LovingA2andMI
LovingA2andMI's JournalReaching 'Herd Immunity' Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe
Source: New York Times
Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives.
Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.
Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/health/covid-heard-immunity-vaccine.html?smid=tw-share
And this comment, seems like a bit of a flip flop of sorts:
“People were getting confused and thinking you’re never going to get the infections down until you reach this mystical level of herd immunity, whatever that number is,” he said.
“That’s why we stopped using herd immunity in the classic sense,” he added. “I’m saying: Forget that for a second. You vaccinate enough people, the infections are going to go down.”
Considering he said this in December 24, 2020....
In the pandemic’s early days, Dr. Fauci tended to cite the same 60 to 70 percent estimate that most experts did. About a month ago, he began saying “70, 75 percent” in television interviews. And last week, in an interview with CNBC News, he said “75, 80, 85 percent” and “75 to 80-plus percent.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/health/herd-immunity-covid-coronavirus.html
Oh well.....
Why a University of Michigan professor voted 'No' on Pfizer's COVID vaccine
Preword: Groupthink is a powerful method to have unification. It occurs in subtle ways. First, by having someone appear as the "Authority figure of Trust". This way a parroting effect takes place. Parroting occurs when those who are not as knowledgeable on the subject matter at hand repeat what they believe is Trusted information from an "Authority Figure". The Figure can be a Person, Place or Thing, similar to a Noun.In the case of the Seven Step Scientific Method, Groupthink can be distributing and destructive. Questioning why is how those who need to know, know any risks associated with the action that is asked to be done. That way, Humans can make a informed decision in whatever decision they ultimately decide.
I know this article will be questioned. Some might even try and have the post deleted altogether. Nevertheless, Dr. Fuller, a University of Michigan Virologist makes an VALID point that deserves thought about the Scientific Method being rushed in the case of the COVID vaccine. Also, not everyone that questions the speed in which this vaccine is being widely distributed is "Anti-Vax". That is a label used in some cases to shut down those with valid questions deserving answers.
One of those No votes came from Dr. A Oveta Fuller, a virologist and viral pathogen researcher at the University of Michigan. Dr. Fuller said she was concerned about the vaccine’s long-term impact.
“Because we are in a COVID pandemic and because so many lives are affected and because the public needs to understand so they know what to do,” Dr. Fuller said. “I felt like this is a lot. A heavy responsibility. It is very sobering and that’s how I take it.”
It’s not a lack of confidence in the research, it’s that she believes some specific questions about the risks did not get answered. Dr. Fuller said more data would help her be certain that she has done her due diligence.
As a researcher and an expert in how viruses behave, she still had questions on the table in terms of autoimmunity and hyper immunity. She just wanted a bit more research to answer a few more questions before creating a full path to widespread vaccinations to the masses.
“I am a great advocate for vaccines. I’m a virologist by training, I think viruses are amazing. I teach them. I study them. I engage the community about them,” Dr. Fuller said. “I think vaccines are a major way that we can stop or prevent infections but ‘a stitch in time saves nine.’”
****Dr. Fuller says it would be better to release the vaccine gradually instead of going almost directly from the study to being given to millions of people.*****
https://www.clickondetroit.com/all-about-ann-arbor/2020/12/11/why-a-university-of-michigan-professor-voted-no-on-pfizers-covid-vaccine/
Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are 'Losers' and 'Suckers'
Source: The Atlantic
When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
Belleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” He also said that he didn’t understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies.
Trump’s understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and sacrifice have interested me since he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. “I like people who weren’t captured.”
There was no precedent in American politics for the expression of this sort of contempt, but the performatively patriotic Trump did no damage to his candidacy by attacking McCain in this manner. Nor did he set his campaign back by attacking the parents of Humayun Khan, an Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004.
Trump remained fixated on McCain, one of the few prominent Republicans to continue criticizing him after he won the nomination. When McCain died, in August 2018, Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of this event, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” the president told aides. Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral. (These sources, and others quoted in this article, spoke on condition of anonymity. The White House did not return earlier calls for comment, but Alyssa Farah, a White House spokesperson, emailed me this statement shortly after this story was posted: “This report is false. President Trump holds the military in the highest regard. He’s demonstrated his commitment to them at every turn: delivering on his promise to give our troops a much needed pay raise, increasing military spending, signing critical veterans reforms, and supporting military spouses. This has no basis in fact.”)
Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/
WOW, just WOW. He...MUST...GO!!!
The Busing Issue.....
It is amazingly disappointing to see the numerous threads on how Kamala Harris position on Busing (a U.S. Supreme Court Decision that has been DECIDED in April 20, 1971) is festering the lines of Racial Divisions here at DU (YES, WE SAID IT).
First, things first -- let's correct the Busing Issue as there as been at least two (if not more) U.S. Supreme Court Decisions on this -- both of whom occurred during the 1970's.
The First Decision was Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg v Board of Education in 1971, as noted below:
In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. However, because of racially segregated housing patterns and resistance by local leaders, many schools remained as segregated in the late 1960s as they were at the time of the Brown decision.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, in the mid-1960s less than 5 percent of African American children attended integrated schools. Indeed, busing was used by white officials to maintain segregation. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), on behalf of Vera and Darius Swann, the parents of a six-year-old child, sued the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district to allow their son to attend Seversville Elementary School, the school closest to their home and then one of Charlotte’s few integrated schools. James McMillan, the federal district judge in the case, ruled in favour of the Swanns and oversaw the implementation of a busing strategy that integrated the district’s schools. McMillan’s decision was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld it. The busing strategy was adopted elsewhere in the United States and played an instrumental role in integrating U.S. public schools.
In later decades, court-ordered busing plans were criticized not only by whites but also by African Americans, who often charged that busing harmed African American students by requiring them to endure long commutes to and from school. Busing continued in most major cities until the late 1990s.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Swann-v-Charlotte-Mecklenburg-Board-of-Education
This is the Second Decision ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court - on a Similar Subject in 1974 was Milliken v. Bradley:
After hours of testimony on redlining, exclusionary zoning, police-sanctioned violence, and other sordid tales of American housing discrimination, the federal judge on the case, Stephen Roth, agreed with the plaintiffs that government “at all levels” bore responsibility for residential segregation. As a result, Roth concluded, the government could not legitimately enforce the school boundaries that residential segregation was designed to exploit.
If the school districts’ boundary lines were drawn today, he wrote, they would be struck down as unconstitutional.
Roth’s proposal, instead of redrawing the Detroit area’s school districts, was simply to make them irrelevant: he ruled that some black students from Detroit would have to enroll in schools out in the suburbs, and lots of white kids in the suburbs would have to enroll in schools in Detroit.
The plan was not without its problems. But it was the first time a judge had recognized the crucial role city-suburb borders played in maintaining segregated schools, and ordered a major metropolitan area to do something about it.
Unfortunately, in July 1974, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to overturn Roth. The majority found no evidence that governments had encouraged segregation in the Detroit metro area – despite, for example, the fact that the mayor of suburban Dearborn had been quoted just a few years before in the New York Times saying, “I favor segregation.” Before that, he told a newspaper: “Every time we hear of a Negro moving…in, we respond quicker than you do to a fire.”
Among Dearborn’s 90,000 residents, there were fewer than 100 black people.
In other realms, Roth’s logic – that political boundaries must be subservient to larger questions of justice, including segregation – is taken for granted. Think, for example, about Congressional districts. To start with, they’re redrawn every ten years to adjust to shifting populations. Not only that, but there are lots of rules designed to make sure the new districts aren’t unfair in ways that violate anyone’s civil rights. If they are, they can be thrown out by a judge, and ordered to be redrawn.
We go through all of this because we understand that unfair Congressional districts can be devastating for minority communities, denying them political power and, along with it, the ability to fight for policies that improve their lives.
School districts, of course, play just as large a role in determining their residents’ life chances, but share basically none of these rules. In general, school districts don’t have to be redrawn at any regular interval, and many haven’t changed for decades, if not generations.
No one is reviewing the districts that already exist, to make sure that they’ve been drawn in ways that don’t unfairly disadvantage anyone. And they’re certainly not throwing out school districts, and ordering them to be redrawn to, say, reduce segregation.
In fact, more recently the Supreme Court has voted to curtail attempts to desegregate even within school districts, to the extent it’s possible.
Predictably, the result of all this is that many American school districts are moving towards pre-Civil Rights Movement levels of racial separation. In the last few years, reports from ProPublica and UCLA’s Civil Rights Project, among others, have found that school segregation has been getting worse for decades.
Sometimes, we’re tempted to justify our separate schools by arguing that they’re equal. Or, more accurately, that they could be equal: we tell the stories of racially and economically segregated schools that have “beaten the odds” by performing as well academically as their wealthier, more integrated peers. But entire school districts shouldn’t have to “beat the odds” to get a decent education. Moreover, as the phrase implies, the vast majority don’t. In his book Fives Miles Away, A World Apart, law professor James Ryan cites a study that found that high-poverty, high-minority schools have a one-in-300 chance of being “high-performing,” or scoring in the top third of schools on at least two subjects in two grades over two years. Mostly white, middle-class schools have a one-in-four shot.
Nor is more money enough, even where it’s needed. Studies have shown that low-income students learn more in economically integrated schools than they do in mostly poor ones – even when the poor schools have more funding.
Piercing school district borders – the walls that prevent enrollment or, in many cases, funds from being spread more evenly between white or relatively more affluent districts and ones populated by black, brown, or poorer families nearby – isn’t a simple task, politically or logistically.
But the five justices who wrote Milliken 40 years ago wanted us to believe something else: that it wasn’t a necessary task, morally.
They were wrong.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/24/youve-probably-never-heard-of-one-of-the-worst-supreme-court-decisions/?utm_term=.a604ecea4121
Jumping back into the present day, children except in urbanized communities where a parents ability to commute their child to a school of their choice if public transportation is NOT PROVIDED by the CHARTER or PUBLIC SCHOOL, travel on school buses daily (with the exception of summer unless the school practices a year round schedule) to either a local school or a school of their parents choice. This is the reality that did not exist in the 1970's #FACT.
The only reason this changed in the 1970's is solely due to Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education decision, period.
Which makes a logical question on why those who children largely attend (still) schools were other children share their race in Non-Minority Communities due to continued Redlining Factors and of course --- not desiring to LIVE near Minorities in General for the most part -- have an issue with Kamala Harris talking about HER STORY and ASKING Joe Biden in a DEBATE regarding if he had changed his Anti-Desegregation position on busing and for that matter on Minority Children attending schools with Non-Minority Children in THEIR DISTRICTS if the Minority Children Parents so choose and a Schools of Choice option allows for such?
What positions like Biden (still) and others seen by the many, many, many, many threads STILL defending Biden's position which to be frank is a 1970's way of thinking -- does is allow an huge opening for Charter Schools to continue to grow and take children out of Public Schools along with the dollars that follow them. #FACT 2
Lastly, Biden has slipped in the polls since his non-answer his position on Busing Desegregation - which it appears he still opposes. Yet, it is funny and awakening at the same time to see the various threads tapping oh so close to the Race and Privilege position of those continuing to add these threads here -- and reveal so much (hopefully no offense taken) on how we have a Racist POTUS named Donald J. Trump in the White House right now.
Hopefully, this post will stand as this post speaks this poster Truth in what in seen in some of the noted threads described above.
Thank you.
Just STRAIGHT UP THANK YOU -- To Senator Kamala Harris!!!
Her MASTERFULLY QUESTIONING of Lying Piece of S**t William Barr Was On FIRE!!!!
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1123662318930399233
#SheBetterBeVP
Elizabeth Warren Proposes Wiping Out Almost Everyone's Student Debt
Source: Huffington Post
"Last year, outstanding student debt in the U.S. topped $1.5 trillion, a growing financial burden that Warren argues is “crushing millions of families and acting as an anchor on our economy.”
“It’s reducing home ownership rates,” she wrote. “It’s leading fewer people to start businesses. It’s forcing students to drop out of school before getting a degree. It’s a problem for all of us.”
To address the problem, Warren is suggesting what she calls a “truly transformational” approach: wiping out $50,000 in student loan debt for anyone with a household income below $100,000. People with student loans and a household income between $100,000 and $250,000 would receive substantial relief as well. At that point, “the $50,000 cancellation amount phases out by $1 for every $3 in income above $100,000,” Warren wrote.
That means someone with a household income of $130,000 would get $40,000 of their loans wiped out. Someone with a household income of $160,000 would get $30,000 in relief.
People with household incomes above $250,000 would not be eligible for debt cancellation.
Under Warren’s proposed plan, up to 76 percent of households with student loan debt would receive “total loan forgiveness,” according to an economic analysis of the proposal by academics at Arizona State University, Brandeis University and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Ninety-five percent, or 42 million Americans, would be eligible to have at least some of their debt canceled."
Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-student-debt_n_5cbcd065e4b032e7ceb9b51b?utm_medium=facebook&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000047&utm_source=bv_fb&utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&fbclid=IwAR0hPbqNhMD1pogTKk5w_2_0ylA0V6TMK3ahZga5rLzxA2lSU7kTnlHBO38
She was the FIRST to call for the Impeachment of Idiot and now the FIRST to call for an reduction in Student Loan Debt for ALL-- and not just Free or Reduced Amount College which is great but does NOTHING to assist those with current Student Loan Debt (which is a sizable number).
This Second Look Candidate is nudging EVER SO CLOSE to our FIRST CHOICE CANDIDATE -- its inspiring! Go Elizabeth Warren!!!
So We Cannot Impeach (Even If He Is Not Convicted & Removed) This Lying POS...But..
OUR PRESIDENT -- Yes, we said OUR PRESIDENT because yes, Barack was the President of All Americans but, he was especially the POTUS for African-Americans. This was a time that we never thought we would live to see. With that....
OUR PRESIDENT was:
-Harassed
-Belittled
-Hamstrung
-Lied On
-Disrespected
-Had His Family Harassed
-Could Not Visit His Family in Hawaii in Peace on CHRISTMAS and in DAMN SUMMER without it being "debated" about the "costs"
-Was told he could not wear a DAMN TAN SUIT!!
-Was told he could not PLAY GOLF EVERY NOW AND THEN (97 Days out of Eight FREAKING YEARS).
-Daughters could not make a teenage mistake w/o it being "National News".
-Had to take it all on HIS SHOULDERS about America's Killing of Young Black Men & Some Women -- when it was NOT his FAULT.
-Had to feel as if he COULD NOT DO DIRECT PROGRAMS for African-Americans -- who voted 97% for HIM in 2008 and 2012 (which is why he won the election the SECOND TIME).
-Had to CONSISTENTLY DEAL WITH BEING TOLD HE WAS NOT AN AMERICAN BORN IN HAWAII!!!!
-Could Not Even Have a DAMN BEER SUMMIT!!!
-And SO MUCH MORE SHIT!!!
Yet, this WHITE CRIMINAL, RACIST, LYING, POS named DONALD TRUMP can Gaslight not only African-Americans but nearly everyone who is not White, Racist and believe in the MAGA BS -- plus run our GOVERNMENT & DEMOCRACY to the Damn Ground but....
We Cannot IMPEACH HIM NANCY PELOSI???? Really Now???
We know he will likely NOT be REMOVED but IMPEACH HIM, NOW!!!
WE WANT ATONEMENT NOW --- For What Was Done To Our PRESIDENT - BARACK OBAMA!!
Period!!!!
Just To Correct The Record....
What Rep. Ilhan Omar Tweeted (or RT'ed) Was This:
For responding with "All About The Benjamins" with an Emoji Song Notes at the end, she was....
Forced to apologize for saying in a Tweet "All About The Benjamins" with an Emoji Song Notes -- as some equaled "All About The Benjamins" with an Emoji Song Notes at the end, to being Anti-Semantic.
There are thousands of Progressives that don't believe the hype, as in don't believe Rep. Omar saying "All About The Benjamins" with an Emoji Song Notes for a RT is racist in any type or form, especially in light of Donald J. Trump tweeting less than 48 hours ago about a "Trail of Tears" which is a Highly-Racist statement for the Indian-American Community when used in the context he tweeted in.
There are thousands of Progressives that don't believe the hype, as in don't believe Rep. Omar saying "All About The Benjamins" with an Emoji Song Notes within a RT was racist in any form, when a poll showed just TODAY 21% of Democrats who took the poll on Blackface, actually believe wearing Blackface is okay -- which is a Highly-Racist gesture to in the same poll 66% of African-Americans.
There are thousands of Progressives that don't believe the hype, as in don't believe Rep. Omar saying "All About The Benjamins" with an Emoji Song Notes within RT was racist at all, when hundreds of Latinos if not thousands are denied legal entity into the United States and Muslims are denied even visiting the United States by the Thousands - while Donald Trump continue to Tweet Racist Statements about the Latino and Muslim community -- but is never asked or is forced into an apology like Rep. Omar.
We are seeing what's in front of us and it's real, not imagined. #FoodForThought
Second woman accuses Va. Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual assault
Source: Washington Post
A Maryland woman said Friday she was raped by Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) in a “premeditated and aggressive” assault in 2000, while they both were undergraduate students at Duke University. She is the second woman this week to make an accusation of sexual assault.
The woman, Meredith Watson, said Friday in a written statement through her attorney that she shared her account immediately after it happened with several classmates and friends. Watson did not speak publicly Friday and her lawyer did not make her available for an interview.
Fairfax denied the allegations forcefully.
“I deny this latest unsubstantiated allegation,” Fairfax said in a statement. “It is demonstrably false. I have never forced myself on anyone ever.”
Watson was friends with Fairfax at Duke but they never dated or had any romantic relationship, Watson’s lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, said.
“At this time, Ms. Watson is reluctantly coming forward out of a strong sense of civic duty and her belief that those seeking or serving in public office should be of the highest character,” Smith said in the statement . “She has no interest in becoming a media personality or reliving the trauma that has greatly affected her life. Similarly, she is not seeking any financial damages.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/second-woman-accuses-va-lt-gov-justin-fairfax-of-sexual-assault/2019/02/08/19e6bb6c-2bdf-11e9-b011-d8500644dc98_story.html?utm_term=.37dd88705ba7
We Take Our Comments Back on how Fairfax need to replace Northam and will say BOTH of THEM Should Move On ASAP!!
It's Raining...
Thank You Real POTUS Barack Obama For ALWAYS SUPPORTING OUR TROOPS - Come Rain Or Shine - AT HOME OR ABROAD.
Meanwhile, with the serial liar in the White House, This happened today....
Donald Trump cancels visit to WW1 military cemetery because it’s raining
Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2018/11/10/donald-trump-cancels-visit-to-ww1-military-cemetery-because-its-raining-8125310/?ito=cbshare
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