Up From Facebook

 " They made a list of more than 30 celebrities including Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift and Billy Joel to appear in their ad campaign to "inspire hope" about coronavirus, but they ended up with only Dennis Quaid, CeCe Winans and Hasidic singer Shulem Lemmer. The health department’s $300 million-plus, taxpayer-funded vehicle to boost confidence in President Donald Trump’s response to the pandemic is sputtering. Celebrities are refusing to participate, and staff are arraying against it. Some complain of the unstated aim of helping Trump’s re-election. Others point to an ill-prepared video team and a 22-year-old political appointee who has repeatedly asserted control despite having no public health expertise, according to six people with close knowledge of the campaign and documents related to its operations." https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/29/hhs-ad-blitz-sputters-as-celebrities-back-away-423274

Human reproduction is remarkably inefficient; nearly 70% of human conceptions do not survive to live birth. Spontaneous fetal chromosome aneuploidy is the most common cause for spontaneous loss, particularly in the first trimester of pregnancy.  Presumably, pregnant women don't sense the chromosome integrity of a conceptus.  Thus, it is interesting to read that among the fraction of conceptions that come to the attention of the woman, there could be an environmental mechanism in operation in some cases: "Overall, these experiments provide compelling evidence that women who have experienced unexplained repeated pregnancy loss perceive socially important odors in a different way, and that this is associated with specific changes in brain structure and function. However, this latest work does not reveal causal links between olfaction and the condition, and further research is needed to establish whether these differences in perception arise as a consequence of experiencing multip...

 I stopped watching/listening to debates back in the Reagan-Mondale race when, after listening to it on the radio, I concluded that Mondale had won, hands down. Reagan sounded to me like a befuddled old man in the early stages of dementia (IKR?). The next day, all the pundits declared Reagan the winner. Since then, I would follow live blogs of the debates, sometimes toggling between two blogs, even though Linda was watching it on TV in the attic at the same time. I just realized that my reaction doesn't matter. In the event, I didn't even stay up for the live blog of this debate, because I knew with Trump on the stage and Chris Wallace from Fox as the pseudo-moderator, the intention wasn't to inform, it was to provide what passes for TV drama. No thanks. Here's a thoughtful summary of what happened: https://www.vox.com/2020/9/29/21493926/first-presidential-debate-winners-losers-biden-trump

 I've posted previously that in my training to work with radionuclides in research, the safety measures boiled down to three: time, distance, shielding. • minimize the time you are exposed to a radioactive source • maximize your distance from a radioactive source • shield the source to block or attenuate emissions (beta particles, gamma rays) These same considerations apply to SARS-CoV-2. Here's a recent article that makes these points in the context of indoor restaurant dining in the age of COVID-19. https://elemental.medium.com/read-this-before-you-even-consider-dining-indoors-be8ef1d24d8c

 I created this blog because I had been repeatedly blocked on FB for criticizing someone in the Trump administration or someone who supported Trump. Now I've been blocked again for a week, this time for criticizing the *behavior* of someone. It is apparently now a violation of community standards ("hate speech or harassment") to point out that a post is trolling. Not calling the person a troll, just calling out their post. At least it is, if the speech comes from a Trump supporter.  Shame on FB. Again.

Not just more fires and stronger hurricanes, but coastal flooding that will make hundreds of millions homeless and starving around the globe. Unlike past environmental catastrophes, this one won't pass and the victims know where you live and won't take no for an answer. Resource wars are already commencing in the Middle East. It's only get worse, and fast. "Nicknamed the “doomsday glacier”, the Thwaites glacier in western Antarctica has the potential to devastate the globe. About the size of Britain, NASA estimates state that if it melted it would increase sea levels by 0.5 meters (1.6 feet). More worrying, however, is the cascade of ice melt it would likely unleash, as the glaciers currently protected from the warming ocean by Thwaites' presence would be exposed, causing a sea level rise that would sink New York City, Miami, and the Netherlands. It's already retreating at an alarming rate, but new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National A...

Trump’s comments about rushing out a COVID-19 vaccine before election day (which is fatuous propaganda) seem to have sown concern about any vaccines that do emerge. The reason there will be no vaccine available to the general public before the election, or even before spring of 2021 at the very earliest, is because of the extensive testing required before any vaccine is ready. I’m in the Moderna trial, so I’ll reference that, although there are other trials either in phase III or slated to launch into phase III, both here and abroad, using a variety of approaches. Testing means first testing in animal models. The Moderna mRNA vaccine proved safe and efficacious (protected against a challenge infection) in animal models. After that, there are three phases of clinical trials in humans. Phase I is for safety. If the vaccine passes the safety trial, it goes in Phase II, which is a small-scale trial for efficacy. In this case, efficacy means does it elicit an immune response (human challeng...

In the early part of the 20th century, Russian/Soviet geneticists were world leaders. Then came the ascendance of Lysenko, who convinced Stalin that the inheritance of acquired traits could bypass the tedious process of genetic breeding and would align with Soviet propaganda about the improvability of mankind. Soviet genetics and Soviet geneticists were collateral damage when they pointed out that facts and evidence didn't align with the rosy expectations of Lysenko and Stalin. Many died. Today, we find a similar impulse in the Trump administration to manipulate or hide the inconvenient facts about the pandemic from the American people. This never ends well. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-officials-messed-with-cdc-covid-report?fbclid=IwAR1-Y406oFAjBQ0Gx2q7oC51eyH_kkZzZhtzP-k5vssQbFo_eBsy1wkUYUs

  "In a nutshell, on average, Black students are roughly 2-3 years behind in 12th grade; 1-2 years behind in 8th grade, and about 1 year behind in 4th grade. Other research suggests that they’re already about half a year behind by first grade. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of using “systemic racism” as something of a talisman that eliminates the need for further exploration, but if this isn’t a consequence of systemic racism then I don’t know what is. You’ll see these test results in blue states and red states; in poor areas and middle-class-areas; and in urban and rural areas. It’s far too widespread to be simply the product of individual bigotry here and there. It’s as systemic as systemic can be. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/09/fact-of-the-day-the-black-white-education-gap/

"I f union density and income share had remained at their level of 50 years ago—before Reaganomics put an end to all that—working class households would be earning $10,000 more than they do now and middle-class households would be earning $15-20,000 more. That’s real money. Instead it’s all been hoovered up by the top ten percent—and especially the top 1 percent—and there’s been no countervailing power big enough and powerful enough to keep the rich from taking it. And that’s just the way they like it." https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/09/the-demise-of-labor-unions-has-cost-you-a-bundle/

  "All of this sounds pretty promising. However, other researchers were quick to point out that apparent immunity to a novel disease can be a fickle thing. For starters, immunity is not simply a case of antibodies; the immune response to a pathogen also relies on a well-trained army of B cells (the white blood cell that secretes antibodies) and T-cells (which directly kill cells that have been infected by an invader)." https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/antibodies-to-covid19-can-last-for-at-least-4-months-icelandic-study-shows/?fbclid=IwAR00JSAjXmoY1_KBAuyQ790t8t068UM0GbTgnRDyt4JVNndwQ9nV9KtDFmo