Republicans: "Kissing The Ring" Gone Amok

Kissing the Ring: To make a gesture of deference, fealty, or genuflection to a person of power or authority. (link)

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"MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on the disastrous hearing by the Republicans today where they called Dr. Anthony Fauci to try and  read lies but Fauci and the Dems went on the offense."

If you are STILL supporting the Republicans after all they have done or failed to do, I challenge you to watch this 20-minute video with an open mind. Their actions and words during Dr. Fauci's "show hearing" today are an excellent summary of the anti-science, dangerous, and general poor character of that once-respectable US political party:

GOP Gets RUDE AWAKENING

Long COVID: What You Need To Know

"Estimates say that as many as 1 in 10 people who had COVID were still affected more than 3 months later. This health condition has become known as long COVID. In this video, we will discuss COVID, how long it lasts, how common it is, what you should do if you think you’re affected, and more."

Click on the link below for a video with the details:

Long COVID: All you need to know

Sweden Is A Terrible Example Of How To Handle A Pandemic

The real news is reporting an upswing in COVID-19 with the experts (aka scientists working in pertinent fields) concerned about the strains on society's infrastructure, workers, students, and other individuals. If you follow conservative media, they are already citing the "success" of Sweden last time as a model for the USA (link). 

Below is the truth about how a country that is secular/essentially non-religious and is also science-minded with high scores on societal happiness and well-being can act irresponsibly with catastrophic results:

“The Swedish response to this pandemic was unique and characterized by a morally, ethically, and scientifically questionable laissez-faire approach, a consequence of structural problems in the society. There was more emphasis on the protection of the 'Swedish image' than on saving and protecting lives or on an evidence-based approach. A strategy was never discussed among all relevant parties, and never implemented nor communicated to the public. In addition, there was an unwillingness and incapacity to admit any failures at all governmental levels; or to take any responsibility for the clearly detrimental outcomes for Swedish society. There were even attempts to revise history by changing, or deleting official documents, communication, and websites, and gaslighting the public. The Swedish authorities involved were not self-critical, did not engage in any official and open dialogue, and misled the public by withholding correct information and even spreading misleading information. A small group of so-called experts with a narrow disciplinary focus received a disproportionate and unquestioned amount of power in the discussion, nationally and internationally. There was no intellectual/scientific discussion between stakeholders (including independent experts from different disciplines), and the international advice of WHO, ECDC, and the scientific community was ignored and/or discredited.”  

(from an article in Nature, the premier science journal: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01097-5)

Covid-19 Origin: The Evidence

"A new COVID-19 variant is fueling a resurgence of the virus as it continues to evolve. But three years on, we still don’t know how the pandemic started. Author and journalist David Quammen ponders the origin of the virus in his latest article for The New York Times Magazine. He joins Walter Isaacson to discuss the conflicting theories."

Click on the link below for an up-to-date analysis of what we really know about the origin of Covid-19:

Lab Leak or Wet Market? Why the Origins of COVID-19 Matter

Dr Fauci's Autopsy On The Handling Of The COVID-19 Pandemic

"Dr. Fauci joins 'CNN This Morning' to discuss the missteps -- and missed opportunities -- that characterized the pandemic response in the US before he retired as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases."

Click on the link below for the interview. Keep in mind that THIS is how science works: it builds on prior knowledge and our knowledge of reality progresses. If you disagree with anything Dr. Fauci says here, you are ignoring not only the above statement about how science works but are impugning the character of the USA's foremost expert on the subject at hand. He is human, makes mistakes, and has the character to self-analyze.

Hear what Dr. Fauci says hampered US response to Covid-19 pandemic

Be Aware Of Where "Statistics" Are From

"The manufacturers of Covid-19 vaccines say they are 95% effective. Peter Doshi re-examined the evidence and estimates they are only 19-29% effective. This pre-print of an as-yet unpublished re-analysis raises many questions but doesn’t support the claims being made on antivaccine sites.

"A correspondent asked for my opinion about a study that he said has been appearing widely on COVID-19 vaccine disinformation sites with claims that it proves that the vaccines are not safe or that it shows there is ' - - - a 300% greater chance of landing in the hospital from the vaccine than from Covid itself.' I read the study. In the first place, I don’t think it showed any such thing. In the second place, there were several things about the study that made me distrust it: - - - "(STATISTICAL SHENANIGANS?)

No Medical Treatment Is Risk-Free

"It is always risky to use a new treatment before all the evidence is in, but it’s also risky to let a serious illness go untreated. Paul Offit’s latest book You Bet Your Life is about the “long and risky history” of medical innovations, giving readers much to consider while trying to decide which risk is greater."

This is directed toward those who are giving Dr. Fauci, and other medical experts, a hard time over recommended management of COVID-19. Click on the link below for details:

Deciding Which Risks to Take

Clean Indoor Air: A Necessity For Health

"Sweeping public health acts for everything from clean water to the control of cholera have revolutionized modern life as we know it. The Clean Air Act, which sets standards for outdoor air, has been around for decades. But as we spend more time inside amid the pandemic, scientists are now recognizing the need for a new form of quality control: regulating indoor air. How do we design and reconfigure spaces to have cleaner air capable of combating airborne viruses?"

Click on the link below for a podcast addressing this timely topic:

An Indoor Clean Air Act?

Patent Protection And Corporate Drug Morality

"Today we take a look at some of the explanations for why life-saving vaccines against COVID-19 are unavailable in much of the world while being refused by substantial numbers of people where they are widely available."

Click on the link below for a podcast exploring Republican anti-science, anti-vaccination, "Mass Formation Psychosis", and monopoly medicine:

The Epidemic of Patent Protection and Propaganda

Morality And COVID-19

Most religions have moral teachings. Claims by religions have not been verified by science. Morality is probably the result of biology and social interactions, and is subjective but informed by objective evidence. Morality regarding any particular issue is usually difficult to agree about, however, the better societies come up with the better choices.

Keeping the above in mind, click on the link below for an opinion regarding the best way to handle the issue of education in the face of COVID-19:

Smerconish: What have we done to our kids?

Government And Mandates

" - - - the cases are actually about something even more important: the future power of federal administrative agencies to regulate … anything."

The SCOTUS is about to paralyze any Federal government action during any crisis that affects its constitutional mandate to "promote the general Welfare." The Founding Fathers thought that this mandate was so important that they included it in the first sentence of the US Constitution. In addition, there are solid precedents in US law in support of science-based government action when health and safety are threatened. Click on the link below for a deeper understanding of why these cases are so important to the welfare of us all:

Supreme Court's Covid vaccine mandate cases are more important than you think

A Lesson In Accepting Claims

The anti-vaccine crowd is touting the results of an Israeli study that found that natural immunity post-COVID-19 infection was much more effective against the Delta variant than two doses of vaccine (link). However, they ignore the very important recommendation of getting vaccinated anyway! In addition, this was just ONE study narrowing in on the Delta variant. 

If one were to do their homework on the issue, one would easily find several studies supporting vaccine being superior to natural immunity (link)(link)(link). 

Science-based thinkers do not "cherry-pick" their research.

Joe Mercola: The Worst Of The Worst

"Joe Mercola is a physician whose nearly a quarter-century of promoting quackery and antivaccine misinformation has garnered him a net worth north of $100 million. It is therefore not surprising that in the age of the pandemic, he has pivoted to fatten his bottom line promoting misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and the COVID vaccines."

Click on the link below for details:

A Superspreader of Medical Misinformation

Organized Medical Disinformation

Understand that the present antivaccination stance held by many ignorant folks is promoted by many medical disinformation activist individuals and organizations. Click on the links below for a closer look:

The Disinformation Dozen

The 'Health Freedom Movement'

If you disagree with the above, you need to falsify the findings of the consensus of the biomedical research organizations mentioned here.

Ignoring Science Can Be A Killer

"Back in 2019, a panel of health experts declared that of every country in the whole world, the United States was the most prepared for handling a pandemic. So what went wrong? Acclaimed author Michael Lewis is unparalleled in unearthing the most compelling characters to tell an unexpected story – it’s no wonder he’s had multiple books turned into movies (The Blind Side, Moneyball, The Big Short). Now, Lewis has done it again with his latest book, “The Premonition”, following the people who spent years preparing for a pandemic only to be ignored at the most crucial juncture – to devastating results."

Click on the link below for an enlightening expose of how the present pandemic could have been greatly attenuated if the Trump administration was not a science denier:

The Premonition with Michael Lewis

COVID-19: Know Your Sources Of Information

I certainly realize that the management of the COVID-19 pandemic is a complicated task, to say the least. The parties in authority have to juggle the competing needs of public health and economics. That said, conservative media is aggressively promoting information that is more magical ideology than science.

Today I was listening to a podcast from "Hank Unplugged" (a conservative Christian production) that is emblematic of what I am talking about. It was an interview with Jay Richards talking about his new book entitled, "The Price of Panic: How the Tyranny of Experts Turned a Pandemic into a Catastrophe". I don't know about you, but having "the tyranny of experts" in the sub-title raises my bullsh!t detector. I will let one reviewer of the book speak for me:

• "Don't believe this propaganda. Jay W. Richards is a low-level business professor, Douglas Axe is a molecular biologist, and his research area is proving that God designed the world, and William Briggs is a minor statistician working to prove Libertarian ideas through the magic of statistics. None are public health experts, none are medical doctors and they have a major agenda to support Trump and the bonkers idea of herd immunity, which would lead to hundreds of thousands more deaths before a vaccine is widely available."

BTW, Jay Richards is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, which is "a politically conservative[4][5][6] non-profit think tank based in Seattle, Washington, that advocates the pseudoscientific concept[7][8][9] of intelligent design (ID)" (link). He also is a major force within the Great Barrington Declaration, which promotes, among other pseudoscience, herd immunity for COVID-19 (click here for more).

Critical Thinking (Science-Based Thinking) About COVID-19

Below is a summary of a very important informational article on how to think about the COVID-19 pandemic and, essentially, all similar global medical-biological crises:

The most important inference to make here is that without accurate testing with real-time results, isolation is our only tool by which to lower the rate of infection and ‘flatten the curve’. By using Critical Thinking, we can logically infer, then, that once a faster type of testing is available, we will begin to see a lesser need for isolation and a gradual loosening of travel restrictions on citizens.

(Critical Thinking About Covid-19)

Understand WHY Complete Drug Testing Is Mandatory!

"At a Thursday news briefing, Trump trumpeted that chloroquine had shown 'very, very encouraging early results' and said 'we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately.' Minutes later, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, an oncologist, clarified that the drug would be available 'in the setting of a clinical trial — a large, pragmatic clinical trial — to actually gather that information and answer the question that needs to be answered and — asked and answered.'

"Friday, the President said, 'It may work, it may not work. I feel good about it. That’s all it is. Just a feeling.' At the same press conference, Anthony Fauci, a physician who heads the NIAID and a veteran of outbreaks going back to HIV, emphasized the need for a methodical clinical trial."

Thanks to Trump, and quacks like Dr. Oz (link to his latest action) and many other magical thinkers, people are dying from hydroxychloroquine, a valid antimalaria drug, in efforts to avoid the coronavirus effects. Below are the steps ALL drugs MUST go through before approval for a particular disease:

• Phase 1 studies (typically involve 20 to 80 people). Phase 2 studies (typically involve a few dozen to about 300 people). Phase 3 studies (typically involve several hundred to about 3,000 people).

"The study referenced by Trump, and other studies done so far of potential treatments for Covid-19, are small and hastily designed even by the standards of Phase 1 studies. So how often do infectious-disease drugs that enter Phase 2 studies reach the market? An analysis by the Biotechnology Industry Organization says they worked out only 27.5% of the time between 2009 and 2015. That means that three-quarters of the time, medicines against infectious disease that looked promising in small studies either were ineffective or had side effects that made them unusable. Even for medicines that reached Phase 3 trials, just 63% succeeded."

Why President Trump is at odds with his medical experts over using malaria drugs against Covid-19