Monday, March 11, 2024

Numbers You Have Not Seen Before.

NotWithABang
ButAMediaManipulatedWimperVille



A European academic group has done a massive worldwide survey of public opinion on the subject of what to do about the climate crisis.

The work was published last month in 'Nature Climate Change'.

The following is from the abstract:

...(W)e conducted a representative survey across 125 countries, interviewing nearly 130,000 individuals. Our findings reveal widespread support for climate action. Notably, 69% of the global population expresses a willingness to contribute 1% of their personal income, 86% endorse pro-climate social norms and 89% demand intensified political action...


And yet, despite numbers that would move the needle significantly on just about anything politically, we continue to do next to nothing, collectively, when it comes to mounting measures that actually matter.

The PR industrial complex, see COP 28, for example, is winning.




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Monday, March 04, 2024

Base-Based Public Health Bashing.



NegativePressure
VentilationVille



The presumptive Republican nominee for US'ian president went to Richmond Virginia this past Saturday and bashed public health over the head with a bushel of, as reader GarFish has noted, faith-based anti-vaccination codswallop.

The following is from a piece by Elizabeth Beyer in the Gannett-owned Staunton News Leader:

""Macho Man" played between show-tunes from Phantom of the Opera as Trump rally attendees made their way through security just inside the doors of the Greater Richmond Convention Center on Saturday...

{snip}

...(Mr. Trump) sprinkled in rhetoric steeped in election denialism between jabs at President Joe Biden’s border and economic policy. He promised, if elected, to implement "MAGAnomics" complete with tax cuts. He sowed doubt in this country's democratic process. He vowed to "not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or mask mandate."

"2024 is our final battle," he said. "We will liberate our country from these tyrants and villains once and for all."...


It's important to understand that Mr. Trump is not just talking about COVID here.

He's also talking about long-standing school mandates for vaccination against childhood diseases like mumps, measles and whooping cough. Such mandates are critical to keep jab rates high to ensure population-wide immunity.

And then, as reader EE reminds us, there is polio.

****

So.

How long before a certain candidate for high office north of the 49th parallel starts to spout such dangerous rhetoric?

Oh, wait...

The following is from Bob Hepburn, writing in the Star last fall:

...You may have missed it, but Poilievre was at it again last week, stirring up the hardcore anti-vaxxers who play a major role in the Conservative leaders’ strategy to win the next election.

In a 10-minute speech in the House of Commons, Poilievre championed a private member’s bill that would have prevented the federal government from imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates on federal employees or restricting unvaccinated travellers from boarding planes and trains.

Poilievre said he supports “bodily autonomy,” adding that everyone should have the right to decide what they put in their own bodies and have the right to refuse vaccines.

I guess Poilievre’s “bodily autonomy” belief also means he opposes Ontario’s law requiring children attending school to be vaccinated against polio, measles, mumps, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and other diseases...


Given how incredibly effective vaccination mandates have been in essentially eliminating many childhood diseases, none of this is a good thing.

OK?


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Sunday, March 03, 2024

Peace In Our Electoral Time!


_____________________________________________
IfNevilleNeverExistedGenerativeAIWouldHaveInventedHim
ChamberlainVille



From a somewhat suspect newsey clickbaitish site called 'The Economic Times':

"On Friday (February 23rd), the world’s 20 largest tech companies and social-media platforms signed an accord, “The Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections”, at the Munich Security Conference. This is a commitment to prevent deceptive artificial-intelligence (AI) content from interfering in elections."


If he hasn't already, I'm pretty sure that Cory Doctorow will soon weigh in on how this thing is nothing more than a very shoddy shallow fake designed to convince us that the digital overlords are actually doing something serious to prevent the ongoing onslaught of obstreperous attacks on liberal democracies, worldwide (including in Canuckistanmikitaville), that make them piles and piles and piles of monopoly money.



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Saturday, March 02, 2024

Before You Make Those Last Minute Spring Break Travel Plans...

WhatSpreadsInFloridaMayNotStayInFlorida
AirTravelVille


Before you make your last minute spring break travel plans, you may want to check the latest news from the Sunshine State.

The following is from a piece by Eduardo Cuevas, originally published in USA Today:

Six children at Manatee Bay Elementary School, in Weston near Fort Lauderdale, caught the disease (measles) over a week ago. New state health data show two more cases in Broward County, of a child younger than 5 and another between ages 5 and 9.

The newly reported infections bring the total to eight, just days after Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo contradicted federal and medical professional guidance to contain the spread of the highly contagious and preventable disease...

{snip}

...In a letter Tuesday, Feb. 19 (state Surgeon General) Ladapo said Manatee Bay parents and guardians could decide whether to send their children back to school, a statement that conflicted with federal and medical professional recommendations that children from the school should remain at home to prevent the spread of measles...


Just in time for spring break trips to the waterpark and/or Disneyworld.

Meanwhile...

Haven't we discussed the spurious edicts of the good Dr. Ladapo before?

Why yes, we most certainly have...

...Joseph A. Ladapo, a professor of medicine at the University of Florida and the state’s surgeon general (appointed by governor Ron De Santis), relied upon a flawed analysis and may have violated university research integrity rules when he issued guidance last fall discouraging young men from receiving common coronavirus vaccines, according to a report from a medical school faculty task force...

{snip}

...In its new report, a task force of the University of Florida College of Medicine’s Faculty Council cites numerous deficiencies in the analysis Ladapo used to justify his vaccine recommendation. A summary said the work was “seriously flawed.” The report’s authors say Ladapo engaged in “careless, irregular, or contentious research practices.”...


Ladapo, who is not an infectious disease expert, also pushed hydroxycholoquine and ivermectin.

It would appear that ideology-driven public health has a long, mangy and dangerous tail, indeed.



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Thursday, February 29, 2024

These Are Not Diana Ross' Supremes.


WhatMakesDonnieRun
NotSchulbergVille


That was then:

“We conclude that when the ground for asserting privilege as to subpoenaed materials sought for use in a criminal trial is based only on the generalized interest in confidentiality, it cannot prevail over the fundamental demands of due process of law in the fair administration of criminal justice. The generalized assertion of privilege must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial.”

That was the Supreme Court of Warren Burger issuing the order, based on an immediate 8-0 decision, that Richard Nixon must hand over the Watergate Tapes because he did not have blanket immunity from prosecution due to executive privilege as a sitting president on July 29, 1974.

****

This is now:

"Without expressing a view on the merits, this Court directs the Court of Appeals to continue withholding issuance of the mandate until the sending down of the judgment of this Court. The application for a stay is dismissed as moot.

The case will be set for oral argument during the week of April 22, 2024."

That was the current Supreme Court of John Roberts issuing the order that there will be no immediate order on February 28, 2024. Instead, there will be further delay in making any decision as to whether or not Donald Trump has blanket immunity from prosecution for committing acts of insurrection as an outgoing, but still technically sitting, president.

The latter two month delay until 'oral argument' commences means that it is very unlikely that the current Supreme Court will make a decision on Trump's ridiculous blanket immunity claim before the summer.

This very likely means that Mr. Trump will not go to trial before the US'ian presidential election in November.

It's important to realize that, if he were to win, it is even more likely that Mr. Trump would end the federal prosecution of his own acts of insurrection if his super slow walking Supremes were to rule against him in the summer.

That's some incentive to win at all costs, 'eh?


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Why are there nine members of Burger's court in the image at the top of the post when the vote against Mr. Nixon was 8-0?....Because the guy in the glasses second from the right, William Rehnquist, actually recused himself because of his previous political association with the Trickster-In-Chief...Just one more thing that is very, very different now than it was then.


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Wednesday, February 21, 2024

The Cookie Dough Mike Chronicles (ctd.)



We'veGotArchivesAndWe'reGonnaKeep
UsingThemVille



"...De Jong was finance minister in the last B.C. Liberal government. He has taken some heat within his own party for leaving behind a sizable budget surplus for the New Democrats to spend.

He makes no apologies: “The biggest criticism I seem to get is that I was too stingy or too careful with public dollars. I’ll take that criticism because when COVID did hit, B.C. was in better shape with its finances than any other province in the country.”...


Yesterday, we commented on the above passage, which is from a recent Vaughn Palmer column. Specifically, we noted that Mr. de Jong largely built his surplus by imposing a hidden, regressive tax in the form of significant monthly MSP payments.

But that doesn't mean that the good Mr. de Jong wasn't also stingy when doling out those regressively obtained public dollars.

It's just that sometimes Cookie Dough Mike was downright mean and disingenuous when doing so, especially when the affected were those who need our help most.

Case in point, the following is what de Jong said after he took away bus passes for the disabled:

...“They’re exercising a new-found freedom and choice that heretofore didn’t exist,” de Jong said. “So that was the whole purpose of the exercise: to give people choice.”...


Heretofore 'choice', indeed.



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Tuesday, February 20, 2024

The Falcon And The Cookie Man.


RevisionistDeanish
HistoryVille



Vaughn Palmer's latest tells the tale of how one very, very fine former BC Liberal Party Finance Minister, Mike de Jong, is not going to run for Kevin Falcon's Soccer Party in the upcoming provincial election.

Mostly the column slowly circles the likely possibility that Mr de Jong, who once tried to soften his image by baking cookies on the Tubez long before Doug Ford's minions got the idea, will instead run federally for Mr. Poilievre.

In the process, the Dean of the legislative press gallery takes a wobbly walk down fiscal memory lane:

...De Jong was finance minister in the last B.C. Liberal government. He has taken some heat within his own party for leaving behind a sizable budget surplus for the New Democrats to spend.

He makes no apologies: “The biggest criticism I seem to get is that I was too stingy or too careful with public dollars. I’ll take that criticism because when COVID did hit, B.C. was in better shape with its finances than any other province in the country.”...


Hmmmm....

With the help of the late, great Dermod Travis, I remember things a wee bit differently when it comes to the strategy that the good Mr. de Jong used to generate his 'surplus'.

The following is from a post written in 2016:

Never mind that 4 percent MSP increase removal for 2017 thingy that the Clarklandians have bamboozled the Lotuslandian proMedia into focussing on over the past few news cycles (Ooooooh! Look! Shiny!!!)...

Because Dermod Travis of Integrity BC has instead noted the fee-for service gouging that has been going on during the entirety of the years of Clarklandia:


Moving out from individuals to the entirety of the British Columbian citizenry, the prediction by Cookie Dough Mike and his minions is that MSP will bring in a collectively regressive $2,549,000,000 this fiscal year (see pg 127).

 Now.... 

First: No other government in Canada hauls in money in this completely non-progressive way.

Second: Take away that $2.5B gouge/regressive pretend-it's-not-a-tax and Cookie Dough's new prediction of a $1.9B surplus is completely gone.


Yes...

I do have archives and I'm going to use 'em.



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And, still herding after all these years, the Keef weighs in on the same story.


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Monday, February 19, 2024

My Weekend Ride.



Where'sHorgan
WestshoreVille


Had a work thing late Friday so C and the Whackadoodle II headed over to SouthVan Isle without me.

I followed Saturday.

On my bike.



I really enjoy the Lochside Route into Victoria from the ferry - especially the flats from Mitchell's to Mattick's Farm. Then it was out to Colwood along the Galloping Goose. A good 50 km with the ride to Bridgeport to get the Tsawwassen bus on the Lotusland side added in.




Sunday, I rode out a little farther through Langford and out to Happy Valley on the GG.



No sign of the former premier anywhere. 


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Friday, February 16, 2024

What Would Alexei Have Done?


IfTheyDecideTo
KillMeVille


The anti-Putin Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who already survived a poisoning, is dead.

Below is his wife Yulia speaking at the Munich Security Conference just hours after she learned the news:



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Back end of the sub header?...."It means we are incredibly strong."


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Wednesday, February 14, 2024

That Handedness Thing Again.


ThePowerOfThe
AmbiJabVille


In the last post we got into a bit of a discussion about the contortions a left-handed person needs to perform when they are forced to complete an exam while sitting in one of those right-handed mini-desks that are often attached to chairs in big lecture halls and/or converted gymnasiums.

Which, of course, is crummy.

But nothing like the old days when folks like my maternal grandmother were forced to switch to using their right hands for everything they did in school because being left-handed was, by definition, 'sinister'.

However...

Is there ever a situation where switching hands, or, more appropriately in this case, arms, is a good thing?

Turns out that, when it comes to multiple vaccination regimens, that just might be case.

The following if from the abstract of recent paper by a group from Portland published in the very respectable Journal of Clinical Investigation:

...In previously unexposed adults receiving an initial vaccine series with the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, contralateral boosting substantially increases antibody magnitude and breadth at times beyond 3 weeks after vaccination. This effect should be considered during arm selection in the context of multi-dose vaccine regimens...


Translation:

If you got your first COVID jab in one arm and then switched to the other arm for the second jab you likely made more antibody against the virus for a significant amount of time.

Imagine that!


________
Why?...Not clear yet...One suggestion in the paper is that you generate more 'memory' B lymphocytes that can generate antibody over the long haul when you get jabbed in both arms, maybe because you get twice as many draining lymph nodes involved.
Tip'OTheToque to Mike The Mad Biologist for the heads-up on the paper...


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Sunday, February 11, 2024

Deadline Day.


WhereIsThatConfoundedLeftHanded
DeskVille



Back in the days before the thought of becoming an academic lifer was even remotely visible far, far over the horizon, I became very good at the cramming for exams.

And then one time, I think it was in the run up to Christmas break during my third year as an undergradual, I hit a wall a couple of days before it was time to trudge off to the cavernous McKinnon gym with hundreds of other young folks so that we could furiously empty our brains onto the page.

The issue was that, suddenly and somewhat inexplicably, I temporarily lost the one thing I ever had in common with Richard M. Nixon.

Which was my 'iron butt', the ability to sit in a chair and focus, really hard, for hours on end.

When I mentioned the problem to my Dad at the time, he took a moment before saying that I should remember all the work I'd already done and just relax a bit because everything would be fine, regardless.

I'm not sure if I heeded his wise words at the time.

But now, 40-plus years on, I am doing my best to channel them as I struggle to strap the iron into the chair once again so that I can finish yet another project on deadline over the next 48 hours.

Argh...


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Image at the top of the post is by JJ Philion is from the UVIC archives, resurrected by a young fellow named Malcom, a member of the school's official blogger army a few years ago.


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Thursday, February 08, 2024

Some Days Are Longer Than Others.


TriumphOfTheWitless
NotChaplinVille



What began as a spur of the moment stream of consciousness throwaway from he who would be Adenoid Hynkel for a day is now viewed as  'definitely or probably good' by a significant proportion of all kinds and categories of US'ians.

Is this due to the great influence of a certain Mr. Hannity, who was the receiver of the throwaway, and the propaganda strength of the cable news network that Mr. Hannity works for?

Well.

I guess you could make that case for the majority of the members of a certain political party.

But what about the rest of the population?

Is it possible that they are being influenced by milk toasty obsequious think pieces from very serious commentators working at even more serious mainstream media outlets?

To wit, check out the following lede by a piece from the Washington Post's national columnist Philip Bump:

The irony of Donald Trump’s assertion that he would seek to have dictatorial powers for the first day of his presidency is that he was supposed to be saying he had no authoritarian inclinations at all...


Gosh.

I wonder if the good Mr. Bump has ever considered the possibility that being a little bit dictator might be the same as being a little bit pregnant?


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Subheader?... Apparently, Charlie Chaplin decided to make 'The Great Dictator', in which he played the fellow named Adenoid referenced above,  after he watched L. Riefenstahl's nazi propaganda film 'Triumph of the Will'.


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Friday, January 26, 2024

Vancouver's 'Temporary' Parks In Potential Privatization Peril...The City Manager Weighs In.


JustBecauseThisIsNotHoustonDoesNotMeanWeDon't
HaveAProblemVille


In recent posts, we discussed how the  recommendations from the mayor's budgetary task force potentially puts 100 'temporary' parks in privatization peril, particularly if the parks board is abolished.

So.

Does the City of Vancouver itself also recognize that there might be a problem here?

Well, according to Francis Bula's tweet storm coverage of a press conference held yesterday to calm the waters given the massive wake caused by the Mayor's  drive to abolish the parks board, the city manager, Paul Mochrie, apparently does:




So there you have it.

The city is 'looking at opportunities' to protect public lands (i.e. all those temporary 'park spaces') that are being put in potential peril of privatization due to the concerted actions of the very same city's mayor.

Don't know about you, but I'm not sure that allays any of my fears.



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Thursday, January 25, 2024

Sometimes Zero Is A Very Good Number, Indeed.


TheBestHealthIs
PublicHealthVille


I've written about this before, but as a tail end boomer I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones.

And I'm not just talking about all of the socioeconomic benefits bestowed upon me just because I was born at the tail end of the 1950's.

Instead, I'm talking about polio.

Because, unlike a good friend of mine who was born just a few years earlier, it is not something I ever had to worry about.

Or live with.

Fast forward to the 2000's when our two girls were coming of age and a different vaccine was being rolled out in public schools all over the world.

This one against human papilloma virus.

At the time, Bigger E. asked me if I thought this was a good idea.

I told her that it was clear that a couple of the virus strains were a major contributing cause of cervical cancer so preventing HPV infection was definitely a good idea. However, being the science geek that I am I couldn't stop there. So I also told her that the development of the disease itself takes a long time which, at the time that she was going to get her jabs, the actual effect on cervical cancer rates wasn't yet known with certainty. Probably broke a number of Dad codes with that last bit - Sorry E.

Anyway...

The cervical cancer rate reduction data are now rolling in.

And the upshot is very good, indeed.

From Scottish Public Health:

An exciting new study from Public Health Scotland (PHS), in collaboration with the Universities of Strathclyde and Edinburgh, shows that no cervical cancer cases have been detected in fully vaccinated women following the human papillomavirus (HPV) immunisation at age 12-13 since the programme started in Scotland in 2008.

The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute today, concludes that the HPV vaccine is highly effective in preventing the development of cervical cancer...

The actual paper is here (see Abstract at bottom of post).

****

This is the way things are supposed to work.

Initial fundamental/basic research, followed by clinical validation and pharma doing things right, from drug development through trials, all ending in a sweeping public health measure that improves everyone's lives (the vaccine is not just for young women and cervical cancer prevention anymore - it is efficacious against multiple types of HPV- driven cancers).

OK?

______

Abstract
Background

High-risk human papillomavirus causes cervical cancer. Vaccines have been developed that significantly reduce the incidence of preinvasive and invasive disease. This population-based observational study used linked screening, immunization, and cancer registry data from Scotland to assess the influence of age, number of doses, and deprivation on the incidence of invasive disease following administration of the bivalent vaccine.

Methods
Data for women born between January 1, 1988, and June 5, 1996, were extracted from the Scottish cervical cancer screening system in July 2020 and linked to cancer registry, immunization, and deprivation data. Incidence of invasive cervical cancer per 100 000 person-years and vaccine effectiveness were correlated with vaccination status, age at vaccination, and deprivation; Kaplan Meier curves were calculated.

Results
No cases of invasive cancer were recorded in women immunized at 12 or 13 years of age irrespective of the number of doses. Women vaccinated at 14 to 22 years of age and given 3 doses of the bivalent vaccine showed a significant reduction in incidence compared with all unvaccinated women (3.2/100 000 [95% confidence interval (CI) = 2.1 to 4.6] vs 8.4 [95% CI = 7.2 to 9.6]). Unadjusted incidence was significantly higher in women from most deprived (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 1) than least deprived (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 5) areas (10.1/100 000 [95% CI = 7.8 to 12.8] vs 3.9 [95% CI = 2.6 to 5.7]). Women from the most deprived areas showed a significant reduction in incidence following 3 doses of vaccine (13.1/100 000 [95% CI = 9.95 to 16.9] vs 2.29 [95% CI = 0.62 to 5.86]).

Conclusion
Our findings confirm that the bivalent vaccine prevents the development of invasive cervical cancer and that even 1 or 2 doses 1 month apart confer benefit if given at 12-13 years of age. At older ages, 3 doses are required for statistically significant vaccine effectiveness. Women from more deprived areas benefit more from vaccination than those from less deprived areas.


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Another time I broke the Dad codes with E?...It was when I let my science geek tendencies run amok while helping her with her Grade 7 science project...Long story short - her teacher rightly informed me that rigorous statistical significance analyses of the data generated were a pretty good indication that the project just may have become as much mine as E's...Apologies for that one also kid.


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Wednesday, January 24, 2024

Developers? In Lotusland?


AllTheirBagmen
'RUsVille



Raymond Tomlin, who is really on top of this parks board on the killing floor thing, explains why the City of Vancouver has been so developer friendly for the last fifty plus years:

...Whether it’s developer Mayor Tom Campbell in the late 60s, or Joel Solomon and Gregor Robertson for a 10-year period when Vision Vancouver was at the seat of power at Vancouver City Hall, or in these latter days, with an avuncular — but dare we say, avaricious — Peter Armstrong and Chip Wilson (backing ABC Vancouver), we who call Vancouver home are reminded yet again, and much to our consternation, this is not our city, for Vancouver is owned lock, stock and barrel by the developer class...


Go and read Mr. Tomlin's entire post - it's good.



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