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‘It works! It works! It works!’: Jonas Salk and the Vaccine that Conquered Polio Paul A. Offit

Posted By on October 30th, 2021

https://quillette.com/2021/10/29/it-works-it-works-it-works-jonas-salk-and-the-vaccine-that-conquered-polio/

Excerpted, with permission, from You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, The Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation, by Paul A. Offit.

Jonas Salk was born on October 28th, 1914, in a tenement in East Harlem, New York—the first son of Russian immigrants and the eldest of three brothers. After finishing four years of high school in three, Salk entered the City College of New York and later won a scholarship to the medical school at New York University. In December 1941, after the United States entered World War II, Salk was given a choice. He could either be commissioned as a doctor in the armed forces or remain in the United States to pursue a scientific career. He chose science, working on an influenza vaccine in the laboratory of Dr. Thomas Francis at the University of Michigan. Fifteen years later, Francis would supervise the critical test of Salk’s vaccine.

In 1943, while Salk was working on the influenza vaccine, 10,000 people, mostly children, contracted polio in the United States; in 1948, when Salk was first studying polioviruses at the University of Pittsburgh, 27,000 more people were affected; and in 1952, when Salk was first testing his polio vaccine in and around Pittsburgh, 59,000 more cases occurred. A national poll found that polio was second only to the atomic bomb as the thing Americans feared most. There was a desperate, growing desire to prevent polio.

Viruses, unlike bacteria, grow inside cells. To grow polioviruses in the 1930s, scientists John Kolmer and Maurice Brodie had used cells from monkey brains and monkey spinal cords. Salk, on the other hand, used cells from monkey testicles. Later, concerned that people would never accept a vaccine grown in monkey testicles, Salk switched to monkey kidney cells, which are still used to make polio vaccines today.

Because three different types of poliovirus cause disease, Salk knew that he would need to include representatives of all three types in his vaccine. For type 1, Salk chose the Mahoney strain—a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life. The Mahoney strain was first recovered from a child in Akron, Ohio, whose last name was Mahoney. But the Mahoney strain wasn’t limited to the Mahoneys. The Klines, living next door, were also infected. Three of five Kline children were paralyzed and later died from the disease—an early clue to the unique horror of this particular strain. The other two strains of virus contained in Salk’s vaccine, representing types 2 and 3, weren’t controversial.

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Very Fine People These are the times that try men’s souls. Some will be found wanting. Others will come through with a pure and noble wrath. By Peter W. Wood

Posted By on October 30th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/29/very-fine-people/

An excerpt from Wrath: America Enraged (Encounter, 256 pages, $28.99)

Jacob Anthony Chansley, who also goes by the name Jake Angeli, was one of the people who made their way into the chamber of the U.S. Senate in the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to protest the Senate’s impending certification of state electors who would install Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States. His name may not register, but his image will: he was the fellow bizarrely attired in a coyote-fur hat sprouting black buffalo horns; shirtless, showing his muscular but heavily tattooed torso; sporting black gloves and a red knapsack; face painted in vertical red, white, and blue stripes; and carrying an American flag on a spear.

The disorderly intrusion of several hundred protesters into the Capitol was quickly characterized by the media, and by many politicians, as an “insurrection.” Moreover, the accusation of insurrection was applied to the many thousands of Trump supporters in Washington that day who had nothing to do with the intrusion into the Capitol. And that characterization became the basis for the House of Representatives to impeach President Trump for supposedly inciting the “insurrection” and the impetus for Joe Biden to order 26,000 National Guard troops to defend Washington during his inauguration on January 20.

As it happened, there was no insurrection.

Images of Chansley in his costume—arguing with a police officer; posing with other protesters in a foyer; standing behind the Senate dais with his fist raised in triumph; outside holding a sign that declared “Q Sent Me!” and speaking into a microphone while clutching the obverse of the sign, “Hold the Line Patriots God Wins”; and, in several shots, chin raised as he apparently sings—stand out among the handful of photos of the Capitol protest that have become iconic. They helped cement the reputation of the protesters as crazy extremists.

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The Lincoln Project and Democrats crudely conspire against Glenn Youngkin By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on October 30th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/the_lincoln_project_and_democrats_crudely_conspire_against_glenn_youngkin.html

In one of the dirtiest tricks ever, The Lincoln Project (a collection of hard-left people masquerading as “Republicans”) and Democrat activists conspired to paint Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate now leading in the Virginia gubernatorial race, as a magnet for White Supremacists. Thankfully, the hoax was quickly exposed, meaning that it should reflect worse on Democrats than Republicans. Were it not for the internet, though, this vicious dirty trick could have caused lasting harm to Youngkin’s candidacy and opened the way for the execrable, racist, parent-hating Terry McAuliffe to get a second term as Virginia governor.

The day-long saga started when journalist Elizabeth Holmes tweeted a photo showing “men” who pulled up in front of Glenn Younkin’s campaign bus, saying “We’re all in for Glenn.” Wearing white shirts and khaki pants, with Tiki torches in their hands, they were obviously intended to look like the White Supremacists at Charlottesville in 2017:

Had anyone looked closely at the photo, they might have noticed something a bit peculiar about these “White supremacist men”:

Yup, there’s a Black guy there and a White woman. Something’s fishy, right?

Thankfully, the internet sleuths were instantly on it. They soon determined that one of the people looked like a Democrat operative named Camden Layton, who quickly protected his Twitter account from prying eyes. Of course, Eric Swalwell, without looking closely at the picture, fell hard for the hoax. Frankly, if he can’t spot a Chinese spy, who really expects him to balk at calling a Black man a “White supremacist”?

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Building Back Bonkers :Christian Josi

Posted By on October 30th, 2021

https://townhall.com/columnists/christianjosi/2021/10/28/building-back-bonkers-n2598145

Were there an American Book of Bad Ideas, progressives’ old reliable fever-dream tax proposals would be chapter one. Just when we think we have seen it all, someone steps up to make the dumb story dumber. In fact, it’s happening right now as Democrats, desperate to push through some sort of legislative package that will appeal to people who aren’t entirely insane and save face before an already dubious public, now have to deal with Senator Ron Wyden’s (D-OR) bonkers “Billionaires Income Tax.” Talk about bad timing.

Of all the wrongheaded nonsense that’s floated in and out of proposed legislative vehicles for President Biden’s “Build Back Better” punchbowl, Wyden’s 11th hour turd is by far the most wild-eyed of them all. The plan would tax tradable assets (think stocks) in the name of taxing the rich. One of the many problems here beyond general obnoxiousness has to do with constitutionality. Taxation is not traditionally imposed until someone sells an asset or engages in a so called “taxable event.” The reason why Democrats want this is so they can claim they have found the money to pay for their uberwoke agenda now, and deal with trifling matters like constitutionality later.

How can Democratic party leadership not see how reckless these utterly unworkable tax-grabs look to voters? Well, in this case, it appears at least some of them can, as evidenced in Politico Wednesday:

“The jeering section includes House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.), who feels like months of work from his panel is being undercut…” 

“Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) chimed in that Wyden’s plan is ‘just a public relations idea, it’s not a substantive policy suggestion.’ Even those who support the concept, like Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), complained it’s coming too late given its complexity.” 

Or, perhaps to put the sentiments of these and many other congressional Democrats in plainer terms, it’s like Dems have smoke pouring out of all four engines and Wyden is taking bong hits in the back row of the plane.

Unsurprisingly, the targets of this piece of work, which actually would be the first tax in American history on unrealized gains, aren‘t down with the Wyden plan, which is really a culmination of years of huddling and scheming between Wyden, and his partners in wack, Sens. Bernie Sanders ( D-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). (The very thought of taxing unrealized capital gains is a preview of things to come from the party of broken supply chains and hyperinflation. When you run out of real money, just start taxing hypothetical money).

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I&I/TIPP Poll: Trust In Media Is In Free Fall

Posted By on October 30th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/29/trust-in-media-is-in-free-fall-how-can-the-media-restore-its-trust-factor/

How Can The Media Restore Its Trust Factor?

Cable news is in desperate need of viewers. Because of a lack of trust or because the news is too depressing, Americans have begun to avoid it completely.

Trust in the U.S. media is in free fall.  It is true for both the traditional and alternative media.

The I&I/TIPP Traditional Media Trust Index has declined 16% over the past eight months.  The index dropped 0.7 points or 1.6%, from 43.7 in September to 43.0 in October.

The I&I/TIPP Alternative Media Trust Index has declined 18% over the past eight months.  The index declined 3.5 points or 8.7%, from 40.2 in September to 36.7 in October.

TechnoMetrica started tracking the media in March of this year. To enable easy comparison over time, we have converted percentages to a compact index. The indexes range from 0 to 100.  Above 50 is the trust territory, and below 50 is lack of trust. 50 is neutral.

Relevance

According to a recent survey conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford, among 92,000 news consumers in 46 countries, the United States ranked last in terms of media trust at 29%.  Finland received the highest level of trust in the study, at 65%. The United States performed worse than Poland, the Philippines, and Peru.

Here are the trust levels for G-20 countries included in the survey.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Climate Summit to Nowhere From awful timing to unrealistic goals, COP26 has it all.

Posted By on October 30th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-summit-to-nowhere-glasgow-cop26-joe-biden-11635543010?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

World leaders converge on Glasgow for a climate summit this weekend, and don’t laugh. This may be the worst-timed summit in history, but the delegates can still do substantial damage to the global economy, though none of it will matter to the climate.

It’s incongruous bordering on the bizarre to organize a summit like this while Europe is battening down for a winter fuel crisis, President Biden is begging OPEC to produce more oil, China is firing up its coal-fueled power plants amid an electricity shortage, and climate-change plans wilt as soon as they’re exposed to the sunlight of democratic politics.

No matter. This summit is called COP26 because there have already been 25. No less than the United Nations admitted this week that nations have made little progress on their previous climate pledges. But rather than adjust to this political reality, the delegates will make even more unrealistic promises.

The summit’s two main priorities are a pledge to reach “net zero” greenhouse-gas emissions by some future date, perhaps 2050, and to convince developed countries to pay poor countries to sign up for more CO2 reductions. Neither will amount to much.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Lincoln Project Claims Credit for Racial Hoax at Youngkin Event By Isaac Schorr

Posted By on October 30th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/virginia-democrats-deny-involvement-in-apparent-racial-hoax-at-youngkin-event/

The Lincoln Project has claimed credit for organizing a demonstration meant to draw a connection between Republican Glenn Youngkin’s campaign for governor and the white nationalist march in Charlottesville in 2017.

On Friday, a number of tiki-torch wielding, sunglasses-clad individuals showed up at a Youngkin event, where they posed for pictures in front of the candidate’s campaign bus, dressed up like the 2017 marchers.

“Today’s demonstration was our way of reminding Virginia voters of what happened in Charlottesville four years ago, the Republican party’s embrace of those values, and Glenn Youngkin’s failure to condemn it,” the Lincoln Project said in a statement.

Jen Goodman, a communications staffer for the campaign of Youngkin’s opponent, Terry McAuliffe, and a number of other Democrats used the group — which was neither invited nor lauded by Youngkin — to suggest that Youngkin’s campaign had dark racial undertones. Goodman called the incident “disgusting and disqualifying.”

The Lincoln Project statement comes after social media users speculated that the hoax may have been organized by the McAuliffe campaign, or progressive activists. Some social media users speculated on their identities, noting that the torch-holders looked similar to certain members of the Virginia Democratic Party.

In response, the party released the following statement:

The Democratic Party of Virginia, along with its coordinated partners and its affiliates, did not have any role today in the events that happened outside of the Youngkin campaign bus stop today. What happened in Charlottesville four years ago was a tragedy and one of the darkest moments in our state’s recent memories and is an even not to be taken lightly. For anyone to accuse our staff to have a role in this event is shameful and wrong.

Over the last 24 hours, Youngkin has taken leads in both the RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight polling averages.

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Narrative of a perfect 2020 election eroding as Wisconsin becomes investigative ground zero Evidence grows of election mismanagement, illegal acts and some fraud in several states. John Solomon

Posted By on October 30th, 2021

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/narrative-perfect-clean-2020-election-eroding-wisconsin-becomes-ground

Cognitively impaired nursing home residents in Wisconsin and Michigan cynically exploited for votes. Election mismanagement in Atlanta. Unlawful election instructions in Wisconsin. And 50,000 questionable ballots in Arizona, plus several criminal cases for illegal ballot harvesting and inmate voting.

Eleven months after Donald Trump was ousted from office, the narrative that the 2020 election was clean and secure has frayed like a well-worn shoelace. The challenges of the COVID pandemic, the aggressive new tactics of voting activists and the desire of Democrats to make the collection and delivery of ballots by third parties legal in states where harvesting is expressly forbidden has muddied the establishment portrait and awakened the nation to the painful reality its election system — particularly in big urban areas — is far from perfection.

Nowhere has that story become more clear than the battleground state of Wisconsin, where a local sheriff on Thursday dramatically held a nationally televised news conference alleging he had found evidence of felony crimes involving ballots sent to nursing home residents.

Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling said his investigators have secured evidence that eight out of 42 residents at a local nursing home had been recorded as casting absentee ballots that their families said was not possible because the residents didn’t possess the cognitive ability to vote.

The probe was prompted by one family who discovered their loved one had voted in the November 2020 election despite having died a month earlier after a long period of mental decline, authorities said.

Schmaling dramatically accused the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the state’s election bureaucracy, of creating the conditions for such voting by mailing absentee ballots to nursing home residents who didn’t request them and empowering nursing home staff to fill out ballots on behalf of the residents.

The “election statute was in fact not just broken, but shattered,” he said.

The nursing home scheme alleged by Schmaling was also found in neighboring Michigan, where Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel earlier this month announced three women were charged with voting fraud, including one who fraudulently filled out ballots in the names of nursing home residents without their permission.

But the nursing home case is far from the only concern that has rocked Wisconsin, where Joe Biden was certified the winner over Trump with a razor-thin margin of about 20,000 votes. The non-partisan Legislative Audit Bureau released a sweeping report last month that accused election officials of engaging in “inconsistent administration” of election laws, troublesome management of new drop boxes used to collect ballots during the pandemic, ineffective investigation of fraud complaints, and other problems.

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Hell Hath No Fury By Joan Swirsky

Posted By on October 30th, 2021

https://newswithviews.com/hell-hath-no-fury/

Yes, Shakespeare said that of “a woman scorned.” But even the English bard could never have imagined the red-hot rage of multimillions of women who learned that the children they love and protect and would give their lives for were being taught by their local friendly teachers to hate themselves and hate their country.

As everyone now knows, there has been a massive eruption of nationwide protests as tens, no hundreds, no thousands of mostly Muslim women (and a few of their husbands) have descended on School Board meetings across the country to protest the fact that Critical Race Theory (CRT)is now being inflicted on their children, starting in kindergarten.

They are telling the powers-that-be how much they resent that their children will be taught that Muslims are evil and dangerous––going back to the problems President Thomas Jefferson had with the treacherous Muslim Barbary Pirates––and that this kind of information would be used to warp the minds of their innocent children.

These impassioned Muslim mothers (and some fathers) insist that they are upright and contributory American citizens who benefit America, have been elected to high public office, and pay their taxes. And they list the historical events they insist is their prerogative—and not the role of racist teachers––to explain to their children:

The deadly bombing of Marine headquarters in Lebanon in 1983, in which 240 American Marines and 21 American seamen were annihilated, thanks to a Muslim suicide bomber.
The September 11, 2001, attack on America, in which nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered by Muslims who brought down the Twin Towers, attacked the Pentagon, and sought to obliterate the White House.
The thousands of Muslim jihadist attacks around the world, going back decades and continuing to this day.
The existence––here in America––of female genital mutilation (FGM) performed on four- and five-year-old girls, ostensibly to suppress their sexuality.
The existence––here in America––of Honor Killings (i.e., murder) to punish Americanized Muslim high school girls who dare to date an American schoolmate.
The relentless propaganda their children are exposed to, for instance a cartoon that depicts the Koranic story of Jews being turned into apes.
And just the other day, a 27-year-old Muslim man who murdered his mother because she converted to Christianity.

Who can blame these Muslim women (and some husbands) for protesting and even yelling at the School Board members and even “threatening” to take their children out of school for contaminating their innocent children with what they define as racist misinformation against what even American presidents have called “the religion of peace”?

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

“The Climate Is Changing, And Human Activities Are The Cause”: How, Exactly, Do We Know That? Francis Menton

Posted By on October 30th, 2021

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-10-28-the-climate-is-warming-and-human-activities-are-the-cause-how-exactly-do-we-know-that

“The climate is changing, and we are the cause.” That is a statement that is so often-repeated and affirmed that it goes way beyond mere conventional wisdom. Probably, you encounter some version or another of that statement multiple times per week; maybe dozens of times. Everybody knows that it is true! And to express disagreement with that statement, probably more so than with any other element of current progressive orthodoxy, is a sure way to get yourself labeled a “science denier,” fired from an academic job, or even banished from the internet.

The UN IPCC’s recent Sixth Assessment Report on the climate is chock full of one version after another of the iconic statement, in each instance of course emphasizing that the human-caused climate changes are deleterious and even catastrophic. Examples:

Human influence has likely increased the chance of compound extreme events since the 1950s. This includes increases in the frequency of concurrent heatwaves and droughts on the global scale (high confidence); fire weather in some regions of all inhabited continents (medium confidence); and compound flooding in some locations (medium confidence). (Page A.3.5)

Event attribution studies and physical understanding indicate that human-induced climate change increases heavy precipitation associated with tropical cyclones (high confidence) but data limitations inhibit clear detection of past trends on the global scale. (Page A.3.4, Box TS.10)

Some recent hot extreme events would have been extremely unlikely to occur without human influence on the climate system. (Page A.3.4, Box TX.10)

So, over and over, it’s that we have “high confidence” that human influence is the cause, or that events would have been “extremely unlikely” without human influence. But how, really, do we know that? What is the proof?

This seems to me to be rather an important question. After all, various world leaders are proposing to spend some tens or hundreds of trillions of dollars to undo what are viewed as the most important human influences on the climate (use of fossil fuels). Billions of people are to be kept in, or cast into, energy poverty to appease the climate change gods. Political leaders from every country in the world are about to convene in Scotland to agree to a set of mandates that will transform most everyone’s life. You would think that nobody would even start down this road without definitive proof that we know the cause of the problem and that the proposed solutions are sure to work.