They experiment with them. The Russians, for example, have weaponized fentanyl. Now, fentanyl is also not what it is represented to be.

My parents were against vaccines. Getting immunized as an adult shouldn’t have been so hard

I am happy to interrupt the relentless COVID-19 coverage to link to this excellent long article in The Globe and Mail: Opinion: My parents were against vaccines. Getting immunized as an adult shouldn’t have been so hard. Take some time away from the outbreak to read it. Excerpt:

On a grey morning in January, 2019, I walked into my doctor’s office for what I hoped would be a quick, straightforward visit. I sat in the examination room, clenching and unclenching my fists as I waited. My palms were sweating, my heart was racing. I was nervous and my body knew it.  

After what felt like hours, the nurse practitioner finally came in. “Well, hello,” she said, a warm smile spreading across her face. “What can I do for you today?” 

I shrugged my shoulders, took a deep breath and tried to gather my courage. “I’m 27 and I haven’t been vaccinated since I was three,” I blurted out. “Can you help?”  

I watched her smile slowly slip away. “Oh my God,” she said. “Hold on, let me go talk to my supervisor.”

Ukraine: Violent clashes as locals hurl stones at coronavirus evacuees' bus

Via The Guardian: Ukraine: violent clashes as locals hurl stones at coronavirus evacuees' bus.

Ukraine’s effort to quarantine more than 70 people evacuated from China over the new virus outbreak was plunged into chaos on Thursday as local residents hurled stones at buses carrying the evacuees and engaged in violent clashes with police. 

The vehicles were finally able to reach the designated place of quarantine after hours of clashes. The masked evacuees, exhausted by the long journey, peeked through shattered bus windows as they drove slowly under heavy police escort.  

Since the early morning, several hundred residents of the village of Novi Sanzhary in Ukraine’s central Poltava region had barricaded the road to a sanitarium intended to host the evacuees, fearing that they could become infected.  

Demonstrators, some of whom appeared drunk, put up road blocks, burned tyres and clashed with hundreds of riot police who moved to restore access. One protester tried to ram police lines with his car. 

The Ukrainian authorities say all passengers on board had been screened twice for the virus before being allowed to fly, but that was not enough to pacify the protesters. 

“Isn’t there any other place in Ukraine that can host 50 people, that is located in more or less remote villages or in far-off areas where there is no threat to population?” queried resident Yuriy Dzyubenko. 

One protester was heard suggesting they should be kept at Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986. Another suggested taking them to parliament, while another said Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s president, should house them himself if he really believed there was no danger. 

“This is what I am telling him, telling the president: ‘Take 10 people, then I will take two,’” a man called Yuriy, who did not give his last name, said.

Nine police and one civilian were hospitalised, regional police said in a statement. 

More than 10 protesters were detained, and Ukraine’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov, visited the site of the skirmishes to try to calm the crowd down. He urged the protesters “not to fall for provocations and be understanding of the necessity for these temporary measures”.  

“The situation is rather heated,” Poltava’s regional police spokesman Yuri Sulayev said.  

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy also weighed in, saying the protests showed “not the best side of our character”. In a statement on his Facebook page, Zelenskiy said the authorities had done everything possible to make sure the virus would not spread to Ukraine.  

“But there is another danger that I would like to mention. The danger of forgetting that we are all human and we are all Ukrainian,” he said.

US Senator Tom Cotton repeats debunked conspiracy theory about coronavirus

Via The Washington Post: Tom Cotton repeats debunked conspiracy theory about coronavirus. Excerpt:

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) repeated a fringe theory suggesting that the ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China.  

Cotton referenced a laboratory in the city, the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, in an interview on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” He said the lab was near a market some scientists initially thought was a starting point for the virus’s spread.  

“We don’t know where it originated, and we have to get to the bottom of that,” Cotton said. “We also know that just a few miles away from that food market is China’s only biosafety level 4 super laboratory that researches human infectious diseases.” 

Yet Cotton acknowledged there is no evidence that the disease originated at the lab. Instead, he suggested it’s necessary to ask Chinese authorities about the possibility, fanning the embers of a conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked by experts.

“Now, we don’t have evidence that this disease originated there, but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says,” Cotton said. “And China right now is not giving any evidence on that question at all.”  

Cotton is referring to a well-known lab in Wuhan, a “Cellular Level Biosafety Level 4” facility with a high level of operational security that works on researching dangerous pathogens. 

In response to Cotton’s remarks, as well as in previous interviews with The Washington Post, numerous experts dismissed the possibility the coronavirus may be man-made. 

“There’s absolutely nothing in the genome sequence of this virus that indicates the virus was engineered,” said Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University. “The possibility this was a deliberately released bioweapon can be firmly excluded.”  

Vipin Narang, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said it is “highly unlikely” the general population was exposed to a virus through an accident at a lab.  

“We don’t have any evidence for that,” said Narang, a political science professor with a background in chemical engineering. 

“It’s a skip in logic to say it’s a bioweapon that the Chinese developed and intentionally deployed, or even unintentionally deployed,” Narang said.  

After the story published, Cotton as part of a series of tweets made a distinction between the possibility the coronavirus is a man-made result of biological weapons research – which experts say should be dismissed – and other possibilities such as a lab accident. He also continued to list the engineered virus as a “hypothesis.”

Canada: Online claims that Chinese scientists stole coronavirus from Winnipeg lab have 'no factual basis'

Via CBC News: Online claims that Chinese scientists stole coronavirus from Winnipeg lab have 'no factual basis'. Excerpt:

The Public Health Agency of Canada is denying any connection between the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, two scientists who were escorted out of the building last summer, and the coronavirus outbreak in China.  

Baseless stories claiming that the two scientists are Chinese spies and that they smuggled the coronavirus to China's only Level 4 lab in Wuhan last year have been spreading on all major social media platforms and on conspiracy theorist blogs. One article from a conspiracy blog was shared more than 6,000 times on Facebook on Monday.  

The story even made its way on Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, where a video pushing these claims was watched more than 350,000 times.  

"This is misinformation and there is no factual basis for claims being made on social media," Eric Morrissette, chief of media relations for Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada said in response to queries by CBC News.

The conspiracy theory seems to be based on a distorted reading of reporting from CBC News published last summer. One of the first mentions occurred Saturday on Twitter, where businessman Kyle Bass claimed that 'a husband and wife Chinese spy team were recently removed from a Level 4 Infectious Disease facility in Canada for sending pathogens to the Wuhan facility.' 

In the tweet, which was shared over 12,000 times, he linked to a story CBC News broke in July, revealing that a researcher, her husband, and some of their graduate students, were escorted out of the National Microbiology Lab (NML) in Winnipeg amid an RCMP investigation into what's being described as a possible "policy breach" and "administrative matter."  

The RCMP and Health Canada have both stressed that there was no danger for public safety. 

CBC reporting never claimed the two scientists were spies, or that they brought any version of the coronavirus to the lab in Wuhan.

Experts say the disinformation is creating a "social panic" online. 

"We've seen already on Twitter and Reddit and other platforms that there have been calls to ban travellers from China from entering North American or Europe — that there have been individuals targeted to be supposedly pulled off flights or stopped at the Canadian border or the U.S. border," says Fuyuki Kurasawa, director of the Global Digital Citizenship Lab at York University.  

"The broader damage is that there grows a mistrust toward both government authorities, public health officials, the media, authoritative sources of media, and there there becomes a social media environment where speculation, rumour and conspiracy theories take over and wash out the factual information that is being promoted online."

Hidden cameras capture misinformation, fundraising tactics used by anti-vaxx movement

Via CBC News, a report from the CBC program Marketplace: Hidden cameras capture misinformation, fundraising tactics used by anti-vaxx movement. Excerpt:

They came from across North America, paying $200 each to attend the ritzy event in Washington, D.C., hoping to snag selfies with some of the biggest names in the anti-vaccination movement.  

For the anti-vaccination activists gathered in the U.S. capital last November, it was also a chance to strategize on ways to further their cause.  

And they were more than willing to share those strategies with the undercover Marketplace journalists who attended the event, posing as activists trying to grow the movement in Canada. 

The Marketplace investigation provided a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the anti-vaxx movement, which experts say is largely to blame for a shift in mindset about vaccination. Nearly half of Canadians today have some concern about vaccine safety.   

"Take vaccines out of the name — that way you won't get flagged," said one Virginian woman attending the event. 

She was speaking about how to get around social media filters geared at weeding out anti-vaccination content.

The woman also pointed to another popular tactic: Challenging vaccination policies under the seemingly libertarian banner of "health freedom," "medical freedom," or "informed consent." 

Her own group is named Virginians for Informed Consent and has about 1,200 members. She's also gone a step further, making the group almost impossible for the public to find. 

"We're secret," she said. "You can't search our name [on Facebook]." 

'Spreading misinformation will create chaos' 

The VIP event attended by Marketplace followed a public rally on Washington's National Mall, where a number of anti-vaccination celebrities — Andrew Wakefield, Del Bigtree and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — galvanized loyal activists, eager to speak out against what they claim is a coverup of a massive vaccine injury epidemic.

The movement persists despite a scientific consensus among medical professionals, vaccininologists and toxicologists that vaccines are safe and effective.  

"Their goal is to create noise, to create uncertainty," said Timothy Caulfield, a health law and policy expert and author of The Vaccination Picture, a book debunking anti-vaccination myths. 

"Spreading misinformation will create chaos — and that's exactly what they've done." 

Non-medical exemptions from vaccines have spiked in recent years, as have outbreaks from vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles. 

Canada: BC judge orders vaccinations for 2 boys over their mother's objections

Via CBC News Vancouver, some good news: B.C. judge orders vaccinations for 2 boys over their mother's objections. Excerpt:

A B.C. judge has ordered the vaccination of two children over the objections of their mother, who questioned the safety of immunization.  

The case went to provincial court in Salmon Arm, in B.C.'s southern interior, because of the father's concerns about recent measles outbreaks and a warning that education officials might not allow his two sons to attend school during an outbreak unless they were immunized. 

The mother attempted to introduce a report into evidence written by a U.S. doctor who testified in the high-profile case of a Michigan mother who fought for years to keep from vaccinating her young daughter.  

But Judge Stella Frame questioned Dr. Toni Lynn Bark's qualifications to speak about immunology, virology or epidemiology as well as her claims to be an expert in "vaccine adversomics."  

"It is difficult to know whether or not this is junk science or a recognized emerging field," Frame wrote in her eight-page decision. 

"Presented as it is in her report, her theory or opinion sounds like a conspiracy theory."  

'Vaccination is preferable to non-vaccination' 

The ruling highlights the role of the courts in adjudicating splits between parents divided over vaccination.  

Frame's decision refers to an earlier B.C. Supreme Court decision in which a judge rejected attempts to link vaccines to autism. Frame said she had reached the same conclusion.  

"The current best evidence is that vaccination is preferable to non-vaccination, that it is required in order to protect those who cannot be vaccinated as well as to protect ourselves, and that any adverse reaction the person may have from the vaccine is largely outweighed by the risk of contracting the targeted disease," Frame wrote.

‘Why my baby?’: How measles robbed Samoa of its young

Via The New York Times: ‘Why My Baby?’: How Measles Robbed Samoa of Its Young. Excerpt (but read the whole article):

UPOLU, Samoa — From the beginning, Nuu Lameko’s baby daughter radiated happiness. She clapped and danced to the songs of praise at church. Often, Ms. Lameko would roll a coconut across the floor of their home to hear her giggle. 

“Whenever I’m having a bad day, she would have that smile to cheer me up,” Ms. Lameko said. 

Late last month, that joy turned to despair. The baby girl, Lemina — called Mina for short — contracted measles as a calamitous epidemic swept the Pacific island nation of Samoa. Days later, Mina, just 10 months old, died in her mother’s arms.  

“I don’t really accept it,” Ms. Lameko said. “God, why? Why my baby?” 

That question has consumed Samoa as the epidemic has killed dozens of young children in the past two months and infected thousands more, leaving virtually no one in this nation of big families and communal living untouched. 

When measles arrived on its shores, Samoa was grievously unprepared. The government had left the door to contagion wide open, allowing the vaccination rate to fall to a staggeringly low level and putting thousands of children at risk.

The failure started with government complacency, compounded by a misguided decision to suspend a vaccination program after a medical scare. And the country’s skepticism about immunization was amplified by both anti-vaccine activists and traditional healers. 

Samoa is an acute example of how unfounded mistrust of vaccines and gaps in routine health care have led to a resurgence of measles around the world.

Outbreaks of measles have hit every region of the planet this year, with the virus emerging in places like the United States where it had once been considered eliminated. Worldwide, reported cases jumped 300 percent in the first three months of 2019, compared with the same period last year.

In Samoa, an independent nation that is part of the same island chain as American Samoa, the government has taken sweeping measures to control the disease’s spread after initial delays in the response to the outbreak. 

During a mass vaccination campaign in early December, the fear that had washed over the country was clear. Families hung red flags outside their homes to alert health workers that they needed a shot, with some bearing messages like “Help!” or “I want to live!”

That effort has put Samoa on the cusp of achieving a 95 percent vaccination rate, seen as the threshold for “herd immunity” — effective protection from the spread of the disease. 

For many, it came too late. Over all, 77 people have died in the epidemic, and at least 5,400 cases of measles have been reported among the population of 200,000, though the numbers are most likely higher.