Month: December 2022

Go ahead, make our day

The parallels between Prime Video’s “Jack Ryan” Season 3 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are simply eerie, says actor and producer John Krasinski. “But even having to explain that we wrote and shot the show before the conflict even happened seems like an alternate reality.”

The Ukrainian government’s cocky messaging crew, however, is not above drawing purposeful parallels between its fight against Vladimir Putin’s invaders and a popular David-versus-Goliath tale from Hollywood.

Enjoy, MFers.

An underdog who wins against the bad guys. This is the kind of story we all enjoy.
Dedicated to all the die hards on the front line.
Ukraine will win!
Yippee Ki-Yay…! pic.twitter.com/JaZzqlOZA7

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) December 26, 2022

Here’s another.

Brothers in arms on an observation post. pic.twitter.com/UfeYMYFzci

— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) December 27, 2022

But their quarry may not be dead

It looks like the GOP race for the presidential nomination is on. Trump is probably fine with a bigger crowd since it may work for him in the long run. With winner-take-all primaries, if he does end up politically crippled by all his baggage, he could slip under the wire with his solid 30% of the GOP base. (He didn’t start winning majorities until the very end of the process in 2016.)

The Washington Post reports:

Potential contenders are well into laying groundwork for campaigns, as more than a dozen have signaled interest or have declined to rule out a run amid speculation. Yet it’s unclear how many will actually take the plunge. A crowded field could play to Trump’s advantage, as it did in 2016 when the rest of the party did not unite around a single alternative as Trump won key early contests with a plurality of the vote.

“We figured by the first quarter next year, we need to be hard at it if we’re going to do it,” said Pompeo in a recent Fox News interview. Pompeo’s political action committee did not respond to a request for comment.

Nikki Haley, the U.N. ambassador under Trump, said at a recent event that she will take the holidays to evaluate whether to run. Pence will have his full family together in Indianapolis for the holidays for the first time in three years as he weighs his options, an aide said.

The former vice president,who is at odds with Trump and his allies over his refusal to attempt to overturn the 2020 election loss,will continue his book tour next month with visits to megachurches, the aide said, starting Jan. 15 with First Baptist Church of Dallas and its pastor, Robert Jeffress, a longtime evangelical ally of Trump.

Jeffress declined to immediately endorse Trump when he announced a third White House bid in November, even as the pastor called him a “great president” — one of many signals that Trump, while still formidable, has hardly consolidated the party’s support.

Trump leads in many 2024 polls, but DeSantis has started to outpace him in some head-to-head surveys, and congressional allies are not rushing to endorse the former president. Former members of Trump’s administration are trying to stake claims to key parts of his coalition, with Pence appealing heavily to the religious right and centering his opposition to abortion.

In some states, governors are preparing for legislative sessions early next year that could provide new platforms for a presidential pitch. In Florida, where new GOP supermajorities will give DeSantis even more power to enact his agenda, Republicans expect to tackle abortion, data privacy and “constitutional carry” for firearms, according to a Tallahassee lobbyist familiar with the plans, as well as the use of “environmental, social and governance” (ESG) criteria in investing — a practice increasingly vilified on the right as liberal excess. State officials have started to preview some of that agenda.

DeSantis’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

DeSantis is fresh off a resounding reelection win while the rest of his party fell short of making the big gains it had hoped for in the midterms. He has waged high-profile legislative battles over the past two years — pushing to curtail coronavirus vaccine mandates; banning classroom discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity for younger elementary school students; and stripping Disney of its special tax status in Florida after the company criticized DeSantis’s policies, among other things.

The coming session is expected to continue clashes with corporations, with Republicans trying again to pass a DeSantis-championed bill on the unauthorized use of consumer data and taking aim at ESG by setting new rules for the investment of state funds. Florida officials recently said they would pull state assets from ESG proponent BlackRock, a major asset-management firm, which denounced the move as political.

Florida’s current 15-week ban on abortion is less restrictive than many other Republican-controlled states’ policies, and DeSantis has been vague in public about what further restrictions on abortion he would support — a potential vulnerability in a GOP primary. At a news conference this month, however, DeSantis expressed openness to a “heartbeat bill” ban at roughly six weeks of pregnancy.

While Trump has drawn plenty of direct and implicit criticism from governors, their allies and others who might enter the race, some are also looking to differentiate themselves from DeSantis. One adviser to South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem contrasted her with DeSantis while noting that, late last month, Noem became the first governor to ban the social media app TikTok on state devices while citing national security concerns. Other states soon followed.

The Noem adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private planning, said the governor expects to visit Iowa early next year. Ian Fury, a spokesman for Noem, said she has invitations to numerous Lincoln dinners coming up, including in Iowa, but has not yet committed. She believes the message that won her reelection in November “should be shared with the rest of the country,” Fury said.

In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin — who shot to stardom last year while flipping the state — has proposed tax cuts for residents and corporations that could run up against opposition in the Democratic-controlled state Senate, though the state legislature approved $4 billion in tax cuts earlier this year. Virginia’s legislative session, which starts in mid-January, could give the governor more achievements to run on.

The wealthy former executive of a private equity investment firm faces less pressure to raise money ahead of a potential 2024 bid — but Youngkin has also been courting donors and this fall held a retreat that some involved described as a way to gauge 2024 support.

Youngkin said at the event that he did not know what would happen but invited donors to go on a “journey” with him, according to an attendee who took note of the open-ended language.

In New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Sununu has echoed worries about a repeat of 2016, when a crowded field split the vote and helped hand Trump the nomination and eventually the presidency. But he also has not ruled out a run of his own. Despite declaring in a recent CNN interview that he is focused on New Hampshire, Sununu recently launched Facebook ads targeted to Iowa and South Carolina, as first reported by FWIW News, which tracks online ads closely.

FWIW News spotted two other candidates restarting their Facebook ads recently: DeSantis and Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.), both fresh off winning reelection. Scott ran ads in swing states this year, released a book and spoke this fall at a Republican Jewish Coalition meeting that served as a showcase of potential 2024 candidates.

In Maryland, term-limited Gov. Larry Hogan amped up his fundraising late last month with an event that promoted a federal political action committee and raised more than $1.2 million. He has said he will not announce his plans until he leaves office early next year.

Another prominent governor discussed as a possible contender, Greg Abbott of Texas, has done little to show movement toward a presidential run this cycle. New Hampshire-based GOP consultant Dave Carney, who advises Abbott, said the governor is focused on the southern border and the coming legislative session and “will take time to thoughtfully look at what the options are” in June, after the session ends.

Other potential candidates include Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.), former New Jersey governor Chris Christie — who once chaired Trump’s transition team but now sharply criticizes the former president — and Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), the runner-up for the GOP nomination in 2016.

“There’s a lot of good people that are considering the race,” said Hutchinson, the Arkansas governor, who said he stands for taking “the theatrics” out of governing. “Is my message unique? Is my skill set and tone and leadership what is right for America at this particular time?”

Sorry ASA. Probably not. The right is still batshit crazy. But good luck to you. And good luck to all the usurpers. It will be a bloodletting the likes of which we have never seen before.

Red wedding anyone?

COVID is still here. How to figure out what makes sense.

I know that most people are just done with COVID and are living their lives, accepting that they may get it the way they accept getting colds and flu. But those who are older or have underlying illnesses or live with people who fit those categories need to be a little bit more analytical about this because COVID is still super contagious and the threat of serious illness and the residual effects of it loom large. I would feel terrible if I thought I gave it to someone.

When there is a surge, I mask up in public spaces. Since I live in Southern California I have the good fortune to be able to go to restaurants and bars and stay mostly outside or in well ventilated places. (And I will never get on an airplane unmasked again — I always caught something before and now I am well when I travel. Yippie!)

Anyway, here is UC San Francisco’s Dr. Bob Wachter’s latest tweet thread about how to mitigate your risk which I have often found very informative:

Covid (@UCSF) Chronicles, Day 1013

As we enter Covid Year 3, it’s clear we’ll be in our current predicament for the foreseeable future. This means we all need to find our own method to weigh & mitigate risks. Today I’ll describe my “50% Rule” & how it governs my choices.

All of us make risk choices daily, without much thought. What is the chance of rain above which I’ll bring an umbrella? Do I buy flood or earthquake insurance? Do I take a statin for my cholesterol? In making these choices, it’s rare there’s an unambiguously “right” answer.

Instead, we weigh the odds & badness of the thing we’re trying to avoid; how unpleasant, risky, & expensive the mitigation is; & our own risk tolerance. Since the cognitive burden of doing this for myriad choices daily is onerous, we all develop rules of thumb to guide us.

I’m utterly aware that many folks have chosen to resume their pre-Covid lives. In doing so, they’ve decided – in essence – that the burdens of mitigation (be it boosters or masks or avoiding indoor dining) exceed the benefits of preventing Covid, or preventing severe Covid.

I understand this. While I try to encourage my mom (who, since dad died last year, now lives alone in South FL) to wear a mask in crowded indoor spaces, I know that the threat of social isolation is very real, and playing cards & eating with friends is important to her.

So now that mom has had the bivalent booster (which greatly lowers her odds of being hospitalized or dying from a case of Covid), I don’t push her on masking & indoor dining. To her, the burdens of being careful seem higher than the benefits. For her, she may well be right.

As for me, I’ve developed a simple algorithm that balances my desire to live life “normally” with my desire to remain Covid-free. It flexes up & down based on current Covid risk & the joys associated with a given activity. I’ve shared this before in bits and pieces, but today I’ll lay out the whole thing, including my mitigation math. My plan will be to follow these rules until the threat of Covid either goes⬇a lot (perhaps via a new antiviral that lowers the risk of Long Covid to near-zero), or goes⬆a lot (likely via a new variant). (8/25)

To make it easy to remember, I’ve taken advantage of fact that many of our current mitigation strategies lower the odds of getting Covid by ~50% (+/- 10-20%). The numbers are admittedly imprecise but close enough & directionally correct. In applying the 50% rule, I’ll be using a version of the Swiss cheese model (Figure), which posits that no one type of protection is perfect (except for total isolation, which seems unsatisfying), and safety can best be achieved by laying different types of imperfect protection on top of one another. (10/25)

Here are some strategies that lower the risk of Covid by ~50%:
• If you’ve been boosted OR had Covid in the past 2 months
• If everybody at a gathering has tested neg. for Covid w/ a rapid test that day
• If an indoor space has really good ventilation and/or filtering.

I’ll now cite a few basic principles that I use for myself. (For context, I’m 65 and have had 5 vaccine shots, including the bivalent 2.5 mths ago.) Because I’m boosted, I don’t worry that a case of Covid will kill me or land me in hospital – particularly since I’ll take Paxlovid if I get Covid. But I still want to avoid getting Covid since each case carries a ~5% chance of symptomatic Long Covid & a small but real chance of raising long-term odds of death, heart attack, stroke, & dementia. Plus I don’t want to infect others if possible.

With that in mind, here are some of my bedrock principles:
1) I’m OK doing anything outdoors with no mask
2) Even if the risk of Covid falls below my threshold for masking, I’ll likely still wear a KN95 when it seems foolish to take any risk at all (ie, crowded airplanes).
3) While reported local case #’s markedly underestimate true prevalence due to home testing, case # trends are useful & the #’s are easily accessible. Plus, they correlate fairly well to other metrics like wastewater & asymptomatic test positivity rates.
I’ve settled on a case rate of <5-10 cases/100K/day in a community as being low enough that I’m ok with indoor dining or small gatherings without masks. Why? Because <5-10 tends to correlate w/ asymptomatic test positivity rates of <1%, meaning <1 in 100 chance that my food server or fellow poker player has Covid, & thus a <10% chance that in a group of 10 any one person is pos.

Why a range (5-10)? First, these are rough estimates.
Second, my risk tolerance depends partly on how important the activity is to me & whether there’s a viable substitute.

For example, if local case rate is <5/100K/day, I’m neutral re: eating indoors vs outdoors. When local rate is 5-10, my strong preference is outdoors, but if outdoors is unavailable or too unpleasant, I’m willing to eat indoors (recognizing that I’m taking a modest risk).

I’ve described my above thinking previously. Now I’ll layer in my 50% Rule – how I factor in mitigation strategies.

Let’s use 10 cases/100K/day as a threshold. If local rate is >10, I ask: are there mitigations I can use to lower the EFFECTIVE rate to below my threshold?

Here are some practical examples. Say the local prevalence is 14 cases/100K/d, as it is now in Dallas (find any U.S. county here). I’d feel comfortable hanging out with a group of people indoors and maskless only if everyone tested (which would cut the risk by 50%, lowering the effective rate from 14/100K/d to to 7), though my preference (since it’s still >5) would be to eat outdoors if possible (or add in 1 more layer of protection, ie ventilation).
(Below: 4 city estimates.)

If rate in my local community was 32/100K/d, as it is now in SF (BTW, asymptomatic test pos. rate @UCSFHospitals is 4.5%, meaning 1-in-22 people with no symptoms of Covid is testing pos. – pretty high), I’d only be comfy indoors if we applied TWO 50%-⬇ tactics (ie, group testing PLUS ventilation).

Note that if I was still in my 2-month post-booster window, I’d give myself 1 more 50% credit. Since I’m now outside the window (my boost was early Sept), I won’t count my booster as lowering my chance of Covid, though it’s still markedly lowering my odds of SEVERE Covid.

For my NYC pals (46 cases/100K/day), I’d only be comfy at a crowded indoor party w/ group testing, ventilation (yes, current temp is 27) AND if I was in my 2-month booster (or infection) window. Otherwise, sadly, I’d skip it.

Is this too onerous? I don’t know many folk who find it too onerous to check the weather before deciding how to dress. Likewise, this thinking helps me decide which Covid risks I’m willing to take & how to mitigate them. While “normal” sounds great, to me it’s not too high a price to stay healthy. Happy holidays!

Originally tweeted by Bob Wachter (@Bob_Wachter) on December 25, 2022.

The NY Times characterizes people who mask up in public spaces as “holdouts” kind of exotic paranoids who just can’t let go of their fears. Whatever. Around where I live I would guess that about 30% of people are still masked in retail stores, including a lot of the workers. I don’t think people even notice one way or the other.

There is no excuse for this

The only reason they could be this inept is if they are looking for reasons to deny disability benefits to people who need them. (And yes, I’m sure there are people who have abused the system, but that doesn’t make this ok.)

He had made it through four years of denials and appeals, and Robert Heard was finally before a Social Security judge who would decide whether he qualified for disability benefits. Two debilitating strokes had left the 47-year-old electrician with halting speech, an enlarged heart and violent tremors.

There was just one final step: A vocational expert hired by the Social Security Administration had to tell the judge if there was any work Heard could still do despite his condition. Heard was stunned as the expert canvassedhis computer and announced his findings: He could find work as a nut sorter, a dowel inspector or an egg processor —jobs that virtually no longer exist in the United States.

“Whatever it is that does those things, machines do it now,” said Heard, who lives on food stamps and a small stipend from his parents in a subsidized apartment in Tullahoma, Tenn. “Honestly, if they could see my shaking, they would see I couldn’t sort any nuts. I’d spill them all over the floor.”

He was still hopeful the administrative law judge hearing his claim for $1,300 to $1,700 per month in benefits had understood his limitations.

But while the judge agreed that Heard had multiple, severe impairments, he denied him benefits, writing that he had “job opportunities” in three occupations that are nearly obsolete and agreeing with the expert’s dubiousclaim that 130,000 positions were still available sorting nuts, inspecting dowels and processing eggs.

Every year, thousands of claimants like Heard find themselves blocked at this crucial last step in the arduous process of applying for disability benefits, thanks to labor market data that was last updated 45 years ago.

The jobs are spelled out in an exhaustive publication known as the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. The vast majority of the 12,700 entries were last updated in 1977. The Department of Labor, which originally compiled the index, abandoned it 31 years agoin a sign ofthe economy’s shiftfrom blue-collar manufacturing to information and services.

Social Security, though, still relies on it at the final stage when a claim is reviewed. Thegovernment, using strict vocational rules, assesses someone’s capacity to work and if jobs exist “in significant numbers”that they could still do. The dictionaryremains the backbone of a $200 billion disability system that provides benefits to 15 million people.

It lists 137 unskilled, sedentary jobs — jobs that most closely match the skills and limitations of those who apply for disability benefits. But in reality, most of these occupations were offshored, outsourced, and shifted to skilled work decades ago. Many have disappeared altogether.

This is ridiculous. Apparently, the rolls have shrunk dramatically in recent years (which makes little sense to me.) If that’s true it means that a lot of disabled people have just fallen through the cracks. That $1500 a month wouldn’t have been enough in the first place but it could have saved lives.

This whole thing makes me sad. Why are we so unwilling to ensure that everyone in this vastly wealthy country has at least a basic subsistence income? Why can’t we take proper care of sick people? So much money and so little compassion…

Twitter is becoming more of a hellhole every day, mostly because of the garbage Elon Musk is personally commissioning and endorsing. The latest edition of “the twitter files” is about how wrong it was for twitter to stop the COVID conspiracy nuts from running roughshod over the website as hundreds of thousands were suffering and dying all over the world. And the COVID denialist, anti-vax contrarian freaks are crawling all over the site. It’s sick.

That’s just the latest in his mission to turn the website into a massive dumpster fire and it may just end up being his most successful business venture yet.

There are some people who could step in and put some restraints on his if they wanted to. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though:

Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter takeover has so far been marked by turmoil.

After slashing half the company’s 7,500 member staff, he’s driven away advertisers and created a bigger financial hole for the company. So far, his ideas for bringing in additional money — paying for verification and additional features — have failed to make much of a dent. An unscientific poll he launched recently told him to step down as CEO.

On a Twitter audio chat recently, Musk cited the company’s precarious financial position as a driver of his aggressive job cuts and drastic actions, adding “we have an emergency fire drill on our hands.”

That’s making at least some of his investors in the deal antsy, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Last week, at least a couple of the original investors received letters from a Musk associate soliciting additional investments, according to two people familiar with the matter, although it was unclear if that would proceed.

Here’s who initially invested in the deal, and what we know about why:

Foreign Investors

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud

The Saudi prince agreed in May to convert his shares of Twitter, worth nearly $2 billion, into a stake in the company when Musk took it private. A month earlier, he had publicly sparred with Musk about the company’s worth, but later tweeted that Musk would be an “excellent leader for Twitter.”

The prince has previously placed winning bets on Apple, Amazon and eBay. But his latest Silicon Valley investment has drawn skepticism in Washington. President Biden and some members of Congress have called on officials to examine the role of Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Twitter deal.

The Qatar Investment Authority

Known for its investments in companies including Barclays, Credit Suisse and Volkswagen, the $450 billion fund has an expansive footprint across the globe, and counts itself among Musk’s investors, putting up $375 million toward the deal. The fund is fueled by Qatar’s liquefied natural gas exports andhelps power the gulf nation’s diplomatic and political projects.

Musk was spotted with Mansoor Bin Ebrahim Al-Mahmoud, CEO of Qatar Investment Authority earlier this month at the World Cup finale.

Binance

The massive cryptocurrency exchange was recently in the news for backing out of its plans to acquire FTX, a rival exchange co-founded by Sam Bankman-Fried that has since collapsed. Shortly after Musk’s initial bid for Twitter, Binance contacted him and committed $500 million toward the purchase.

The exchange’s executives have said they support Musk’s desire to curb the presence of bots on the platform. They have also said they see Twitter as an opportunity to research and develop crypto-related technology and services, including payments and authentication. The crypto company, founded in China, has no headquarters and has drawn the scrutiny of regulators in the United States, Britain and Japan.

What they get: As part of the deal, anyone who invested $250 million or more gets special access to confidential company information. But giving that privilege to foreign investors is raising flags with Biden and U.S. officials. Of particular interest is whether that includes access to personal data about Twitter’s users since several of the entities are entwined with governments that have a history of cracking down on dissidents on Twitter and other online platforms.

Venture Capitalists

Andreessen Horowitz

One of the most famous venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, this firm has invested in Airbnb, Lyft and Coinbase. Co-founder Marc Andreessen was one of the people who privately messaged Musk about the Twitter deal, according to court filings. “If you are considering equity partners, my growth fund is in for $250 [million] with no additional work required,” Andreessen wrote. His firm would go on to give even $400 million. He has cheered on Musk in recent weeks on Twitter, particularly during the release of the “Twitter Files,” a string of releases on behavior inside the company before the takeover.

The other co-founder, Ben Horowitz, said in several tweets that the venture capital firm believes in “Elon’s brilliance” to make Twitter “what it was meant to be.” Horowitz went on to say that Twitter suffers from a range of issues, including censorship. He said that Musk was “perhaps the only person in the world” who could build the public square people hoped for, echoing the praise that conservatives have directed toward Musk, who they see as a champion of free speech.

Sequoia Capital

Another storied investment firm in the tech world, Sequoia Capital, has backed DoorDash, Zoom and 23andMe. A partner at the firm, Roelof Botha, has known Musk for decades, and was hired by him to work on what would become PayPal. Sequoia has also invested in Musk’s other ventures, SpaceX and the Boring Company. “Elon has succeeded in many different industries,” Botha said during an interview at a Wall Street Journal conference in October. “He’s an incredible first-principles thinker.”

What they get: Some of the biggest players in Silicon Valley are now tied to Twitter’s future. They will expect a major return on their investments, and their influence ensures that they can throw their weight around. How Musk decides to run the company, who he hires and promotes, and what features and products he emphasizes will reveal the role these investors will play in the new, private Twitter. But as their messages and public comments suggest, they’re also trying to get into Musk’s good graces.

Elon’s Buddies

Larry Ellison

The co-founder and chairman of the software company Oracle, Larry Ellison is known for his lavish spending. The tech titan, whom Musk counts as a friend, purchased the Hawaiian island of Lanai, in 2012. Earlier this year he texted Musk, “Elon, … I do think we need another Twitter.” Ellison would go on to pledge $1 billion to Musk’s purchase.

The billionaire has cultivated ties with Donald Trump, hosting the president in 2020 at his estate in California’s Coachella Valley and giving millions to Republican candidates and committees, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. After Musk said in October that he would not reinstate banned accounts until there was a clear process in place for doing so, he restored Trump’s account after a 52 percent majority of users in a Twitter poll he ran voted in favor of the decision.

Jack Dorsey

One of the co-founders and former chief executive of the company, Jack Dorsey rolled over his investment in Twitter to Musk’s new private enterprise, doubling down on his faith in the tech mogul, to the tune of $1 billion.

Dorsey, who runs the tech conglomerate Block, was one of several key characters who encouraged Musk to pursue Twitter, according to private text messages made public through court documents. In the messages, Dorsey told Musk that he had previously tried to get him to join the board but was blocked, and later referred to the board as “terrible.”

After Musk oversaw dramatic firings and layoffs at his new company, Dorsey apologized on Twitter for growing his former company too quickly.

What they get: From political persuasion to regained glory, the wealthy elite in Silicon Valley have myriad reasons to ally themselves with Musk — and may have some asks of him too. A host of Musk’s associates now function as a small council of lieutenants, helping to bring Musk’s vision of a “hardcore” Twitter 2.0 to fruition. Jason Calacanis, a longtime Musk associate who helped fundraise and cheerlead during the turbulent run-up to the deal, has played an important role in the company’s transition. And once Musk shifts his focus from Twitter, there’s also the role of CEO up for grabs.

Banks

Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays

A collection of several banks — including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Barclays — have lent Musk more than a quarter of the funding, or $13 billion. After a boom of dealmaking in 2021, coming off the uncertainty of the pandemic, Musk’s buyout presented an enticing opportunity.

This intimidating debt load and Musk’s optimistic revenue projections present daunting math for the company. Musk’s platform would need to charge $44 a month to recoup the advertising value generated by the top segment of U.S. power users if it relied only on subscriptions, according to an internal document reviewed by The Washington Post.

What they get:While these banks won’t hold the same type of sway over Twitter, they are a powerful weight on the billionaire, who will owe roughly $1 billion in interest a year. Musk has also at times last year put more than half of his Tesla shares down as collateral on loans, according to financial filings, worth tens of billions of dollars. But Tesla has slumped roughly 65 percent this year, highlighting both the risks facing tech companies in a downtrodden market and the danger of loading a slow-growth company like Twitter with too much debt. The banks helping to finance his Twitter deal would play a huge role if the company ever goes under.

Meanwhile, Tesla stock is in free fall and people are wondering if Musk might even be facing down margin calls. At this point it appears he might just be willing to blow it all up. Too bad for all the Tesla investors who just thought it was a good car.

Imagine that

Ron DeSantis is a nihilistic cretin:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) petition for a grand jury investigation into COVID-19 vaccines, in which he decries the ongoing vaccine campaign as “propaganda” by the Biden administration, is drawing fierce criticism from health experts.

Physicians and public health experts say his request betrays decades of established procedure designed to ensure the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, and only serves to stoke further immunization fears.

DeSantis’s petition for a grand jury investigation was approved by the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday, clearing the way for what his office described as a probe into “wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to the COVID-19 vaccine.”

The request was first made known during a roundtable discussion the Florida governor held last week, in which he condemned what he viewed as the linking of morality to pandemic mitigation methods such as staying at home in the early parts of the outbreak and getting vaccinated once the shots became available later on, and criticized federal COVID-19 guidance as being a “huge political farce.”

In his petition, DeSantis expressed suspicion over the COVID-19 vaccines’ ability to prevent transmission of the virus, as well as public statements made on the subject by officials like President Biden and outgoing chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci. As has been previously stated by physicians and researchers, no vaccine is 100 percent effective, but studies have consistently shown the coronavirus vaccines offer strong enough protection for recipients to prevent severe disease, hospitalization and death.

“It is impossible to imagine that so many influential individuals came to this view on their own. Rather, it is likely that individuals and companies with an incentive to do so created these perceptions for financial gain,” DeSantis suggested in his petition.

Public health experts and physicians, however, said DeSantis’s approach to scrutinizing the vaccines was flawed and counterproductive to promoting public health.

Brian Castrucci, president and CEO of public health group the de Beaumont Foundation, said DeSantis “appears to be focused on creating fear around vaccines that have been shown to be safe and effective,” rather than protecting the lives of Floridians.

“These vaccines have been tested and scrutinized more than any other vaccine, and they continue to save lives. Vaccine safety is not a partisan issue and attempting to make it one puts lives at risk,” Castrucci added.

Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at Johns Hopkins University and former principal deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said in a statement to The Hill that while there are legitimate avenues for evaluating vaccine recommendations, DeSantis’s investigation request was not an example of one.

“This is turning a matter of health and science into a political wedge issue, with the likely consequence that many people will be misled into placing themselves and their families at risk of serious illness and death,” Sharfstein said.

Other public health experts similarly disagreed with the avenue the governor has chosen for reviewing the COVID-19 vaccine guidance.

“His understanding of the facts or at least his articulation of the facts are just wrong,” Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told The Hill. Commenting shortly before the court’s decision, Benjamin said he hoped the petition was denied, as he considered such an investigation “a waste of taxpayer money and time and effort.”

“No one has either inappropriately or purposely either overstated or understated the vaccine in any way,” said Benjamin. “It’s a brand-new technology. Like any brand-new technology, you make some assumptions about what you think’s going to happen. It actually turned out to be a whole lot better than most people thought it would be.”

William Schaffner, professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University’s department of health policy and its division of infectious diseases, said he was “baffled” by DeSantis’s assertion that influential public health officials could not have come to same conclusion when it came to the vaccines.

As Schaffner noted, there are two independent panels composed of voluntary, external experts who advise federal agencies on vaccine policy. These committees are the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee at the FDA and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for which Schaffner is an ex-officio member, usually a nonvoting position within the group.

“That committee has been working for more than 60 years, and it deals with all vaccines. And it establishes the standards of practice as to who ought to receive the vaccines,” Schaffner said of the ACIP, noting committee meetings are entirely open to the public. “So, this is a rigorous, externally vetted, very critical process and it’s transparent … it is a model of open regulatory and recommending processes.”

In addition to expressing suspicion over the vaccine’s ability to prevent transmission, DeSantis further asserted that the risk of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, could possibly outweigh the benefits conferred by immunization.

Myocarditis is a rare side effect of mRNA vaccination that has been observed to be more common among young male patients. Both the ACIP and the CDC have previously determined that the risk of myocarditis and pericarditis, an inflammation of the muscles surrounding the heart, is outweighed by the benefits of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

Both Benjamin and Schaffner pushed back against DeSantis’s suggestion, stating that the risk of myocarditis was in fact higher in COVID-19 infections than in coronavirus immunizations. Schaffner referred to myocarditis following vaccination as a “transient phenomenon” from which the vast majority of patients fully recovered, which has also been observed by the CDC in surveys.

“I’ve worked for governors and mayors and there’s clearly a role for elected officials to provide the appropriate moral leadership in our communities and governance leadership,” Benjamin said. “But I think that they get in trouble when they try to practice medicine.”

This is one of the most grotesque political gambits I’ve yet seen. Not even Trump went this far. He is purposefully promoting vaccine resistance among the American public and it’s going to kill a lot of people, many of them children whose parents are so brainwashed they’ll apply this bullshit to the childhood vaccines as well. They are already doing it. I can hardly believe this is happening in the 21st century.

It is vitally important that this monster never becomes president.

Happy Hollandaise will continue through the end of the year so if you are still of a mind to throw some support this way you can do so with the buttons below or the address on the left sidebar. And thank you!!!

Axios posts a chart this morning labeled: Share of independent voters who supported Democrat or Republican candidates.

Republicans consistently underperform Democrats with independent voters “who say they don’t lean toward either party,” Axios reports, referencing an AR/VoteCast survey.

Associated Press reported Monday:

Republican House candidates nationwide won the support of 38% of independent voters in last month’s midterm elections, VoteCast showed. That’s far short of the 51% that Democrats scored with the same group in 2018 when they swept into power by picking up 41 seats. The GOP’s lackluster showing among independents helps explain why Republicans flipped just nine seats, securing a threadbare majority that has already raised questions about the party’s ability to govern.

Ability to govern? Republicans have shown no desire to govern. That’s plain from this quote from a voter raised in a rural Republican family:

“We were just being told, ‘Pelosi bad, Biden bad, therefore Craig bad,’ instead of hearing ‘This is my plan to represent this district,’” said [Steve] Stauff, a 42-year-old sales representative. “If you don’t bring me solutions to whatever problems you think we have, how can I take you seriously?”

Despite relentless Republican messages blaming inflation on President Joe Biden, independent voters unhappy about the economy nonetheless attributed inflation to many factors out of Biden’s control. “But that nuance was often missing from the GOP’s political message,” reports AP.

Axios adds:

The data show Republicans have been stuck in the high 30s among independents in each of the past three elections.

• These voters made up 12% of the electorate in 2018, 5% in 2020 and 8% in 2022.
• 20% of independents didn’t vote for either party in 2022 (the missing votes in the chart above).

Yes, well. The chart at the top of the post represents “independents who say they don’t lean toward either party.” What they say and how they actually vote may be very different things. So, it’s not clear how accurate (or useful) the chart is.

Once early voting starts here, candidates start asking themselves (and me) how the unaffiliated vote (what independents are called in North Carolina) will break for Democrats. UNAs now constitute the largest bloc of voters in this state. So when people ask how Democrats are voting, that’s not my greatest concern. UNAs hold the veto pen in the voting booth. Knowng how they split statewide is important to statewide candidates, but knowing how they split where is important both to statewide candidates and to those running in districts.

It is necromancy to know in any precinct how UNAs will vote in the coming election. But owing to North Carolina’s wide-open access to freely downloadable election data, it is possible to estimate how independent voters cast ballots in the last one. That is a window into where the fishing is good (and not) for Democrats looking to woo those independents in the fall. In the 30+ states where voters register by party, divining this may also be possible but a lot more trouble and not free.

In 2020 and 2022, I estimate only 42% of UNAs in NC voted for the Democrat at the top of the ticket. In my county it was 56%. In my precinct it was 80%. In counties below 100k in population, the UNAs go red pretty fast. In some precincts in those especially, not even all the registered Democrats vote for the Democrat. That sort of thing might be useful to know in 2024.

Now if I can just get our candidates’ attention.

Happy Hollandaise will continue through the end of the year so if you are still of a mind to throw some support this way you can do so with the buttons below or the address on the left sidebar. And thank you!!!

Social media, vaccine hesitency and AI

At this pace, artificial intelligence (AI) won’t just want to replace us, we’ll need it to. If primitive Russian bots were able to dupe millions over the last couple of election cycles, what happens when the troll farms get their hands on tools like Chat GPT?

“It is already writing better than most of my students write … college freshmen,” says author and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff.

Social media can spread misinformation and conspiracy theories faster than the truth can respond. And that’s just with human troll farms liking, sharing, and retweeting, or with bots with crude handles and bios like @JoeBlow6363088. What might advanced AI do when set loose in the already toxic social media sandbox?

What stone-knives-and-bearskins level trolling has bequeathed us is resurgent epidemics of childhood diseases like measles in middle-American towns like Columbus, Ohio (Washington Post):

Most of the 81 children infected so far are old enough to get the shots, but their parents chose not to do so, officials said, resulting in the country’s largest outbreak of the highly infectious pathogen this year.

“That is what is causing this outbreak to spread like wildfire,” said Mysheika Roberts, director of the Columbus health department.

The Ohio outbreak, which began in November, comes at a time of heightened worry about the public health consequences of anti-vaccine sentiment, a long-standing problem that has led to drops in child immunization rates in pockets across the United States. The pandemic has magnified those concerns because of controversies and politicization around coronavirus vaccines and school vaccine mandates.

More than a third of parents with children under 18 — and 28 percent of all adults — now say parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate their children for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR)to attend public schools, even if remaining unvaccinated may create health risks for others, according to new polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health-care research nonprofit.

A recent study estimates that COVID-19 vaccines saved over 3 million lives in this country. The authors concluded, “Without vaccination the U.S. would have experienced 1.5 times more infections, 3.8 times more hospitalizations, and 4.1 times more deaths.” Yet the breakdown in trust in government and in science killed unknown millions suspicious of politicians and expertise.

“We’re living in a progressively anti-science era, and that’s a very dangerous thing when you’re dealing with a very deadly pandemic that has already killed more than a million people in this country,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told the L.A. Times.

Much of the conspiracy-mongering has a partisan bias, but much of that accelerated through social media-spread misinformation. The “politically polarized nature of COVID-19 information, and misinformation, on social media has given rise to anxiety, sadness, anger and hostility that feed incivility,” researchers from the University of California, Davis found.

The problem has a feedback-loop aspect. Biotechnology helps reduce COVID infections and deaths while computer technology helps fuel both backlash against it and the political valence of opposition to government and science.

The Post again:

The growing opposition stems largely from shifts among people who identify as or lean Republican, the Kaiser survey found, with 44 percent saying parents should be able to opt out of those childhood vaccines — more than double the 20 percent who felt that way in 2019.

They’re all about freedom, but not about their fellow man.

Anne Zink, chief medical officer for Alaska’s health department, saw her first case of chicken pox recently in an unvaccinated young woman covered in painful sores. The patient thought the disease no longer existed.

“I was like, ‘Well, it really doesn’t when all of us choose to get vaccinated, but you aren’t vaccinated, your family’s not vaccinated, and the people you hang out with are not vaccinated. Chickenpox has been spreading in your community, and now you’re really sick,’” Zink recalled.

What’s also at work here is that when science and government work as intended people take them for granted. We take for granted that people are not killed by smallpox, paralyzed by polio, or disfigured by Hansen’s Disease. As Joni sang, you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone?

The bomb cyclone dropped temperatures here 40 degrees in a few hours Friday morning. In another time there would be no warning save for Uncle Charlie’s trick knee. But I spent Thursday applying Armor All to the door gaskets on our vehicles (and leaving the doors unlocked) so they would open at 0° F. I charged phone, laptop and flashlight batteries. How did I know to do that? The National Weather Service, NOAA weather satellites, and the government-created internet.

People are mighty selective about what parts of the government and science they trust and what parts they don’t. Ironically, the same science that saves their lives teaches them to distrust both to the point of removing them from the gene pool. It will be even more ironic when AI replaces us all. How’s that for freedom?

Happy Hollandaise will continue through the end of the year so if you are still of a mind to throw some support this way you can do so with the buttons below or the address on the left sidebar. And thank you!!!

The NY Times profiles one of the city’s most “colorful” characters on the occasion of his passing:

The Rev. Louis R. Gigante was always larger-than-life. A Roman Catholic priest, the son of Italian immigrants and brother of New York mobsters, Father Gigante swaggered through the crime-ridden and crumbling South Bronx with a baseball bat and a development company that built thousands of apartments for the poor.

But it turns out even the legend could not live up to the true scope of Father Gigante’s full life. After he died in October, his will revealed two more startling facts: He was a multimillionaire. And he left nearly all his fortune to a single beneficiary — his 32-year-old son.

The revelation discloses publicly a brash defiance of one of the tenets of the Catholic Church, that priests must remain celibate. The discovery was made in recent weeks by the journalist Salvatore Arena, a former New York Daily News reporter who is preparing a book proposal about Father Gigante and looked up his last will and testament.

“I almost fell out of my chair,” Mr. Arena said.

As was his way, Father Gigante also appeared to have made minimal effort to hide his son from the outside world in the way that other priests have in the past. The reverend’s personal life had been the subject of decades of whispering in the Bronx and was an open secret among those closest to him.

Father Gigante may have evaded church scrutiny of his personal life through sheer force of personality, in much the same way he used his outsize persona to rebuild desolate streets surrounding his parish, broker back-room deals as a Democratic kingmaker and loudly defend his criminal siblings. It may have seemed hard to fathom that through a late stretch of those busy years, he was also raising a son in a quiet suburb north of the city.

Luigino Gigante was born in 1990 and raised in Somers, N.Y., in Westchester County, an hour drive from Father Gigante’s parish, St. Athanasius Roman Catholic Church in the South Bronx. He and his father lived with the boy’s mother and were by all appearances an unremarkable suburban family — until the time came every day when Dad put on his Roman collar and returned to being Father.

“We had a quiet life,” Mr. Gigante said in an interview in Manhattan, where he goes by Gino. “He was proud of me. We did everything together.” As for the fact that his father was a priest, “it was just like another quirky thing,” he said.

I don’t really care. Maybe this is so common that nobody minds and the whole celibacy thing is just a myth. According to the article, it was kind of an open secret. But I would think people would wonder how he managed to become a multi-millionaire doing non-profit work helping build housing for the poor. Apparently, there were plenty of people who knew about that as well.

Again, it’s not on me. I’m not religious, But I’m not really sure the church should have influence on any kind of social policy since it’s pretty clear they don’t live by the moral code they preach and hold other institutions to higher standards than they hold themselves.

If anyone wants to know why younger people are rejecting organized religion in droves, this might be a hint.

Happy Hollandaise will continue through the end of the year so if you are still of a mind to throw some support this way you can do so with the buttons below or the address on the left sidebar. And thank you!!!

This is the stuff that Elon Musk and his accomplices want to see more of on social media:

Vocal Covid-19 vaccine opponent Alex Berenson has discovered who the real victim of soccer analyst Grant Wahl’s sudden passing at the World Cup is: Berenson himself.

And his accused persecutors? Wahl’s family, of course.

In an unfathomably ghoulish tweet, Berenson whined about the Wahls’ alleged efforts to “shame/silence those of us raising serious questions about mRNA safety.”

“I’m sorry if Grant Wohl’s [sic] family prefers no one discuss what might have caused his death. But he was a public figure and publicly pro-mRNA shot and his wife is a huge jab advocate,” declared Berenson within a larger thread critiquing proponents of the mRNA vaccines.

After their advent, Wahl called the vaccines “incredible,” submitted that they were “not getting enough credit for the marvel that they are,” and echoed the medical community’s critiques of anti-vaxxers such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

Wahl’s widow, Dr. Céline Gounder, is a professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine and outspoken proponent of the vaccines who served on President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board transition team.

In both an appearance on CBS and post celebrating her husband’s life on his Substack page, Gounder revealed Wahl’s cause of death to be an ascending aortic aneurysm. From Substack:

An autopsy was performed by the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office. Grant died from the rupture of a slowly growing, undetected ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium. The chest pressure he experienced shortly before his death may have represented the initial symptoms. No amount of CPR or shocks would have saved him. His death was unrelated to COVID. His death was unrelated to vaccination status. There was nothing nefarious about his death.

Gounder did not reference the vaccine-related conspiracy theories during her CBS appearance, so the clause “his death was unrelated to vaccination status” in a longer tribute appears to comprise the totality of her efforts to silence and shame the delicate flower calling itself Alex Berenson.

Berenson’s theory of the vaccine’s role in Wahl’s death is wholly without merit. He bases his ludicrous claim on giant cell arteritis (GCA) being a risk factor for an ascending aortic aneurysm, calling it “a side effect of mRNA jabs.” The two screenshots Berenson provided as evidence refer only to singular cases of GCA being observed in much older patients in the immediate aftermath of vaccination — a textbook example of correlation without causation — and with no subsequent ascending aortic aneurysm following either case. He linked to neither article.

For the dual crimes of differing with Berenson about the safety and efficacy of the mRNA vaccines and Wahl’s having passed away at an early age, Wahl (posthumously) and Gounder (while grappling with unspeakable tragedy) have been tried and punished by the disgraced ex-New York Times reporter. In carrying out their sentence, Berenson has exemplified his signature traits: shoddy work, an unshakeable victim complex, and chronic inhumanity.

This is sickening on so many levels from the massive numbers of deaths from COVID (due to failure to vaccinate) to grossly suggesting that Grounder had a role in her husband’s death because she was in favor of vaccines. And Elon Musk continuing the insane disseminating of disinformation about COVID. These people are despicable.

This interview with Dr. Fauci in the LA Times addresses the anti-science bias that’s killing people:

Your career has been bookended by the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics. Both diseases are still with us, and are likely to remain so for some time. Do you find that discouraging?

Not at all. The work with HIV is historically transforming. When we first started caring for patients, we would give an infected patient a life expectancy of eight to 12 to 15 months.
Almost all of my patients died.

Over a period of time, we discovered the virus and developed a diagnostic test. And over a few years, we developed a series of antiretroviral drugs, then we added the protease inhibitor. Today we can tell somebody who’s infected with HIV that if they get on therapy, they are going to live an essentially normal lifespan.

And now, we have drugs that can 99% prevent infection with HIV. It’s true we don’t have a vaccine yet for HIV/AIDS, but hopefully we’ll get it.

That’s the science thing that I’m responsible for. I’m not responsible for the implementation of healthcare systems that don’t get people into healthcare. I’m not responsible for the fact that there’s a lack of equity. What I have been responsible for is the science, and the science has been an overwhelming success story when it comes to therapy and prevention. So am I discouraged? No, I think it’s cause for celebration!

The public seems to expect quick, complete solutions. Do they fail to appreciate that science doesn’t quite work that way?

I think there is a lack of appreciation for that. With HIV it was a gradual process of going from a complete lack of interventions in the early 1980s, to fielding interventions that proved slightly effective in 1986-87, then progressively adding medications that were moderately effective, and now to having drug combinations that are universally and dramatically effective.

I think people think of science as something that you get up at bat and you hit a home run the first time around. It isn’t that way — it’s a gradual, iterative process that is cumulative, and that will ultimately get you to the endgame you want.

And when the progress of science takes an unexpected turn?

That’s another lesson learned. Science collects data, and you act on the data that you have at the time.

In January 2020, we were learning about aspects of the coronavirus, and we had to, by necessity, make recommendations, make guidelines. We had to publicly discuss our understandings of the virus.

But the outbreak was dynamic, and science is self-correcting. So what we knew in January was one thing. When we later learned that the virus is readily spread by aerosol, and that 50% to 60% of the spread was by people who didn’t even know they’re infected, we had to change our recommendations and guidelines.

People sometimes said, “You’re flip-flopping.” It has nothing to do with flip-flopping! It was a case of continuing to make decisions based on the latest and most accurate data you have. After all, the SARS-CoV-2 that we were dealing with in January 2020 was very different from the SARS-CoV-2 virus that we’re dealing with now.

If you stick with the science, you’re going to have to be prepared to change as the facts evolve.

You’ve had more experience communicating with the public than most scientists will ever have. What has that taught you?

That people don’t hear the caveats. They hear the positive aspects of what you say.

As we communicate what we know, the only thing we can do better is to continue to try to emphasize that we’re dealing with a moving target, and that what we’re telling you now is based on the data as we know it. However, this may change, and we may need to change. Yet every time I’ve done that, the headline never includes the “however.” They never, ever include the caveat.

The science of immunology is enormously complex. Yet people without science background need to understand enough of it to make sense of your recommendations. How do you deal with that?

You have to take special care in articulating its complexity. And you just have to keep the “however” in the explanation.

I don’t blame the public. But it is truly complicated — the whole idea of antibody immunity that goes up and then goes down, and the T cells that persist but are tough to measure, though they’re probably the most important thing protecting you from severe disease. It’s so difficult to get that into a soundbite. You can’t report immunology in two sentences.

What happens when you add extreme partisanship to the mix?

It makes it untenable. Untenable! It makes people’s willingness to accept the dynamic nature of the science impossible.

We’re living in a progressively anti-science era, and that’s a very dangerous thing when you’re dealing with a very deadly pandemic that has already killed more than a million people in this country.

Do you ever ask yourself where we would be now with HIV/AIDS if we had today’s level of partisanship back then?

I don’t think we would be as advanced as we are now.

Ideological differences are a good way of keeping balance in this country. But not when it turns into profound divisiveness.

An example is if you look at the number of people vaccinated in red states versus blue states. There is absolutely no reason whatever that you’d make a decision about whether or not you are going to avail yourself of a lifesaving intervention for yourself and your family based on your ideological persuasion. It just doesn’t make any sense.

You are among the most beloved doctors and scientists in the country and also among the most reviled. Are you OK with that?

For me personally, I don’t care. But I’m not OK with the country being so divisive that they threaten the life and the safety of people like me and my family merely because I’m telling people to get vaccinated, to wear a mask where appropriate, to avoid indoor settings, and to abide by public health principles.

I mean, if that’s the reason why I’m hated by people, that’s a sorry state for the country.

The country is in a sorry state indeed. Rich fools, attention seekers, snake oil salesmen and devious power-mongers are exploiting people’s ignorance and making them hostile to science. It couldn’t happen at a worse time.

Berenson is a fiction writer. He is not a scientist, a doctor or even a science writer. He writes fiction. This is what he’s writing these days now that he’s back on twitter:

Happy Hollandaise will continue through the end of the year so if you are still of a mind to throw some support this way you can do so with the buttons below or the address on the left sidebar. And thank you!!!