'Toontime: 24/7 ME

credit: Dave Whamond

For a sociopathic narcissist such as the one occupying the Very White House, nothing is better than a pandemic crisis for increased media exposure--a built in nationwide platform to repeat your latest grievances, quack remedies*, conspiracy theories, psycho-drama, and nauseous self-aggrandizement.  At least MSNBC had the sense to cut away from his non-stop maunder to debunk the wonders of zinc against COVID-19! At this point in the regime the CMM is simply enabling the dysfunctional governance of a disordered chief executive.  Current US death rate from SARS-CoV-2: 3.6% (John Hopkins)

I alone can fix this....

* From the shur'nuff department comes this NYT report: "Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drug maker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine....The professional organization that published a positive French study cited by Mr. Trump’s allies changed its mind in recent days. The International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy said, “The article does not meet the society’s expected standard.” Some hospitals in Sweden stopped providing hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus after reports of adverse side effects, according to Swedish news media Dr. Voodoo's latest pitch: Zinc. The mineral was last touted as a cure for the common cold.  NOT!

What is, comes to US from Salon: the top corporate manufacturer of hydroxychloroquine, Novartis, spent about a year funneling $100,000 per month into “a reputed slush fund for Trump” managed by his personal lawyer Michael Cohen. That arrangement delivered $1 million worth of slush.  Another fan-boy of Trumpillini and co-f0under of Amneal Pharmaceuticals plays golf with the current occupant.  Bottom line: It's all about graft, all the time!  The supposed business empire he built that so impressed dollar addled 'Merican voters trained like Pavlovian dogs to salivate at the appearance of money was mostly over-hyped shlock that crumbled into bankruptcy in 1992. Almost everything he touched from the Plaza Hotel to Trump University lost money. Only the fact that the banks (Citibank at the front of the line) were into him for so much money--$3 billion of which $900 million was personally guaranteed--did he survive to prey on the public coffers. The banks could have easily called Trump’s loans and left him penniless, and therefore not a legit presidential contender, “but we all agreed that he’d be better alive than dead,” explained Alan Pomerantz, then head of the real estate department at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the law firm that represented Citibank. The only 'fake news' nowadays is Donald Trump.

COTW: Employment Is Victim of Corona Virus

Still think chaining your health care to a job is a good idea?  Take a look at this chart first:

The initial unemployment claim figure is over 16 million.  The St Louis Federal Reserve projects that 47 million more people may become unemployed by the end of June, with unemployment reaching 32%.  That is Great Depression level unemployment. Employer provided health care is also becoming a work benefit of the past. The reason is straight forward: it costs too much. Workers are left to fend for themselves in a market built on private insurance oligopolies--a system neither fair or efficient. Because the federal government has become the operating arm of the corporate state, it chooses to helicopter dump trillion$ into unaccountable corporate coffers rather than build a more equitable social safety net  This is no way to run a railroad, 'Merica.  Are you reading, Joe Gramps?  A single payer option should have been part of the Affordable Care Act, but your administration caved to the insurance lobby.  Better late than never; it will pave the way to a true socialized, universal health care system.

the beginning of the myth?

Praising Ceasar

Bernie probably sounded the death knell of his quest for the Room Without Corners when he bravely pronounced mild praise for the social accomplishments of the Castro regime.  Those are undeniable, {20.02.08} as are the human rights abuses committed by the Cuban revolution.  Cuban doctors and Cuba's socialized health care system are respected around the world.  Not only do they regularly assist developing nations with health care, but they engage in ground breaking research.  Here is one more example.

In September 2011 a Chinese news agency (notably not a western source because after all nothing good can come out of communist Cuba) reported that Cuban doctors had developed a vaccine for inoperable lung cancer, CIMAvax-EGF. This was the result of twenty-five years of research by Havana’s Center for Molecular Immunology. Castro had expressed interest in the Institute's earlier research into Interferon with a visit to the Institute [picture, left] Interferon turned out to be a dead end, but research went on.  The vaccine is now in use in Latin America and the Balkans. It does not prevent lung cancer.  It does control the spread of tumors to other parts of the body in late stage non-small cell lung carcinoma.  The vaccine is given to patients who have lung cancer for which other treatments are not effective.  Initial trials show that patients under 60 benefit most in terms of survival. Side effects are relatively mild. 

Like any vaccine, more widespread testing is needed to determine if it is safe and effective.  Trials are supposed to take place in the US, Japan and the European Union.  The FDA authorized a phase II clinical trial to take place in Buffalo, NY at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in 2016.  However the current ideologically based, economic embargo against Cuba is hindering that cooperation.  An immunologist at Roswell said of the Cuban doctors involved, “The wonderful thing about working with our Cuban colleagues is that they really believe, in their heart of hearts, that medical care is a human right.”  If that type of commitment to the common good is socialistic, US Person says bring it on!*

*On the subject of vaccines and vaccinations, the Colorado county of El Paso, which contains the city of Colorado Springs has more reactionary conservative voters than any other county in the state, and they have displayed more weirdness in anticipation of a vaccine for COVID-19. These rabid reactionaries passed two county platform resolutions against mandatory vaccination, condemning the policy in no uncertain terms twice. Possibly by strange coincident, the county also has the most deaths from COVID-19 in the state.  Colorado already has lax vaccination requirements allowing parents to exempt their children for religious or philosophical reasons.  It has the worst vaccination rate for measles in the nation

Continuing the Purge

Latest:  The latest casualty in Il Douche's war against government oversight of his criminally corrupt regime is the inspector general selected by a panel of inspector generals--in other words an independent civil servant--to oversee the distribution and use of $2 trillion in pandemic relief.  Glenn Fine was replaced on Monday by the inspector general of a captive agency, the EPA. The replacement apparently is expected to do both jobs, badly. DOD is a the government's largest agency both in terms of personnel and budget.  Fine's removal is the latest in a series of personnel decisions intended to squash any independence in the apparatus of federal government and replace it with slavish sycophants in thrall to the Cult of Trump. The Antichrist is also attacking the IG of Health and Human Services following her report about delays in testing and short supply issues. Criticism of his "fantastically incredible job performance is definitely not allowed by the Anointed One. Senator Schummer, the minority leader, ripped Douche's "corrupt action" and said he is trying to sideline "honest and independent public servants because they are willing to speak truth to power and because he is so clearly afraid of strong oversight."  What was your first clue, Senator?

{05.04.20}The Antichrist in Office continues his purge of civil servants who stood by their public duties over slavish adherence to the Cult of Trump.  Michael Atkinson, the former intelligence inspector general, was fired by Trumpillini on Friday in an attempt to avoid media coverage of the event.  Atkinson was the IG who forwarded the whistle blower complaint about the Ukraine affair to Congress, where it became the basis of an unsuccessful impeachment attempt.  In his statement concerning his dismissal, Atkinson said he was compelled by law to forward the complaint, which turned out to be a highly accurate description of Trumillini's attempted shakedown of the Ukrainian government for help smearing his Democratic rival in the election campaign.

As justification for the dismissal, Trumpillini said that he had "lost confidence" in Atkinson's abilities, and his handling of the complaint against him was "unfair". He told the press, "Not a big Trump fan, "that I can tell you." Both the Very White House and the Barr Department tried for days to prevent the complaint from reaching Congress as required by federal law.  Observers consider this latest purge of perceived 'enemies of Trump' endangers democracy at a time when 'Mericans are frightened out of their minds by the pandemic.

Who will be the next victim of the Antichrist's unrelenting vindictiveness? US Person nominates, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has the impertinence to speak truth to power about the pandemic.  During one of his propaganda broadcasts, the Antichrist restrained Dr. Fauci from answering repeated questions about hydroxchloroquine, the anti-malarial drug touted by the huckster-in-chief as a miracle cure for COVID-19. Dr. Fauci has repeatedly said in public that there is no firm evidence the drug is an effective treatment for COVID-19, and that it has serious side effects.  But Don Douche interrupted Dr. Fauci's response saying, “You don’t have to ask the question,” stepping in front of the podium, waving his hand in the air and using his immense girth as a physical barricade between Fauci and the reporter.

It is not obvious why he continues to insist that this anti-microbial drug would be effective against a novel virus infection, but some pundits argue that if he follows his cult-like modus operandi, he will use the medical warnings against its untested clinical use as an excuse for the worsening spread of the disease, which has been exacerbated by the regime's muddled and confused response to the crisis.  As a public voice of expert caution, Dr Fauci is in danger of becoming another scapegoat for Don Douche. “If it does work, it would be a shame we did not do it early,”  said Don about hydroxychloroquine during the press conference Sunday. Thwarted again by another 'deep state' conspiracy against him, his propaganda line will be.  Will Fauci join the league of truth-tellers whose members include James Comey, Robert Mueller, Col. Vindmin, Ambassador Yovanovitch, and Michael Atkinson?   The emperor not only has no clothes, but he has also lost his mind.

Corova Virus: A Biological Perspective

It may be helpful to put the current pandemic into the broader context of ecology and history.  SARS CoV-2 is not as deadly as the Bubonic plague that killed sixty percent of the population of Europe in the fourteenth century, nor is it as lethal as the swine flu pandemic of 1918-20 that killed 50 million worldwide.  Ebola killed more than 11,000 in West Africa in 2016.  All of these infectious diseases however, pale in comparison to the fungal infection known as Bd after Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a fungus that kills amphibians by eating their sensitive skin and causing fatal heart attacks.

baby limosa harlequin frog, Daily Mail

The latest estimate by researchers published in Science is that the cytrid fungus, identified twenty years ago, is responsible for the decline of a shocking 501 amphibian species and is presumably responsible for the extinction of 90 species.  Another 124 have declined more than 90% and probably will not recover.  Lead researcher Ben Steele of Australia National University, told the Atlantic, “It rewrote our understanding of what disease could do to wildlife.”

When one considers that amphibians are a major class on the tree of life that have been in existence for some 370 million years the scale of destruction wrought by one organism in five decades is mind bending.  Amphibian experts are rightfully "freaking out" about the lost of so many species, so quickly.  The mysterious disappearance of frogs from the rain forests of the Americas and Australia in the '70s was noted by wildlife experts, but the cause was debated.  By the time the fungus was isolated in 1998, it had killed 60 amphibious species.  Epidemiologists at Imperial University (sound familiar?) conducted a genetic study that suggested the fungus originated in Asia and quickly spread to five continents.

adult harlequin, Daily Mail

Bd is the perfect frog killer, undiscriminating, persistent and able to convert nutrients found on amphibian skins, it spreads through the water.  There is another factor in the ability of the fungus to kill so many species around the world: the increasing interconnections artificially created by man's global transportation network.  Steele compares it to a recreation of Pangaea, the super continent existing in the Paleozoic Era.  A result of this condition is that fungal infections that might have stopped at the shoreline are showing up across the oceans, infecting a range of fauna from bats, snakes, salamanders and others. Included in this artificial transmission is the largely illegal wildlife trade in which foreign organisms are introduced to a defenseless ecosystem for the sake of profit. Besides the obvious ecological impact of too many rabbits or pythons, the pathogens they carry do the most damage to biodiversity.

There is a glimmer of hope for amphibians.  Some decimated populations are increasing and the rate of decline for sixty species appears to be easing.  So far Papua New Guinea, rich in amphibious species has escaped the fungal plague. Perhaps frog evolution has found a way to combat Bd. Nature may have to provide an effective defense because there is no easy way for man to combat the disease. There are captive breeding programs, research on hybridization, and genetic manipulation of the fungus itself.  None of these strategies are close to being deployed in Nature, and there are always unintended consequences to artificial solutions.  What the Bd scourge tells man, is there is no escape from natural processes that tend to restore ecological balance, no matter how successful the species.

Bronx Zoo Tigers Infected

More:In the middle of a pandemic and two weeks into a quarantine order, Wisconsin will go ahead with its primary.
Update: Prime Minister Boris Johnson was moved on Monday evening to intensive care where a ventilator is available.  The Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is now in charge of the British government at his request.  In early March Johnson visited a hospital were COVID-19 patients were treated. He boasted that he shook hands with everybody and would continue to do so.  Johnson attempted to take a Trumpian attitude to the disease spread, and was criticized for his initial slow response to the outbreak in the UK. COVID-19 deaths in the US now exceed ten thousand and are still climbing.  New York Mayor Cuomo has doubled the fine for violating social distancing rules to $1000. He told the press,  “This is an enemy that we have underestimated from Day 1, and we have paid the price dearly.”  Wisconsin finally postponed its primary set for Tuesday until June 9th.  The edict has been challenged in the Wisconsin Supreme Court by the Repugnant controlled legislature.  The court also has a conservative majority.

{5/4/2020}The SERS CoV-2 virus is proving its surprising resilience. It has made another species jump to tigers housed at the Bronx Zoo.  "Nadia", a four year old Malaysian [photo], her sister "Azul", two other Amur tigers, and three African lions are exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19; they were probably infected by an asymptomatic keeper.   Nadia and the others are under the care of veterinarians; they are reported to be doing well, interacting with their custodians, and are expected to make a full recovery. The Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages the zoo, says it is unknown how the virus will affect Panthera, since each species' response to a novel respiratory infection is different.   The USDA said Nadia first began experiencing symptoms such as persistent cough on March 27th. The infection is the first confirmed transmission to another species in the United States. Pets may be at risk of infection; the agency advises people experiencing COVID-19 symptoms to restrict their interaction with pets out of an abundance of caution. The CDC does not have evidence that animals can spread the virus to humans at this time.  The Bronx Zoo, along with the New York Aquarium and four other city zoos are closed to the public, but staff are at work caring for their wards.

In other plague news: Boris Johnson, the British prime minister who has been self-isolated for the past ten days with a COVID-19 infection, was admitted to hospital Sunday.  A spokesperson said the admission was on the advice of his doctor for tests. However, there have been persistent rumors that his condition has not improved since contracting the infection. Item: New Orleans' death rate is twice New York City's. Question of the moment: Does Don Douche, or any of his family, own stock in a company that manufactures or distributes hydroxycloroquinine?

Its trade name is: Plaquenil.  The anti-malarial drug was developed in the 40's as a less toxic alternative to cloroquinine, and will undergo a trial in New York to determine its safety and effectiveness against COVID-19.  Health officials have repeated warnings that the drug has serious side effects and should not be self-administered despite Don Douche unqualified, reckless advice, "What do you have to loose? take it". Three people in Nigeria overdosed on the drug last month. Quinine drugs can cause heart rhythm problems, severely low blood pressure, and eye, muscle or nerve damage. There have been some unverified reports that the drug confers relief to patients with COVID-19.  Item: COVID-19 deaths in US, 8,500.

'Toontime: A Great Light in the Sky

This picture and caption gave US Person a belly laugh, so he wanted to share it with his readers. Thanks go to LawyersGunsandMoney blog, which is worth a read.  The KT asteroid killed off the dinosaurs. SERS CoV-2 will kill hundreds of thousands of Americans, probably fewer than the 1918 Influenza (675,000 deaths) because of better (hopefully) medical treatment.

 I once had a bird named Enza;

Who flew out the window towards Potenza;

 So I baked a cake and when it was done, in flew Enza.

In another demonstration of the dinosaur-like mentality of the US military and their political enablers, the US Navy relieved a decorated captain of command of the USS Roosevelt aircraft carrier after his appeal for help controlling his ship's corona virus outbreak was made public. Capt. Brett Crozier wrote, “We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our sailors.”  Apparently the Navy considered that statement to be an embarrassing show of weakness, as the Trumpian cabal continues to 'tough it out'* against a killer virus.

About 93 cases of COVID-19 have been detected on the carrier anchored off Guam, which has a complement of more than 4,800 sailors and marines.  He asked the Navy for permission for 90% his men and women to go ashore into quarantine since the ship is operating in peacetime.  The letter was addressed to Crozier's chain of command. After the letter leaked, the Navy allowed 2,700 sailors to go ashore by Friday. Dismissal is what you get for putting your crew before your career.

John Darkow, Columbia Missourian

* Most rational political observers have known for a long time that many of Don Douche's most rabid supporters are mentally deranged.  But two more examples of their delusional thinking emerged this week and deserve mention. A train engineer in San Pedro, CA drove his freight train off the tracks in an effort to ram the US Navy hospital ship, Mercy, in port to help with the crisis.  The engineer told the arresting officer that he had to ram the ship because it was part of a 'deep state' hoax to wreck his president's chances of re-election.  Page two: El Paso County in Colorado is a known bastion of extreme right-wing, evangelical politics.  US Person can testify to this fact, personally.  The El Paso County Republican Party chairperson posted a question on the party's Facebook page asking if party members, “believe that the Coronavirus is a PSYOP (Psychological Operation)”, and encouraged them to “post your answer” in the comments.  The post was quickly criticized by other party officials, and it was taken down.  The chairperson defended her rumor mongering saying, “I posted a question, I’m sorry people couldn’t answer it. Don’t get all offended.”