Archive for 2021
December 23, 2021
THIS SCIENTIST CREATED A RAPID TEST JUST WEEKS INTO THE PANDEMIC. HERE’S WHY YOU STILL CAN’T GET IT:
When COVID-19 started sweeping across America in the spring of 2020, Irene Bosch knew she was in a unique position to help.
The Harvard-trained scientist had just developed quick, inexpensive tests for several tropical diseases, and her method could be adapted for the novel coronavirus. So Bosch and the company she had co-founded two years earlier seemed well-suited to address an enormous testing shortage.
E25Bio — named after the massive red brick building at MIT that houses the lab where Bosch worked — already had support from the National Institutes of Health, along with a consortium of investors led by MIT.
Within a few weeks, Bosch and her colleagues had a test that would detect coronavirus in 15 minutes and produce a red line on a little chemical strip. The factory where they were planning to make tests for dengue fever could quickly retool to produce at least 100,000 COVID-19 tests per week, she said, priced at less than $10 apiece, or cheaper at a higher scale.
Bosch’s prototype attracted a top Silicon Valley venture capital firm, which pitched in $2 million.
“We are excited about what E25Bio is capable of shipping in a short amount of time: a test that is significantly cheaper, more affordable, and available at-home,” said firm founder Vinod Khosla. (Disclosure: Khosla’s daughter Anu Khosla is on ProPublica’s board.)
On March 21 — when the U.S. had recorded only a few hundred COVID-19 deaths — Bosch submitted the test for emergency authorization, a process the Food and Drug Administration uses to expedite tests and treatments.
A green light from the FDA could have made a big difference for the many Americans who were then frantically trying to find doctors to swab their noses, with results, if they were lucky, coming back only days later.
But the go-ahead never came.
In public, Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins urge Americans to “follow the science.” In private, the two sainted public-health officials schemed to quash dissenting views from top scientists. That’s the troubling but fair conclusion from emails obtained recently via the Freedom of Information Act by the American Institute for Economic Research.
The tale unfolded in October 2020 after the launch of the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement by Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff, Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya against blanket pandemic lockdowns. They favored a policy of what they called “focused protection” of high-risk populations such as the elderly or those with medical conditions. Thousands of scientists signed the declaration—if they were able to learn about it. We tried to give it some elevation on these pages.
That didn’t please the lockdown consensus enforced by public-health officials and the press. Dr. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health until Sunday, sent an email on Oct. 8, 2020, to Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
“This proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists . . . seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford. There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises,” Dr. Collins wrote. “Is it underway?”
These researchers weren’t fringe and neither was their opposition to quarantining society. But in the panic over the virus, these two voices of science used their authority to stigmatize dissenters and crush debate. A week after his email, Dr. Collins spoke to the Washington Post about the Great Barrington Declaration. “This is a fringe component of epidemiology,” he said. “This is not mainstream science. It’s dangerous.” His message spread and the alternative strategy was dismissed in most precincts.
Dr. Fauci replied to Dr. Collins that the takedown was underway. An article in Wired, a tech-news site, denied there was any scientific divide and argued lockdowns were a straw man—they weren’t coming back. If only it were true. The next month cases rose and restrictions returned.
Dr. Fauci also emailed an article from the Nation, a left-wing magazine, and his staff sent him several more. The emails suggest a feedback loop: The media cited Dr. Fauci as an unquestionable authority, and Dr. Fauci got his talking points from the media. Facebook censored mentions of the Great Barrington Declaration. This is how groupthink works.
On CBS last month, Dr. Fauci said Republicans who criticize him are “really criticizing science, because I represent science. That’s dangerous.” He isn’t “science.” And it’s also dangerous for scientific officials to mobilize to quash dissent, without which it’s easy to make tragic mistakes. A scientific debate over pandemic policy was and still is in the public interest, especially during a once-in-a-century plague.
Related: The Suicide of Expertise.
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Jesse Kelly Challenged Writers to See How COVID Regulations Affect Americans, and Here’s My Research. “My aunt died in April of 2020. A Michigan hospital wouldn’t allow her to have visitors until they were sure she was dying. The state kindly allowed a one-hour funeral with no more than ten people at one time.”
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THE REALLY, REALLY BIG QUESTION: So why is there something rather than nothing? Dr. Stephen Meyer says there are three possible answers: Aliens brought life to Earth, we’re just one in the multiverses, or there’s a fine tuner. And you say?
GUESS WHICH VIOLENT CRIMINALS WON’T BE RELEASED WITHOUT BAIL? Five Arrested in Connection with Armed Carjacking of Dem Congresswoman. “The 62-year old congresswoman handed over the keys to her 2017 blue Acura MDX at gunpoint on Wednesday at FDR Park in South Philadelphia. Scanlon was approached by two black men who demanded the keys to her vehicle as she walked toward her parked vehicle after taking a tour of the park around 2:45 p.m., according to police and the congresswoman’s office. . . . The incident comes amid a spike in carjackings in the city, which had recorded 503 carjackings by October, double the 227 seen by October 2020, according to WPVI-TV.” She lost several cellphones, too.
Plus: “Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said he was ‘appalled to learn of this violent crime.'” Yeah, well maybe start locking up violent criminals then.
JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON: The Corporate Media Freakout Over The Omicron Variant Isn’t Normal, It’s Psychotic.
Rather than return to lockdowns and school closures — to say nothing of canceling holiday gatherings — there’s every reason to believe we’ll be able to weather this surge with minimal disruption.
Unless you’re a member of legacy media. In that case, you’re probably going to cancel your own birthday party like The Atlantic’s Ed Yong did, even though all his birthday guests were vaccinated and boosted, and probably would have been tested before showing up at his house. But no, it was just too great a risk.
Yong, you see, covers science. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Covid. He’s written too many stories about the pandemic to be dissuaded by mere data about omicron. For him, isolation, masking indoors, and eating outside are normal and necessary, and really what everyone should be doing.
He’s not alone. Former GOP communications director and CNN contributor Tara Setmayer blurted out on Twitter last week that she hadn’t been on a plane or gone to a movie since March 2020, and has only eaten indoors twice this entire time, even though her family is vaccinated and boosted.
This isn’t a healthy or sane response to the pandemic, especially not after nearly two years of Covid. Judging by how busy airports and movie theaters and restaurants are across the country, it’s also not normal. It’s borderline psychotic.
It’s also meant to induce psychosis, which for millions of Americans, it has.
BREAKING: Joe Biden Makes Stunning Admission About Running in 2024. “If I’m in the health I’m in now—if I’m in good health—then, in fact, I would run again.”
Mental or physical?
GRIFTERS GONNA KEEP GRIFTING:
Say, Evan, have you paid the campaign staffers you stiffed in your 2016 campaign yet?
UPDATE: From the comments:
“Help us unseat that Far-Right bastard Mike Lee before he kills millions of women, children and minorities with his unhinged Nazi policies that are an embarrassment and insult to America.”
“Wow, you really don’t like him. Why?”
“Because he’s so divisive.”
That’s how it works these days.
GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: High-Profile L.A. Crimes Spark Rush for Bullet-Proof Cars, Rolex Replicas and Safe Rooms.
Earlier: Tom Cotton: Recall, Remove & Replace Every Last Soros Prosecutor.
SAY A PRAYER FOR ALL THE EVIDENCE PRICELESS MEMENTOS THAT DIED: Former Virginia Gov. Chuck Robb’s mansion turns into flaming inferno.
NEWS YOU CAN USE? Kenosha Prosecutor From Rittenhouse Case Wants the Public to Know He’s Not Gay.
In a bizarre email exchange with the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, James Kraus, who acted as part of the prosecution team in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, wrote that he and prosecutor Thomas Binger are not—I repeat, NOT—having a homosexual affair.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Libs Need Rehab for Their COVID Panic Porn Addiction. “It feels like the fear of all things pandemic might be an addiction that they have no desire to quit.”
THE WHOLE POINT OF BEING WOKE IS TO BE ABLE TO HATE AND OPPRESS YOUR FELLOW CITIZENS WHILE FEELING GOOD ABOUT IT: Bette Midler’s West Virginia slur proves she’s the ‘illiterate’ bigot.
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K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: PA Gov. Tom Wolf vetos curriculum transparency bill, calling it a ‘dangerous and harmful imposition.’
“Under the guise of transparency, this legislation politicizes what is being taught in our public schools,” Wolf said in his veto message.
The bill would have required school administrators to post and periodically update course syllabuses, course summaries, the state academic standard to each instructional course, and title or link to textbooks used in the school, unless it violated a copyright law.
The governor opposed this bill from the outset. In his veto message, he said, “This legislation is a thinly veiled attempt to restrict truthful instruction and censor content reflecting various cultures, identities, and experiences. My administration is committed to creating a safe learning environment for all students, and we will not take part in this dangerous and harmful imposition.”
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Andrew Lewis, R-Dauphin County, said many schools already do this so his bill intended to standardize this practice across all school districts, charter schools, intermediate units and career and technical schools. Private and parochial schools would have been exempt from the bill.
In a statement in response to the governor’s veto, Lewis said, “It is infuriating that the governor wants to maintain the status quo and have parents jump through hoops to access information about their own children’s education.”
Flashback: The left is playing dumb on the ubiquity of its radical ideology in our schools.
How did that play out? Glenn Youngkin Defeated Terry McAuliffe Because Democrats Betrayed Parents.
ROGER KIMBALL: The right targets: On the future of conservatism. Plus: “We’re in a war, and it’s a war to the death. Now they [the Left] actually admit it. They used to pretend. Not anymore.”
THE BRANDON WHITE HOUSE’S ENERGY INCOMPETENCE:
In its first year, the Biden administration operated under the assumption that it could mollify the climate activists within the Democratic collation with policies that would make energy more expensive and, thus, justify what Press Sec. Jen Psaki admitted was the White House’s “focus on clean energy options.” At the same time, however, they seemed to think that policies designed to produce scarcity and the associated price hikes would be quietly absorbed by the general public. Both of these assumptions were unfounded. Restive climate activists on Joe Biden’s left flank are not satisfied by what they regard as half measures, and the popular backlash against the rising cost of living has become an existential threat to the Democratic Party’s political prospects.
Needless to say, this is not a coherent energy policy. It’s improvisatory theater designed to satisfy whatever political constituency the administration happens to be addressing at the moment. Granholm’s frivolity may titillate the handful of Americans for whom the workings of government is a source of entertainment, but all the saucy impudence in the world can’t paper over abject incompetence.
Earlier: “We’re going to keep at it to ensure the American people are paying their fair share for gas,” is the perfect Kinsley Gaffe for an Obama administration retread like Biden: As Steven Chu, Obama’s then-incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”
So is it fair to ask if Biden is on the payroll of Putin? As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:
If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:
Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.
“Yep,” Glenn added in late 2019. “You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.”
Related: Biden tormented by Republican guerrilla campaign and ‘I did it’ stickers.
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Matt Margolis: Joe Biden’s Forgotten ‘Mission Accomplished’ Moment. “Today, as many appear ready to lockdown against because of the omicron variant of COVID-19, it seems we have forgotten Joe Biden’s own ‘mission accomplished’ speech from this summer, in which he celebrated our ‘independence from COVID-19.'”
AJ Kaufman: Inside Chuck Schumer’s Disastrous First Year. “He gives stunts priority over legislation.”
Yours Truly: Is the Media Lying About the Texas Man Who Supposedly Died of OMGicron? “Deaths are a lagging indicator, but with so many cases reported, if omicron were at all deadly we wouldn’t be arguing over the fate of one poor soul in Texas.”
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WHEN THE RUSSIANS SAY WHAT THEY VALUE, LISTEN TO THEM. “After a few decades of fighting relatively unsophisticated enemies – and losing one conflict against them – we should be a bit humble and critical of how good we are against the way more significant opponents intend to fight the next war against us. They’ve been watching us a lot more than we’ve been watching them.”