Really notable reporting by @ddiamond.bsky.social and colleagues. Tomorrow is when the CDC usually pre-releases its weekly bulletin, MMWR, to reporters, in advance of public release on Thursdays. Be interesting to see whether it's in the inbox or not.
— Maryn McKenna (@marynmck.bsky.social) January 21, 2025 at 8:49 PM
[Gift link to the Washington Post article.]
I've described the MMWR in the past as the best-read magazine you've never heard of. *Everyone* in public health and infectious diseases reads it. It has carried the first report of the most important outbreaks for decades, including the first description, in 1981, of what came to be known as AIDS.
— Maryn McKenna (@marynmck.bsky.social) January 21, 2025 at 8:54 PM
Right now, social-media medical reporting just as chaotic as (other) political reporting. We used to call these fusterclucks ‘Chinese fire drills’ but — even with China’s status on both covid and H5N1 — I’m thinking ‘Repub fire drills’ is a better nym.
The public health risk remains low, but bird flu variants have proven to be unpredictable, which is why the virus is a top priority for the federal government.
— NPR (@npr.org) January 18, 2025 at 3:54 PM
6 more states join #USDA's mandatory (though not yet national) milk testing strategy, bringing to 38 the number of states participating. New states joining are Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina & West Virginia. www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-po…
— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) January 17, 2025 at 1:28 PM
#USDA has confirmed another California dairy herd has been infected with #H5N1 #birdflu, the state's 712th; 143 of those herds have cleared the infection & come out of quarantine, per CA's Dept of Food & Ag.
Cumulative national total: 929 herds in 16 states.
www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-po…— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) January 20, 2025 at 11:43 AM
Avian flu surge continues on US poultry farms as feds address contamination of raw pet food
Shoring up pet food safety plans to account for H5N1 and enhanced preslaugher turkey flock surveillance come in the wake of raw product links to cat infections.https://t.co/dnH2lwhJme pic.twitter.com/4TBlutX17s
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) January 21, 2025
Katherine J. Wu was one of the very best journos covering Covid, so I was eager to hear her thoughts on bird flu. She says her level of concern has gone from "medium" to "medium-plus."
She says we're kinda OK for now. But she reminds us that if RFK Jr is head of HHS, that would be very bad.— Fiona "Fi" Webster ?????? (@fiona-webster22.bsky.social) January 15, 2025 at 9:50 PM
There's still more we can & must do to control the outbreak in cows & poultry & reduce human infections. We need more testing, more outreach to educate the public about the risks, & above all we should offer vaccination to those at risk.https://t.co/3cCWVPxzEY
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) January 16, 2025
Wastewater detections of bird flu viral RNA are mostly confined to California, where officials suspect discarded milk to be the cause.#birdflu pic.twitter.com/NbSRTHwCNw
— STAT (@statnews) January 17, 2025
H5N1 can live up to its name as a highly pathogenic avian influenza virus. This kid is lucky to be alive.
Severe illness seems to be thankfully rare. But at population scale, this is millions of people. We can’t afford to let H5N1 become a pandemic.https://t.co/GYruAjbWEt
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) January 17, 2025
Good read on H5 avian influenza https://t.co/blMjce31wI
— Marion Koopmans, publications: https://pure.eur.nl (@MarionKoopmans) January 18, 2025
Between the incoming administration’s immigration, agricultural, and trade policies and H5N1 trying its hardest to live up to its pandemic potential, it’s about to be a banging 4 years for egg-price economists
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) January 20, 2025
Too bad if there happens to be a recall on food tainted with salmonella or other, or an uptick of H5N1 activity in humans, or a new outbreak of any other infectious disease. No alerts, no problem. 🤷🏽♀️
Make sure you are up to date on recomnended vaccines at the minimum
www.reuters.com/world/us/tru…— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) January 21, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Seeing from colleagues, the CDC PHAP program is *cancelled* as of an email sent about 30 minutes ago. No service program for the next two years – it is essential for data collection, community health work, etc. especially in states that critically need the help.
— Laura Johansen, MPH (she/her) (@laurajohansen.bsky.social) January 21, 2025 at 8:15 PM
Last night's update: More than 200,000 new cases https://t.co/A5gzkSZJL0
— BNO News (@BNOFeed) January 20, 2025
Are people getting infected more or less often than years past?
Here's the rolling 12-month total infections as estimated through WW. 2022 was a heavy year with the arrival of Omicron, we're less than half that rate today. Bump near the end is Winter2023+Summer2024. pic.twitter.com/PDtmTZTVhq
— JWeiland (@JPWeiland) January 18, 2025
Here’s where the 3 million lives saved figure is from @YaleSPH https://t.co/VXXcAnMekl
— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) January 21, 2025
======
Trump wants to pull the US out of the World Health Organization again. Here's what may happen next https://t.co/L6fuLY9IgQ
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 21, 2025
Per Helen Branswell at STATNEWS, “The move could cripple the WHO and substantially weaken global health security”:
… A U.S. withdrawal from the WHO would deprive the Geneva-based institution of its biggest funder and a major contributor of scientific expertise, likely necessitating a massive reorganization and a curtailment of the functions the WHO is able to perform.
During the previous Trump administration, in the first summer of the Covid-19 pandemic, the U.S. filed notice of its intent to withdraw from the WHO, saying it was doing so because the agency had protected China in the early days of the pandemic, when it was slow to share details of the spread of the new coronavirus.
But the Biden administration rescinded the withdrawal notice on its first day in office…
In his executive order calling for the U.S. to withdraw from the WHO, Trump reiterated the same issues he raised in 2020: the WHO’s “mishandling” of the Covid-19 pandemic, “its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.”
He also said the WHO demands an unfair level of payments from the U.S., relative to other nations’ contributions.
In a statement Tuesday morning, the WHO said that it “regrets” Trump’s decision and noted that, with the cooperation of the U.S. and other member states, it had embarked on a series of reforms over the last seven years.
“We hope the United States will reconsider and we look forward to engaging in constructive dialogue to maintain the partnership between the USA and WHO, for the benefit of the health and well-being of millions of people around the globe,” the WHO said…
Should the United States follow through on the threat to withdraw, it would mark the first time in 75 years that a member state has left the United Nation’s health organization. The Soviet Union and a number of its satellites withdrew from the nascent agency in 1949 over Cold War tensions, returning in 1956.
The WHO’s constitution does not even anticipate countries withdrawing. There is no provision in it for countries to revoke their membership.
But the joint resolution of Congress that allowed the U.S. to join the WHO at its founding does spell out the terms by which it can leave. The country must give a one-year notice and pay any outstanding bills before it can quit the organization…
Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at the O’Neill Institute, part of the Georgetown University Law Center, told STAT a U.S. withdrawal from the WHO would be “a grave strategic mistake.”
“We’ll be out on the outside looking in” when the pandemic treaty, a pact that is meant to better prepare the world for pandemics and that is still a subject of negotiations, is agreed to in May, he said. Trump’s order also calls for the U.S. to stop negotiations on that agreement.
“When major issues come up before the World Health Assembly, we’re not going to be at the table. When China is trying … to assert its influence in Africa, in Latin America, and other countries where the United States has very strong strategic interests in minerals and trade, we won’t be there,” said Gostin, who has been involved in drafting and negotiating the pandemic treaty…
A U.S. withdrawal from the WHO would throw into doubt the organization’s capacity to do the myriad things it is tasked with, from developing the disease coding system used by health systems around the world to organizing responses to health emergencies like the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014-2016 or the Zika outbreak of 2015-2016.
The organization also serves as a de facto drug and vaccine regulatory agency, doing for countries without the capacity to rigorously assess the evidence supporting new drugs and vaccines what the Food and Drug Administration does for the U.S. or the European Medicines Agency does for countries in the European Union. WHO prequalification, as the process is called, assures countries that the data supporting a new drug, vaccine, or diagnostic test have been thoroughly studied, expediting the work of national regulators…
(Lots more disheartening information at the link.)
Scoop: The White House is commissioning a new review of covid's possible origins, days before Trump arrives.
Jake Sullivan asked for an outside panel to examine feds' intel and findings.
I asked Biden officials: is this an effort to front-run Trump? They insisted it's about getting answers.— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond.bsky.social) January 17, 2025 at 3:33 PM
… Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration’s national security adviser, on Sunday asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to assemble an outside panel of experts who would take a fresh look at the existing findings on the coronavirus and examine the government’s conclusions, according to two administration officials.
Biden officials say the panel’s creation — coming days before the incoming Trump administration takes office — was driven by Sullivan’s desire to understand a virus that killed more than 1 million Americans and upended society. Sullivan also requested on Dec. 17 that intelligence agencies update their own assessments of the pandemic’s origins, according to one official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe national security matters…
The panel is still being assembled but is expected to include outside experts familiar with the highly technical issues involved with virus evolution and national security. Members of the panel will have access to classified intelligence on possible origins of the coronavirus.
Republicans on Friday greeted the news with skepticism, calling it overdue and insufficient. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), who sat on the House panel reviewing the nation’s coronavirus response, said Democrats had missed opportunities to investigate the virus’s origins during the past four years.
The panel — which could be shaped or dismissed by the incoming Trump administration — would represent the latest effort to settle a question that polarized political leaders, the intelligence community and the public as the virus ravaged the world in 2020…
One U.S. official who advised on establishing the new outside panel and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an in-progress effort said it was a move by the Biden administration to ensure that scientific work on the coronavirus mystery continues. “There is a commitment and a serious interest to say, this is not decided, or well enough understood,” the official said…
Independent panels can help shape debate — such as a board commissioned by U.S. intelligence agencies that raised new questions about symptoms suffered by government officials known as “Havana syndrome” — but are unlikely to uncover smoking guns. Government officials, including some Republican lawmakers, have repeatedly said any further revelations about the virus’s origins probably rest with China, whose leaders have been evasive.
Scientists and federal experts have been preparing for further reviews of the pandemic response as Republicans take control of the White House and the Senate this year. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), the new chairman of the Senate’s government oversight panel, has vowed to prioritize investigations into the coronavirus pandemic, repeatedly alleging that federal officials participated in a “covid coverup” related to the possible origins of the virus.
The lab leak theory is something which dominates what passes for American intelligentsia and is essentially CCP propaganda meant to distract from the corruption of wet markets continuing to be open
— Centrist Madness (@centristmadness.bsky.social) January 15, 2025 at 8:43 PM
======
New CDC update on SARS-CoV-2 variants shows small increase in XEC and further rise of LP.8.1 that together account for about 2/3 of new cases
covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-t…— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) January 17, 2025 at 12:20 PM
Five years since the first confirmed U.S. case of COVID-19, most have moved on. But for people with immune system problems, the threat of infection remains and governs their everyday lives. pic.twitter.com/NZ1JelEJr4
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 18, 2025
Vulnerable Americans live in the shadow of COVID-19 as most move on https://t.co/4aGzuvOa5A
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 15, 2025
Did your existing health issues get worse after a #COVID infection, or did you develop new onset #LongCOVID? Tune in to our free webinar on January 23rd to learn how you can get involved in a study we're working on with the FDA and other patient orgs. 1/10 pic.twitter.com/k03Yo5fw4M
— CURE ID (@id_cure) January 22, 2025
Important Covid editorial @science.org by Maria Van Kerkhove
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/…— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) January 16, 2025 at 2:18 PM
BARDA to fund development of COVID preventive drug
Shionogi will receive $375 million to develop a long-acting protease inhibitor designed to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection in people who are immune compromised.https://t.co/wYjDsa6tww
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) January 17, 2025
Multiple #Covid-19 infections significantly increase the risk of #LongCovid, affecting 85% of studied cases. Vaccination prior to #Infection reduces this risk, highlighting its critical role in prevention. @stonybrooku https://t.co/LrL7mwPVAl https://t.co/VKP12CLHs2
— Medical Xpress (@medical_xpress) January 17, 2025
======
This was always their pitch during the pandemic: restore trust in public health by letting anti-vaxers not take the vaccine. It makes no sense. It never did.
— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) January 17, 2025 at 10:52 PM
Weird medical discovery of the week: “Tick bites can trigger serious reactions to some medications”:
Jennifer Wallace was reacting badly to medication she takes for chronic pancreatitis. She broke out in hives, her heart beating fast. And she suffered an unstoppable, intense itching all over her body. Several times, she went into anaphylactic shock, which can be deadly, and was rushed by ambulance to a hospital.
It took doctors a long time, however, to figure out the unlikely cause: alpha-gal syndrome, also known as red meat allergy, which Wallace probably got from lone star tick bites in her backyard in North Carolina.
According to one study, in the parts of the United States where lone star ticks are common, North Carolina included, as many as 9 percent of unexplained anaphylactic reactions may be due to alpha-gal syndrome — an allergy to a carbohydrate called galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose, alpha-gal for short, found in all mammals except humans and some old-world primates.
“Because it’s present in cows and pigs and sheep, when we eat meat or products [derived] from those animals, we can get a reaction,” says Scott Commins, an immunologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Wallace’s pancreatitis medicine is made using some of those products…
Besides reacting to red meat, people with alpha-gal syndrome may be allergic to such mammalian-derived ingredients as gelatin, which can be found in gummy bears and yogurt. If you are highly sensitive, you may react to cosmetics, including certain shampoos (which may contain keratin derived from horns or hooves) and deodorants (because of lanolin, from sheep’s wool).
Lastly, there are drugs and other medical products with ingredients of mammalian origin, from pancreatic enzymes derived from pork, like the ones Wallace took, to anti-venoms, thyroid medications and heparin, a commonly used blood thinner. What’s more, many drugs come in mammalian-derived gelatin capsules and contain other pork- or cow-based inactive ingredients…
According to the CDC, there may be as many as 450,000 people living with alpha-gal syndrome in the United States, with the highest prevalence in states such as Arkansas, Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri. This pattern can be explained by the geographic distribution of the lone star tick, the main culprit behind AGS, whose range is expanding because of climate change. (Other ticks may trigger the condition, too, just much less frequently.)…
If there is one drug that has many patients worried, it’s the blood thinner heparin. It’s derived from pig intestines and is used to prevent and treat blood clots. In some cases, heparin is administered intravenously. “It’s one of those medicines that you could receive in an emergency situation,” Commins says. In one small study co-authored by Wilson, 24 percent of people with alpha-gal syndrome undergoing heart bypass surgery had a serious allergic reaction to intravenous heparin…
For those who react intensely to medications, some researchers suggest that taking omalizumab, a newly approved drug for food allergies, could reduce risks of surgery or treatments. In the future, however, more medications could be made with plant-based ingredients. Some biotechnology companies are also working with genetically engineered pigs that don’t produce alpha-gal to develop new materials and drugs.
For now, one of the best approaches for AGS patients is to wait because antibody levels to alpha-gal tend to go down as the post-tick bite time increases. That’s why, Wilson says, if you “want this thing to go away,” the No. 1 thing to do is avoid more ticks.
And: An exotic disease that you really shouldn’t be wasting your time worrying about, unless you or a close contact are travelling in the region:
Tanzania confirms Marburg outbreak in Kagera region
So far all 25 suspected case-patients have tested negative for the virus but remain under close surveillance. https://t.co/tqGZPJ4shU
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) January 21, 2025
MomSense
Let’s just reject medicine, science, expertise, education. Should we take bets on how long it will be before the witch trials start?
New Deal democrat
There is very good news and very bad news this week.
First, the good news. Per the CDC’s latest report last Friday, the Holiday wave has peaked, as wastewater particles declined from 5.66 particles per mL to 5.44 as of January 11. That is only about 2/3’s of last summer’s peak and less than 1/2 of last winter’s peak.
The 52 week total of deaths through December 21 was 48,500. Given the trend in infections, it is possible that this number could decline below 40,000 by spring.
Now the very bad news: Per WaPo, “ The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has instructed federal health agencies to pause all external communications, such as health advisories, weekly scientific reports, updates to websites and social media posts, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday, citing a dozen current and former officials and sources.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-officials-ask-us-health-agencies-pause-external-communications-washington-2025-01-22/
That means the CDC update above is likely to be the last update we will ever receive about COVID (or bird flu or any other health threat) infections, hospitalizations, or deaths. We are moving back to the Dark Ages.
rusty
If you don’t track something, then you no one can claim it’s getting worse. It’s the same as states that are stopping determining maternal deaths, so no one can point out that anti-abortion laws are killing women. It’s the same as my home state promoting school vouchers but deliberately not testing to see what children receiving them are learning. That way no one can complain that the vouchers, supposedly put in place to improve academic outcomes, aren’t accomplishing their goal. There is going to be a whole lot more of this with economic numbers, health status and more. Conservatives don’t want real numbers interfering with truthiness.
Steve LaBonne
@MomSense: Already here- the contemporary version is prosecuting women who miscarry.
WTFGhost
Hearing that there’s research for a vaccine – IIRC, there *is* a vaccine, it’s a bog-standard flu shot, grown in eggs (did you know we have a strategic egg reserve? If only Egghead, of the old Batman series, had known of this!).
Um. The best way to get information on the internet is not to ask a question, but to post something wrong. I’ll be more honest :-) – if anyone does my homework for me, and can tell me if vaccine research is for an mRNA vaccine (or, hell, any other type of non-egg vaccine), it would set my brain at ease.
Steve LaBonne
@rusty: Bog-standard practice for authoritarian regimes.
Steve LaBonne
@WTFGhost: Yes, mRNA flu vaccines, and combo flu/COVID vaccines, are well along in the development process.
Suzanne
One mindset that I observe but just absolutely do not grok is extreme optimism. I am such a planner. I think about worst-case scenarios and contingencies all the time. I can’t imagine being of the mindset that a pandemic happened, it was incredibly destructive….. and thus we don’t need to ever think about another one!
Steve LaBonne
@Suzanne: There is actual psychology research showing that pessimists have a more realistic view of the world than optimists.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
I care more about positive action than viewpoint.
Kay
@MomSense:
Bill Gates is giving interviews talking about how great Trump is. He started with “as you know my issue is world health”. He sees no contradiction in saying that.
The tax cuts and the punishment of women for Me Too was apparently enough for every male tech billionaire to go hard Right. Weak, weak people. No integrity or rigorous thought at all.
Gate’s ex supported Harris though. Better quality person.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: And of course, effective action requires realism.
Spanky
@Steve LaBonne: Another way of looking at it is remembering how extremely stupid Trump and those in his orbit are.
I, frankly, continually fail to grasp extreme stupidity. I chalk it up as a failure of my otherwise active imagination.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
Is that scientifically proven too? Because the right lives in fantasy land but is able to take pretty effective action.
Steve LaBonne
@Spanky: “You don’t know anybody as stupid as Donald Trump. You just don’t.” – Fran Lebowitz
Suzanne
@Baud: I believe in “hope for the best, plan for the worst”. The problem with excessive optimism is that it precludes the “planning for the worst” part.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: Actually, right-wing authoritarian regimes tend to be short-lived, thanks to things like Hitler imagining himself to be a brilliant general. (Application to current events left as an exercise for the reader.)
Baud
@Suzanne:
People always compare pessimism to excessive optimism.
How does optimism compare to excessive pessimism?
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
Sounds optimistic.
Kay
@rusty:
Ohio pioneered private school vouchers. Republicans told us for years we would see dramatic gains from kids switching to private schools – really Catholic schools – 80% of the voucher funding goes to the Catholic Church. But then ten years in they had to admit that public schools were outperforming private schools – that data was overwhelming. So they simply stopped requiring standardized testing in private schools. Problem solved!
Soprano2
@Steve LaBonne: Pessimists are also more successful business owners, because when there are problems they don’t ignore them and think they’ll magically get better. Optimism is not always constructive.
BritinChicago
@Steve LaBonne: Yes, I’ve seen that too. But optimists are happier, which always struck me as very unfair! Being right should be good for something, but under this administration it may not be, may be the opposite.
jimmiraybob
The writing’s been on the wall for a while now. As people have been pondering the question of when, exactly, was America great (RE: MAGA) I’ve been calling it at anywhere from the 17th century to 5th century.
Kay
We have a strong D candidate for Ohio Sec of State. He’s an oncologist. Bryan Hambley. He’s great. I met him a couple of months ago and he Zoomed in to our county meeting last night.
I have no idea why he wants this horrible job but I’m grateful to him for running in such a hostile climate for good guys.
BritinChicago
@Baud: Franco took power in Spain in 1936/37 and lasted until his death in 1975. Just one case, of course….
Baud
@Kay:
He must be an optimist.
(Red State Dem candidates are heroes.)
Baud
@BritinChicago:
At least he’s still dead.
WTFGhost
@Steve LaBonne: I don’t want to risk an argument in a specialized thread, but: witch hunts took a problem (one that was invented, if need be) and posited a cause.
Prosecution for miscarriage is *hideous*. But it’s not exactly a witch hunt, pedantically speaking.
A clampdown on “woke” in schools could be a witch hunt, where people are accused of grooming children, and aiding-and-abetting is broadly defined. But that would be too unpopular.
A clampdown on the migrant “invasion” might work. The goal is not “witches” but “people for show trials with assured convictions,” and anyone hiding “illegals” might be rounded up and hit with a gag order, all as part of national security, donchaknow. You’d see that people were imprisoned for hiding “illegals” and even their associates drew significant prison sentences, and, the hope is, you’d start to think “I have a family… maybe someone with less to lose can help out, instead.”
Anyway: my point is only, that’s what a modern witch hunt would *be*; an invented problem, with show trials, and convictions proving the problem is being fought, vigorously, to the point that people are afraid of the gesta… er, the special secret police, who work so hard to protect us all!!!
That’s not to say I wouldn’t throw “witch hunter” in the face of someone who prosecuted a miscarriage, okay, but that would be an attempt to shame them, more than my feeling that it was a *true* witch hunt. There are more than enough similarities, but, as yet, I don’t think it has the power for show trials and convictions to assure the people that the “problem” is being fought.
jimmiraybob
@BritinChicago:
Franco was the first one that I thought of too.
WTFGhost
@Baud: During the “sh!thole country” bit, John Oliver had the perfect quote from someone living in one such country. I don’t know if there was a lead-up, but, it ended with “…and the same worms will eat him, too.” I decided that’s on a fine par with “still dead”.
The same worms will eat TCG too… except, the first hundred thousand worms who try to eat him will die of an Adderall overdose, and the next hundred thousand from cholesterol poisoning. But eventually….
Kay
@Baud:
He’s one of those people who have defied odds. He grew up in rural Indiana. Eli Lilly is an Indiana company and they offer a full ride scholarship to talented students to go to any Indiana school. He got the scholarship, took it to Notre Dame, where he met his wife, another Lilly scholar.
Suzanne
@Baud:
I don’t know. I have mentioned here before that I spent some time working in the marketing and advertising industry (hated it). I have a few big takeaways from those years, but the biggest might be that just scads of people really, really do not think/operate the way I do, or my friends do. And it will be a lifelong struggle for me — for all of us — to develop that cognitive empathy. Some of those differences are around the things we talk about all the time here, such as race and gender, but there’s a lot of other signs.
There is oodles of research about what actually gets people to actually be conscious of something, to respond positively, make decisions, buy stuff, etc. It’s all, quite frankly, fucken depressing.
Scout211
My husband was a psych professor so he was involved in research his whole career. I was a psychotherapist for my whole career and actually worked directly with people to help them develop coping skills. Research is fine and does help us understand people psychologically, but in the real world of people, relationships and emotions, you really can’t divide people into binary optimism/pessimism categories.
In fact, what with so much binary categorizing people on many issues here lately?
Steve LaBonne
@BritinChicago: An illuminating one because he was much less inclined than some other dictators to do risky stupid shit. Salazar, too.
Baud
@Scout211:
It’s always been thus.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Same here.
WTFGhost
@BritinChicago: keep in mind, a pessimist *might* worry too much that it will rain tomorrow, while an optimist might decide “if it rains, I’ll do something else instead,” and that would lead to greater happiness, in the right circumstances.
A lot of people seem to feel an optimist must be blindly optimistic. I’m exceedingly optimistic, thinking that a condition I’ve had for 40+ years, worsening all the time, might get better. I’m also aware that most stories that start like mine, don’t end (pedantically: climax) with “and then, one day, like a miracle…”.
So optimism doesn’t have to be blind. It can be realistic about the prosects of good and bad things.
Heck, sometimes, optimism is just “well, if bad things happen, we’ll hopefully still be alive, and we’ll figure out what to do then.” It’s not borrowing trouble from next week, all on the Monday of the prior – and that makes most folks happier. And it’s not thinking “no problems,” but it’s thinking “I’m the equal of all problems I foresee – maybe with some help.”
Chris Johnson
I’mma count it as a win if they don’t literally nuke the medical companies that develop vaccines. Hope I don’t have to fall back on that because they figuratively do it and didn’t literally bomb the factories and headquarters.
These people are not fucking around. They want us dead, they’re run out of Russia, there is NO point looking for more sensible self-interested explanations. It’s a desperation move beginning with demanding this silence and seeing how far they can take it (not how far would be popular, how far they can TAKE it. Public interest stopped mattering when they stopped being interested in elections and such, which is when the Russian wing seized power with the aid of the Musk/media engine)
The Musk side of things will actually not want this. The traditional Republicans heavily invested in the healthcare industry won’t want this. Same for anyone heavily invested in health insurance, evil as it is: mass death from no healthcare means insurance becomes a moot point, it goes away too. The American oligarchs with skin in this game don’t want this.
We’ll see who’s calling the shots. If the executive branch all-out attacks American medicine rather than trying to make money off it, it means the Russia wing is stronger and they’re making a desperate ploy to kill as many of us as they can. Trump will neither know, or care, personally, about this.
A good question is whether guys as insane as Elon Musk think they can pull off mass casualty events this way in order to reboot the economy into crypto or some shit like that. Musk has already hinted at grand realignments in his favor, and this is one path towards that. He would likely need to instigate or capitalize on some such event (say, bird flu) and then distract really hard by demanding everybody blame it on immigrants or something.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: There are 10 kinds of people in the world- those who understand binary numbers and those who don’t.
Suzanne
@WTFGhost: I would define what you describe as a normal and appropriate amount of optimism. Excessive optimism is what I observe, and it makes me crazy. That would be more akin to seeing it rain for three days in a row, and being in absolute denial that there’s any possibility that it could rain tomorrow as well….. and having no backup plan for that.
Matt McIrvin
@WTFGhost: The Satanic Panic of the 1980s was a literal witch hunt, about hunting witches.
Kay
Does anyone know if there is a specific Musk/Trump EO that cuts ACA subsidies? Because those are actual “entitlements”, legally. We could sue on that.
I’ve seen three news articles with blurry, imprecise explanations and they all link to a Trump site that says it’s the EO’s but is actually advertising the EO’s with no doc links.
MomSense
@Steve LaBonne:
No I think we will end up with actual witch trials. Palin’s pastor famously had his congregation pray to keep her safe from witchcraft.
Scout211
I love your comments on the blog Suzanne but please consider that what makes you crazy can be what helps someone else cope with their life. And we all have different coping skills, sometimes vastly different.
ETA: And also consider that your observations, like everyone’s observations, are filtered through our own experiences.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I did a whole project on it in law school. Just amazing. Like all panics, religious Right wingers needed centrist buy in and they got it. There were a whole section of centrists who were convinced they were saving children. Just like the anti woke and anti trans panics. Panics follow a very predictable pattern. It’s far Right plus centrist buy in and it’s almost always sold as saving children or women, but women are treated as children (like in the trans panic).
narya
@Baud: @Suzanne: Same here–but also: I grew up in a small town, with anarchists as maternal grandparents and atheists as parents, so I got a very early education in Being Different, and recognizing that other folks thought differently than I did. I was also smarter than the kids around me, which took me longer to recognize. it’s true that I have to keep learning the “different” thing over and over, and the “smart” thing is a whole lot less relevant (and less true) in a larger world than my hometown, but that early practice remains useful. OTOH, I also see a rule-follower tendency in myself, so I try to question that, too.
O. Felix Culpa
@Scout211:
Liberals are not exempt from wanting soothing simplifications in threatening, complex times, alas.
Princess
@BritinChicago: And Salazar was dictator of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. Salazar is the model for the Catholic Fed Soc types. He’s what they aspire to, the reason the scotus judges gave Trump full immunity to do anything.
NotMax
@MomSense
Remembering flaky candidate Christine O’Donnell’s denial.
;)
Princess
@Suzanne: excessive optimism makes me crazy too. Eg. “Only a third of the country voted for Trump! What a repudiation!!”
WTFGhost
@Suzanne: I’m springboarding off of your response, Suzanne, not exactly *responding* but suddenly babbling the stuff I want to talk about. (And I’m leaving your reference so people can see you, then Baud, in the chain.)
Excessive pessimism is one of those things where it’s hard to explain, because so many people are so in love with Murphy’s Law, and engineering, and, really, with all kinds of pessimistic ideas.
But it would be, like, me running into a problem in a relationship, because in the past, relationships *ended* with this problem, and so, I’m unwilling to remember “this is not the same time, they are not the same person, and, neither am I,” and trying to fix the problem. *That* is excessive pessimism.
When you’re in that state, usually, you’re incorrect – as I mentioned in the example, the “better” answer is “but this isn’t the same relationship, or the same people!” – but if you’re stuck in a state of excessive pessimism, you simply don’t see that as a possibility, *or*, you see the risk of harm far exceeding the potential gain.
Suzanne
@Scout211:
That’s absolutely true. It obviously works for some people. It feels just incredibly risky and dangerous to me.
Like…. “Future pandemic?! Won’t ever happen!!!”. Uhhhhhh please don’t lead us down that road!
jimmiraybob
@Scout211: I assume that belief/faith in the unknown and rejection of the empirically knowable is a coping mechanism?
Kay
It looks like Musk/Trump just overturned this Biden EO. But the additional ACA subsidies were part of legislation so I’m not sure how Musk and Trump can just declare a law Congress passed on expansion and funding for the ACA void by decree.
Executive Order 14009 of January 28, 2021 (Strengthening Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act).
It’s still a violation of a promise. Trump and Republicans swore they wouldn’t cut entitlements. This is a cut in entitlements. Huge promise broken, On Day One.
Scout211
Again, why are we arguing from an “excessive” version of a perfectly valid coping mechanism? Just because it isn’t valid to your own coping style, why is is not okay for others?
Kay
Lol. The NYTimes has “Trump Asserts a Muscular Vison of Presidential Power as he takes Over”
Like a parody of media capture.
Born to be bootlickers. Fucking natural serfs.
gene108
@Steve LaBonne:
The USSR survived from 1917 to 1991 across multiple leaders.
Communist China (1949 to present) does not seem to be on the verge of collapse.
Authoritarian regimes can last a very long time, unless they copy Hitler and wage war against much of the world.
Soprano2
@Kay: I also saw that he fired all of the members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee. They’re the people who examine safety issues at airports and airlines. He can’t actually get rid of the board because it was established by legislation, so the committee will still exist but it won’t be able to do anything because it won’t have any members. I expect a lot of stuff like this, crippling the government’s ability to actually do things that would benefit citizens but that business doesn’t like.
jimmiraybob
@Kay: ” I’m not sure how Musk and Trump can just declare a law Congress passed…”
They are literally fighting to nullify the 14th Amendment. Or at least the part that inconveniently gives citizenship to those born here. They are the law. L’État, c’est moi
Suzanne
@Scout211: Far be it from me or any of us to interfere with what helps people emotionally get through the day. W/R/T governance, though…. I fervently hope that there’s teams of smart people looking out for the icebergs we face and developing strategies to avoid them.
Soprano2
@Scout211: I think both excessive optimism and excessive pessimism can be bad under the right circumstances. There has to be a balance between the two. I read an article where Steven Covey said he’d never had a bad day. I immediately stopped listening to him after that, because that’s just a lie. You can have a bad day and still have a productive attitude toward it, but saying you’ve never had a bad day as an adult cannot be true.
Scout211
Yes it is. It may not be a healthy one to you or to others, but it works for some people.
In fact, you have just described most religious beliefs.
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: Rather like ignoring the data on the “black boxes” after an airliner crash.
”No, we don’t need to know what killed those poor bastards; nothing to see here, move along.”
Kay
I might subscribe to the WSJ. I know the editorial page is far Right and the paper itself leans Right but at least they’re transparent that they have an ideology, unlike the WaPo and the NYTimes, and their hard news coverage is better quality than the NYTimes and the WaPo. They also have actual subject matter experts instead of David Brooks philosophizing about how much he loves manly men or 17 articles on how Harvard is too woke.
If we’re going to have a trade war, and we are, I need a real newspaper with an international bureau.
gene108
@Suzanne:
Ive worked with sales guys. They kind of have to be excessively optimistic because of all the rejection they face in sales not closing. A lot have no contingency if something they are confident about does not close. There are limited if any backup plans.
Kay
OK, done. Intro offer is 2 a week for a year. I get gift links too so I can share. I need a real newspaper.
MomSense
@Kay:
The broligarchs think their $ will keep them at the top of the food chain. They should take a look at how Putin consolidated power. A broligarch could find himself in prison with his assets stripped.
jimmiraybob
@Scout211: I’ve been pondering this question for a long time. There are brilliant scientists that have contributed enormously to their fields that also profess a Christian faith and then there are those that profess a Christian faith that abjectly reject the intellect and empirical fact. If one rejects rampant disease then that would seem the basis for calling one positive and one negative mechanisms.
gene108
@jimmiraybob:
They are fighting the entirety of the 14th amendment as we understand. The conservative legal movement rests on the idea that the 4th (Roe, for example) and 14th amendments were too broadly applied in the landmark cases of the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s.
cmorenc
@BritinChicago: I remember riding a train in Spain in summer 1977, two years after Franco’s death, but the “Guardia Civil” were still a thing and a couple of uniformed armed members in black patent-leather hats were aboard every train. The trains did run on time, and though their presence was a bit intimidating, they did not act in any sort of menacing fashion, and were jovially joking with passengers. But probably because the GC had such a longstanding track record of not putting up with anyone acting in any remotely disruptive or subversive way. And American college-age tourists touring Spain on trains were not regarded as any sort of potential problem.
Professor Bigfoot
@Scout211: I doubt humans are always “optimistic” or “pessimistic” even on the same day.
Professor Bigfoot
The fastest and easiest way to kill as many of us as possible would be to set loose political violence and violent repression.
The Sturmabteilung have been broken out of jail, the FOP has been promised full immunity, and…
Professor Bigfoot
@MomSense: “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition” is no longer a true statement, n’cest pas?
(yes, I know the Inquisition existed to hunt Jews, not witches, but here we are)
Chris Johnson
@Kay: No, just literal Pravda. I’ve been saying that’s been hiding in plain sight ever since they ran a massive billboard, all white, with the English translation of Pravda on it.
It’s just Pravda. Some folks remember. Russian oligarch wealth turned out to be bigger than the entire American journalism industry post-internet, and here we are. It’s just literal Pravda. Not even serfs or bootlickers, you’re misunderstanding who is their employer.
OK, I guess serfs remains accurate. Or, employees. The study of Eichmann proved that if it’s your job, there’s nothing you won’t do. It’s just their job now.
jimmiraybob
@gene108: It seems to me that the MAGA/John Birch/Christian Nationalist right consider the whole constitution as too broad. How dare we allow women and foreigners (AKA: non-whites) to be considered as included under the umbrella of human/natural rights (AKA: unbiblical).
jimmiraybob
@Professor Bigfoot: All of the inquisitions were about quashing intellectual dissent from Catholic and later Protestant orthodox church dogma. Being Jewish was, in itself, enough of a threat to Christiandom as to make them automatic targets – from the 11th century People’s Crusade, preceding the officially sanctioned first crusade, to today.
Chris Johnson
@Soprano2: Oh, hey, love that for us. I’d love to know who told him that existed. We’d be a lot better off if it was in fact just his dumbass self, but no, he takes orders from Russia and some of ’em know our weak points.
Don’t fly. It’s gonna get a lot more dicey, bear in mind what he just killed was a thing that can provide oversight on Boeing, itself in severe decline. Just in time for American aviation truly to go to shit.
sab
@MomSense: Well Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is safe with her cowrie shell collar.
Another Scott
Whoops, wrong thread. Check upstairs.
Best wishes,
Scott.
bluefoot
It’s hard to overstate how bad “pausing” communications from health agencies is. All of medicine, public health, drug development and drug safety surveillance depends on those communications.
Ohio Mom
@Soprano2: That just shows how much help Trump has, the size and scope of the network advising him, or probably the phrase “directing him” is the accurate word.
Obviously the government has some system in place to ensure air safety but I never gave a moment’s thought to exactly how that was accomplished. Or why anyone would want to dismantle it.
And I am sure Trump thought even less on this subject. But one of his henchmen knew they wanted to close it down, how to close it down, quickly through an E.O. Someone has tremendous background knowledge, and it isn’t just the figureheads we see like Stephen Miller.
That is the real swamp and whatever the opposite of being drained is what describes its condition. This swamp is overflowing.
sab
@Ohio Mom: Multiple alligators imported to it daily. All those alligators on oligarch payrolls now feeding in the US taxpayer funded DC swamp.