boosters

Hurricane DC

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

If you’re still driving around wearing a mask have we got good news for you?

The White House on Friday launched the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, half a year after Congress instructed the administration to set up a new arm in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

It is a now-permanent installment in Washington and will first be led by retired Major General Paul Friedrichs, a longtime biosecurity official. It comes roughly two months after the Covid-19 public health emergency ended and weeks after Covid-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha stepped down, reflecting an overall wind-down of the administration’s coronavirus efforts.

Just in time!

Pandemics are like hurricanes.  You know another one is coming.  Best be prepared.  You don’t know exactly where and when it will hit.  And, they both get named by the government.

There was Alpha and our favorite Delta AY.4.2 amongst many other COVID-19 variants that caused us to run to CVS for a booster or three.  Hurricanes Katrina, Ike, and Sandy needed no boosters, strong on their own accord.

Permanent installments in DC grow like hurricanes as well.  They start small, grow into an unstoppable fury, and leave a mess behind time and again.

After 9/11 the Transportation Security Administration was created.  It’s now a permanent installment as well.

As of the fiscal year 2020, the TSA operated on a budget of approximately $7.7 billion and employed over 47,000 Transportation Security Officers, Behavior Detection Officers, Transportation Security Specialists, Federal Air Marshals, and other security personnel.  The FY 2023 Budget is 34% higher at $10.3B and manned(or womanned) by 60,652 positions or 29% more fine government workers.

That’s Bidenomics!  Grow the government from the bottom up and the middle out.

Don’t you feel safer?  Remember to take off your shoes before going through the airport gauntlet, please.

You’d think that the combo of WHO, NIH, FDA, and the CDC would be able to handle the next time some Chinese bats take flight.  Or did it escape from the lab Anthony?

But, no.  It is time, or past time really, for another arm to be added to the many in DC there to serve you.

Thank goodness Biden and Kamala are urging the wealthy to pay their fair share.  As they remind us, there is still work to do.

Maybe the government is the virus, after all, it spreads just like a pandemic does.

Unfortunately, like COVID, there does not seem to be an effective vaccine to eliminate its growth.

 

 

 

Taking the Bad With the Good

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

So there’s bad news, more bad news, and even more bad news, and good news. Then there’s bad news and good news.  Which do you want first?

Ah, yes.  Understood.  Let’s get most of the bad out of the way first to get on to sunnier days.

The first bit of the bad is that those long lines that you’re standing in to get tested for Covid -19’s latest variant Omicron aren’t going to get shorter anytime soon.  New cases have exploded to surpass the previous highs of the late Spring of 2020.

And when you finally get to the front of the line and assuming they haven’t run out of test kits, the results might not be accurate so says the FDA.  “Covid-19 antigen tests may be less capable of detecting the fast-spreading Omicron variant,” the Food and Drug Administration cautioned on Tuesday.

If you test negative but exhibit the symptoms, stay home they ask.  Sure.

The new warning is based on preliminary studies by the National Institutes of Health’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics initiative using patient samples with the live virus — analysis that “represents the best way to evaluate true test performance in the short-term,” according to FDA.

The good news is that help is on the way.  The Biden administration has signed a $137 million contract with a pharmaceutical company for the purpose of building a factory for COVID-19 test strip materials, a White House official confirmed yesterday.

But it’s going to take a while.  The new facility will not start churning out the materials for three years, according to the company.  Never mind that the administration is under fire for reportedly rejecting a deal in October that would have strongly ramped up the supply of COVID tests available now.  Remember, Biden always says, get vaccinated, NOW!  Maybe his new command will be, “Get tested, LATER!”

Of course, the bad news is that the three-year timeline also signals that the administration expects the need for tens of millions of such tests per month into 2024 or 2025 and beyond.

So, Covid-19 has plans to have a sixth and seventh sequel called Covid-24 and Covid-25?  How many Friday the Thirteenth’s can you watch?

At least $137 million is cheap money for such non-entertainment in these inflationary times.

Further, the multi-department cooperation by our government is heartening.  The Department of Defense issued a press release stating that it had awarded the contract in coordination with the Department of Health and Human Services.  It was funded through the American Rescue Plan Act.

Got that?  Government red tape never has supply chain issues.

The White House inked the agreement with MilliporeSigma, a subsidiary of German firm Merck KGaA, not to be confused with U.S. company Merck & Co.

“The money will allow the company over three years to build a new facility to produce nitrocellulose membranes, the paper that displays test results, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin,” the outlet reported. “That, in turn, will allow for 85 million more tests to be produced per month.”

Well, at least that’s some good economic news for Wisconsin.  After the Kenosha riots that never should have happened, the subsequent trial that never should have happened, and the SUV in Waukesha that ran down its citizens at a parade, they could use a dose of good news.

And, based on the above we could use another dose or two from Pfizer to boost our spirits as well.

 

 

 

The $99,000 Question

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Many, many moons (Bang!  Zoom!) ago Ralph Kramden had a chance to win big, big bucks as a contestant on the $99,000 Answer Game Show.  He chose music as his category of expertise.

He convinced his buddy Ed Norton to quit his job working in the NY sewer system to help him prepare in the week prior.  Norton, as Ralph called him, was an accomplished pianist.  In the Bensonhurst apartment, he played song after song, and Ralph would know the name, the singer, and the year of everyone.

But, prior to each song, Norton would play a little bar or two of a jingle, then get to the actual song.  Norton described the need like a pitcher warming up in the bullpen.  This angered Ralph so. But, it was a small price to pay for very cheap labor.

A week passed and it was time for the big show.  The bus driver strode onto the stage with a wide girth and a wide grin, confident that he was going all of the way to the top ($99,000 in a geometric progressing fashion).

The MC asked for the first song from his show band.  And, wouldn’t you know it, it was the Norton warm-up jingle.  “Humanah, humanah,” Ralph muttered.  He also broke out into an immediate sweat.  He had no clue.  He had heard it two hundred times in the last seven days, but.

The buzzer sounded and ended Ralph’s run to fame and fortune before it started.  “Swanee River,” said the MC.  “That’s Swanee River,” Ralph stammered.

So too went the President Joe Biden national address yesterday.

He told us that the international travel testing window he instituted gave us a look at what the virus would do in the foreign lands before it got here.  He then told us that Omicron came upon us so fast that no one would have predicted that.  Odd.  “That’s Omicron,” he muttered.

Humanah, humanah!

Unlike Ralph, he said we are prepared though.  While you’ve been shopping his team has been stockpiling hospital gowns, masks, ventilators, and the like. No reporter asked if that would stop or slow the spread.

“And get vaccinated, NOW!  And get your booster, NOW!,” he urged in between coughs of his own.  No reporter asked if either would help in short order given 73% of all new cases are Omicron in the US, and the totals are doubling every three days, NOW.

Also, note, that the Director of NIL Immunization publicly stated yesterday, as Biden was lecturing, that he thought vaccines should be administered every three months from here on out.

The day before, the good Doctor Anthony Fauci said publicly that we will very likely NEVER be able to ride in an airplane again without a mask.  This was a day or two after American Airlines and Delta questioned if masks on planes were any deterrent.

He’s sending relief to hard-hit areas where testing lines are long with more tests, in-home tests, and more testers.  He sounded testy telling us that.  No reporter asked if by the time our government got to those currently higher infected areas if the virus would already be ramping up elsewhere.  “Skate to where the puck is going,” Dr. Wayne Gretzky once brilliantly stated.

“You can still work, but even if vaxxed, wear a mask inside,” he implored us.  Norton wore a mask in the sewer for his job.  It was definitely needed.  No one asked why we have never defined what a good mask is from, say, a thong.  No one asked if any studies showed the effectiveness of masking.

You can still enjoy the holidays if vaxxed and boosted said Jolly St. Joe.  You’re in for a dark winter of death if you’re unvaccinated said Joe Grinch.  No one asked why the vaxxed are getting and spreading the virus.

What about deploying the floating hospital ships, the USNS Mercy, and the USNS Comfort?  He didn’t offer and no one asked.  Hopefully, he didn’t go executive order rogue and is trying to send them unannounced to Colorado and Nevada.  Drydocks both.

What about therapeutics? He offered nothing and no one asked.

Schools can and should stay open.  We can test every day if we need to starting in mid-January.  Surely the virus won’t replicate much in three weeks.  Surely the band won’t play Swanee River.

Luckily, vaxxed or not, Norton got his job back in the sewer.  Ralph went back to driving his bus.  Normalcy at last.

But here is the $99,000 question.

What is lunacy?

The answer?  Doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.

That’s Swanee River?

To the moon Alice, to the moon.  Has the virus reached there?

 

 

 

Booster Palooza

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

This medical update is brought to you by Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J.  Or, should we have said their financial update?

Cue Sonny of Cher fame.  And the beat goes on.  And the beat goes on.  Cue your trustworthy government.  And the boosters go on.  And on.  And on.

Let’s start the check-up by looking at some very recent events.

“General Colin L. Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, passed away this morning due to complications from Covid 19,” the Powell family wrote on Facebook, noting he was fully vaccinated.  Maybe it’s just a rare breakthrough case you say?

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who is vaccinated against Covid-19, tested positive for the virus on Tuesday morning, according to department spokesperson Marsha Espinosa.  Maybe it’s yet just another rare breakthrough case?

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday excused President Biden’s decision to not wear a mask inside a DC restaurant as “moments in time that don’t reflect overarching policy.”  “I would say, of course, there are moments when we all don’t put masks back on as quickly as we should.”

This brushed aside, unmasked, wordless “gaffe” happened just a few short days after Biden interacted with the now infected Secretary Mayorkas.  Don’t worry though, Biden’s recent coughing and sneezing was only a common cold.

Where is the contact tracing police? Ha, that’s a good one.  It’s a worthless exercise.  It’s like chasing loose change in a tumbling dryer.

Well, you get the picture, and it isn’t a pretty one.

But, it does seem clear that being vaccinated does significantly reduce the risk of getting a case requiring hospitalization pretty dramatically.  That is good.

Does natural immunity do the same?  Someone tell us yes or no, please.

But when will the American citizens get the bigger picture?  How much longer do you want to be told what you can and cannot do with or without a mask, socially distanced or not, vaccinated or not?

NCAA football fans seem over it.  Fauci worried weeks ago about these superspreader events that aren’t superspreader events.  If he placed money on black and red on the roulette wheel, you should get down on green.

Do you know that POTUS’s jab mandate for employers of 100 or more is making its way through the bureaucracy?  It’s not final yet, but should be in a few weeks.

It sounds like a good idea.  But, fully one-third of the nation’s workforce is employed by companies that have less than one hundred employees.  Why stop the soon-to-be legally challenged mandate at 100 plus?

And, can anyone tell you what your immunity is after contracting the disease versus a jab?  Two jabs?  Three?  Why stop at three?

That’s info that Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J would prefer you not really know, understand, or embrace.

The FDA fills the gap.  It now recommends that the heretofore J&J one-and-done shot gets an extra free shot. It even approved the booster, get this, by having one of its advisors say “we approved the booster more on gut feeling than facts.”  And to make it all the easier the FDA is expected to approve this week a mix and match of three companies elixir along the booster highway.    Comforting all, isn’t it?

Around and around we go as it’s money, money, money for the pharms, and free, free, free for the minions.  Didn’t your dad tell you “nothing is free?”

Biden actually said weeks ago that the time has come that “we must protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated.”   It sounded ludicrous.  It turns out that maybe it didn’t go far enough.

Maybe we need to find a way to protect the vaccinated from the vaccinated.

Pfizer’s ears just heard its pockets jingle.