Monthly Archives: December 2023

FDA Official Shames…Who?

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Peter Marks, FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director, thinks he’s shaming Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo over Ladapo’s raising the question of whether the FDA has adequately monitored mRNA-based Wuhan Virus vaccines for possible contamination with extraneous DNA fragments. Marks is claiming—and he’s actually serious—that simply raising the question is intrinsically misleading.

Yet he claims this, also:

Given the dramatic reduction in the risk of death, hospitalization, and serious illness afforded by the vaccines, lower vaccine uptake is contributing to the continued death and serious illness toll of COVID-19[.]

The mortality rates for children from a Wuhan Virus infection are

  • 3 per 100 000 for those younger than 1 year [with their unformed immune systems]
  • 6 per 100 000 for those aged 1 to 4 years
  • 4 per 100 000 for those aged 5 to 9 years
  • 5 per 100 000 for those aged 10 to 14 years
  • 8 per 100,000 for those aged 15 to 19 years

For adults, the rate is 0.5% or less—a maximum of 500 per 100,000. Hospitalization and less than hospitalized serious illness rates are even smaller—and the number of actual infections that are so trivial that the individuals don’t bother to see a doctor about it or even don’t notice the infection illustrates the growing lack of general severity of the Virus.

mRNA vaccines may lower those rates further, but calling such reductions “dramatic” is itself…misleading.

Marks shames himself with his distortion.

Meeting the Press

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One letter writer to The Wall Street Journal‘s Thursday last Letters section commented on an earlier WSJ Joseph Epstein op-ed regarding the Old Stream Press’ Meet the Press, put on by performance theater network NBC. One comment by the correspondent drew my eye.

Instead, too many journalists frame their questions in ways designed to distort politicians’ messages to their political detriment.

A lot of that, though, is on the politician interviewee. Far too often, the interviewee is too timid—or too unable to think on his feet—to push back and point out that the interviewer is proceeding from false underlying premises with the question.

Too often, also, the interviewee is too timid—or too unable to think on his feet—to ask the interviewer for the evidence he has underlying his question, emphasizing that “reports” are not evidence, just rumor-mongering. And to the inevitable interviewer follow-up, “Do you deny those reports?” answering, “You’re still not offering any evidence.”

Relatedly, too many interviewees are too timid to simply talk through an interviewer’s interruptions, and then at the end of his answer to call out the interviewer’s insult to the segment’s viewers, pointing out that the interviewer with his interruptions is telling the audience that he thinks they’re too stupid to decide for themselves what they will hear and how they will interpret it.

It takes two to properly play an interviewer’s dominance game.

Katie Hobbs—Virtue Signaling?

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Arizona’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs is pretending to distance herself from her fellow Progressive-Democrat, President Joe Biden. She’s complaining that he’s not doing enough regarding our southern border—Arizona’s in particular—and so she has called out her State’s National Guard to send them to Arizona’s border with Mexico. At the same time, she wants more Federal aid—because all solutions to all problems consist of more money in the minds of Progressive-Democrats.

[W]e can’t stand alone, she says,

Arizona needs resources and manpower to reopen the Lukeville crossing; manage the flow of migrants; and maintain a secure, orderly, and humane border….

She doesn’t want to close Arizona’s border to illegal aliens—she can’t tell the difference between migrants and illegal aliens any better than can Biden—she simply wants to “manage” their flow into our nation. Since that’s at the core of Biden’s policy, also, Hobbs’ complaining is simply to draw attention to her own precious self.

Nanny State in Automobiles

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Tesla is recalling a double potful of its cars over autopilot performance.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of dashcam footage and data from a crash in Texas in 2021 shows Tesla’s Autopilot system failed to recognize stopped emergency vehicles.

That sort of thing wants correction, certainly.

However, the larger problem is this:

Tesla will recall more than two million vehicles over concerns its Autopilot system can be misused by drivers[.]
…
Tesla’s Autopilot system may not have sufficient controls in place to prevent driver misuse, [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] said.

Failures of the autopilot system need to be corrected, and that’s on Tesla. Driver misuse, though, is on the driver, not the manufacturer. Trying to shift that responsibility away from the user/driver is rank nanny state-ism.

The Harvard Corporation and Antisemitism

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The Harvard Corporation (or, formally, President and Fellows of Harvard College) is the body that, overall, governs Harvard University. That august forum has just explicitly backed Harvard President Claudine Gay in the aftermath of her antisemitic testimony before a House committee several days ago. The corporation said her testimony was unfortunate, but that otherwise everything is jake for and with her.

It’s convenient for Gay, though, that she also sits on the Harvard Corporation. Although she cannot vote on matters before the board, she does set its agenda.

I have to wonder whether the subject of her handling of antisemitism would have been on the agenda if she didn’t already know the Corporation’s decision.