No one knows where people are getting infected

[argh!]

i am not going to jump on the bandwagon for the theory that the virus came from the wuhan virology lab - yet. but, i will say that the current w.h.o. investigation, and the w.h.o. itself is bought and owned by the ccp, for propaganda purposes. check this article out from a taiwanese investigative report. included is video of one of the w.h.o. 'investigators' in early december: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4104828

Good find. Very interesting. Thx.

forgot this one: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4108578. it would take way too long to explain why on a forum like this, but passing diseases from lab rats to humans would be very easy, if there was an an accident that wasn't caught in time (like a bite), an employee half-heartedly going through the motions of caring for the lab rats, or if one just happened to get out (i've seen this a couple times). i dunno. i'm not sold on the idea that the virus came from a lab, but i can see how it could happen, especially in a place like china. when there are too many people, and too many people who don't really care about the job they are doing, it isn't good.

 

[MikeyGriz]

forgot this one: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4108578. it would take way too long to explain why on a forum like this, but passing diseases from lab rats to humans would be very easy, if there was an an accident that wasn't caught in time (like a bite), an employee half-heartedly going through the motions of caring for the lab rats, or if one just happened to get out (i've seen this a couple times). i dunno. i'm not sold on the idea that the virus came from a lab, but i can see how it could happen, especially in a place like china. when there are too many people, and too many people who don't really care about the job they are doing, it isn't good.
[/quote]

Isn't this how it always starts, and the next thing you know you've got zombies running amuck! :shock:

 

[argh!]

forgot this one: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4108578. it would take way too long to explain why on a forum like this, but passing diseases from lab rats to humans would be very easy, if there was an an accident that wasn't caught in time (like a bite), an employee half-heartedly going through the motions of caring for the lab rats, or if one just happened to get out (i've seen this a couple times). i dunno. i'm not sold on the idea that the virus came from a lab, but i can see how it could happen, especially in a place like china. when there are too many people, and too many people who don't really care about the job they are doing, it isn't good.

Isn't this how it always starts, and the next thing you know you've got zombies running amuck! :shock:
[/quote]

i agree with you up to a point, but i watched mice being investigated for hantavirus put in a vivarium (animal housing) not made for mice, my view has been skewed. alas, it also hasn't been disproven at other institutions.

 

[argh!]

this article has fauci saying wearing two masks is common sense. duh. it was also common sense last february, but fauci decided to mislead the public. he's also been wrong many, many times, and now is saying the w.h.o. leadership did a great job from the start, despite them obviously being bought by the ccp, and guilty of spreading the ccp's propaganda instead of the truth. i really do not understand why left wingers, right wingers, or anybody with any sense will stoop to making excuses for the guy, even call him a 'hero'. biden should've fired him and replaced him and the others involved with the terrible response to the virus.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/01/26/covid-double-masking-effective-fauci-says-makes-common-sense/4157884001/

 

[tourist]

FAUCI
U
C
K
!!!!!!!!!! :lol:

 

[ranco]

this article has fauci saying wearing two masks is common sense. duh. it was also common sense last february, but fauci decided to mislead the public. he's also been wrong many, many times, and now is saying the w.h.o. leadership did a great job from the start, despite them obviously being bought by the ccp, and guilty of spreading the ccp's propaganda instead of the truth. i really do not understand why left wingers, right wingers, or anybody with any sense will stoop to making excuses for the guy, even call him a 'hero'. biden should've fired him and replaced him and the others involved with the terrible response to the virus.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/01/26/covid-double-masking-effective-fauci-says-makes-common-sense/4157884001/

I couldn't agree more. He said the dumbest things at the beginning of the pandemic (ie: the virus was not a major threat to the US; we shouldn't worry about it, masks are useless...) that I can't believe anyone takes him seriously. The CDC also bungled the initial test kits. Now he says its just common sense that two masks work better than one. You would think a scientist might try to rely on some sort of study. The guy is way past his prime (if he ever had one) and should pushed out the door.

 

[Cuervohola]

The Fake Fraud Fauci is so incredibly Fraudulent that it's a Bi-Partisan sentiment!

His Fraudulency started for me with the NIH having a nice ownership chunk of Moderna, and VIOLA! That's one of the Russian Roulette poisons you can now choose.

It concluded with him sitting in the Nationals Stadium right next to his buddy with his mask being used as a chin diaper.

"Masks and social distancing for thee, but not for me!"

 

[grizindabox]

Cuervo knows where he was infected and someday he will realize that bareback is not the way to go and start wearing a damn condemn.

 

[PlayerRep]

Ever heard of this?

"A new kind of corporate supercourt is looking for legitimacy."

"The Oversight Board, a hitherto obscure body that will, over the next 87 days, rule on one of the most important questions in the world: Should Donald J. Trump be permitted to return to Facebook and reconnect with his millions of followers?

The decision has major consequences not just for American politics, but also for the way in which social media is regulated, and for the possible emergence of a new kind of transnational corporate power at a moment when almost no power seems legitimate.

The board took up the case Thursday, and will appoint a panel of five randomly selected board members, at least one of them American, to decide what is to be done with Mr. Trump’s account. The full, 20-person board will review the decision, and could reinstate Mr. Trump’s direct connection to millions of supporters, or sever it for good.

It has five American members.

[Facebook created this board a number of years ago, and has completely turned over certain Facebook decisions to the board.]

Mr. Zuckerberg floated the notion of an independent content moderation body back in 2018, and Facebook finally appointed its members last May. The company put $130 million into a legally independent trust with a staff of 30, which two people involved said paid six figures annually to each board member for what has become a commitment of roughly 15 hours a week. The board is structurally independent, and Mr. Zuckerberg has promised its decisions will be binding. The members I spoke to said they felt no particular obligation to Facebook’s shareholders. The company, meanwhile, has pledged to abide by decisions on topics as varied as nudity and hate speech, in hopes that it will ultimately shield Mr. Zuckerberg from making endless, impossibly controversial public choices.

Executives at other platforms remain skeptical, and show no sign of jumping aboard. And the board will have to weather American domestic politics, with pressure from an anti-corporate left and a populist right embodied by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson (“an extraordinarily articulate polemicist,” Mr. Clegg said).

The members include two people who were reportedly on presidential shortlists for the U.S. Supreme Court, along with a Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a British Pulitzer winner, Colombia’s leading human rights lawyer and a former prime minister of Denmark. The 20 of them come, in all, from 18 countries on six continents, and speak 27 languages among them."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/business/media/trump-facebook-oversight-board.html

 

[Cuervohola]

Cuervo knows where he was infected and someday he will realize that bareback is not the way to go and start wearing a damn condemn.

If you are going to insult someone, thou that didn't even graduate grade school Yo Mama jokes 101, at least try to make sense.

What's a condemn?

 

[PlayerRep]

this article has fauci saying wearing two masks is common sense. duh. it was also common sense last february, but fauci decided to mislead the public. he's also been wrong many, many times, and now is saying the w.h.o. leadership did a great job from the start, despite them obviously being bought by the ccp, and guilty of spreading the ccp's propaganda instead of the truth. i really do not understand why left wingers, right wingers, or anybody with any sense will stoop to making excuses for the guy, even call him a 'hero'. biden should've fired him and replaced him and the others involved with the terrible response to the virus.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/01/26/covid-double-masking-effective-fauci-says-makes-common-sense/4157884001/

I couldn't agree more. He said the dumbest things at the beginning of the pandemic (ie: the virus was not a major threat to the US; we shouldn't worry about it, masks are useless...) that I can't believe anyone takes him seriously. The CDC also bungled the initial test kits. Now he says its just common sense that two masks work better than one. You would think a scientist might try to rely on some sort of study. The guy is way past his prime (if he ever had one) and should pushed out the door.

The CDC bungled more than just the test creation. Bungled 2 other things. Horrible mistakes. What were they thinking? Isn't this what the CDC and their 17,000 (?) employees are supposed to do.

"Special Report: How U.S. CDC missed chances to spot COVID's silent spread"

"In early February, 57 people arrived at a Nebraska military base, among the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the new coronavirus outbreak. U.S. health officials knew very little then about the mysterious new virus, and the quarantined group offered an early opportunity to size up the threat.

"Reuters has found new evidence that the CDC’s response to the pandemic also was marred by actions - or inaction - by the agency’s career scientists and frontline staff.

In early February, 57 people arrived at a Nebraska military base, among the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the new coronavirus outbreak. U.S. health officials knew very little then about the mysterious new virus, and the quarantined group offered an early opportunity to size up the threat.

The federal government sought help from a team at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, including Dr. James Lawler, an experienced infectious disease specialist. Lawler told Reuters he immediately asked the world-renowned U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for permission to test the quarantined group, deeming it crucial to know whether people without symptoms were infected and could spread the deadly pathogen.
Agency officials worried that detained people couldn’t give proper consent because they might feel coerced into testing. “CDC does not approve this study,” an official at the quarantine site wrote to Lawler in a Feb. 8 email obtained by Reuters. “Please discontinue all contact with the travelers for research purposes.

Soon after balking at testing the returnees from Wuhan, the agency delayed testing asymptomatic passengers among 318 evacuees from the Diamond Princess, a contaminated cruise ship in Japan. In addition, the agency failed at that time to make effective use of outside experts and appeared at times unprepared for the crisis on the ground, lacking adequate personal protective gear and ignoring established protocols, Reuters found.

“Yes, they were interfered with politically,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, referring to alleged meddling by the Trump administration. “But that’s not the only reason CDC didn’t perform optimally during COVID-19. There are a lot of things that went wrong.”

Four top public health experts or ethicists told Reuters that the question of whether to test or engage in research on detained people has always been a sensitive topic. But all said the CDC should have proceeded given the fast-moving public health emergency.
Moreover, the CDC finalized rules in 2017 providing that medical testing was expressly allowed in quarantine, as long as participants were given the opportunity to give “informed consent” or opt out. Informed consent means giving people adequate information to understand the risks and benefits of a test or procedure."

Read in Reuters: https://apple.news/Aug0spBlPTjuYq6XDcdITgg

 

[grizindabox]

Cuervo knows where he was infected and someday he will realize that bareback is not the way to go and start wearing a damn condemn.

If you are going to insult someone, thou that didn't even graduate grade school Yo Mama jokes 101, at least try to make sense.

What's a condemn?

It is how spell check spells condom apparently.

 

[grizindabox]

If you are going to insult someone, thou that didn't even graduate grade school Yo Mama jokes 101, at least try to make sense.

What's a condemn?

It is how spell check spells condom apparently.

or fat fingers I guess.

 

[argh!]

I couldn't agree more. He said the dumbest things at the beginning of the pandemic (ie: the virus was not a major threat to the US; we shouldn't worry about it, masks are useless...) that I can't believe anyone takes him seriously. The CDC also bungled the initial test kits. Now he says its just common sense that two masks work better than one. You would think a scientist might try to rely on some sort of study. The guy is way past his prime (if he ever had one) and should pushed out the door.

The CDC bungled more than just the test creation. Bungled 2 other things. Horrible mistakes. What were they thinking? Isn't this what the CDC and their 17,000 (?) employees are supposed to do.

"Special Report: How U.S. CDC missed chances to spot COVID's silent spread"

"In early February, 57 people arrived at a Nebraska military base, among the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the new coronavirus outbreak. U.S. health officials knew very little then about the mysterious new virus, and the quarantined group offered an early opportunity to size up the threat.

"Reuters has found new evidence that the CDC’s response to the pandemic also was marred by actions - or inaction - by the agency’s career scientists and frontline staff.

In early February, 57 people arrived at a Nebraska military base, among the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the new coronavirus outbreak. U.S. health officials knew very little then about the mysterious new virus, and the quarantined group offered an early opportunity to size up the threat.

The federal government sought help from a team at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, including Dr. James Lawler, an experienced infectious disease specialist. Lawler told Reuters he immediately asked the world-renowned U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for permission to test the quarantined group, deeming it crucial to know whether people without symptoms were infected and could spread the deadly pathogen.
Agency officials worried that detained people couldn’t give proper consent because they might feel coerced into testing. “CDC does not approve this study,” an official at the quarantine site wrote to Lawler in a Feb. 8 email obtained by Reuters. “Please discontinue all contact with the travelers for research purposes.

Soon after balking at testing the returnees from Wuhan, the agency delayed testing asymptomatic passengers among 318 evacuees from the Diamond Princess, a contaminated cruise ship in Japan. In addition, the agency failed at that time to make effective use of outside experts and appeared at times unprepared for the crisis on the ground, lacking adequate personal protective gear and ignoring established protocols, Reuters found.

“Yes, they were interfered with politically,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, referring to alleged meddling by the Trump administration. “But that’s not the only reason CDC didn’t perform optimally during COVID-19. There are a lot of things that went wrong.”

Four top public health experts or ethicists told Reuters that the question of whether to test or engage in research on detained people has always been a sensitive topic. But all said the CDC should have proceeded given the fast-moving public health emergency.
Moreover, the CDC finalized rules in 2017 providing that medical testing was expressly allowed in quarantine, as long as participants were given the opportunity to give “informed consent” or opt out. Informed consent means giving people adequate information to understand the risks and benefits of a test or procedure."

Read in Reuters: https://apple.news/Aug0spBlPTjuYq6XDcdITgg

reading that, especially as a scientist, makes me feel sad and disgusted, but unfortunately, also not surprised. how i'd love to be in charge of the hhs for a few months, in order to get rid of the me-first politicians that run the nih, cdc, etc... francis collins and his crony hires, who run the nih, and include some who i know personally, would be out the door right after fauci. sigh.

 

[MikeyGriz]

Ever heard of this?

"A new kind of corporate supercourt is looking for legitimacy."

"The Oversight Board, a hitherto obscure body that will, over the next 87 days, rule on one of the most important questions in the world: Should Donald J. Trump be permitted to return to Facebook and reconnect with his millions of followers?

The decision has major consequences not just for American politics, but also for the way in which social media is regulated, and for the possible emergence of a new kind of transnational corporate power at a moment when almost no power seems legitimate.

The board took up the case Thursday, and will appoint a panel of five randomly selected board members, at least one of them American, to decide what is to be done with Mr. Trump’s account. The full, 20-person board will review the decision, and could reinstate Mr. Trump’s direct connection to millions of supporters, or sever it for good.

It has five American members.

[Facebook created this board a number of years ago, and has completely turned over certain Facebook decisions to the board.]

Mr. Zuckerberg floated the notion of an independent content moderation body back in 2018, and Facebook finally appointed its members last May. The company put $130 million into a legally independent trust with a staff of 30, which two people involved said paid six figures annually to each board member for what has become a commitment of roughly 15 hours a week. The board is structurally independent, and Mr. Zuckerberg has promised its decisions will be binding. The members I spoke to said they felt no particular obligation to Facebook’s shareholders. The company, meanwhile, has pledged to abide by decisions on topics as varied as nudity and hate speech, in hopes that it will ultimately shield Mr. Zuckerberg from making endless, impossibly controversial public choices.

Executives at other platforms remain skeptical, and show no sign of jumping aboard. And the board will have to weather American domestic politics, with pressure from an anti-corporate left and a populist right embodied by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson (“an extraordinarily articulate polemicist,” Mr. Clegg said).

The members include two people who were reportedly on presidential shortlists for the U.S. Supreme Court, along with a Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a British Pulitzer winner, Colombia’s leading human rights lawyer and a former prime minister of Denmark. The 20 of them come, in all, from 18 countries on six continents, and speak 27 languages among them."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/business/media/trump-facebook-oversight-board.html

How can 20 of them come from 18 countries if 5 of them are American?

 

[PlayerRep]

Ever heard of this?

"A new kind of corporate supercourt is looking for legitimacy."

"The Oversight Board, a hitherto obscure body that will, over the next 87 days, rule on one of the most important questions in the world: Should Donald J. Trump be permitted to return to Facebook and reconnect with his millions of followers?

The decision has major consequences not just for American politics, but also for the way in which social media is regulated, and for the possible emergence of a new kind of transnational corporate power at a moment when almost no power seems legitimate.

The board took up the case Thursday, and will appoint a panel of five randomly selected board members, at least one of them American, to decide what is to be done with Mr. Trump’s account. The full, 20-person board will review the decision, and could reinstate Mr. Trump’s direct connection to millions of supporters, or sever it for good.

It has five American members.

[Facebook created this board a number of years ago, and has completely turned over certain Facebook decisions to the board.]

Mr. Zuckerberg floated the notion of an independent content moderation body back in 2018, and Facebook finally appointed its members last May. The company put $130 million into a legally independent trust with a staff of 30, which two people involved said paid six figures annually to each board member for what has become a commitment of roughly 15 hours a week. The board is structurally independent, and Mr. Zuckerberg has promised its decisions will be binding. The members I spoke to said they felt no particular obligation to Facebook’s shareholders. The company, meanwhile, has pledged to abide by decisions on topics as varied as nudity and hate speech, in hopes that it will ultimately shield Mr. Zuckerberg from making endless, impossibly controversial public choices.

Executives at other platforms remain skeptical, and show no sign of jumping aboard. And the board will have to weather American domestic politics, with pressure from an anti-corporate left and a populist right embodied by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson (“an extraordinarily articulate polemicist,” Mr. Clegg said).

The members include two people who were reportedly on presidential shortlists for the U.S. Supreme Court, along with a Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a British Pulitzer winner, Colombia’s leading human rights lawyer and a former prime minister of Denmark. The 20 of them come, in all, from 18 countries on six continents, and speak 27 languages among them."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/business/media/trump-facebook-oversight-board.html

How can 20 of them come from 18 countries if 5 of them are American?

Good point. Don't know. Maybe some Americans live in other countries? Probably a mistake. Good catch.

 

[reinell30]

Where is the pandemic hitting now, Cats or Griz? Can't play for some reason?

 

[PlayerRep]

The CDC bungled more than just the test creation. Bungled 2 other things. Horrible mistakes. What were they thinking? Isn't this what the CDC and their 17,000 (?) employees are supposed to do.

"Special Report: How U.S. CDC missed chances to spot COVID's silent spread"

"In early February, 57 people arrived at a Nebraska military base, among the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the new coronavirus outbreak. U.S. health officials knew very little then about the mysterious new virus, and the quarantined group offered an early opportunity to size up the threat.

"Reuters has found new evidence that the CDC’s response to the pandemic also was marred by actions - or inaction - by the agency’s career scientists and frontline staff.

In early February, 57 people arrived at a Nebraska military base, among the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the new coronavirus outbreak. U.S. health officials knew very little then about the mysterious new virus, and the quarantined group offered an early opportunity to size up the threat.

The federal government sought help from a team at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, including Dr. James Lawler, an experienced infectious disease specialist. Lawler told Reuters he immediately asked the world-renowned U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for permission to test the quarantined group, deeming it crucial to know whether people without symptoms were infected and could spread the deadly pathogen.
Agency officials worried that detained people couldn’t give proper consent because they might feel coerced into testing. “CDC does not approve this study,” an official at the quarantine site wrote to Lawler in a Feb. 8 email obtained by Reuters. “Please discontinue all contact with the travelers for research purposes.

Soon after balking at testing the returnees from Wuhan, the agency delayed testing asymptomatic passengers among 318 evacuees from the Diamond Princess, a contaminated cruise ship in Japan. In addition, the agency failed at that time to make effective use of outside experts and appeared at times unprepared for the crisis on the ground, lacking adequate personal protective gear and ignoring established protocols, Reuters found.

“Yes, they were interfered with politically,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, referring to alleged meddling by the Trump administration. “But that’s not the only reason CDC didn’t perform optimally during COVID-19. There are a lot of things that went wrong.”

Four top public health experts or ethicists told Reuters that the question of whether to test or engage in research on detained people has always been a sensitive topic. But all said the CDC should have proceeded given the fast-moving public health emergency.
Moreover, the CDC finalized rules in 2017 providing that medical testing was expressly allowed in quarantine, as long as participants were given the opportunity to give “informed consent” or opt out. Informed consent means giving people adequate information to understand the risks and benefits of a test or procedure."

Read in Reuters: https://apple.news/Aug0spBlPTjuYq6XDcdITgg

reading that, especially as a scientist, makes me feel sad and disgusted, but unfortunately, also not surprised. how i'd love to be in charge of the hhs for a few months, in order to get rid of the me-first politicians that run the nih, cdc, etc... francis collins and his crony hires, who run the nih, and include some who i know personally, would be out the door right after fauci. sigh.

To me, this were huge missed opportunities. Judged today, they were total screwups.

I'd put these 2 CDC problems, along with the CDC testing issue, in my Top 5 for screwups and missed opportunities. Masks would be in my Top 5. So would generally not pushing along manufacturing of PPE a bit faster, or much faster.

I would put Trump messaging in another category by itself. It wasn't good, but it's hard for me to rate that because I'm not sure who was really listening to him and taking action based on what he said. My view is that the Dems and the press used his messaging against him and kept shouting all the way, but I don't see how his messaging killed anyone in an elder care home. I suppose one could argue that his messaging to downplay the virus caused some elder care home employees not to be careful enough and they got covid and infected older people at work. However, I'm not so sure that elder care home workers tended to be people following Trump, and there were lots of elder care home precautions put in place fairly quickly.

Sending older covid patients back to elder care homes was a huge goof up, but I put it in a category by itself, and that was all over the various governors.

Vaccine development was a huge positive. Extra beds in places like NY were positive, even though probably not necessary. Same with more production of ventilators. Closing down travel from China early. Too bad travel from Europe and other places wasn't restricted sooner, but that was a tough one. The CDC screwups potentially could have gotten the US to closing down European travel earlier.

After Trump lost and now that Biden is in charge, has caused the media and Dems to calm down and keep pointing fingers at every opportunity.

 

[PlayerRep]

Ever heard of this?

"A new kind of corporate supercourt is looking for legitimacy."

"The Oversight Board, a hitherto obscure body that will, over the next 87 days, rule on one of the most important questions in the world: Should Donald J. Trump be permitted to return to Facebook and reconnect with his millions of followers?

The decision has major consequences not just for American politics, but also for the way in which social media is regulated, and for the possible emergence of a new kind of transnational corporate power at a moment when almost no power seems legitimate.

The board took up the case Thursday, and will appoint a panel of five randomly selected board members, at least one of them American, to decide what is to be done with Mr. Trump’s account. The full, 20-person board will review the decision, and could reinstate Mr. Trump’s direct connection to millions of supporters, or sever it for good.

It has five American members.

[Facebook created this board a number of years ago, and has completely turned over certain Facebook decisions to the board.]

Mr. Zuckerberg floated the notion of an independent content moderation body back in 2018, and Facebook finally appointed its members last May. The company put $130 million into a legally independent trust with a staff of 30, which two people involved said paid six figures annually to each board member for what has become a commitment of roughly 15 hours a week. The board is structurally independent, and Mr. Zuckerberg has promised its decisions will be binding. The members I spoke to said they felt no particular obligation to Facebook’s shareholders. The company, meanwhile, has pledged to abide by decisions on topics as varied as nudity and hate speech, in hopes that it will ultimately shield Mr. Zuckerberg from making endless, impossibly controversial public choices.

Executives at other platforms remain skeptical, and show no sign of jumping aboard. And the board will have to weather American domestic politics, with pressure from an anti-corporate left and a populist right embodied by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson (“an extraordinarily articulate polemicist,” Mr. Clegg said).

The members include two people who were reportedly on presidential shortlists for the U.S. Supreme Court, along with a Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a British Pulitzer winner, Colombia’s leading human rights lawyer and a former prime minister of Denmark. The 20 of them come, in all, from 18 countries on six continents, and speak 27 languages among them."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/business/media/trump-facebook-oversight-board.html

How can 20 of them come from 18 countries if 5 of them are American?

"Facebook 'Supreme Court' Orders Social Network To Restore 4 Posts In 1st Rulings"

[Not the Trump issue/ruling.]

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/28/961391277/facebook-supreme-court-orders-social-network-to-restore-4-posts-in-first-rulings

[5 Americans on 20-person board. 2 Stanford law profs.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversight_Board_(Facebook)#:~:text=The%20co%2Dchairs%2C%20who%20selected,Prime%20Minister%20Helle%20Thorning%2DSchmidt.

 

[argh!]

reading that, especially as a scientist, makes me feel sad and disgusted, but unfortunately, also not surprised. how i'd love to be in charge of the hhs for a few months, in order to get rid of the me-first politicians that run the nih, cdc, etc... francis collins and his crony hires, who run the nih, and include some who i know personally, would be out the door right after fauci. sigh.

To me, this were huge missed opportunities. Judged today, they were total screwups.

I'd put these 2 CDC problems, along with the CDC testing issue, in my Top 5 for screwups and missed opportunities. Masks would be in my Top 5. So would generally not pushing along manufacturing of PPE a bit faster, or much faster.

I would put Trump messaging in another category by itself. It wasn't good, but it's hard for me to rate that because I'm not sure who was really listening to him and taking action based on what he said. My view is that the Dems and the press used his messaging against him and kept shouting all the way, but I don't see how his messaging killed anyone in an elder care home. I suppose one could argue that his messaging to downplay the virus caused some elder care home employees not to be careful enough and they got covid and infected older people at work. However, I'm not so sure that elder care home workers tended to be people following Trump, and there were lots of elder care home precautions put in place fairly quickly.

Sending older covid patients back to elder care homes was a huge goof up, but I put it in a category by itself, and that was all over the various governors.

Vaccine development was a huge positive. Extra beds in places like NY were positive, even though probably not necessary. Same with more production of ventilators. Closing down travel from China early. Too bad travel from Europe and other places wasn't restricted sooner, but that was a tough one. The CDC screwups potentially could have gotten the US to closing down European travel earlier.

After Trump lost and now that Biden is in charge, has caused the media and Dems to calm down and keep pointing fingers at every opportunity.

yes, vaccine development was phenomenal. distribution of the vaccine, and prioritization of non 1a or 1b tier individuals by many institutions was unforgivable. i read some hospital in georgia was removed from the places receiving vaccine for six months, because they did something similar to what apparently happened in billings - giving the vaccine to administrators and other lower risk individuals. harvard and many other institutions, including the very high-profile scripps hospitals in socal, should also receive some sort of penalty, but they are too rich, powerful, and connected to the hhs. two of the nih institute directors i know, including one who's lab i was sort-of in as a postdoc (i conducted research at two institutes, it's a long story), are scripps guys. one got his girlfriend a huge lab, with basically blank-check funding, when he took the nih position.

sorry, the above is a long ramble, because the issue pisses me off, but the point i want to make is that it is private industry research and development companies, where one's findings have to be real and of value to somebody, that have made the best vaccines - pfizer and moderna. if only they could also be in charge of distribution... here's an interesting read, sort of, until plotkin starts 'humble bragging': https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/27/expert-covid-vaccine/?arc404=true