The Merchants of Death.
The NY Times has an article on how the fight over mask mandates in Tennessee schools is forcing a terrible dilemma on parents of disabled children who are at special risk.
...Tennessee is one of seven states that the federal Education Department is investigating to determine whether governors’ orders allowing families to flout school mask mandates discriminate against students with disabilities by restricting their access to education.
Even though many local school boards, including Williamson County’s, have voted to require universal masking, an executive order issued by Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, allows parents to send their children to school maskless, no questions asked. At the high school Ms. Hart’s son attends, data published weekly by the districtshows that more than 30 percent of parents have formally opted out, a percentage that mirrors the district’s overall.
“We’ve always known that not everybody really cares about our children, but it is in our face right now — that it’s not worth you asking your child to wear a mask, so my child can be safe,” said Ms. Hart, who is a researcher and a trained epidemiologist. “That is the scar that I will carry from the pandemic, this playing out in my face over and over and over again.”
If you read The NY Times article about people protesting the mask mandate, the top reader-recommended comment earlier today is this:
Our daughter has down syndrome. She was supposed to start school this year but didn’t due to the risk. Our older kids are not in school either. We’re homeschooling them due to the risk to their sister. It’s been hard on everyone.
We’re a military family and have no choice in where we live. We’re from a New England state where things are under control. Here in the deep south it’s bedlam. Nobody wears masks. We rarely leave the house and when we do we wear n95 masks. We don’t leave the base, our house within the gates of the installation. Masks are technically required here but only some people wear them correctly and keep them on. Just shopping for groceries at the commissary is terrifying.
Yesterday was the first time I had left the base in weeks. I took one of the kids to the dentist. Nobody in the waiting room was wearing a mask and more kept coming in. I had to request to wait in a separate room and deal with the eye rolls. Then they refused to keep the door of the treatment room closed. Nobody here takes it seriously and all I can do is pray my husband is reassigned to a state or overseas base where sanity prevails.
It’s a wrenching story, but there’s a missing element, as Eric Boehlert pointed out at Press Run Media: Media ignore a monster story — the brainwashing of Covid zombies
...The mindless behavior is hard to describe, and the rest of the world must be looking on in slack-jawed astonishment as Trump voters lead a mad movement powered by Fox News. The network is doing what no other outlet has done in the history of television news — it’s deliberately getting people killed during a public health crisis by feeding eagerly gullible red state viewers a mountain of lies.
From PizzaGate, to QAnon, to the current anti-vaccine and anti-mask hysteria, the GOP has been brainwashed. It’s no secret — lots of victims openly admit it. Still, the press shies away, nervous about offending conservatives by portraying them as mindless zombies being easily duped about a miraculously safe and effective vaccine. (It’s the same reason news outlets refused to call Trump a “liar.”)
You see the same arguments coming up again and again. You don’t see much about where the arguments are coming from. As I posted in a comment:
Can we admit an unpleasant truth here?
People are getting sick and dying because the Republican Party and right wing media have made a public health issue into a culture war fight for political advantage. They have deliberately made mask wearing and vaccination into a wedge issue to divide the country and energize their base.
Why the press is ignoring this is journalistic malpractice. If the Republican Party was refusing to enforce drunk driving laws, arguing that the government was intruding on people’s personal freedom to choose what goes into their bodies while hypocritically calling on people to ‘act responsibly’, there would be outrage.
The Republican Party effectively has press permission to behave badly. It’s a big part of the reason we are where we are today. It’s not just democracy that dies in darkness; we have a body count here measured in the hundreds of thousands.
It’s past time for the press to recognize the Republican Party is the party of bad faith on every issue.
Are You Super-Immune?
ICYMI, NPR had a report back on September 7, 2021 discussing studies that find some people apparently have a super-charged immune response to Covid-19.
...Over the past several months, a series of studies has found that some people mount an extraordinarily powerful immune response against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19. Their bodies produce very high levels of antibodies, but they also make antibodies with great flexibility — likely capable of fighting off the coronavirus variants circulating in the world but also likely effective against variants that may emerge in the future.
So how does this work? The studies are looking at:
People who have had a "hybrid" exposure to the virus. Specifically, they were infected with the coronavirus in 2020 and then immunized with mRNA vaccines this year. "Those people have amazing responses to the vaccine," says virologist Theodora Hatziioannou at Rockefeller University, who also helped lead several of the studies. "I think they are in the best position to fight the virus. The antibodies in these people's blood can even neutralize SARS-CoV-1, the first coronavirus, which emerged 20 years ago. That virus is very, very different from SARS-CoV-2."
In fact, these antibodies were even able to deactivate a virus engineered, on purpose, to be highly resistant to neutralization. This virus contained 20 mutations that are known to prevent SARS-CoV-2 antibodies from binding to it. Antibodies from people who were only vaccinated or who only had prior coronavirus infections were essentially useless against this mutant virus. But antibodies in people with the "hybrid immunity" could neutralize it.
Some caveats. For one, someone has had to have recovered from the infection before getting an mRNA vaccine for this to happen — and there is no guarantee that this happens in everyone who has done so. For another, there’s a question of what happens in the case of a “break-through” infection, where someone vaccinated then gets sick. Third, booster shots are now being suggested for certain groups. Will this produce “super immunity”? It remains to be seen.
Bottom line: whether or not you’ve gotten the virus and recovered, get vaccinated — and keep taking other precautions. “Do you feel lucky?” is not a viable medical strategy.
Vaccines in Salads? Would You Believe a Cure from Llamas?
Aldous J Pennyfarthing has a post up about the doings of former national security advisor, former general, and current full-time loon: Mike Flynn warns the world of dark forces putting vaccines in your salad dressing.
As Aldous points out, this is likely coming from people who have freaked out over research into engineering plants to produce vaccines that can be eaten to produce immunity. This would address both supply and storage issues with current mRNA vaccines.
This kind of work has been underway for decades; plants naturally produce many compounds that are harvested and refined for medical uses. Genetic engineering is being used to deliberately turn plants into biological factories for specific compounds. It’s a work in progress. Assuming they can get a handle on quality control issues, this could revolutionize drug production. We’re not there yet though.
So, what about Llamas?
Victoria Gill at the BBC reports on research which finds that the nanobodies (described as simpler than antibodies) produced by llamas (and camels) may be the basis for a new Covid-19 infection treatment.
Just like our own antibodies, virus-specific nanobodies latch on to and bind to viruses and bacteria that invade our bodies. This binding essentially tags an invading virus with an immune "red flag", to allow the rest of the body's immune armoury to target it for destruction.
What makes it of particular interest is that the nanobodies are administered as a nasal spray.
Prof Naismith, who is one of the lead researchers and director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute in Oxfordshire, explained that coronavirus-infected rodents treated with the new nanobody nasal spray fully recovered within six days.
Here’s how it works:
"That's where we had some help from Fifi the 'Franklin [Institute] llama'," explained Prof Naismith.
By vaccinating Fifi with a tiny, non-infectious piece of the viral protein, the scientists stimulated her immune system to make the special molecules. The scientists then carefully picked out and purified the most potent nanobodies in a sample of Fifi's blood; those that matched the viral protein most closely, like the key that best fits a specific lock.
The team was then able to grow large quantities of the specially selected, most potent molecules.
(Anyone who has ever read the Med Service Series (example here) by Murray Leinster will recognize this as very like the technique Med Ship Doctor Calhoun uses with Murgatroyd, his tormal, to treat unknown diseases.)
The advantage is that this technique can be used to treat an infection, whereas vaccines work by preventing infections. It may have broader applications besides Covid viruses too. Unlike hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, etc. this treatment appears to actually work on an active infection — so far in lab animals. It’s a long way from use in humans.
Given the way Covid crazy cures are metastasizing on line, it’s likely there will be claims that getting covered in llama spit will prevent Covid once news of this research gets around.
Again, get the vaccine, do all the other things to stay safe — and don’t listen to Republicans or Fox.