NEW: Bidenworld is taking a more aggressive approach to combat vaccine fear-mongering by conservative forces.
That includes
– Calling on SMS carriers to mete out false messages
– urging social media platforms to fact-checkw/ @EugeneDaniels2 https://t.co/HlAcOnQRgA
— Natasha Korecki (@natashakorecki) July 12, 2021
… The White House has decided to hit back harder on misinformation and scare tactics after Republican lawmakers and conservative activists pledged to fight the administration’s stated plans to go “door-to-door” to increase vaccination rates. The pushback will include directly calling out social media platforms and conservative news shows that promote such tactics.
“The big misinterpretation that Fox News or whomever else is saying is that they are essentially envisioning a bunch of federal workers knocking on your door, telling you you’ve got to do something that you don’t want to do,” Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said in an interview on Sunday. “That’s absolutely not the case, it’s trusted messengers who are part of the community doing that — not government officials. So that’s where I think the disconnect is.”…
Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages. The goal is to ensure that people who may have difficulty getting a vaccination because of issues like transportation see those barriers lessened or removed entirely.
“We are steadfastly committed to keeping politics out of the effort to get every American vaccinated so that we can save lives and help our economy further recover,” White House spokesperson Kevin Munoz said. “When we see deliberate efforts to spread misinformation, we view that as an impediment to the country’s public health and will not shy away from calling that out.” …
Indeed, over the past few weeks, criticism of the administration’s door-to-door vaccination strategy has increasingly become a fixture on Fox News, in addition to being a top topic on conservative social media posts and over SMS messages to cell phone users. It’s coming at a time when the highly contagious Delta variant is triggering a rise in hospitalizations and infections among those who have not been vaccinated. Those who are door knocking are individuals like pastors or grassroots organizers, not government bureaucrats. And they are not delivering vaccines, but spreading the word on where and how to get vaccinated, and why it’s important to do so. To the degree that people understand that, the White House reasons, it could have a positive impact on increasing vaccinations.
That hasn’t stopped conservative media figures from misrepresenting those efforts in strident, almost apocalyptic terms.
Charlie Kirk, the pro-Trump co-founder of the conservative student organization Turning Point USA, said on Fox last week that he was embarking on a “massive public relations campaign” around vaccination efforts, which he compared it to an “Apartheid-style open air hostage situation.” (Turning Point’s other founder, Bill Montgomery, died last year from coronavirus-related complications.)…
In an interview with Right Side Broadcasting during the Conservative Political Action Conference, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) offered a different variety of false scare tactics, suggesting that the administration would use door-to-door vaccination efforts as a means to “take your guns” and “your Bibles.” …
***********
Chimera Investments?!?
??Documents obtained by The Moscow Times and interviews with officials and vaccine buyers reveal a secretive deal between Russia and a Dubai royal to supply poor countries with Sputnik V — at a high price. Investigation with @JakeCordell and @felix_light https://t.co/Adn7jlddOJ
— Pjotr Sauer (@PjotrSauer) July 9, 2021
… Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, Russia has advertised Sputnik V as a “vaccine for all mankind” and promoted the jab across the developing world as a cheap route out of the pandemic. But documents obtained by The Moscow Times, as well as interviews with officials and vaccine buyers, show that countries from Pakistan to Guyana have been forced to deal with a royal middleman and companies based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) acting as official Sputnik V resellers asking clients to pay more than double Russia’s advertised price to get their hands on the jab.
The deals have left a trail of controversy in their wake, threatening to undermine Russia’s already troubled vaccine diplomacy efforts.
The setup hinges on an arrangement between the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and Aurugulf Health Investments, an Abu Dhabi-based company established late last year with close connections to Emirati royalty. RDIF granted Aurugulf exclusive rights to sell and distribute its flagship Sputnik V vaccine in countries around the world, documents reveal, with Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook al-Maktoum, a low-ranking Dubai royal, acting as the chief dealmaker…
Chimera Investments — the company Sarraf visited in Abu Dhabi — is a subsidiary of Royal Group, a sprawling conglomerate run by powerful royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, UAE’s national security advisor and brother of the current leader of Abu Dhabi. The al-Nahyan family is one of the six ruling families of the UAE.
Corporate registry data seen by The Moscow Times also shows that Royal Group is one of two entities controlling Aurugulf, which was registered in Abu Dhabi in October 2020 — two months after Sputnik V was authorized in Russia and weeks into RDIF’s intense marketing drive. The company has little corporate presence, according to registry data shared by corporate intelligence outfit Diligencia…
The use of the Emirati scheme to sell Sputnik V has been met with uproar in almost every country where a supply deal is known to have taken place.
In Pakistan and Lebanon, private companies leapt at the chance to get vaccines, circumventing sluggish national rollouts and delays to the WHO’s own vaccine sharing Covax facility. Sarraf said that in just seven days businesses requested vaccines for 830,000 people — 12% of Lebanon’s population — at $38 per jab plus hospital fees, more than half the country’s monthly minimum wage.
Local Pakistani supplier AGP is embroiled in legal proceedings after selling its first batches to private clinics and is now battling with the government over what price the precious jabs can be sold at. It paid a wholesale price of $22.50 each for the first batch of 50,000 doses, which arrived in Karachi on March 17 having been shipped from Abu Dhabi via Bahrain, transport documents show. That’s more than twice Russia’s advertised selling price, even before private hospitals added their own mark up.
The shipment of the vaccines cost less than $0.10 per dose, according to an air freight receipt obtained by The Moscow Times…
For Russia, theories ranging from a desire to limit its liability to attempts to curry favor with the Emirati elite have been put forward as possible reasons for the deal…
Or, then again (says the cynic), maybe Putin-favored Russian oligarchs are making bank while the banking’s good?
***********
A group of virologists makes a case against the 'lab-leak notion.'.Scientific findings show spillover from animal to human. Wet markets in Wuhan sold live animals susceptible to the virus, including palm civets & raccoon dogs 2 yrs before the pandemic https://t.co/QRLTBzKP7y pic.twitter.com/2Q44GG7CNQ
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) July 10, 2021
The neverending battle:
In the latest volley of the debate over the origins of the coronavirus, a group of scientists this week presented a review of scientific findings that they argue shows a natural spillover from animal to human is a far more likely cause of the pandemic than a laboratory incident.
Among other things, the scientists point to a recent report showing that markets in Wuhan, China, had sold live animals susceptible to the virus, including palm civets and raccoon dogs, in the two years before the pandemic began. They observed the striking similarity that Covid-19’s emergence had to other viral diseases that arose through natural spillovers, and pointed to a variety of newly discovered viruses in animals that are closely related to the one that caused the new pandemic…
In the new paper, the scientists provided more evidence in favor of the virus having spilled over from an animal host outside of a laboratory. Joel Wertheim, a virologist at the University of California, San Diego, and a co-author, said that an important point in support of a natural origin was the “uncanny similarity” between the Covid and SARS pandemics. Both viruses emerged in China in the late fall, he said, with the first known cases popping up near animal markets in cities — Wuhan in the case of Covid, and Shenzen in the case of SARS.
Reminder: It took more than a dozen years to verify the animal reservoir for SARS, so the source for COVID-19 is unlikely to be solved before the 2022 midterms. (And even if it were, of course the GOP Death Cultists would lie about it.)
From a salty thread, by actual virologist:
There's multiple lines of evidence, including:
-Live susceptible animals sold in Wuhan, just like what happened with SARS-CoV
-Common supply chains could lead to animals at multiple markets infected with the same virus
-Epi data suggests a connection with live animal markets— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) July 7, 2021
…..
Excess deaths from pneumonia follow a similar pattern. The area where WIV is the last to be impacted. This suggests that SARS-CoV-2 did not start spreading near WIV, but near multiple markets with confirmed live animals in fall of 2019.https://t.co/1tGm1Gh9EY pic.twitter.com/YbsoYJAXrv
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) July 7, 2021
Or that the exact same thing (cryptic spread to a location thousands of miles away) happened with SARShttps://t.co/WTRBF6ldC2
— jeff brender (@JeffBrender) July 8, 2021
trollhattan
I recall back in, oh, late 2019/early 2020 it was “Hey, China, stop eating wild animals, you wild animals!”
Seem like innocent times now, eh?
M31
I know I’m thinking logically, which doesn’t apply to Republicans, but how does the lab-leak theory make Trump’s covid actions look better?
short answer: it doesn’t
long answer: It doesn’t, you bunch of loser tool dickhead fuckwad turdwiping piece of shit assholes
Just Chuck
@M31: It’s not designed to make T look better so much as to distract. And like all good fascist propaganda, to make that distraction as much as possible about hating furriners.
Snarki, child of Loki
Oh, with the “lab leak”, the MAGAts are just looking for something they can say TFG was ‘right’ about.
Better if they just inject the Lysol and bleach and prove that it clears up their Covid problems PDQ.
Spanky
Maybe if they want to hit back harder they should stop tap dancing around the word “lie”.
Villago Delenda Est
How COVID got loose is irrelevant. The response to it is, and origin worries are a diversion from the total incompetence of TFG, his shitstain son-in-law, and the entire GQp.
Chief Oshkosh
I kinda like the idea of sending federal robocops door to door to beat the ever-loving shit out of GQPers. Since we have the Soros-funded, Musk-produced robocop technology and we have the DeepState databases of how everyone voted AND what they are thinking at any given moment, this just seems like a no-brainer.
Of course, the robots will vaccinate the once-human oozing lumps of flesh once they’re done with the beatings. You know, just to be sure.
/s
(sort of)
Mary G
@Villago Delenda Est: That’s how I feel. It’d be good to know how it came to infect humans, but it shouldn’t affect treatments or precautions. Trump isn’t going to be exonerated for dismissing the problem, lying through his teeth about its severity, refusing to model mask-wearing, elbow bumping or social distancing at all if it came from a lab or a bat.
Steeplejack
Korecki: “[. . .] mete out false messages”? That’s got to be “weed out,” right?
Brachiator
Basic question for conservatives.
Trump approved development of a Covid vaccine.
So why aren’t you getting the shot?
H.E.Wolf
Thank you! I was scratching my head over that.
Either “weed out”, or perhaps “mete out penalties for.”
(Or else the writer was really unclear on the meaning of “mete out”….)
NotMax
@H.E.Wolf
Reminded of an anecdote from a teacher of high school Spanish. She received a homework assignment from a student which began with “Carneme a la biblioteca.”
Upon questioning the apparently homophone befuddled student about what he (or she, I forget) was trying to convey, the response was “I looked it up. Carne means meat, doesn’t it?”
Major Major Major Major
I genuinely don’t get how some of you can reject this entire line of inquiry as “fascist propaganda” or whatever.
@Mary G:
I agree, especially as it relates to preventing future pandemics. Which makes me wonder why you think you agree with Villago, who called this question “irrelevant”.
dmsilev
@Chief Oshkosh: I’ve been advocating for a while that the Feds should contract with Jeff Bezos to arm those prototype Amazon delivery drones with vaccine-delivery dart guns.
I mean, if we’re going to go Skynet, let’s go full Skynet.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Villago Delenda Est:
As far as domestic politics and policy, yes. As far as keeping the same thing from happening again, no.
Wag
@Major Major Major Major:
I don’t reject the lab leak theory simply because it is “fascist propaganda.” I reject it because it is scientifically less plausible. The “fascist propaganda” aspect is just icing on the cake.
HumboldtBlue
As an aside, may I add some buttercream to the thread?
MisterForkbeard
@Major Major Major Major: It’s something that should be investigated.
But focusing on it (as happened on the right, and in the media briefly) is wrong, especially when they mangle the science really badly or when it’s used to prop up an anti-China, pro-Trump stance. Which is what this devolves into 70% of the time. It’s sort of like Trump’s MS-13 fixation: It’s not that he’s wrong that MS13 was bad, but he vastly overhyped it and targeted vulnerable ethnic groups to do it, ignoring bigger and worse threats while conflating everything to MS13.
My own feeling is that we should investigate, but that it shouldn’t be a high national media priority, and we should recognize that the evidence is pretty far tilted towards the Natural hypothesis. And to recognize that a lot of the discussion about the source isn’t even handed from neutral parties – it’s part of a larger, jingoistic attempt to deflect blame and glorify Trump. And indirectly, to discredit the larger scientific community.
Major Major Major Major
@Wag:
That’s actually not a very good reason for wholesale rejection of an idea!
@MisterForkbeard: Yeah this is pretty much my take.
HumboldtBlue
Top health official in Tennessee has been forced out.
Here’s her going away statement.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: More of a “Al pastor a la biblioteca.” man myself.
???
Mallard Filmore
Moscow Times reported a story that makes Putin and his government look bad? I am surprised.
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue: I was expecting a dessert recipe, but right on, Corey!
Wag
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m not rejecting it wholesale. I agree that it should be investigated. But to elevate the lab leak theory to equal to the level of a natural source of infection is just like both-siderism around fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Should we look into the remote possibility of Dominion machine hacking throwing the election to Biden? Sure. A brief look is reasonable. But just as Trump’s claims of tampering are wrong, so too are the Right’s claims of a lab leak. We can look into the theory without expanding its credibility.
HumboldtBlue
Caitlyn Jenner found out her kind get the oak-barrel-aged special reserve hate that is the foundation of the GOP.
Trae Crowder explains the GOP to her.
Wag
@HumboldtBlue: Hell of a statement.
Mary G
@HumboldtBlue: Dr. Michelle Fiscus didn’t pull any punches:
Brava!
Gin & Tonic
@Mallard Filmore: The Moscow Times is a relatively independent, English-language newspaper primarily for the expat community there.
Cheryl Rofer
The lab leak scenario requires
A jump from animals to humans requires only #2. So far, the advocates of a lab leak as the explanation have provided no evidence whatsoever. The Twitter thread from Angie Rasmussen nicely summarizes ACTUAL EVIDENCE for a jump from animals to humans.
Sure, it all should be investigated, but how SARS-CoV-2 got into humans has ZERO to do with what we need to do now to deal with it, and that kind of investigation typically takes years. So the lab leakers should sit down and shut up until they have some ACTUAL EVIDENCE.
dmsilev
Remember how, way way back in the distant past of …last Friday, Biden fired the Trump-holdover head of Social Security and the guy was like ‘you can’t fire me, I’m going to be working from home as usual on Monday morning’? Well, funny thing, and I do mean funny:
Fired and defiant, former Social Security chief is cut off from agency computers
Gin & Tonic
Was there an in memoriam thread for Edwin Edwards? I always had a soft spot for that guy.
HumboldtBlue
@dmsilev:
Love to see it.
(sits quietly in the corner because as a follower of Cheryl Rofer on Twitter I knew “lab leak” was a bat signal.)
dmsilev
@HumboldtBlue: The whole thing is great. Republican Senators are shocked, shocked I tell you, and are planning ….to have Charles Grassley give a floor speech expressing his shockitude.
Mary G
@dmsilev:
I like to visualize this “offboarding” as Kamala Harris making him walk the plank off a pirate ship into a swarm of sharks. Offboard all the Trumpkins, Uncle Joe!
Gin & Tonic
@dmsilev: When my former employer had cause to fire an employee with high-level access, their credentials were useless by the time they had reached their car, basically.
Richard
@Brachiator: we talk about this everday. We still don’t understand. I still have friends that say “nope not gonna do it”. Some are vegan cultists. Some are immigrants from traumatized countries. Some are flat-out trump assholes.
They all have one thing in common- they don’t trust the government.
Hey i don’t trust the government either but i thought we are the government. Don’t i see you in my town?
dmsilev
@Gin & Tonic: It’s the blindingly-obvious thing to do. And pretty much everyone was predicting that this would happen as soon as his firing was announced on Friday. I guess he thought he would bluff his way through or something.
Also, going out of his way to be an asshole to all and sundry on the staff just about guaranteed that IT would process that ‘remove credentials’ request ASAP.
trollhattan
@HumboldtBlue:
Worlds collide.
dmsilev
@trollhattan:
…because my hate is all-encompassing.
MisterForkbeard
@trollhattan: Tomi also believes that you don’t deserve legal protection for being trans, that business should be able to fire transfolk unilaterally, that trans people should be banned from entering the right bathrooms, etc.
Richard
@dmsilev:
Good. Trump appointed some unqualified, really bad bureaucrats. Because we don’t burn our bureaucrats, or take them to kangaroo court and shoot them in the head in this country.
That bootlicker should consider himself lucky. He will be able to keep his house. He will probably be able to pay tuition for his spawn, if he has any.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Going door to door to take everybody’s guns and Bibles… The guy who said that is a fucking U.S. congressman. They ought to expel that shit for this.
Mary G
Woman overboard!
Roger Moore
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
The Republicans have been lying about people coming to take our guns for decades, and they’ve been complaining about persecution of Christians for their beliefs for almost as long. Nobody within the party can say anything to contradict the guy because they’d be admitting the whole party is built on a foundation of lies.
HumboldtBlue
@Mary G:
Aye, matey.
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
I’m rooting for injuries.
Another Scott
@Major Major Major Major: d-squared reminded us that liars should not be given the benefit of a doubt. The people pushing this lab escape stuff are all notorious liars.
We can talk about it when there is actual evidence saying that it is plausible. Otherwise, it’s a distraction.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Any word if the TX Dems successfully made it to DC?
Mary G
@Roger Moore: There was hope for a good Twitter catfight, but Jenna blocked Ronna or Ronna blocked Jenna, I forget which. I agree injuries to all sides is only fair. I hope they start demanding audits of where all the money went, because Jenna’s definitely dumb enough not to know it was laundered and funneled to TFG.
Mary G
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yep.
They only make $7,200 a year and are giving up their day job to do this. Good for them.
NotMax
@Mary G
That salary is somewhat misleading as it is not a full-time position. The Texas legislative calendar (absent being convened for a special called session, any of which may last for no more than 30 days) runs for a maximum of 140 days, every other year
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Mary G:
Yay!
NotMax
@NotMax
Follow-up.
frosty
@NotMax:
Well, in the case of PA, a part-time legislature could do less damage. I worked in Maryland, and it was always interesting seeing the panic and hustle for the bills we wanted as the 90 days was about to expire,
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
And what if urgent legislation needs to be passed in an off year?
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Then it falls to the executive of the state to call them into special session.
Geminid
The lab leak hypothesis is part of a larger narrative: a negligent response by Chinese authorities that first allowed the virus to spread unchecked, and then a cynical or malicious decision to have evacuating expats spread the virus worldwide. A hardcore variation is that the virus was engineered in a bioweapons lab, and the “leak” was intentional.
A rational analysis would hold that if the above were true, trump’s culpability for his lazy response would be enhanced, not excused. But now his supporters contend that the powerful leader they used to brag about was actually a victim.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
OTOH, it’s enough time spent legislating that it’s incompatible with most regular jobs. It’s got to really skew what state legislators do for a living (or whether they need to).
Chris Johnson
‘lab leak scenario’ is simultaneously a possible real thing that won’t be only something confined to China… and the thin end of a wedge for the argument, “China has been caught trying to murder everybody in the world with biological weapons and have thousands of other bioweapons ready to unleash, when this one slipped out to alert us all! They must be destroyed utterly!”
It is that argument that people are rebelling against when they refuse to entertain talk of ‘lab leak scenario’. Ask yourself how differently it would be spun if it was ‘escaped from a vaccine development lab of doctors’ or it was ‘escaped from a secret military facility’. Both could be labs, but the second one is basically a cover for declaration of global war.