Bummer: Scientists Aren’t Sure Boosters Will Prevent Another Chinese Coronavirus Wave

By William Teach November 19, 2022 – 10:30 am

Wait, is the NY Times questioning the capability of the COVID vaccines? Are they vax deniers now? The vaccines and boosters did not prevent the waves in 2021. (Yahoo non-paywalled version here)

Will COVID Boosters Prevent Another Wave? Scientists Aren’t So Sure.

As winter looms and Americans increasingly gather indoors without masks or social distancing, a medley of new coronavirus variants is seeding a rise in cases and hospitalizations in counties across the nation.

Masks do not work. Not in the least. If they did, the waves since around June 2000 would have been a whole lot less, right? If they worked the NY Times would require all their employees to wear them at work. Stop trying to make masks a thing.

The Biden administration’s plan for preventing a national surge depends heavily on persuading Americans to get updated booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. Now some scientists are raising doubts about this strategy.

Older adults, immunocompromised people and pregnant women should get the booster shots, because they offer extra protection against severe disease and death, said John Moore, a virus expert at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York.

But the picture is less clear for healthy Americans who are middle-aged and younger. They are rarely at risk of severe illness or death from COVID, and at this point most have built immunity through multiple vaccine doses, infections or both.

Wait, what? Healthy people are at little risk? You mean like since this started?

The newer variants, called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, are spreading quickly, and boosters seem to do little to prevent infections with these viruses, as they are excellent evaders of immunity.

“If you’re at medical risk, you should get boosted, or if you’re at psychological risk and worrying yourself to death, go and get boosted,” Moore said. “But don’t believe that will give you some kind of amazing protection against infection, and then go out and party like there’s no tomorrow.”

The variants mostly evade the vaccines, so, get ahead and get them? Really? If they did anything, I’d get one. I’m not against them, and if they can keep me from getting really sick from COVID, I’d take one. But, they do not really work at this point

The most recent boosters are “bivalent,” targeting both the original version of the coronavirus and the omicron variants circulating earlier this year, BA.4 and BA.5. Only about 12% of adults have opted for the latest shot.

They do not really make sense at this point. Question: do naturally occurring coronaviruses spin out so many darned variants so darned fast that easily evade vaccines?

“It’s not likely that any of the vaccines or boosters, no matter how many you get, will provide substantial and sustained protection against acquisition of infection,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, head of Beth Israel Deaconess’ Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, who helped develop the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Oops?

The Biden administration may have no choice but to promote boosters given the lifting of other precautions, Chapman said. But most people make decisions based on what others in their social network do, or what their political and community leaders recommend, not on esoteric scientific data, she noted.

Yeah, that’s what most in Progressive circles do, because they have been taught to not think for themselves.

Read: Bummer: Scientists Aren’t Sure Boosters Will Prevent Another Chinese Coronavirus Wave »

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Good Grief: Climate Cultists Blaming Climate Apocalypse For Massive Buffalo Snowstorm

By William Teach November 19, 2022 – 7:15 am

What’s going on in the Buffalo area?

More than 5 feet has fallen in New York snowstorm and 2 people have died while clearing paths in Erie County

Heavy snowfall is pounding parts of western New York state as a potentially historic storm that’s halted traffic on major roadways threatens to topple trees, damage property and knock out power as temperatures plunge.

Snowfall totals have now reached 5 feet in at least one location. Orchard Park, where the Buffalo Bills had been scheduled to play their now-relocated NFL game Sunday, had snowfall totals of up to 66 inches by Friday evening.

Buffalo’s highest three-day snowfall is 56.1 inches, which occurred in December 2001, CNN Meteorologist Brandon Miller said. Indeed, given the rate of snowfall, Buffalo may see a month’s worth of snow in only a few hours. That could make this month the snowiest November since 2000, when 45.6 inches in total fell in the city during the entire month, Miller added.

Now, this is being written late Friday evening. How much snow by Saturday morning? It’s snowing 1-3 inches per hour. Interestingly, in Buffalo proper, there really isn’t all that much (check out these webcams). It’s the area to the south and east that are getting hammered.

Looks fun, eh? Roads are shut down, both from the notion of “nah, bro, you’re not going anywhere” and government decree. Heck, many snowplows and such have gotten stuck. So, of course the Washington Post goes with

Human-caused climate change has the potential to intensify lake-effect snow events, at least in the short term, according to the NOAA’s U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit.

“Ice cover extent and lake water temperatures are the main controls on lake-effect snow that falls downwind of the Great Lakes,” the tool kit states. “As the region warms and ice cover diminishes in winter, models predict that more lake-effect snow will occur. The predictions change once lake temperatures rise to a point when much of what now falls as snow will instead fall as rain.”

A couple more tweets below the fold with video

Read More »

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Biden Says To Just Be Patient With Economy, There Might Be Setbacks

By William Teach November 19, 2022 – 7:00 am

See, we have to wait till his polices, whateverthehell they are, kick in

Post-Election Joe Biden Warns of Upcoming ‘Setbacks’ in the Economy

President Joe Biden warned Americans on Friday to expect setbacks in his ongoing attempts to fix the economy.

“It’s going to take time to get inflation back to normal levels as we keep our job market strong, so we could see setbacks along the way,” he said at the White House, promising to stay “laser-focused” on the economy.

He also claimed that inflation at the grocery store was “down slightly,” even though the cost of food at home is up 12.4 percent from the previous year. (snip)

Biden encouraged Americans to be patient until his policies could go into effect, providing seniors with cheaper diabetes medicine. He also promoted tax credits for replacing windows and doors in their homes, replacing heating systems, and mounting solar panels on their roofs.

“That’s good for your wallet but also good for the environment, because you’re using less energy,” he said, noting that the tax credits were “just going to start kicking in.”

Except, none of those policies will actually reduce inflation. And, again, spending quite a lot of money, thousands, tens of thousands, to get a tax credit, doesn’t actually save you money except in the very, very, very long term, and is rather difficult when all those products are being driven higher in price. Plus the middle and working class already spending lots more for food, clothes, energy, and more. Will landlords allow so many to do any of that?

That said, does Biden have an ulterior motive? Could he be saying “just be patient” as a way of leading up to blame the GOP House when Biden’s policies fail? Which they will?

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Interesting: Washington Post Editorial Board Is Gently Questioning COVID’s “Someone Ate A Bat” Origins

By William Teach November 18, 2022 – 3:17 pm

It really wasn’t all that long ago when the Washington Post was criticizing everyone who had questions on Wuhan Flu’s origins. I wonder what changed (the piece is behind the paywall, but you can try copying this link and paste in your browser, will give you a cached version)

Wuhan’s early covid cases are a mystery. What is China hiding?

The story of how the pandemic got started — and turned into a global catastrophe — remains a black box. It should not be.

The first cases could provide the most important clues about the origins of the virus, yet we know the least about them. They could show whether the outbreak began by a zoonotic spillover, perhaps from animals sold at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, or was an inadvertent research-related accident, such as a leak from a research facility in Wuhan. The early cases could illuminate missteps in public health that allowed the virus to spread. They could point to failures in the early warning and surveillance systems, offering important lessons for the future. And knowing more about the early cases could reveal the extent to which China concealed vital information from the public when the outbreak might still have been brought under control.

It probably wouldn’t show that it was released on purpose, just that it came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is right freaking there. And has been known to have lax standards

The Beijing government has insisted the virus came from somewhere abroad, perhaps imported on frozen food. But the key to unlocking the origins lies within China. It is particularly important to discover how far and wide the virus spread in December 2019. The outbreak probably eluded detection at first, then was detected but not recognized as a new disease by doctors and nurses. After that, it was both detected and recognized, but the vital reporting was suppressed by Chinese authorities, both local and national.

To prevent the next pandemic, and to better understand this one, a serious, sustained and credible investigation is needed.

What is China hiding?

Remember when the Post and so many other leftist outlets lambasted those who questioned the origins, simply taking China’s word for it? Anyhow, it’s a pretty darned long and detailed editorial. Going way down we see

It is critical to gain a better understanding of how such a monumental disaster for mankind came about. A serious investigation must return to China, looking at both the zoonotic and research-related hypotheses. It must be thorough and credible, carried out with broad expertise that includes both scientists and public health experts from within China and beyond. Nothing should be off limits or excluded.

Yeah, that’s what a lot of us stated, we need to know, and we were called conspiracy nutjobs for saying it

Home Truths on Where Covid Came From

Pessimists say that the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus will never be known. The next Congress may have a chance to prove them wrong.

The Democrats have retained control of the Senate, but Republican capture of the House has now been confirmed. Though its margin will be small, the party will hold a majority in the chamber, and GOP-led committees can exercise subpoena power to uncover documents still withheld by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Though much of the relevant information remains concealed in China, the NIH paid for virus-manipulation research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, so it should retain progress reports and other relevant information.

It is beyond absurd that the genesis of the Covid-19 plague has become a partisan issue, with the Left favoring the natural origin explanation and the Right a laboratory source. But with Democrats having chosen to block congressional inquiry into the virus’s beginnings, the task of investigation has fallen to Republicans.

A Republican inquiry might start with the notorious February 1, 2020, teleconference attended by Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci, two leading NIH officials, as well as the panel of virologists who had told them the previous evening that the SARS-CoV-2 virus seemed to be engineered, not natural. Within three days of the conference, the virologists had changed their minds and decried their original conclusion as not merely wrong but a conspiracy theory. Why?

You can bet Fauci and Collins will attempt to obfuscate, like they’ve done before, but, Republicans will control these hearings, and neither man will have Democrats to get them off the hook

Both Collins and Fauci are well known for long service and achievement in medical research. But in the twilight of their careers, they seem to have made a serious error of judgment. Having funded the virus enhancement research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, they should have recused themselves from inquiry as to whether the institute was the source of SARS-CoV-2. Instead, they presided over a series of events that led to suppression of the lab leak hypothesis. They excluded the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which was better qualified to investigate, instead delegating continuation of their inquiry to Jeremy Farrar, a senior British health official with known and intimate ties to China’s health bureaucracy. “This is not my area of expertise so I have backed off and am leaving it all to Jeremy,” Fauci wrote in a February 13, 2020, email. In Farrar’s hands, the inquiry died a safe death.

Why was the CDC excluded, when they could have figured this out early? Another long piece, worth the read.

Read: Interesting: Washington Post Editorial Board Is Gently Questioning COVID’s “Someone Ate A Bat” Origins »

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If All You See…

By William Teach November 18, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is the flag of a massive carbon polluter (but China is excluded), you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Daley Gator, with a post on Los Angeles potentially banning rodeos.

Read: If All You See… »

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Biden Looks To Shield MBS From US Lawsuits, Accused Of Killing Journalist

By William Teach November 18, 2022 – 10:30 am

Now, just imagine that it was the Trump administration doing this. The media would be in a frenzy, declaring he was a killer for defending a killer, they’d say he’s in the Saudi pockets. When Biden does? Just small news pieces

U.S. moves to shield Saudi crown prince in Khashoggi killing

Isn’t that great? The US is doing it, not the Biden admin

The Biden administration declared Thursday that the high office held by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince should shield him from lawsuits for his role in the killing of a U.S.-based journalist, a turnaround from Joe Biden’s passionate campaign trail denunciations of Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the brutal slaying.

The administration said the prince’s official standing should give him immunity in the lawsuit filed by the fiancée of slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and by the rights group he founded, Democracy for the Arab World Now.

The request is non-binding and a judge will ultimately decide whether to grant immunity. But it is bound to anger human rights activists and many U.S. lawmakers, coming as Saudi Arabia has stepped up imprisonment and other retaliation against peaceful critics at home and abroad and has cut oil production, a move seen as undercutting efforts by the U.S. and its allies to punish Russia for its war against Ukraine

The State Department on Thursday called the administration’s decision to try to protect the Saudi crown prince from U.S. courts in Khashoggi’s killing “purely a legal determination.”

And despite backing up the crown prince in his bid to block the lawsuit against him, the State Department “takes no view on the merits of the present suit and reiterates its unequivocal condemnation of the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” the administration’s court filing late Thursday said.

It may, or may not, be the correct legal determination, based on U.S. and international law.

Biden as a candidate vowed to make a “pariah” out of Saudi rulers over the 2018 killing of Khashoggi.

“I think it was a flat-out murder,” Biden said in a 2019 CNN town hall, as a candidate. “And I think we should have nailed it as that. I publicly said at the time we should treat it that way and there should be consequences relating to how we deal with those — that power.”

Remember when Biden fist-bumped MBS in July? There was some outrage from activists, but, the media, which had been very, very mad over Khashoggi’s murder, took a quiet position, much like they are now. The NY Times has a small, way down the front webpage article. The Washington Post, for whom Khashoggi worked for, has a slightly bigger piece, but, it is treated more as straight news, rather than opinion masquerading as straight news. There is an opinion piece by David Ignatius, though.

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Who’s Up For Paying Extra Airline Fees To Save The World From A Fever?

By William Teach November 18, 2022 – 7:15 am

If not, you want all life on Earth to die. But, are the fees worth it?

You could opt to pay extra on your next flight to help the planet. But is it a waste of money?

climate cowFor people trying to lower their carbon footprint in the world, flying is a conundrum.

It’s wonderful to visit family and see new places, but air travel is also a contributor to the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming.

Commercial airplanes and large business jets make up about 10% of US transportation emissions, accounting for 3% of the nation’s total greenhouse gas production, according to the latest numbers from the Environmental Protection Agency.

So climate-conscious travelers may be tempted to buy an add-on to their ticket that claims to reduce the environmental impact of their flights. Several major U.S. airlines offer to let passengers buy these offsets through their websites. And multiple other companies and non-profits also sell carbon offsets.

This piece from the USA Today then goes on to describe how utterly evil it is for you to fly. Not for the Elites, of course. That’s a question that few media outlets will ever ask, namely, why are all these high toned and fancy todo believers in ‘climate change’ taking lots and lots of fossil fueled flights, mostly on private jets? Then we get to

Do carbon offsets really work?
It depends on the offset. And who you ask.

They’re a scam

Still, offsets are not a “get out of jail free” card. Carbon is being emitted by the plane, notes Daniele Rao, an expert on the decarbonization of aviation at the non-profit Carbon Market Watch. He’s generally skeptical of offsets but is willing to say they’re “probably” better than nothing.

“It’s OK to purchase offsets. But you have to know that you’re not reducing your emission, you’re still having an impact,” he said.

Basically, it’s like paying speeding tickets because you like speeding while lecturing Other People to stop speeding. Anyhow, no one really, truly knows if these carbon offsets make any difference, because transparency is rather low. One think after all this time things would be a little bit more definitive, right? Here are a few ideas so you can be better

Take a train, bus or car for trips that are 600 miles or less — especially if multiple people are going.

Trains and buses take quite some time. It would take longer to take either from Raleigh to NJ to visit the parents than driving. Interestingly, the article fails to note the vast number of fossil fueled flights Biden takes to Delaware, which are way, way, way less than 600 miles.

Don’t fly business or first class. The amount of energy required to fly a plane is divided among the people flying. Coach is the most energy efficient.

Huh? That plane is going there anyway. You’re just paying more for the seat. The plane has the same “carbon footprint” regardless of seat.

Use a program like Google flights to see the actual carbon footprint of a given flight, so you can compare. Newer aircraft and more dense seating arrangements mean fewer pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger.

Yeah, no. I just want to get there.

Read: Who’s Up For Paying Extra Airline Fees To Save The World From A Fever? »

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Will Trump Get All His Supporters Back For 2024?

By William Teach November 18, 2022 – 7:00 am

It’s a good question

Can Trump hold onto his supporters and allies in 2024?

He promised to put an American flag on Mars and to execute drug dealers. He joked about climate change and reminisced about his warm relationship with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

For former President Donald Trump — given to lengthy asides about yacht parties or toilet hydraulics — his 2024 presidential announcement was something of a relatively sober policy address, even if it included his typical litany of falsehoods, exaggerations and non sequiturs.

Most notably, Trump refrained from promoting lies about the 2020 election having been “rigged” against him. He had made backing of those claims an all but necessary condition for anyone seeking his support, and persisted in this even as most Republicans concluded long ago that the former president’s obsessive relitigation of his defeat to Joe Biden was only harming their party.

On Tuesday night, speaking mostly from prepared remarks, Trump showed a measure of discipline not seen since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, when his regular briefings from the White House press room had about them a disconcertingly normal air, leaving some to wonder if the crisis had transformed him.

Obviously, this was written by a Typical Left Wing member of the Credentialed Media

Tuesday’s speech can thus be seen as an attempt to consolidate and win back support at a time when his support is fleeing — and also to energize his core supporters with the promise of a carnivalesque campaign that captures the renegade feel of his first maverick try at the White House. “I think it’s going to be very similar to 2016,” the longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone told Yahoo News ahead of Tuesday’s speech. “Trump has never had trouble remaining interesting.” (snip)

“If President Trump continues this tone and delivers this message on a consistent basis, he will be hard to beat,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., wrote on Twitter. Most reviews of the speech were markedly more negative, but praise from a senior Republican was a signal, however faint, that Trump was on the right track.

“Trump got his mojo back,” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, once a GOP candidate for the presidency, declared.

But

There were far more detractors, however. The current governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, also a Republican, tweeted: “Trump is correct on Biden’s failures, but his self-indulging message promoting anger has not changed. It didn’t work in 2022 and won’t work in 2024. There are better choices.”

Let’s go to a big time detractor, a “Republican” with extreme TDS

“It’s very probable that that pattern will happen again here. They’ll all come back to him if the voters stay with him,” says Joe Walsh, R-Ill., the former congressman who hosts the “White Flag” podcast. In a telephone interview, Walsh estimated that about 38% of the Republican electorate is made up of “hard-core” Trump supporters who will follow him to the exclusion of any other candidate. Another 20%, he argued, are willing to entertain other options but will grudgingly back Trump if he emerges as the frontrunner.

Excitable Joe Walsh (he’s not the fun one) does have a point. The problem here is that it will be hard for Trump to pull that other 42% if he wins the primaries. And, beyond that, he won’t be able to pull the Independents, no matter how bad a job Biden does over the next two years. His mental health issues could grow a lot more, and people will still vote for Joe.

Let’s say you describe most of Trump’s policies to people without saying Trump’s name. Maybe attach them to a squishy Republican or Democrat. They’ll support most of them. Now, say they are Trump’s policies, and the voters want nothing to do with them, Because Trump. Sorry, he’s toxic. I love or like most of his policies, I love that he battles with the media and Democrats. But, this is politics, and you do have to talk electability. He surprised people in 2016. He won’t in 2024. Even without Democrat cheating, he probably cannot win. And, he may do his schtick where he talks shit about the other Republicans running, making them have a difficult time getting elected if Trump doesn’t win the primaries.

Read: Will Trump Get All His Supporters Back For 2024? »

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Credentialed Media Concerned GOP House Will Investigate Lots Of Things

By William Teach November 17, 2022 – 3:07 pm

Of course, the USA Today isn’t asking one important question: how will the GOPe screw this up?

What will a Republican House look like? A lot of investigations and maybe impeachment.

Biden Brain SuckerNow that Republicans have taken the House, President Joe Biden’s agenda is likely going to stall over the next two years of his term – at least the more ambitious parts of it.

“I’m proud to announce the era of one-party Democrat rule in Washington is over,” California GOP Leader McCarthy declared after winning the nomination from his caucus to be the next speaker, replacing Democrat Nancy Pelosi. (snip)

When Democrats took control of the House as part of the 2018 blue wave, they started a flurry of investigations into then-President Donald Trump’s administration and his business dealings, including probes of his tax returns and later, the role he played in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Republicans have been itching to return the favor. When they win control of the House next year, expect a lot of investigations into Biden’s programs and his son Hunter Biden’s financial dealings. (snip)

A GOP majority could also open investigations into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Department of Justice.

McCarthy has vowed to immediately open an inquiry into the FBI’s search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

“When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts and leave no stone unturned,” McCarthy said.

See, it’s A-OK for Democrats to investigate everything when Trump was in office, and to continue investigating when Trump was gone. But, not OK for Republicans to investigate.

Some House Republicans have been clamoring to impeach Biden if the GOP takes control of the House. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., one of the Republican Conference’s most fiercely outspoken members, has introduced articles of impeachment against Biden multiple times.

However, McCarthy has tried to temper conversations surrounding impeachment, telling reporters, “We will not play politics with it.”

Don’t go down this road. As much as Biden deserves it, it’ll never happen since Democrats control the Senate. And it will generate sympathy for Dementia Joe via a concerted media campaign. Focus on exposing Democrats.

Should the GOP take the House, continued U.S. aid to Ukraine as it fends off a Russian invasion is up in the air. McCarthy told Punchbowl News that a Republican House won’t write a “blank check” to Ukraine, suggesting that Republicans would limit or halt funding to Ukraine.

It’s time to wind down this gravy train

Expect a GOP-run House to push through legislation with traditional conservative points: tax cuts, expanded energy production, and a reduction in government spending.

A House Republican agenda revealed in September titled a “Commitment to America” outlined various legislative goals for a GOP majority that also include increased fossil-fuel production.

But the Democratic-led Senate would go along with little of that. And if it did, the GOP still would have to contend with Biden’s veto pen.

If Biden and the Dems want to vote against increased energy independence and reducing the energy costs for Americans, that won’t look good.

Read: Credentialed Media Concerned GOP House Will Investigate Lots Of Things »

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If All You See…

By William Teach November 17, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is an area flooded due to carbon pollution Bad Weather rain, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Gateway Pundit, with a post on civil war looming in Brazil.

Read: If All You See… »

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