Friday, January 29, 2021

And another day of vaccines, slurs, movements, imposing new restrictions, drone images, bans, supersavers, and personal playgrounds comes to a close:

“Only the mediocre are always at their best.” -- Jean Giraudoux

Deaths

US: 447,459 (+3690)

World: 2,216,311 (+15,354)

Cases

US: 26,512,193 (+173,586)

World: 102,629,743 (+593,305)

Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine is 66% effective in global trial, but 85% effective against severe disease, company says. The vaccine's efficacy against moderate and severe disease ranged from one country to another: 72% in the US, 66% in Latin America and 57% in South Africa. This was measured starting one month after the shot...But for Mammen, the key result was how effective the vaccine was at preventing severe disease -- regardless of variant or age group...From one month after the shot, all hospitalizations and deaths occurred in the placebo group. — That’s a big deal.

Dr. Fauci sees vaccination for kids by late spring or the summer.

Washington state is nearing 310,000 total COVID-19 cases Friday, as King County reported its first instance of the faster-spreading virus strain.

Senate Republicans say Trump should be held accountable for riot -- but not by them.

Marjorie Taylor Greene uses offensive slur in rant referencing Down’s syndrome. GOP congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene once compared members of Congress to people who suffered with Down’s syndrome, who she said were “retards” without “common sense”. — She needs to be expelled. She’s taking Trump’s game plan of spouting hatred about others to another level. 

Rep. Cori Bush moving office away from Marjorie Taylor Greene 'for my team's safety'.

Republican state lawmakers in battleground states Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania have moved to impose new restrictions on mail-in voting for future elections...Despite the absence of widespread security issues with mail-in voting, GOP lawmakers in all three states are arguing for added security and proposing steps that would make it harder to qualify for or cast mail-in ballots. — Because Republicans don’t want more people voting. 

'This is literally an industry': drone images give rare look at for-profit Ice detention centers. This new image collection, taken from near the perimeters of the facilities, gives a rare look at just how many of these centers occupy the landscape. “What I want to show through the accumulation of imagery is that this is literally an industry,” Taylor said, “that it’s expansive, that it occupies a significant amount of territory in our national landscape – and I’m only showing a fraction of it. “That, to me, is an important realization. The scale is shocking; how it is changing the United States,” said Taylor, a professor of art at the University of Arizona...Excerpts from some of the interviews follow. Each of the interviewees was given a pseudonym because their asylum cases are pending. Alejandro and Alonzo’s interviews were translated from Spanish.

UW-Madison police chief bans 'Thin Blue Line' imagery. Roman said the flag has been “co-opted” by extremists with “hateful ideologies” and that her department needs to distance itself from the imagery to build trust with the community.

The richest 20% of America are the real pandemic supersavers. During the worst year for economic recovery since 1946, Americans socked away money at a historically high pace. But those savings largely stayed in the pockets of higher earners, while everyone else held close to nothing by the end of 2020.

Americans have long had a reputation for treating other countries as their personal playgrounds, and the pandemic hasn’t changed that. But why are some travelers behaving like the pandemic doesn’t exist in the first place, endangering both themselves and the communities they visit? Manly says it all comes down to emotional maturity. “Some people,” she says, “confuse being free with not being accountable.” It’s similar to the mindset of the kind of people who maintain their own homes beautifully but trash hotel rooms when they travel. “For some people, they like to have an excuse to shirk personal responsibility — and unfortunately, often when we do that, we are impacting other people.”

Ohio GOP lawmakers seek to recognize ‘President Donald J. Trump Day’. Two Republican lawmakers are seeking to recognize June 14 in Ohio as “President Donald J. Trump Day.” State Reps. Reggie Stoltzfus of Paris Twp. and Jon Cross of Kenton are planning to introduce a bill in the Ohio House of Representatives making this designation. -- The GOP, across the board, has gone insane.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.