[ThTh1] In one of my most recent Throughputs, I talked about why RFK, Jr. was a horrendous choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Radley balko, in the process of castigating Senator Cassidy for casting the critical vote to approve RFK, runs down how RFK has been even worse than feared. Kennedy is already attacking childhood vaccination, slowing the development of new vaccines, potentially banning mRNA vaccines (which can treat pancreatic and brain cancer), removing tooth-saving fluoride from water and has commissioned a study from an unqualified lying quack to give the official seal of approval on the lie that vaccines cause autism. He has responded to our nation’s most significant outbreak of measles in a generation by telling people to take cod liver oil and Vitamin A. He has suggested that we let bird flu run wild in poultry populations to breed more resistant birds. And he’s capped that off by laying off 100,000 HHS employees, including many in vital areas of public health. And the top infectious disease specialist has resigned, apparently because RFK was trying to get him to lie about vaccine safety.
The appointment of RFK is an infuriating disaster and a self-inflicted national tragedy. Millions are going to get sick and thousands die because of this, at minimum. And it was all foreseeable. No one who ever voted to confirm him should ever be elected to a position higher than assistant dog catcher.
However, this is a fait accompli. Trump isn’t going to remove him from office and neither is Congress. In the months and years to come, we are going be deluged with Kennedy’s neo-Lysenkoism, official studies given official government approval that tell absolute falsehoods.
To combat that, we’re going to need an Electronic Resistance, a network of actual scientists who are reliable tellers of truth on critical issues; people who have the expertise and communications skills to call out the lies of this Administration.
To that effect, I have my first recommendations on this. Recommendation #1 is Health Nerd’s Substack, notably this recent post that takes apart a dubious study claiming COVID vaccines cause AIDS. Recommendation #2 is Dr. Ellie Murray, who eviscerated the latest garbage study claiming vaccines cause autism.
[ThTh2] The “we’ve discovered a new state of matter” claim is a bit overblown, but it is encouraging to see mor progress on quantum computing.
[ThTh3] I expect our government to announced that COVID-19 came from a lab leak. But back in the world of reality, new evidence is pointing to raccoon dogs as the potential source of the outbreak.
[ThTh4] We see with our brains, not our eyes:
[ThTh5] It’s not the biggest we know, but the black hole at the center of the Einstein Ring is really honkin’ big.
[ThTh6] Color me extremely skeptical of the claim that we’re bringing back the dire wolf. In the first place, the dire wolf DNA has been mixed with the DNA of modern species. Second, you need a population more like a few dozen to bring back a species into a sustainable state. A more accurate description might be that we can now breed hybrids of modern wolves and dire wolves. Which is … still something.
[ThTh7] You may have seen a lunar eclipse but have you seen one … from the moon?
ThTh6: this really sounds like they just made some edits to a few genes (14?) in modern wolves, ignoring whatever other genetic differences there are between modern wolves and a species that last had a common ancestor millions of years ago, and called it a dire wolf. Maybe this is the first step in a more complex attempt at resurrecting extinct species, but right now it looks like they just have some slightly genetically modified wolves, not anything like actual dire wolves, to this lay person.Report
Why am I not surprised a Shapiro is involved with this outfit?
R.R. Martin cuddling the pups was a super cute pic but my cruel brain just grunted and thought *well anything to put off writing the next book*.Report
ThTh3: multiple government agencies have already announced that it came from a lab leak.
Granted, these are intelligence agencies and not scientific ones… but we’ve got multiple agencies that have already announced their conclusions (to this point).Report
ThTh1 = This is the point where I say:
Welcome to the world of trans people, where this has been happening for the past five years, and it sure is nice how the media has managed to perfect the process of mainstreaming absolute nonsense about trans people as science…so they can do it for vaccines too. And whatever else scientific bullcrap they try to pass off. I’m sure climate science is next.
I would say I told you so, but what is the point?Report