CDC

Good Night Everyone

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

John Fetterman stumbled and bumbled through his debate last evening with Dr. Oz for the Pennsylvania Senate seat.  At least he has an excuse.  If his family, friends, and for that matter the DNC had a conscience, they would follow the science.

Speaking of doctors and following the science, Joe Biden, the CDC, and the NIH seem to be stumbling and bumbling with this pesky covid 19 pandemic.

It started about a year ago right now when the President, who stumbles and bumbles a bit himself, said, “For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for themselves, their families, and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm.”  Looking back that seems overstated.

By June of this year, he was promoting a safe vaccine for children ages five and under.

The President then pivoted in a 60 Minutes interview in early September. “We still have a problem with Covid. We’re still doing a lotta work on it. But the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape.”

And, yesterday, in remarks on Covid, before he rolled up his sleeve for yet another booster he said, ” Americans have a choice as to how bad COVID-19 could be this winter.”  He also warned, yet again, that more people are likely to die.    Maybe we aren’t in pretty good shape?

Giving a boost to the booster effort he continued, “It’s incredibly effective, but the truth is, not enough people are getting it,” Biden said.  “Now we need a shot just once a year.

Noticeably absent was CDC Director Rochelle Walensky from the group gathered to support Biden and his remarks.   Last Friday night the good Dr. Walensky tested positive for COVID-19.  She is up to date with her vaccines.  Consistent with CDC guidelines, she is isolated at home.

Remember, it’s incredibly effective.

Dr. Anthony Fauci was behind the President and smiling from ear to ear.  He misses the spotlight ever so much.  With Cuomo and Lemon off of CNN at night and Rachael Maddow seldom seen on MSNBC most evenings now, his path to a live camera to tell us “I am the science” is tougher.

Will Dr. Oz defeat Fetterman in two weeks?  If he does, the Senate is one big step closer to Republican control.

And, if they get that control, another good doctor will find a path to a live camera.  Dr. Rand Paul promises a full Senate investigation by the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions into the origin, treatment, payouts, and results of the last three years of the virus and the subsequent billions of jabs to save us all.

Susequently, that will get Dr. Fauci plenty of the live air time he covets whether he wants it then, or not.

“Goodnight everyone,” Fetterman said as the debate began last evening.

Kudos to him for stumbling into correctly reading the exhausted American psyche.

We’re all looking for a few good nights right about now.

 

 

How Far?

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

How far down the rabbit hole are you willing to go?

  1.   Spain’s government mandated a minimum 80-degree setting on all home air conditioning units as the transition to green power hasn’t kept up with demand.
  2.   Ukraine’s richer by $50 billion thanks to the generosity of America.  Zelenskyy is so appreciative of this gesture that he took time away from posing for the Vogue cover to reach out to China to have them bid on the rebuild after the war that is or isn’t a war.
  3. China is so concerned about the effect of burning fossil fuels that official plans call for boosting coal production capacity by 300 million tons this year. That is equal to 7% of last year’s output of 4.1 billion tons, which was an increase of 5.7% over 2020.  All of the windmills in the world matter not if China and India don’t comply.
  4.  It seems like they disagree with then-President Barack Obama who lectured us that “climate change was no longer a debate, it’s fact.”  He’s is right though.  The climate has been changing for hundreds of millions of years.
  5.  All of this paves the way for the Inflation Reduction Act, which gives away over a quarter of trillion dollars to green companies and green-leaning pet projects.  Never let capitalism get in the way of a government, er, political handout.
  6.  All of the green handouts, capitalism, and the Inflation Reduction Act collided yesterday.  The Inflation Reduction Act, the major climate bill, was signed this week, continuing the EV purchase $7500 tax credit but only those assembled in North America qualify.  Capitalism stepped in and GM and Ford raised the prices of certain electric models by $6,000 to $8,500, roughly matching the $7,500 tax credit introduced under the inflation bill.  We think that’s called a zero-sum game.
  7. Thirty-one models qualify, but the government’s process to qualify is tricky and the timing is trickier due to quotas.  The “must have” is that at a minimum “final assembly” must occur stateside.  Could this be as simple as screwing on the gas tank cap to qualify?  Wait.
  8. Actually the only thing this screws is the gas combustion car manufacturing business.  Oh, and the big, bad oil business as well.
  9. If you obsoleted much of the need for oil (good luck) you’d certainly harm the economy in Texas, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Louisiana, and Oklahoma to name a few.  What do all of these states have in common?  Hint- It’s not abortion rights, er, woman’s reproductive health.  Think red.
  10. Who wins when wind wins?  Hint-It’s not states that have or will abort abortions.  Think blue.
  11. At least we seem to be winning across the 50 united vs. that pesky pandemic.  Two vax’s and two boosters did the trick.  How?  We don’t need to revisit government political theater handouts and capitalism do we?
  12. Although the military is still requiring all of the jabs or you’re discharged from it for refusing.  Masking will be mandatory for Philadelphia students for the first 10 days of the upcoming school year that starts on Aug. 29, after which it will be “optional but strongly encouraged.”  We have to guess that the disease can only count to ten just like many students.  Make it make sense.
  13. Meanwhile, the CDC Director weighed in, “In our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations.” Dr. Rochelle Walensky said this and more in a statement to the media yesterday that goes on to recommend CDC changes.

We’re so far down the rabbit hole that Bugs Bunny just asked Dr. Rochelle, “ah, what’s up doc?”

 

We Come Bearing Gifts!

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Tis the season for gifts.  And, yesterday, while you were returning those one size too small pj’s, your government and its agencies were bestowing a few other gifts for you to try on for size.

The biggest gift of all was Joe Biden giving the states the responsibility to solve this pesky virus problem.  On a teleconference with governors, he said, “There is no federal solution. This gets solved at the state level.”

This seems odd.  A year or so ago, Kamala tweeted out that the first thing she and Joe Biden were going to do when they got to the White House was to solve this virus problem.

And, just a week ago he coughed through a White House speech telling us all that the federal government was ordering more testing, mailing in-home test kits, putting Army doctors into needed states, and telling us to get vaccinated, NOW! This Omicron variant must have really snuck up on them.

And with that, he clicked his heels and walked to his helicopter to depart to his Delaware beach house that you and some lobbyists gifted him for all of his roughly 94 plus years of loyal government service to the people and counting.

But wait!  There’s more!

The CDC gave you new social distance guidelines reducing the stay-away zone from six feet to merely three.  Retailers love selling gifts, so across America they are busy this AM scraping the old 6 ft. floor signs off and sticking new 3 ft. ones down.  Our best guess is that two years into this we can’t sneeze quite as far as we used to.  It happens to the best of us.

And then the good doctor, Dr. Fauci, weighed in.   He was and wasn’t in the gift-giving mood Monday.

First, he wanted to mandate that we give you the jab or three in order to get on airplanes.  “When you make vaccination a requirement, that’s another incentive to get more people vaccinated,” Fauci said on MSNBC. “If you want to do that with domestic flights, I think that’s something that seriously should be considered.”  Could he help with all of the cancellations, too?

But, then he wanted to take away your fun this New Year’s Eve. “When you’re talking about a New Year’s Eve party, we have 30, 40, 50 people celebrating. You do not know the status of their vaccination, I would recommend strongly staying away from that this year.”  Isn’t he the dud bottle rocket that never leaves the bottle?

He wasn’t asked directly about the 50-80 thousand fans in the stands at the roughly 25 bowl games between now and the New Year thankfully.  For now, it’s game on, if you can field a team that is.

The NFL is giving its players reduced return to work requirements after consulting with the NFLPA starting this weekend.  The new protocols are more lengthy and complicated than War and Peace.  There’s not enough virtual ink on Al Gore’s internet to relay them.  The New Orleans Saints needed a dose of this last night.

And, last but not least, the CDC gave us this statement yesterday.  “Given what we currently know about COVID-19, CDC is shortening the recommended time for isolation from 10 days to 5 days, if asymptomatic, followed by 5 days of wearing a mask when around others.”  Mask and ye shall receive a 5-day reprieve!

What’s better than the gifts that keep on giving?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

 

 

 

Underoos and Boosters

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

To mask or not to mask?  That is but one of the many questions that the CDC must ask, and answer.

Main St. (we have plenty of toilet paper and Clorox Wipes on the shelves) and Wall St. (new highs on major averages nearly weekly) are behaving much differently than last April 2020.  Meanwhile, the CDC, WHO, Fauci, and your ever-loving government seem like they can’t get out of the middle of a busy intersection.

They have a few questions to answer.  Again, we might add.

In no particular order, we pose more than two handfuls below.

  1.  Do masks really help? No, really help?
  2.  If they do why aren’t we all wearing them again right now?  Why only the hot spots CDC?  Why not the other spots before they turn into hot spots as well?
  3. Should we call the vaccines, well, vaccines?  Or should we call them therapeutics?  When you hear about needing a booster (3rd shot) after a scant few months you have to wonder.  When you hear Pfizer’s initial two doses may only have a 40% retention of the antibodies after only four months you have to wonder even more.
  4. How can pro golfer Jon Rahm test positive six weeks ago, go into quarantine, get fully vaccinated, and test positive yet again this past week? If you trust the tests, which is a whole other box of swabs, then Rahm’s results make you wonder why we test and why we get vaccinated.
  5. Where is the “science” or “data” (the two most overused words on the planet in the last 15 months) that compares positive tested adults’ resiliency to reoccurrence v. vaccinated adults?
  6. Why did Biden campaign against the “reckless way” Trump rushed the vaccines to the market and now blame those unvaccinated for the latest wave?  Seems like a mixed message.  Also, how can the border be wide open during a pandemic?
  7. Why do those that scream that it is a women’s right to choose also scream at the unvaccinated as if they have no right to choose? If your answer is that they are two totally different circumstances, you may be right and you may be wrong at the same time.
  8. Is anyone working on a better vaccine?  We assume that private enterprise and capitalism are always doing what the market rewards, but the noise is quite silent around this.   Why aren’t people demanding this and holding the Administration’s feet to the fire?
  9. Is big brother actively encouraging pharma to do so?  Are they incentivizing it? We give away billions every day.  Maybe we could call it infrastructure to speed it along?  Maybe we could call it climate change remediation to speed it along?
  10.  Where did the flu go?  How did we drop from millions of cases in a year to next to none?  Ah, was it because of masks, washing hands, and social distancing that it went away?  If so, why hasn’t that worked on Covid-19?  More contagious you say?  Then why are we doing it in the first place then?
  11.  Does wearing a mask on your chin help?  Does wearing a mask only to cover your mouth help?
  12. Now that we have a Delta variant and a Lambda variant can a third be far off?  Should we publicize the future names now as we do for the hurricane season?  In today’s world of equality, half need to be male and half female names.   And, don’t forget the acceptable pronouns.
  13. Can anyone make Joy (was there ever a worst first name given relative to the person’s disposition?) Behar close that worthless yapper of hers?  Yesterday she said that we should begin to “threaten” those who remain unvaccinated.  It wasn’t that long ago that individual freedoms were the ever-present battle cry from the left.  It still is depending upon the subject.  See question seven above.
  14.  If you have a child ages 2-12 will you get them vaccinated when the CDC and the FDA say that the shot or shots are safe?  Why?
  15.  If you have a 3-5-year-old have you bought the mask that Fauci wants your child to wear to preschool?  Crayons, Underoos, lunch boxes, and masks.

Questions, we had a few.

 

 

Follow the Political Science

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

“Follow the science,” we were told by our political leaders.  “Ok,” we mostly replied.

“It’ll be two weeks to flatten the curve,” we were promised.  “Sounds good,” we begrudgingly replied.

“Two masks are better than one,” the power-hungry cried.  “Go to hell,” all but the most obedient sighed.

“No real change can occur until we can have the masses vaccinated,” came the disappointing announcement.  “Ugh,” we collectively uttered.

And, after a year and counting, last week the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced that the science now provided a comfort level for them to make a proclamation.   People fully vaccinated against Covid-19 do not need to wear masks or practice social distancing indoors or outdoors, the director of the CDC announced Thursday.

“If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a White House Covid-19 briefing. “We have all longed for this moment when we can get back to some sense of normalcy.”
Calling it an “exciting and powerful moment,” Walensky said the science supports the updated CDC guidance.
But the science must not apply in Washington DC.  At least not yet.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy introduced a resolution to update the House’s mask policies in light of the CDC’s revised guidelines.  McCarthy introduced H. Res. 414, a privileged resolution that would direct Congress’s Attending Physician to update the House’s mask policies in light of the updated guidelines on masks.

Why is the resolution privileged?  Isn’t everything in DC privileged?  We digress.  Who knew Congress had an attending physician?  Isn’t everyone in Congress privileged?  We digress again.

Democrats blocked the resolution to update the House’s mask policies straight down partisan lines, with 218 votes cast against vs 210 Republicans voting in favor.

Not one Democrat followed the science.  Not one Republican disagreed with the science.  Amazing?  No.  Shameful?  Yes.

Resolution co-authors, along with McCarthy, released the following as part of their full statement after the vote.

After a year of lockdowns and restrictions, Americans are yearning for normalcy, and we should celebrate the progress the vaccines have helped us achieve in just a few months.

Vaccinated Americans should have the confidence to return to their pre-pandemic routines, and the federal government should help reinforce trust in the vaccine. This should start with our leadership in Congress. That is why we are calling on Speaker Pelosi to stop politicizing science as a personal vendetta against her political opponents. Instead, she should adopt the same mask guidance from the CDC, which the White House and Senate are using as the basis for their protocols.

As elected officials, we have a responsibility to send a message to the American people that we believe in the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.

In other words, that same science that we followed at the outset of this pandemic should be followed now.
“The Speaker’s reluctance to trust the science will only help to sow distrust in the vaccines,” the Republicans concluded in their statement.
In other words, if you can’t trust the CDC’s recommendation on masks, why should you trust the recommendation to get vaccinated?  Sixty-three percent of Americans haven’t been vaccinated yet.
Last week BBR published the results of the Rasmussen Poll that asked Americans how much longer should we continue to wear masks.  If you recall six percent said indefinitely.   Was Speaker Pelosi one of those in that six percent polled?
No, she and her 217 followers in Congress were not.
They love watching the polls though.  Political polls.  Always.
We’re guessing one shows that a good bit of their vaccinated base isn’t quite ready to shed their baby blanket, er, mask.
Maybe it is about science after all.  Political science that is.