COVID vaccine: ‘Extremely good news’ about Oxford/AstraZeneca jab

The AstraZeneca jab offers even stronger protection than first known, new data shows

Just one shot of either the Oxford/AstraZeneca or Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine can cut hospital admissions of older people by 80 per cent, new data shows.

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock confirmed the finding and also revealed the jab may offer better protection against COVID-19 than first thought.

The Public Health England figures compared people who received the first dose of the vaccine with others of a similar age who were yet to receive protection.

Mr Hancock said the data was “extremely good news”.

“A single shot of either the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine or of the Pfizer vaccine works against severe infection among the over-70s with a more than 80 per cent reduction in hospitalisations," he said in a public address to the nation.

“In fact, the detailed data show that the protection that you get from catching COVID 35 days after a first jab is even slightly better for the Oxford jab than for Pfizer, albeit both results are clearly very strong.”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/coronavirus/covid-vaccine-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-astrazenecaoxford-jab/news-story/f0ff9fe4891f14f34149afeeab7605dd

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Game-changing COVID-19 vaccine pill pursued by small British firm

In the global scramble to discover a COVID-19 vaccine, did governments overlook an option almost too good to be true? Wayne Channon thinks so, and is out to prove it.

“If we can make vaccines which are thermally stable and taken orally, that could be transformational,” Channon says. “It will require a mindset change. And the benefits are not trivial.”

IosBio, the British biotechnology firm Channon chairs, has for years tried to convince pharmaceutical giants of the benefits of turning temperature-sensitive liquid vaccines into much more stable pills.

“We thought it would be a walk in the park to persuade them to reformulate their vaccines but it turned out to be very naive,” he says.

“For big pharma, getting something into the cold chain [a temperature-controlled supply chain] is considered a success for them. They don’t own the cold chain so there’s no economic imperative to change.”

However the coronavirus pandemic may finally herald the arrival of oral vaccines; iosBio’s technology was given to humans for the first time during trials in California on Monday and the team behind the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab has also started exploring whether it could eventually be taken as a pill.

Tablets or nasal sprays could provide a more targeted immune response, overcome the need for storage and transportation at freezing temperatures, be handed out much faster, help people who are afraid of needles and, according to Channon, even be sent in the post as a booster shot.

“For the next pandemic, the world is going to be a different place,” he says. “We will have some new technology and I think oral vaccines are going to be at the forefront of that.”

IosBio gave up on trying to convince pharmaceutical companies and in 2016 started developing vaccines itself. However the firm was overlooked for funding by the UK’s vaccine taskforce during last year’s race to find candidates.

Several months later a phone call from billionaire doctor, businessman and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong opened the door to a potential breakthrough. Soon-Shiong - the world’s richest doctor who Forbes estimates is worth $10 billion - had woken up at 3am with a realisation that inoculating the world would be easier through an oral vaccine and tracked down iosBio.

The pills are engineered to withstand temperatures of up to 50 degrees, allowing them to pass through the stomach without loss of efficacy before they are released in the intestines where immune cells are concentrated.

The British outfit licensed its thermal stabilisation technology to ImmunityBio in exchange for royalties on worldwide sales of an approved oral vaccine. The deal opened up the tens of millions of dollars in funding needed to launch clinical trials.

Sixty-five people in California will take part in the phase one trial launched on Monday. Phase two and three trials will be expanded to thousands more. Oral vaccines have already proven highly effective on monkeys under trials funded by the US government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, Channon added.

“We want to be the universal booster, just because of the simplicity of giving it, simplicity of distributing it and the fact it’s going to have probably a more profound impact,” Channon says. “Even if it’s not this year, it could be next year.”

Channon says distributing the pill via post was an option but agreed governments might want more oversight on the actual uptake by public.

“That’s the debate we’ve got to have with the regulator. I think there is a good argument that if you are sent a vaccine there is at least as much chance of you taking it is as you having a needle in the arm. so I think you’d say lets be pragmatic about this.

“If the worst thing is you have to go to your doctor and pick it up and put it in your mouth and say I’ve taken it, it’s still going to be a lot more efficient [than traditional vaccines].”

The phase one trial will end in two months.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/game-changing-covid-19-vaccine-pill-pursued-by-small-british-firm-world-s-richest-doctor-20210301-p576wl.html

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NY Bars and Restaurants Win Court Victory Against Cuomo's COVID Curfew

Late last year, blue state governors began enforcing an utterly nonsensical policy ostensibly to fight COVID-19. Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) and Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) insisted on curfews for bars and restaurants, preventing them from staying open for lucrative late-shifts without explaining how this business-throttling move would fight the pandemic.

On Saturday, a New York State Supreme Court justice granted a preliminary injunction allowing 90 bars and restaurants to remain open until their regular closing time of 4 a.m. Cuomo had ordered a 10 p.m. curfew in November. Last month, he extended the curfew to 11 p.m. The bars and restaurants sued, demanding the scientific data upon which Cuomo based the curfew.

Steve Cohen, the HoganWilling PLLC attorney representing the bars and restaurants, argued that science did not support the curfew. Cohen said his firm has 13 lawsuits already and is welcoming more industries to come on board.

Donald Swartz, owner of Veneto Wood Fired Pizza and Pasta in Rochester, N.Y., told Fox & Friends that the legal effort began with 10 different restaurants, mostly in the Buffalo area, but grew to nearly 100 different small business owners.

“Months ago we were being redlined where the city of Rochester could not serve indoor dining, but you can go over to the suburbs and you can sit down so it was quite difficult to operate under those conditions,” Swartz recalled. “The law office went to battle for us and got that removed.”

The business owner said he is “really hoping that everybody can get back to — as close as we can — to full dining and we can get our employees — get our staff — back to work. That’s really what we want to do.”

“Let us do what we do best, get back to work, provide a service, provide jobs and provide some taxes back to the state, which [has] got to be much needed at this point,” Swartz added.

While the legacy media long celebrated Cuomo as a heroic warrior against COVID-19, a long train of recent scandals involving the governor’s nursing home orders and sexual assault allegations have eviscerated his political future.

The very idea of a curfew to fight COVID-19 never made much sense. The virus does not suddenly become more likely to spread after 10 p.m. or 11 p.m., but limiting the hours of restaurants and bars does severely cut into their revenues. Cuomo, in particular, appeared to target small businesses that dared to mock his lockdown restrictions with satirical menus. While this petty vindictiveness should be beneath the dignity of a governor, fellow Democrats and alleged victims of sexual assault have come forward with claims that Cuomo personally threatened them, suggesting that this vindictiveness is not outside of the governor’s character.

Yes, this is the same Andrew Cuomo who won an Emmy and who penned a book about his exploits in fighting COVID-19.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/03/01/ny-bars-and-restaurants-win-court-victory-against-cuomos-covid-curfew-n1429093

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Britain's "national Health Service at work

A bureaucracy that kills

A university student has died from sepsis after trying 25 times to get through to a GP surgery only to be refused an appointment, an inquest heard.

Toby Hudson, 19, was unable to speak to anyone at the practice, in Weymouth, Dorset, because of a faulty phone system, so gave up and tried again the next day.

When he did get through to a member of staff he was told he could not have an appointment for at least 48 hours.

The teenager was told that due to him being registered at another surgery in his university town of Southampton, Hants, he could either wait two days to re-register or go to an urgent care walk-in centre.

He attended the centre and was seen by nurse practitioner Briony Jefferis, who wrongly diagnosed him with tonsillitis and gave him antibiotics.

Over the next 24 hours Mr Hudson‘s condition deteriorated in front of his parents who called 999 when he slipped into unconsciousness.

He went into cardiac arrest but was delayed in getting to hospital because an ambulance went to the wrong location.

Toby died on the night of July 4, 2019, two days after he had first sought help at the Wyke Regis & Lanehouse Medical Practice in Weymouth, Dorset.

A post mortem examination showed he died from multiple organ failure due to sepsis, due to infectious mononucleosis (glandular fever).

An inquest into his death in Bournemouth heard Mr Hudson had previously been a patient at the Weymouth practice.

However, when he moved to Southampton to study chemistry at university he registered at a new clinic closer to campus.

He had been suffering from a cough for around two months before he returned to his family home in Weymouth in the summer of 2019.

It was heard that Toby was suffering from swollen glands and ‘puffy’ tonsils and a sore throat when his parents told him to speak to a GP.

Giving evidence, Dr Matthew Brook, a partner at the Wake Regis & Lanehouse Medical Practice, admitted issues with the phone system due to a high patient load. Dr Brook said: “We were having tremendous problems with our phone system which could not handle a much higher number of calls. “We had updated the system but it was not working correctly.

“There was a queuing system but in a lot of cases people were waiting a long time and then hanging up.

“We have had a review since then and nobody recalled taking the call from Toby.”

Dr Brook insisted that the correct procedures had been followed. According to national guidelines, temporary residents should only be seen by a GP if they do not require urgent care.

He said: “With temporary residents, receptionists are told to ask whether a patient needs an urgent appointment, within 48 hours.

“If they do require one within 48 hours we refer them to the urgent care unit. “If not, the patient is re-registered and we are then able to make an appointment.”

Mrs Jefferis said she was “not remotely worried” about Toby‘s symptoms when she examined him at the urgent care centre in Weymouth Community Hospital.

She added that he “did not show any signs of sepsis” and that his symptoms were “consistent with those of tonsillitis.”

Mr Hudson‘s father, Peter, returned home on July 4 to find him looking pale and when he helped his son to the wet room of the house he briefly lost consciousness, so he called 999.

The teenager was then taken from his home address in Weymouth to the Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester, but died later that evening.

Mr Hudson said: “I felt there was no urgency. I had to press for action to be taken and for our concerns to be heard.” He added: “We have a lot of concerns about his care.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/student-sepsis-death-inquest-b1808022.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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UK: Pfizer vaccine ‘dramatically reduces’ Covid transmission risk after one dose, study shows

A single dose of Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine cuts the number of asymptomatic infections and could significantly reduce the risk of transmission, a new UK study suggests.

The findings from Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge indicated 75-per-cent protection from Covid-19.

The results also point to a four-fold decrease in the risk of asymptomatic Covid infection among healthcare workers who have been vaccinated for more than 12 days – suggesting the first dose will significantly reduce the spread of the virus.

“Our findings show a dramatic reduction in the rate of positive screening tests among asymptomatic healthcare workers after a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine,” said Nick Jones, a Cambridge University Hospital specialist who co-led the study.

The UK has been rolling out Covid vaccinations since late December 2020, with both the Pfizer shot and the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab given to people in high-risk categories.

As part of their study on the Pfizer vaccine, Cambridge researchers analysed results from thousands of Covid tests carried out each week as part of hospital screenings of healthcare staff.

Dr Mike Weekes, an infectious disease specialist at Cambridge University’s department of medicine, who co-led the study, hailed the findings as “great news”.

He said: “The Pfizer vaccine not only provides protection against becoming ill from SARS-CoV-2 but also helps prevent infection, reducing the potential for the virus to be passed on to others.”

After separating the test results from unvaccinated and vaccinated staff, the Cambridge team found that 0.8 per cent of tests from unvaccinated healthcare workers were positive.

This compared with 0.37 per cent of tests from staff less than 12 days after vaccination – when the vaccine’s protective effect is not yet been fully established – and 0.2 per cent of tests from staff at 12 days or more post-vaccination.

The study and its results have yet to be independently peer-reviewed by other scientists, but were published online as a preprint on Friday.

Independent scientists said the findings were very encouraging. Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, said: “To see such a reduction in infection rates after a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine is very impressive, and shows that vaccination truly does offer a way out of the current restrictions and a much brighter future.

“It will be important to understand whether the reduced risk of infection played out across all the exposure risk groups included in the study, but nonetheless, this is still excellent news.”

Dr Andrew Freedman, of the Cardiff University School of Medicine, said the latest study “demonstrates clearly the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing infection”. He added: “This means that vaccination will lead to a substantial reduction in transmission of the virus.”

Key real-world data published on Wednesday from Israel, which has conducted one of the world’s fastest rollouts of Pfizer’s vaccine, showed that two doses of the Pfizer shot cut symptomatic Covid-19 cases by 94 per cent across all age groups, and severe illnesses by nearly as much.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/covid-vaccine-pfizer-transmission-dose-b1807964.html

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How the Johnson & Johnson single-dose COVID-19 vaccine is different from others

The United States now has a third regulator-approved coronavirus vaccine. The US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) cleared the vaccine produced by medical giant Johnson & Johnson.

However, this vaccine is different from the others approved in the US. It has provided optimism that swathes of the world could be vaccinated from COVID-19 much quicker than first thought.

Johnson & Johnson has achieved something different to most other vaccine candidates — developed a single-dose COVID-19 vaccine.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine requires a person to receive two shots, 21 days apart. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine allows for a longer timeframe between the two shots.

Other vaccines which require two doses include Novavax, the Moderna vaccine, Russia's Sputnik V and China's Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines.

However, Johnson and Johnson is not the only company to be developing a single-dose vaccine. The CanSino Biologics vaccine developed in China also has a single-dose shot.

The American company has shown results which have proven to be more effective than its Chinese counterpart.

The USFDA said Johnson & Johnson's vaccine offered strong protection against serious illness, hospitalisations and death.

One dose was 85 per cent protective against the most severe COVID-19 illness, in a massive study that spanned three continents.

Protection remained strong in countries such as South Africa, where the variants of most concern are spreading.

Meanwhile, the Chinese single-shot vaccine falls well below that mark, according to initial data. CanSino Biologics said its vaccine was 68.83 per cent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 disease two weeks after a single-dose vaccination, citing interim data, while the rate fell to 65.28 per cent four weeks after one shot.

However, reports from a trial of the vaccine in Pakistan, and other countries, showed promising results in preventing serious coronavirus infections.

Faisal Sultan, Pakistan's Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Health Services, said the CanSino Biologics shot was 90.98 per cent effective in preventing serious infections.

Unlike the Johnson & Johnson studies, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna research finished before the South African and British variants began widely spreading.

Along with being a single dose, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine also has another big advantage — it can be kept in warmer temperatures.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine needs to be stored at -70 degrees Celsius, making it extremely difficult to transport and keep in storage.

The Moderna vaccine used in the US also needs to be stored below zero, at -20C.

However, the Johnson & Johnson jab can be stored in a regular fridge between 2-8C.

This puts the vaccine on par with other vaccines which can be stored at these temperatures, including the Sputnik V and the Oxford-AstraZeneca.

These advantages in transport and storage will make the vaccine potentially more accessible.

In the United States, Johnson & Johnson is aiming to distribute 20 million doses by the end of March, and 100 million by the middle of the year.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-01/how-the-johnson-and-johnson-covid-19-vaccine-differs-from-others/13201050

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The Blue States Are Now the Beggar States

Last week, I visited South Florida for four days, and what a shock: Everything was open. The beaches, the hotels, the restaurants (with some sensible safety and social distancing restrictions). The classrooms are full.

The other strange thing about being in Florida was that people were happy. They were playing tennis and golf. They were going to work and getting on with their lives. Florida is a Republican, can-do kind of place.

Then, there is New York. Manhattan is a morose and deserted place to be. It's as if it's boarded up. People are living their lives afraid. They are depressed, which makes the whole place depressing. In Southern California, I experienced the same dreariness. And it wasn't the weather, which was warm and sunny. Restaurants were closed or highly restricted. Stores were sparsely attended, and people were generally grimacing and standoffish. They yelp in horror if you take off your mask, even for a moment.

Yet through it all, there is almost no evidence that lockdowns, business closures, stay-at-home orders and other strategies have reduced the infection rates or death rates from the virus. To take just one prominent example, open Florida has had a lower death rate (adjusted for the age distribution of the population) than closed-down California and New York. Even President Joe Biden's crackerjack health officials can't explain that one.

Fifty states experimented with responses to the virus, and the verdict is in: The big blue states got crushed. The highest unemployment states are Hawaii, Nevada, California, Colorado, New York, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Connecticut. On average, the blue states have 2 percentage points lower unemployment, which means millions of more jobless citizens. Their revenues have collapsed with businesses closed down.

Why New Yorkers put up with walking disasters such as Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, or why Californians tolerate Gov. Gavin Newsom, is their own business.

The "progressives" in these states voted for higher taxes, more regulations, high energy prices and economic lockdowns. That's democracy in action. Now the latest census data and U-Haul trailer rental data confirm that productive people are "voting with their feet" and accelerating their race to get out of town. The New York Post reports about 1,000 Northeasterners every day are relocating to Florida, Texas and Tennessee. The biggest population losers last year were deep-blue New York, Illinois and California.

Now, Biden wants to give some $400 billion to the failed blue states, mainly from the prospering red states, the ones that wisely didn't shut down their economies or schools. The blue states get a bigger slice of the pie, which is Robin Hood in reverse because blue states generally have a higher per capita income than red states.

The supposedly high-brow, highly educated, culturally refined elites in Beverly Hills, California, and Long Island, New York -- the very same "progressives" who have generally thumbed their nose at the working class "deplorables" in Middle America -- have fallen so far that they now have to beg people in West Virginia, Arkansas and Mississippi for money.

You'd think liberals would be ashamed, but spending other people's money is what they do best.

Every liberal Democrat in Congress, from Sen. Elizabeth Warren to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will vote for the blue-state bailout. Do they understand that in doing so, they are verifying the collapse of the very blue-state liberal model they want to impose on all of America?

https://townhall.com/columnists/stephenmoore/2021/02/23/the-blue-states-are-now-the-beggar-states-n2585156

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IN BRIEF

Student suspended from education program for factually saying, "A man is a man. A woman is a woman." (Daily Wire)

Thanks to dezinformatsiya, a sizable number of Americans erroneously think over 10,000 unarmed black men are killed by police each year (Not the Bee)

George Floyd riots estimated to cost 66 times more than Capitol damage (though only in DC dollars would the building damage be $30 million) (Federalist)

Forty percent of California's inmates have been vaccinated for COVID. Meanwhile, the vaccination rate for law-abiding Californians is just 6.5%. (Not the Bee)

As our Nate Jackson observes, former California Attorney General and president-in-waiting Kamala Harris was a "tough on crime" lady who threw tons of people in jail, yet inmates are now being vaccinated at an insanely fast rate.

Jen Psaki distances Biden from Andrew Cuomo, says sex harassment claim should be "reviewed" (Fox)

FDA greenlights Pfizer vaccine to be stored at normal freezer temperatures, instead of ultra-cold (Examiner)

Ex-Olympic gymnastics coach kills himself hours after being charged with sex crimes (WaPo)

Policy: Inflation: The next problem for the U.S. economy? (1945)

Policy: Standing up to the intolerant Equality Act (Daily Signal)

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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FDA Panel Recommends Johnson & Johnson's One-Dose COVID Vaccine for Approval

More good news on the coronavirus front. A panel of FDA advisors voted unanimously on Friday to recommend the agency approve drugmaker Johnson & Johnson's one-dose coronavirus vaccine in the United States. Following the recommendation by the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, the FDA is expected to approve the vaccine for emergency use in the coming days.

Johnson & Johnson's vaccine will be the third coronavirus vaccine to receive FDA approval, but the first vaccine requiring just one shot for vaccination. The drug showed a 66 percent effectiveness against moderate to severe COVID-19 infections and about an 85 percent effectiveness against the most serious illnesses. While two other FDA-approved vaccines have efficacy rates in the 90s, Johnson & Johnson's drug was shown to prevent 100 percent of hospitalizations in a clinical study of around 44,000 participants in the United States.

"This is a vaccine to prevent you from going to the hospital and dying at a level that’s certainly comparable" to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, said Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA's advisory panel and vaccine expert at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Unlike the vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna, Johnson & Johnson's vaccine candidate does not to be stored in freezers and remains stable for months in refrigerated temperatures.

In the United States, over 44 million Americans have received at least one dose of the two-dose vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna, according to the AP. Nearly 20 million Americans have now received both doses.

Around 3 to 4 million doses of the new vaccine are expected to be shipped out next week if the drug receives emergency-use approval from the FDA. The company has pledged to deliver some 20 million doses by April and 100 million by late June.

Approval may come as early as this weekend.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bronsonstocking/2021/02/26/fda-approves-johnson-and-johnsons-onedose-covid-vaccine-n2585429

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India's coronavirus cases mysteriously fell

The government committed to inoculating 300 million people by August this year, which was touted as the largest and fastest vaccination program in the world. But it has fallen behind schedule.

The initial phase targeted healthcare and frontline workers, such as police officers, sanitation staff and soldiers, and is about to be expanded to people aged over 60 and those over 45 with health problems.

But daily injections have varied wildly between 17,000 and 650,000, which is far below the 1.5 million per day it needed to reach its goal on time.

By comparison, the United States is averaging 1.2 million vaccinations a day.

Hospitals in India were pushed to the brink last year as the country recorded close to 100,000 cases a day.

The number of daily cases has since come tumbling down to almost a tenth of the September peak, but a fresh surge has prompted restrictions to be reimposed in several states, particularly in Maharashtra and Kerala.

Delhi's mysterious drop in cases: The nation's capital, Delhi, is recording fewer than 150 cases of COVID-19 a day, far below its peak of more than 8,000 in November 2020. The city recently recorded three days of zero COVID-19 deaths, a feat not witnessed since the early months of the pandemic.

Many coronavirus wards in the capital have been shut down and converted back to normal operations. India's largest coronavirus treatment hospital, Lok Nayak Hospital, had its entire 2,500-bed capacity dedicated to treating coronavirus patients. Now, it has 300 coronavirus beds and around 30 patients.

"We were full. There was a time when a lot of deaths were occurring here," Dr Sandeep Garg said, who now manages a non-COVID ward. "Yesterday, we had seven to 10 patients."

Some health experts believe the rate of infection has dropped so significantly because the real rate of infection was so great, and the virus is now struggling to spread widely.

A recent serological survey, which tested 28,000 residents across Delhi, found more than half of the test subjects had developed antibodies, more than 60 per cent in some regions, meaning they had previously been infected with the virus.

This would put Delhi's actual rate of infection 30 times higher than the official data. The state's health minister said the city was "inching" towards herd immunity.

The exact threshold for herd immunity against COVID-19 is unknown, but some experts believe about 70 to 90 per cent of a population would need to have antibodies to stop the virus in its tracks.

A nationwide serological survey suggested a quarter of the Indian population had developed antibodies, which would not be enough to achieve herd immunity.

"Pandemics by their very nature are diseases of the crowd," said Dr Sumit Ray, who runs the not-for-profit Holy Family Hospital in Delhi. "The [serological] surveys show it has infected so many people that it is finding it difficult to transmit itself."

Health experts have warned against people letting their guard down, as the rate of mask wearing and social distancing drop significantly.

"Will a mutation happen which will change that? We don't know yet," Dr Ray said. "Will the herd immunity, the antibodies, last for how long? We don't know."

Suspicion could be a barrier to a swift vaccine rollout
India has approved two locally made vaccinations, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, known locally as Covishield, as well as Covaxin, which was developed by Indian pharmaceutical giant Bharat Biotech.

It is also considering approving the Russian Sputnik 5 vaccine. Pfizer withdrew its application for emergency approval after the government requested more data.

Covaxin was approved despite still not completing its final trials. Bharat Biotech is expected to publish its phase 3 data sometime in March.

The Indian Government has maintained earlier trials showed Covaxin is safe and effective. While the Indian Council for Medical Research said the urgent approval was necessary given the pandemic.

The vaccine is being widely used in the district of Barmer, near the Pakistan border, a region so remote that camels are needed to deliver the drug to remote villages. Bhika Ram has managed the region's vaccine depot for 35 years and has received two injections. "I have a strong feeling that I have acquired immunity," he said. "I am safe, and others are also safe from me."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-28/indias-coronavirus-curve-falling-but-vaccine-variant-concerns/13187640

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‘Trump was right’: Conservatives double down on ex-president

Orlando, Florida: Even before you step inside the Conservative Political Action Conference, America’s largest annual gathering of right-wing activists, it’s clear who commands the hearts and minds of today’s Republican Party base.

A cigarette-smoking man wearing a red “Bikers for Trump” hat is circling the conference venue on an oversized tricycle. His bike is emblazoned with a sign that reads: “Trump was right about everything.” A woman, wrapped in an American flag, waves a giant flag that says: “F--- Biden and f--- you for voting for him.”

Inside four-star Hyatt hotel that is hosting the conference, the adoration for the former president is even more intense. The must-see attraction at this year’s event is a giant, glistening gold statue of Trump wearing thongs on his feet and holding a wand.

On Monday (AEDT) the conference-goers will be able to see Trump himself, when the three-day event culminates in Trump’s first speech since leaving the White House.

The artist who made the statue, Tommy Zegan, explains that it is taking a jab at former president Barack Obama, who once said of Trump’s promise to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States: “What magic wand do you have?”

This year’s conference is taking place just over a month since Trump left the White House and Democrats took control of the US Senate. But it is accompanied by none of the soul-searching and internecine debates you might expect following such significant defeats.

That’s because many of those attending the event do not believe Trump lost the election – because of voter fraud.

In order to return to political dominance, so the thinking goes, Republicans don’t need a new candidate or to adjust their policy agenda: they must simply find a way to stop their opponents from cheating next time.

“It was rigged,” Zegan says of the November election. “There were too many anomalies.”

If Trump were to run again in 2024, Zegan says, he would definitely support him.

Anna Villalobos, who is running a stall at the conference selling MAGA (Make America Great Again) hammocks, says: “The numbers don’t add up. How could 80 million people vote for Biden but only 20 million follow him on Twitter? I 100 per cent believe they stole the election.”

Ronald Solomon, who runs the MAGA Mall, which sells pro-Trump paraphernalia, says he is already doing a roaring trade in “Trump 2024” flags and caps.

“If Trump wants the nomination, he gets it,” Solomon says.

It’s the same story on the main stage, where speaker after speaker offers the same formula for returning to power: doubling down on Trumpism.

“Let me tell you this right now: Donald J. Trump ain’t going anywhere,” Texas senator Ted Cruz tells the crowd to loud applause. “These deplorables are here to stay.”

Florida senator Rick Scott says abandoning Trump’s policies on trade, immigration and China would be like reverting to antiquated technology such as flip-phones or typewriters.

“We will not win the future by trying to go back to where the Republican Party used to be,” he says. “If we do, we will lose the working base that President Trump so animated. We’re going to lose elections across the county and, ultimately, we’re going to lose our nation.”

Democrats in Washington, Scott says, “are trying to turn this country into a communist ash heap”.

Florida congressman Matt Gaetz says: “We proudly represent the pro-Trump America First wing of the conservative movement. We’re not really a wing, we’re the whole body.”

Gaetz jokes that if Liz Cheney, the Wyoming congresswoman who voted to impeach Trump last month, had been at the conference she would have been booed off stage.

“What does that say?” he asks. “The leadership of our party is not found in Washington, D.C.”

As would be expected at such an event, there are panel sessions on abortion, gun ownership and foreign policy.

Big tech bias against conservatives is a major focus, with several speakers advocating breaking up social media giants such as Facebook and Google. It’s an interventionist position that until recently would have been well oustide the conservative mainstream.

But, by far, the dominant theme at this year’s conference is election integrity.

Seven panel sessions in total are dedicated to “protecting elections”, with speakers proposing a series of new measures to tighten voting rules.

“Democrats, not Republicans, installed ballot drop boxes on sidewalks, where nobody oversaw them,” conservative commentator Deroy Murdock says. “How many fraudulent ballots got deposited in these boxes unchecked and then got counted? Who knows.”

T.W Shannon, a former state legislator from Oklahoma, appears to justify the deadly January 6 assault on Congress by saying: “The reason that people stormed the Capitol was because they felt hopeless because of a rigged election.”

Donald Trump junior, himself seen as a possible future Republican presidential candidate, delights the crowd by using air quotes when referring to Joe Biden’s “80 million votes” and joking that the event should be renamed TPAC: the Trump Political Action Conference.

Offering a preview of his father’s upcoming address, he says: “I imagine it will not be what we call a ‘low-energy’ speech. And I assure you that it will solidify Donald Trump and all of your feelings about the MAGA movement as the future of the Republican Party.”

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/trump-was-right-conservatives-double-down-on-ex-president-20210228-p576gy.html

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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'Equality Act' Creates New Persecuted Class

It was expected to pass, and yesterday the House of Representatives approved what’s become known as the “Equality Act.” Also passed in 2019, yesterday’s vote was a nearly partisan 224-206, with three Republicans joining Democrats on a bill that adds “sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity” to the kinds of discrimination prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (as well as the Fair Housing Act, the Equality Credit Opportunity Act, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972). Such a thing as “transgender” was unheard of in 1964. Nevertheless, Democrats say, the word “sex” now means “identity.” The bill is accurately described by author Ryan T. Anderson as “legislative malpractice that turns equality on its head.”

Anderson, whose book on gender dysphoria was banned by Amazon recently, summed up this new legislation: “It isn’t drafted as a shield to protect vulnerable minorities from unjust discrimination, but as a sword to persecute those who do not embrace new sexual and gender ideologies.” He adds, “If you fear what Big Tech can do if you dissent from gender ideology, just wait to see what Big Government will do if the so-called Equality Act becomes law.”

Strategically, as our Mark Alexander has previously noted, this effort is all about women voters, whom Democrats consider to be emotionally incontinent dupes.

Ironically, however, opponents of the bill rightly charge that it would not only harm women’s sports by allowing men who identify as women to compete but would also remove the sanctity from other women-only spaces such as restrooms, private clubs, and prisons. In all those instances, the desires of a “transgender” man would take precedence over decades of commonsense separation of the two sexes.

“By erasing sex as a distinct legal category, the measure threatens to open up female-only spaces and opportunities designed to increase representation for girls to biological men, which can endanger the safety of women and girls,” declared Inez Stepman, a policy analyst for the Independent Women’s Forum. Keeping it in the family, her husband Jerrett describes a panel discussion held by The Daily Signal where several experts weighed in with their principled opposition.

Of deep concern to biblically faithful Christians, the bill will nullify the protections afforded to believers under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a previous sticking point that even some Democrats have complained about in the past.

After all, one of the authors of the RFRA back in the early ‘90s was none other than then-Representative Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

Beyond the RFRA, however, is the little inconvenience called the First Amendment.

None of that mattered to the House, controlled by the ostensibly Catholic Nancy Pelosi. The chamber passed the bill, and the ostensibly Catholic President Joe Biden supports it. Since Biden’s itching to sign it, the biggest hurdle now will be getting it through the Senate since the bill will fall under a 60-vote cloture rule. The question is how many Senate Republicans will fold under the full-court press sure to be waged inside the Beltway on this one.

True to that principle, proponents are already arguing that the measure is simply an extension of the Supreme Court’s recent Bostock decision, wherein a divided Court expanded the definition of discrimination on the account of sex to cover homosexual and “transgender” persons. If HR 5 only did that, most would likely at least concede the sentiment. Even the dissenters in Bostock did that, noting that their objection was primarily based on the fact that Congress simply had not addressed the issue by passing a bill to add this language since the 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act. Unfortunately, in this rendition, the Democrats decided to add more on the Rainbow Mafia’s wish list and eliminate the right for religious people to object.

In the old days, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate might have worked together to massage the bill into something all sides could stomach. Perhaps that would include granting additional protections outlawing discrimination against LGBT individuals in the workplace and housing — the basis for the Bostock case, among others — while protecting religious liberty and addressing scientific and fair-competition concerns about biological men competing in women’s sports.

Unfortunately, today’s radically left Democrats demand obeisance to an all-or-nothing “solution” despite the numerous laws already in place that address the subject — never mind the states that have addressed this in their own myriad ways. Fully enacted or not, the Orwellian “Equality Act” will be a divisive issue Democrats campaign on in 2022 and beyond until they’ve won yet another victory in the culture war.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/78021-equality-act-creates-new-persecuted-class-2021-02-26

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Five Counties Are Trying To Leave Left Wing Oregon And Become Part Of Idaho

When you think of Oregon, you probably think of the left wing riots that have been happening in Portland for months.

It’s easy to forget that it’s a big state and not everyone who lives there is a left wing radical. Some people there are sick of it, and are trying to make parts of the state leave for Idaho. It’s happening in five counties.

The Washington Times reports:

Five Oregon counties to vote on leaving state, escaping to ‘Greater Idaho’

Five Oregon counties will ask voters in the next election whether they want to detach from the deep-blue state and join neighboring red-state Idaho.

Move Oregon’s Border, also known as Greater Idaho, confirmed Tuesday that the initiative to move swaths of largely rural eastern and southern Oregon into Idaho qualified for the May 18 special election ballot in five counties: Baker, Grant, Lake, Malheur and Sherman.

In Baker County, organizers far exceeded the 496 signatures required by submitting 746, with the clerk reporting that 630 were accepted. The county population is about 16,000.

“Oregon is a powder keg because counties that belong in a red-state like Idaho are ruled by Portlanders,” said Mike McCarter, president of Move Oregon’s Border, in a statement.

He cited the impact of Democratic Gov. Kate Brown’s novel coronavirus restrictions; ongoing Antifa unrest in Portland; a state task force’s unsuccessful effort to prioritize “Black, Indigenous and people of color” for novel coronavirus vaccines, and what he described as the state legislature’s bias in favor of Portland over rural communities.

“This state protects Antifa arsonists, not normal Oregonians, it prioritizes one race above another for vaccines and program money and in the school curriculum, and it prioritizes Willamette Valley above rural Oregon,” Mr. McCarter said.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/five-counties-trying-leave-left-wing-oregon-become-part-idaho/

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The Supreme Court Must Now End the 'Systemic Racism' of Affirmative Action

As the nation's incipient racial reckoning following last May's killing of George Floyd morphed into the summer's riotous anarchy, the term "systemic racism" emerged as a fixture of our public discourse. What began as a somewhat arcane dialogue about purported police "militarization" and the "qualified immunity" legal doctrine soon took on a much more insidious tone. America, those like The New York Times' "1619 Project" fabulists told us, was rotten to its very core, blemished by the indelible taint of "systemic racism."

In reality, as many courageously pointed out amid unprecedented "cancel culture" headwinds seeking to stifle all dissent, there is no such thing as "systemic racism" that afflicts all of America's leading institutions. Despite the claim attaining mythological status, there is no factual basis to support it. There will, sadly, always be individual racists from all backgrounds and all walks of life, but American society in the 2020s simply does not have anything remotely resembling a legally enshrined regime under which its racial majority "systemically" oppresses its racial minorities. America in the year 2021 is not Germany in 1936; it is not South Africa in 1985; and it is not -- after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 -- the Jim Crow South. This ought to be astoundingly obvious.

But while the notion of sprawling, multi-institutional "systemic racism" is a lie, there is at least one major American institution that does suffer from legally codified racism that tarnishes the institution's integrity, sullies its legitimacy and is so widespread that it might earnestly be dubbed "systemic." I speak, of course, of affirmative action admission policies in American higher education.

Thankfully, due to the petition for a writ of certiorari that was filed before the U.S. Supreme Court just this week in the case of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, the nightmarish systemic racism of affirmative action might finally end soon. (As a disclosure, I personally know Students for Fair Admissions' attorneys, one of whom is now representing me before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in unrelated litigation.)

There is at least some cause for optimism. A divided Court in 2016 upheld race-conscious university admissions policies in Fisher v. University of Texas, but the Court's composition has changed since then due to the successful Trump-era nominations of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. What's more, affirmative action is perhaps the single issue upon which infamous Republican-nominated disappointment Chief Justice John Roberts is the most reliable. In addition to his joining Justice Samuel Alito's dissent in Fisher, it was Roberts who, in the 2007 race-conscious education case of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle, penned perhaps his most iconic line: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." At a bare minimum, then, there should be four votes to grant the writ of certiorari and hear the case.

Affirmative action might have been devised as a well-intentioned effort to eradicate the vestiges of antebellum chattel slavery, but as Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his 1995 concurrence in Adarand Constructors Inc. v. Pena, "Government sponsored racial discrimination based on benign prejudice is just as noxious as discrimination inspired by malicious prejudice."

And discriminate Harvard does. The university maintains noxious de facto racial quotas to penalize Asian Americans, redolent of the anti-Jewish Ivy League quotas of the early 20th century. Harvard's lawyers conceded at trial that Asian Americans are penalized by the admissions office's nebulous "personal rating" category -- and they are penalized simply for the fact of being Asian. The university engages in deliberate racial balancing, seeking to fill its incoming freshman classes with a largely preconceived, annually consistent racial breakdown.

Harvard's admission data are eye-opening. For high school applicants in the top academic decile of their class, whites are admitted at a rate of 15.3%; Asian Americans are admitted at a rate of 12.7%; Hispanics are admitted at a rate of 31.3%; and blacks are admitted at a rate of 56.1%. Poor refugees from Communist China and impoverished white students from Appalachia are thus placed at a "systemic" racial disadvantage relative to well-off Hispanics and blacks. In no rational universe is this a just arrangement.

Legal conservatives usually have myriad reasons for pessimism, but affirmative action could prove an exception. The justices have a real chance to deliver a grievous blow to the systemic racism that blights one of the nation's leading institutions. Let's hope they don't blow it.

https://townhall.com/columnists/joshhammer/2021/02/26/the-supreme-court-must-now-end-the-systemic-racism-of-affirmative-action-n2585382

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IN BRIEF

Dozens of House Democrats want Biden to give up sole authority to launch nuclear weapons (Fox)

Biden rescinds Trump's apprenticeship program to placate organized labor (Daily Wire)

Biden cancels Trump's "Operation Talon" that targeted sex offenders living in the U.S. illegally (Human Events)

Steven Crowder temporarily suspended from Twitter for discovering that "people — who may not be real people — have voted from addresses that do not exist" (Daily Wire)

New analyses show Johnson & Johnson's one-dose vaccine works well (NY Times)

Black Lives Matter Foundation raked in more than $90 million last year (Daily Wire)

California bill would fine stores $1,000 for having separate boys and girls sections (PJ Media)

Ex-aide Lindsey Boylan details sexual harassment allegations against Governor Cuomo (NY Post)

U.S. bank profits fell 36.5% in 2020 — but still posted a $147.9 billion windfall (Reuters)

We now have the full landing video of NASA's Mars rover and it's EPIC (Not the Bee)

Soledad O'Brien, the Democrats' "expert" in Senate hearing on "misinformation," is a prolific conspiracy theorist (Post Millennial)

Policy: The "Equality Act" would impose transgender ideology on everyone (Daily Signal)

Policy: How the "Fight for 15" could enable a wave of youth lawlessness (City Journal)

Dominion Voting Systems files defamation suit against Mike Lindell and MyPillow (Dominionvoting.com)

Preposterous Biden plan would effectively abolish ICE (American Military News)

Healthcare bore brunt of cyberattacks in 2020 (Roll Call)

California approves $600 stimulus payments for 5.7 million people (Fox News)

San Francisco school board puts hold on renaming its 44 schools (KGO)

Seattle-backed homeless shelter provides heroin how-to guide and paraphernalia (PJ Media)

Daily COVID deaths fall to 1,235 — the lowest since before the holiday season (Daily Mail)

Canada laudably joins the U.S. by declaring China's treatment of Uighurs "genocide" (UPI)

States set for clash with Biden administration over transgender athletes (Examiner)

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Conservatives aren't more fearful than liberals, study finds

This is a long overdue study below. At least since 1950, Leftist psychologists have been trying to show that there is something psychologically wrong with conservatives. And a favorite claim is that conservatives are more fearful. It is fear that causes conservatives to oppose the innovations that Leftists want, you see. That the changes that Leftists want are invariably half-baked and destructive cannot possibly be the explanation for conservative opposition, of course.

So bits of research have been trotted out showing that conservatives do have some fears. But fears have their place so when are fears too weak or to strong? Perhaps the degree of fear that conservatives have is just right. There is of course no metric that would enable such a judgment to be made so Leftists just ignore the issue. Whatever degree of fear that conservatives show is wrong, wrong, wrong -- with the wrongness being a mere opinion, not something inferable from the research results.

At any event, someone has now done a really good study which shows that there is no overall correlation between fear and ideology. That does not of course rule out other psychological differences between Left and Right

Are conservatives more afraid of threats than liberals? Political psychologists have long found evidence that people on the right are more sensitive to scary stuff, on average, than people on the left, a basic psychological difference thought to drive some political disagreements between the two groups.

But new research suggests that's overly simplistic.

In a new international study, conservatives and liberals both responded to threats — but they responded more strongly to different kinds of threats. And to make matters more complex, those responses don't always map nicely onto the political divide, or stay consistent from nation to nation.

"This link between threat and conservative beliefs, or conservative ideology, is just not simple," said study leader Mark Brandt, a psychology professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. "It depends on a lot of different things. It depends on the type of threats that we study; it depends on how we measure political beliefs and what kind of political beliefs that we measure; and it depends on the precise country that we're looking at."

Let's rewind to 2012, well before the 2016 election and the dramatic political fallout that's happened since. That year, psychologists reported that conservatives responded more strongly to scary images than liberals did on a basic biological level: They literally started sweating more. This tracked with earlier research suggesting that conservatives were more prone to disgust, on average, than liberals. Multiple studies reached similar conclusions.

It made for a neat story. People physiologically prone to fear and disgust would pay more attention to threats and thus turn to a conservative political ideology that promises safety and the status quo. But there was a lingering problem. Seventy-five percent of the research cited on the topic in one influential 2003 meta-analysis was done in the United States, and only 4% was conducted outside of Western democracies. Another problem? The definition of "threat" in most studies on the topic was usually narrow, focused on threats of violence or terrorism. Political persuasion was often defined narrowly too, without accounting for differences between social ideology and economic ideology.

"Many of the studies cited in support of this conclusion use threat measures or manipulations that exclusively tap threats emphasized by conservative elites," said Ariel Malka, a political psychologist at Yeshiva University who was not involved in the new study, referring to politicians and media figures.

This is a problem because the link between threats and politics can run both ways. For example, a recent POLITICO poll found that 70% of Republicans thought the 2020 election was marred by fraud, compared with only 10% of Democrats. Before the election, only 35% of Republicans thought the election would be fraudulent, and 52% of Democrats did. The post-election shift makes it pretty clear that people's fears of fraud are driven by party affiliation and messaging from party elites, not the other way around. If studies on threats focus on fears usually emphasized by conservatives, they're likely to find a connection between threat and conservatism.

Brandt and his colleagues wanted to broaden the scope. They turned to a dataset called the World Values Survey, which asked people from 56 different countries and territories about their perceptions of six different categories of threats, including war, violence, police violence, economics, poverty and government surveillance. Economic threats were broad-based worries about the job market and availability of education; poverty threats were more personal concerns about being able to put food on the table or pay for medical care. The survey also captured people's political beliefs in nuanced ways, ranging from whether they called themselves conservative or liberal to their individual opinions on immigration, government ownership of industry and abortion. Data on 60,378 participants was collected between 2010 and 2014.

Economic fears were slightly associated with some left-wing beliefs, but not all. For example, a fear of personal poverty was linked with more acceptance of government ownership of industry, but fears about the wider economy weren't. The fear of war or terrorism was sometimes associated with right-wing beliefs, but reporting worries about violence within one's neighborhood was associated with left-wing beliefs, as was fear of police violence.

And there were many unexpected findings. The threat of war or terrorism was linked to left-wing beliefs on government ownership, for example, and economic worries were linked to left-wing beliefs on social issues. The threat of personal poverty was associated with right-wing views on social issues and on protectionist job policies that would reserve the highest-paid jobs for men and non-immigrants. What was clear was that threats and right-wing beliefs weren't married. There were six statistically significant associations between certain threats and conservative beliefs, nine associations between other threats and liberal beliefs, and 15 potential relationships between threat and belief that didn't turn out to correlate at all.

Making matters more complicated, the relationships between ideology and threats weren't consistent from nation to nation. For example a fear of war or terrorism was associated with left-wing beliefs in Kazakhstan just as strongly as a fear of war or terrorism was associated with right-wing beliefs in the United States. Likewise, Brandt told Live Science, experiencing the threat of poverty leads to left-wing beliefs in the U.S., but in Pakistan and Egypt, the threat of poverty is linked to right-wing belief.

If you look only at the United States, the researchers report, it's true that right-wing beliefs and a fear of war or terrorism go hand-in-hand. But expanding to other threats shows an inconsistent mix of associations. In other words, even in the U.S., conservatism and a physical sensitivity to threats aren't clearly linked.

It's not clear from the study which comes first, the political belief or the focus on a threat. It's possible that experiencing a particular threat moves people to adopt a certain political belief, but it's also possible, as with voter fraud in the 2020 election, that people adopt a political identity first and focus on specific threats as a result.

The new work is likely to be influential, said Bert Bakker, a political scientist at the University of Amsterdam who studies the relationship of personality and political ideology. Bakker was not involved in the current study, but his work has shown that the difference in disgust between conservatives and liberals may also be overstated.

"I am less certain about what we know about this now than I was a couple years ago," Bakker told Live Science.

It's still possible that people gravitate toward political beliefs for deep-seated psychological reasons, Brandt said.

"It's definitely plausible that people experience some threat or some event and then adopt this attitude," he said. "But what 'this attitude' is and the best one to address that threat might be different depending on the particular context."

There may also be other psychological reasons to associate with a political group, Malka noted. People have a social need to fit in, and may adopt attitudes that help them do so. Future research should focus more on how pre-existing political affiliation leads people to focus on different threats, he told Live Science.

https://www.livescience.com/conservatives-not-more-fearful-than-liberals.html

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Poll: While Republican Voters Care About Issues, Democratic Voters' Top Concern Is Absolutely Ridiculous

The priorities of the Democratic Party have always been hard for me to understand, and a recent survey from Echelon Insights once again has me scratching my head wondering how Democrats’ priorities can be so out of wack.

What do you think the Democrats’ number one issue of concern is? Jobs? Poverty? COVID-19? The environment? Health care?

Pfft. You’re not even close. According to Kristen Soltis Anderson, the cofounder of Echelon Insights, Democrat voters’ number one issue is none of those issues. Nor is it police brutality or LGBT issues. In fact, the number one issue for Democrat voters isn’t even a public policy issue at all. Democrat voters are more concerned about “Donald Trump’s supporters” than anything else.

I kid you not. According to their survey, a stunning 82 percent of Democratic voters are Extremely/Very Concerned about “Donald Trump’s supporters.”

What does this mean? What can we assume from this?

The answer is obvious. Democrats are less concerned about policy issues than they are about people with whom they disagree politically. To them, Trump supporters are more dangerous than Islamic terrorists, a more pressing issue than gun violence, and even more important than issues that affect their various constituencies, like discrimination against LGBT Americans, sexism, student debt, alleged voter suppression, etc.

To these voters, Trump supporters are a bigger issue than all of those and more. Imagine being a store owner minding your own business and thinking that the Democrat voters around you think you are a bigger issue facing this country than anything else, even more than the issues that directly affect their own families.

What about Republican voters? Well, they are actually concerned about real issues. Their number one issue is illegal immigration, followed by a lack of support for police and high taxes.

What don’t you see on the chart? “Joe Biden’s supporters.” And why not? Because Republican voters clearly care more about real issues. Democrats, on the other hand, are still obsessed with Donald Trump and the people who voted for him. They would rather whine about Trump than actually solve the problems facing this nation. That’s why Democrats went through not one, but two bogus impeachments. The base of the Democratic Party cares more about punishing Trump and doing something about his supporters than doing the business of the American people.

“Because the question wording is consistent for the party-only issues as well as the ‘asked of everyone’ issues we can look at them together for better context,” explained Anderson. “Looking at the full range of issues asked of each side, Republicans still say illegal immigration and lack of police support are top concerns, while for Democrats concern about [the] spread of COVID is top of the list, with Donald Trump’s supporters in second.”

The fact that Democrats see Trump supporters as a bigger problem than almost everything else tells you how insane they’ve become. The Democratic Party isn’t afflicted by Trump Derangement Syndrome, they are defined by it.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/02/25/poll-while-republican-voters-care-about-issues-democratic-voters-top-concern-is-absolutely-ridiculous-n1428264

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Leftist Bias Has Destroyed Wikipedia

“The days of Wikipedia’s robust commitment to neutrality are long gone,” Wikipedia cofound Larry Sanger recently lamented. “Wikipedia’s ideological and religious bias is real and troubling, particularly in a resource that continues to be treated by many as an unbiased reference work.”

It is that view of the site being “an unbiased reference work” that is the real problem. Founded in 2001, Wikipedia essentially started as an experiment in public-accumulated knowledge. The site bills itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” As such, Sanger notes, “[Wikipedia] is not perceived as credible by librarians and academics because it lacks a formal review process and is ‘anti-elitist.’”

Worse, Sanger explained, leftist activists have moved in to gradually “take control of any influential institution not explicitly conservative … and they just work harder, and in more subtle ways, on the ones that are explicitly conservative.” It’s groupthink, too, he says: “And then when the rest of the media and tech became insanely far left, Wikipedia naturally went along with the trend.”

A glaring example of this leftist takeover of Wikipedia is noted by Fox News, which reported, “The two main pages for ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ span a massive 28,000 words, and yet they contain no discussion of the genocides committed by socialist and communist regimes, in which tens of millions of people were murdered and starved.” How can you even begin to have an accurate understanding of the far Left’s bloody ideology without acknowledging its history in practice? You can’t, and that’s the point of Wikipedia’s bias.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/78002-leftist-bias-has-destroyed-wikipedia-2021-02-25

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose COVID vaccine ‘highly effective’

Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot coronavirus vaccine is on track for emergency authorisation due to its efficacy in preventing severe cases of COVID-19 as the EU promises a renewed jab push.

The US Food and Drug Administration has endorsed Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, a critical step in bringing a third shot to the US marketplace.

According to new documents released by the FDA on Wednesday (local time), the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine is highly effective in preventing severe COVID-19, including the South African and Brazil variants, new documents released by the US Food and Drug Administration showed on Wednesday (local time).

In large clinical trials, the vaccine efficacy against severe disease was 85.9 per cent in the United States, 81.7 per cent in South Africa, and 87.6 per cent in Brazil.

An independent panel of the Food and Drug Administration will meet to discuss its merits on Friday and an emergency use authorisation is likely to follow soon after.

That would bring a third vaccine into the fight against the outbreak in the United States, the world’s hardest-hit country where more than 500,000 people have lost their lives.

Experts see the J & J vaccine as a vital tool, even though its efficacy against moderate COVID-19 is lower than that demonstrated by the Pfizer and Moderna shots that have already received authorisation.

“The vaccine was effective in preventing COVID-19 using a less restrictive definition of the disease and for more severe disease, including COVID-19 requiring medical intervention, considering all cases starting 14 days after vaccination,” the new FDA summary said.

“Although a lower efficacy overall was observed in South Africa, where there was a predominance of B.1.3.5 lineage during the time period of this study, vaccine efficacy against severe/critical COVID-19 was similarly high across the United States, South Africa, and Brazil,” it added.

The J & J vaccine uses a common-cold causing adenovirus, which has been modified so that it can’t replicate, to carry the gene for a key protein of the coronavirus into human cells.

This makes those cells produce that protein, which in turn trains the human immune system.

The fact that it requires only one dose, and that it can be stored at fridge temperature rather than in freezers like the Pfizer and Moderna shots, gives it an operational advantage.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/world/australian-medics-in-the-uk-say-covid-vaccine-rollout-is-working/news-story/e4a6a764103eb1643bc140d2e1e9db64

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Oxford starts work on potential COVID-19 vaccine pill

The team behind the Oxford jab have launched research on whether the vaccine could be taken as a pill - a medical breakthrough that could make annual coronavirus inoculation programs faster, cheaper and more widespread.

Professor Sarah Gilbert, the lead developer behind the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine being rolled out around the world including in Australia, said a product delivered via nasal spray could also be a game changer in the race for “second generation” vaccine products.

“As you know all the vaccines have been given at the moment as intramuscular injections,” Gilbert said on Wednesday local-time.

“That is not necessarily the best way to provide protection against a respiratory virus infection, where we want the immune system to be active in the upper respiratory tract and then in the lower respiratory tract, which is where the virus is causing the infection.

“And we have flu vaccines that are given by nasal spray. This could be a very good approach in the future to use vaccines against coronaviruses.

“It’s also possible to consider oral vaccination where you take a tablet that will give you the immunisation, and that would have a lot of benefits for vaccine rollout if you didn’t have to use the needles and syringes for people.”

Gilbert told British MPs on Wednesday that her team had started to assess both approaches.

Avoiding labour-intensive COVID-19 vaccination programs could be a crucial factor in the world learning to live with the virus, which experts have repeatedly warned could become a seasonal disease similar to the flu.

“But they will take time to develop,” Gilbert said of the pill or nasal spray.

“They will have to be tested for safety and then for efficacy as well because the immune responses that will be generated by both of those approaches will be a little bit different to what we get from an intramuscular injection.

“But they have potentially large advantages, and so that’s where we’re going to be focusing our attention on working out if we could use different delivery rates in the future for these vaccines.”

Any new product would likely take more than a year to eventuate because it would have to be developed and then go through pre-clinical and clinical trials. Regulators would also have to review it for approval.

Small British biotech company IosBio partnered last year with United States-based ImmunityBio to develop oral coronavirus vaccines after promising tests in monkeys. Clinical trials are underway in South Africa and the US.

IosBio had been trying to develop an oral vaccine for the Zika virus - partly through UK government funding - before the pandemic began last year.

The company’s chairman, Wayne Channon, said pills or nasal sprays had the potential to overcome the global challenges of traditional vaccines, including storage temperatures.

“Oral vaccines are more cost effective to produce and can be easily stored and transported around the world,” he said last month. “They also have the potential to be self-administered, reducing health systems’ dependency on trained health professionals to run immunisation programmes and present a future where people could have vaccines delivered straight to their door.”

The former head of the UK’s vaccine taskforce, Kate Bingham, last month said the world would have to develop more efficient ways of making and distributing COVID-19 vaccines.

“Frankly, two injections delivered by health care professionals is not a good way of delivering vaccines,” she told the BBC. “We need to get vaccine formats which are much more scalable and distributable, so whether they are pills or patches or nose sprays.”

Gilbert also told Wednesday’s parliamentary hearing that clinical trials would start over the coming months on a vaccine tweaked to respond to emerging variants. The UK government has flagged a potential autumn ‘booster’ shot program.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/oxford-starts-work-on-potential-covid-19-vaccine-pill-20210224-p575lb.html

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The Return of Operation Choke Point

Nice bank ya got there. It’d be a shame if something happened to it. That’s essentially the message our nation’s worst attorney general began sending back in 2013 to certain banks that had the wrong kinds of customers. He even came up with a fittingly descriptive name for his unconstitutional anti-business program: Operation Choke Point.

As we wrote yesterday, the Biden administration is planning to revive Barack Obama and Eric Holder’s infamous initiative, a 2013 scheme by which the Obama Justice Department’s banking industry regulators forced certain banks to investigate the business they did with firearm and ammunition dealers and other disfavored businesses — such as pawn shops, coin dealers, and short-term loan providers — ostensibly because they were believed to be at a high risk for fraud and money laundering. Thus, through Operation Choke Point, the Obama administration was trying to deny several perfectly legal industries even basic access to the banking system.

This orchestrated denial of goods and services is the very definition of redlining, a system that was originally used to keep blacks out of certain neighborhoods in certain U.S. cities through the denial of mortgages or home improvement loans. Rather than redlining “undesirable” people, the Obama administration was redlining undesirable businesses.

And it worked. Just ask Brian Bookman, a former police officer and Army veteran. As The Daily Signal reported back in 2014, “After researching his case on the Internet, Brookman says he concluded that his banker, JP Morgan Chase, closed the account because two of his business activities — dealing in vintage coins and selling firearms — were labeled ‘high risk’ by federal bureaucrats as part of an Obama administration initiative called Operation Choke Point.”

So selling firearms and thereby facilitating access to our Constitution’s Second Amendment is now considered “high risk”?

Under President Donald Trump, however, Choke Point was rightly considered an unconstitutional infringement on these legal businesses and ended by the Justice Department in 2017. “And by the end of the former president’s term,” writes Jon Dougherty in BizPac Review, “the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency [OCC] issued a ‘Fair Access’ rule instructing large banks to provide financial services to businesses and individuals irrespective of political considerations.”

But like nearly every other good policy work from the Trump administration, Joe Biden and his hard-left handlers are undoing it. Rather than attempt to enact legitimate legislation through Congress, the Biden administration is, as our Nate Jackson put it, carpet-bombing us with executive orders. And so, eight days after taking office, Biden’s OCC announced that it was suspending the Trump administration’s Fair Access rule.

And why might it do that, except to revive Operation Choke Point, even if by another less suspicious name?

All this is part of a larger strategy: the Left’s politicization of the economy. As Kelsey Bolar writes in The Federalist, “For all intents and purposes, Operation Choke Point is happening every day on a massive scale, [including] a stranglehold on information, speech, and the broader marketplace of ideas. Concerningly, the government is now playing an active role. As exemplified by Parler and the recent Twitter purge, Big Tech is choking conservatives off their social media platforms while Democrats cheer it on.”

So much for the promise our 46th president made in his inaugural speech to “work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as those who did.” But that’s Joe Biden. Promises made, promises broken.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/77962-the-return-of-operation-choke-point-2021-02-24

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IN BRIEF

Senate Republican leader unloads on "radical and underqualified" HHS nominee Xavier Becerra (Daily Wire)

Senate confirms Linda Thomas-Greenfield as UN ambassador, despite her calling Chinese intervention in Africa a "win-win-win situation" in 2019 (Fox)

Senate confirms former Tom Vilsack for return engagement as agriculture secretary (Des Moines Register)

Good move: Federal judge indefinitely blocks 100-day deportation moratorium (Forbes)

$1 billion class-action lawsuit filed against Texas electric company after "catastrophic" bills (Forbes)

Five ERCOT board members who live outside of the state are resigning (Texas Tribune)

Virginia lawmakers vote to abolish the death penalty (AP)

Grand jury votes not to indict Rochester officers in Daniel Prude case (NPR)

Democrats write a bill to start a racism racist center at the CDC (National Pulse)

Americans identifying as LGBTQ more than ever thanks to indoctrination of our youth (NBC)

Identity wars: Campground for homosexuals takes heat for prohibiting women who identify as men (Disrn)

Washington Football Team to spend one more year fumbling for a new name (Disrn)

Nearly 100 Confederate monuments removed in 2020 (NPR)

Biden to visit Texas on Friday following deadly winter storm (CNBC)

Trump appeals Facebook's decision to indefinitely suspend him (CNSNews.com)

MSNBC contributor who encouraged ISIS to bomb Trump Tower will testify on domestic terrorism (Federalist)

Policy: The Cotton-Romney plan to raise the minimum wage without killing jobs (National Review)

Policy: The tax benefits of parenthood: A history and analysis of current proposals (AEI)

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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As Trump Predicted, Under Biden China Owns the United States
What that means for America’s patriotic movement

On February 11, Joe Biden announced sanctions on Burma for a recent coup in that nation, also known as Myanmar. “The military must relinquish power they’ve seized and demonstrate respect for the will of the people of Burma as expressed in their November 8 election,” Biden said. For the current occupant of the White House, first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, that was something of a departure.

During a political career of nearly 50 years, it’s hard to find the Delaware Democrat urging China’s ruling Communist Party to respect the will of the people and hold free elections. As they made clear at Tiananmen square in 1989, the people of China want freedom, democracy, and human rights. The Communist regime deployed massive military force against the people, but for Joe Biden that proved no object to China’s admission to the World Trade Organization.

As the Black Book of Communism and other studies confirm, China’s Communist regime has murdered scores of millions, but American politicians demanded no accounting, or punishment of those responsible, as a condition of WTO admission and trade privileges. Neither did they require free multi-party elections, or self-determination for Tibet, as a condition of joining the WTO.

Access to the American market was supposed to make China more peaceful, but the regime became more repressive and expansionist. On the other hand, American politicians made plenty of money. Prominent among them is Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a regular guest of the PRC since the 1970s and a staunch advocate for China’s most favored nation status.

As Glenn Bunting of the Los Angeles Times reported in 1997, Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum “has expanded his private business interests in China – to the point that his firm is now a prominent investor inside the communist nation.” In 1995, Dianne Feinstein became a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “giving her a prominent platform for her efforts to support China’s trade privileges.”

As Ben Weingarten noted in the Federalist in 2018, Feinstein’s husband has “profited handsomely from the greatly expanded China trade she supported.” The senator also “served as a key intermediary between China and the U.S. government, while serving on committees whose work would be of keen interest to the PRC.”

For 20 years, through three election cycles, Feinstein maintained on her staff a Chinese spy who would even attend consular functions for the California Democrat. One wonders what the FBI knew, when they knew it, and what they did about it, if anything.

Other politicians with China business connections include Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi, whose husband has conducted a series of deals in the Communist nation. Recall that Speaker Pelosi kept Eric Swalwell on the House Intelligence Committee even after his “PoonFang” liaisons with a Chinese spy.

The PRC’s biggest American asset is surely Joe Biden. He acquired the China beat in 2012 on the recommendation of National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, a failed Fannie Mae lobbyist and behind-the-scenes operator for the “composite character” David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.

Biden routed the China trade through son Hunter, a frequent flyer on Air Force Two. Hunter’s laptop was the equivalent of Hillary Clinton’s private server, enabling the vice president to avoid scrutiny. The FBI had Hunter’s laptop but by all indications FBI bosses believed that, as Comey said of Hillary Clinton, no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges against Joe Biden’s son, especially with the “Big Guy” running for president. The New York Post broke the story, but the Democrat-media-tech axis promptly banned the October surprise.

Joe Biden is also on record that the Chinese Communists are “not bad folks,” and “not competition for us.” So no surprise that Biden turns a blind eye to China’s repressions and beats up on Burma, a nation that poses no threat to the United States. In effect, Joe Biden serves as governor general of Americachukuo, China’s North American economic zone.

With Biden in the White House, President Trump predicted, China would “own the United States.” There’s also something to Trump’s charge that the Bidens are an “organized crime family.”

In December, Joe Biden claimed nobody in his family would be involved in any business that even appears in conflict with the presidency and the government. As Miranda Devine of the New York Post reports, it turns out that Hunter Biden still holds a 10 percent share of the Chinese firm BHR partners and is thus “still in business with the Chinese Communist Party.”

The performance of Joe “America Last” Biden and China-compliant Democrats brings clarity to the patriotic movement now in place and growing. At least 74 million patriots are part of an independence movement that seeks to preserve rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Those rights are now at risk, as the Democrat demolition squad seeks to erase the nation’s history. To adapt Milan Kundera, the struggle of the patriotic movement against the America-Last regime is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/trump-predicted-under-biden-china-owns-united-lloyd-billingsley/?utm_campaign=2022356&utm_content=2776302

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Supreme Court’s Decision Not to Hear Elections Cases Could Have Serious Repercussions

With the U.S. Supreme Court’s “baffling” refusal on Monday to grant review of the Pennsylvania election cases that had been appealed to the justices, the majority of the court is—to quote Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent—“leav[ing] election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt” and “invit[ing] further confusion and erosion of public confidence” in our elections.

Who can forget the chaos of this past election season? Attempts to change election rules and procedures began before any ballots had even been cast.

In some cases, state executive branch officials changed the rules; in others, judges made the changes. But under the U.S. Constitution, neither had the authority to do so.

As Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote late last year, “[t]he Constitution provides that state legislatures—not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials—bear primary responsibility for setting election rules … [a]nd the Constitution provides a second layer of protection, too. If state rules need revision, Congress is free to alter them.”

Notable instances during and after the 2020 election where this procedure wasn’t followed occurred in Pennsylvania. There, the state’s Supreme Court ordered election officials to accept late-arriving mail-in ballots up to three days after Election Day and to count them even if they didn’t have a postmark showing they had been mailed by Election Day.

What’s particularly problematic about the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision is that the Pennsylvania Legislature had explicitly decided not to extend the ballot-receipt deadline past Election Day.

The authority the Pennsylvania court cited for overriding state law was what Thomas called a “vague clause” in the state’s constitution providing that elections “shall be free and equal.”

Apparently, requiring absentee ballots to be received by Election Day is somehow not a “free and equal” election, but allowing ballots to come in three days after Election Day is a “free and equal” election.

That was the ludicrous justification used by the state court.

The U.S. Supreme Court was asked to enjoin (or stop) the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling from taking effect, but the justices deadlocked 4-4 because Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and Justice Amy Coney Barrett had not yet joined the court. Thus, the decision remained in place.

Later, the state Republican Party and others asked the high court to hear the cases on the merits, but to do so on an expedited basis. Again, the court declined—meaning, the cases proceeded according to the court’s normal procedures, which has now led to it declining to review the case at all.

That prompted blistering dissents from Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito, with Gorsuch joining Alito’s dissent.

Disappointingly, neither Justice Brett Kavanaugh nor Barrett joined them in getting the court to accept a very important case on a fundamental issue, as described by Alito, that could affect all future federal elections and has divided the lower courts; namely, “whether the Elections or Electors Clause of the United States Constitution … are violated when a state court holds that a state constitutional provision overrides a state statute governing the manner in which a federal election is to be conducted.”

They did not, of course, explain why. Should the issue arise again, as seems likely, perhaps Kavanaugh and Barrett will be less reticent to take up the issue then. One can only hope.

The election may be over, but Thomas pointed out that the court now had even more reason to hear this case because the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had reached the opposite result from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and had enjoined the Minnesota secretary of state from extending the ballot-receipt deadline that state’s Legislature had set.

Thomas made the commonsense point: “Unclear rules threaten to undermine [the electoral system]. They sow confusion and ultimately dampen confidence in the integrity and fairness of elections.”

That shouldn’t be controversial, but apparently it is.

Thomas went on to say:

An election system lacks clear rules when, as here, different officials dispute who has authority to set or change those rules. This kind of dispute brews confusion because voters may not know which rules to follow.

Even worse, with more than one system of rules in place, competing candidates might each declare victory under different sets of rules.

According to Thomas, the country was “fortunate that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to change the receipt deadline for mail-in ballots does not appear to have changed the outcome in any federal election. … But we may not be so lucky next time.”

In fact, he pointed out that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to change another rule did make a difference in a state election.

The state Supreme Court “nullified” a state law requiring a voter to write the date on his mail-in ballot. One candidate for a state Senate seat was the winner under the applicable state law, but her opponent was declared the winner under the “contrary rule—that violated state law—announced by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.”

As Thomas said in his spirited dissent, “If state officials have the authority they have claimed, we need to make it clear. If not, we need to put an end to this practice now before the consequences become catastrophic.”

We agree.

We also agree with Thomas that “[b]ecause the judicial system is not well suited to address these kinds of questions in the short time period available immediately after an election, [the court] ought to use available cases outside that truncated context to address these admittedly important questions.”

Alito agreed, saying that now that “the election is over,” there was “no reason for refusing to decide the important questions that these cases pose.”

These cases seemed to provide the perfect opportunity for the court to do so. Yet, it inexplicably declined the opportunity.

Thomas ended with a sharp rejoinder to his colleagues:

One wonders what this Court waits for. We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections.

The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling. By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence.

Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more of us. I respectfully dissent.

While we all hope Thomas’ words don’t prove to be prophetic, they may well be. By refusing to take these cases, the Supreme Court is—for the time being anyway—giving state government officials free rein to make unauthorized changes in election rules and to override election laws set by state legislatures.

Even if states set clear rules well in advance of their next elections by enacting commonsense reforms to protect the integrity of their electoral processes, those rules may be voided by partisan officials with no respect for the Constitution and the rule of law.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/02/23/supreme-courts-decision-not-to-hear-elections-cases-could-have-serious-repercussions

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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