Requiem for a (mental) lightweight – Obliviousness of the Capitol rioters – Selection for the grand jury investigating Trump’s actions in Georgia during the election – Putin’s questionable health – Debate about the second booster – Evening statistics
Philip Anderson has provided, with tears in his eyes, a eulogy for Roseann Boyland, one of the attendees of the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and who, as he claims, suffocated under a pile of 30 bodies of people who collapsed after the police sprayed them in order to render them unconscious. He himself nearly underwent the same fate that day, but had gotten his arm over his head before the others fell on top of him, thereby giving him enough space in which to breathe even after he fell into unconsciousness.
As a matter of course, he places all of the blame upon the police for the stress he endured and for this woman’s death, with none whatever allotted to himself and his fellow conspirators. As it happens, the autopsy tells a different story: the cause of Boyland’s death was an amphetamine overdose. She had, it appears, been struggling with drug addiction for some time. But Anderson’s account is typical of the majority of the people who assailed the Capitol. “It was all very confusing,” said Shawn Bradley Witzeman, who attended the rally and was subsequently arrested and charged with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. “I don’t think the large majority of people who were there had any idea that what they were doing was illegal.”
I have, I admit, been over-hasty in writing off all of the participants as being activated by malice and treachery. I should have remembered the dictum of my favorite philosopher, Lucy Van Pelt from Charles Schultz’s Peanuts:
“Have you ruled out stupidity?”
It appears that progress has at long last been made in the investigation concerning Trump’s attempt to derail the voting result of the election in Georgia. A special grand jury was selected today, consisting of 23 grand jurors and three alternates. It is a beginning, but there is a long way to go. The jurors won’t convene until next month and even then they won’t be meeting every week – understandably, for the grand jury investigation may take months to complete. There was a pool of over 200 people from whom the jurors were selected, and they were selected amid a set of fairly rigorous requirements. To qualify, a grand juror must be at least 18, must be U.S. citizens and must have lived in Fulton County for the past six months. Anyone who was an elected official or has been for the last two years, anyone convicted of a felony, or anyone who served on a Fulton County jury or grand jury in the last year was disqualified to serve on this one. In addition, anyone who was convinced beforehand that a crime was committed during Trump’s attempt to force Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes needed for him to win the state was similarly eliminated. This last criterion certainly would have excluded me.
Vladimir Putin is set to undergo cancer surgery and to delegate power to Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian federal police’s Security Council, while he is incapacitated during and after the procedure. The surgery and its aftermath are predicted to incapacitate Putin for two or three days. An anonymous Russian insider said that Putin’s cancer is progressing but added that he didn’t want to give anyone “false hope.” Putin has appeared sickly of late and uncharacteristically fidgety as well, causing some observers to surmise that he is afflicted with several other maladies, including Parkinson’s disease, in addition to his cancer. Indeed, some rather odd rumors are circulating about the nature of the remedies he has resorted to – such as bathing in the blood extracted from deer antlers, which are hacked off while they are growing and still full of fresh blood (an “alternative therapy” used in the Altai region, as well as in Khazakstan and Mongolia). How his condition will affect the war in Ukraine is very uncertain. Patrushev is said to be even more hardline than Putin but his grip on the nation’s government is less secure. If Putin is incapacitated longer than predicted, the Russian government officials who are concerned about the nation’s economic and military losses from the conflict (Russia has already lost several generals, an almost unheard-of result in any other instance of a major nation waging war) may push back against continuing to pursue operations in Ukraine, but this is not to be counted on.
The fourth dose of the vaccine has become widely available, but there is still considerable debate as to whether it is necessary or even desirable. A recent study concludes that although a fourth dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine offers protection against serious illness for at least six weeks after the shot, it provides only short-lived protection against infection, which wanes after just four weeks. In any case, Americans who have already been boosted have shown low rates of hospitalization and mortality from COVID and it is unclear what benefit, if any, a second booster will provide. Dr. Marty Makary, a medical commentator and public policy expert from Johns Hopkins University, criticized the FDA for approving fourth doses for all Americans 50 years and older: “At the crux of the broad opposition to second boosters is the recognition of B- and T-cells, which public-health officials have long ignored. They talk only about antibody levels, which tend to decline in the months after vaccination. B- and T-cells, activated by the primary vaccine series or an infection (and augmented by a single booster in older patients), are highly and durably effective at preventing serious illness from COVID.”
Several other medical professionals agree with this assessment. “There are very few, if any, people who in my opinion require a fourth dose” (Dr. Anna Durbin, an international public health expert at Johns Hopkins University). ‘In general, it’s too early to recommend a fourth dose, except for those who are immune-compromised” (Dr. Paul Goepfert, professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham). “Where’s the evidence that somebody over 50 benefits from a fourth dose? Because the evidence to date appears to support the possibility for those over 65, although I haven’t, we haven’t, seen all the data . . . but where’s the evidence for a 50-to-64 year old? Where’s that evidence? Because absent that evidence, then there shouldn’t be this recommendation” (Dr Eric Rubin, editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, and member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee). This last statement refers to the fact that Pfizer asked FDA approval only of second boosters for people 65 and older, and corporate officials were probably as surprised as everyone else when the FDA recommended them all those over 50 as well.
All in all, it seems best to defer the second booster until more evidence comes in. Take medicine because you must, not because you can – that has always been my attitude in such matters, and I see no reason to alter it in this case.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 513,794,980; # of deaths worldwide: 6,262,846; # of cases U.S.: 83,122,109; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,020,958.